UPDATE TO BELOW ALEX NEWS......
Another rumor bites the dust. Steve Lukather, the guitarist for Toto, says he’s not playing guitar on a new Van Halen album. Recent reports suggested that Alex Van Halen enlisted Lukather to complete unreleased tracks featuring his late brother, Eddie Van Halen. Lukather says that, while he is assisting Alex in reviewing unreleased recordings, he will not perform guitar parts on any Van Halen songs. Why? Because he’s committed to honoring Eddie’s legacy, said “The fact that ANYONE would think for even a second that I would play anything on this is ridiculous.” He’s apparently involved in some way, but for now…rumor squashed.
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If a report out of the Netherlands is true, Alex Van Halen is trying to finish tracks his brother Eddie recorded with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather.
Last month, Alex, who was born and raised in Amsterdam, was in the Netherlands and did an interview for his book Brothers, as well as going to see Toto perform at the Gelredome in Arnhem.
Alex alluded to the album during the interview, saying, “Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”
Jean-Paul Heck, the reporter who did the interview, then asked Lukather, who said, "Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”
A source close to Lukather confirms that Heck did interview Alex and he was at the Toto show, where he did speak to Lukather, but says that anything further needs to come from Alex. The source adds that the quote from Lukather is "not verbatim."
Meanwhile, a source for Alex is unaware of such a project, but tells us they'll look into it.
Last November, during an interview about Brothers, Alex told us about the archives.
Van Halen's last album was 2012's A Different Kind of Truth. Seven of the album's 13 songs were re-recordings of demos they did in the '70s into early '80s.