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Alex Van Halen Talks "Unfinished" Business

MORE UPDATES TO BELOW....

Alex Van Halen says the title of the last song he recorded with his late brother Eddie, the instrumental "Unfinished," came from "a song piece of music" by the late composer Franz Schubert known as "Unfinished."

Speaking last week in Culver City, California in support of his just published memoir, Brothers, he said, "[Franz] didn't finish the song so there were several musicians or composers who finished the song for him.

"And it was a strange way of all these things coming together at one time. That song was my father's favorite song. Either that it was only the record he had [laughs]. It was ingrained in us from a very early time. An early, early slate. So it all kind of came together and that's why we named that last song Ed and I wrote together 'Unfinished,' in honor of the lineage from my dad to Ed to me and to Wolf[gang Van Halen, Eddie's son]."

Asked if there is more music to come, Alex said there is. "I listen to it and I tell you, it tears my heart up. I can't even verbalize it, but I am going to take some of that music and make something of it. It was stuff that Ed had written and that we had worked on but, again, the most important thing is [that] I'm not going to try to pretend to be him or giving [it to] a guitarist to imitate him. I even tried Artificial Intelligence to see the patterns of how he plays. You can't do it. Ed was unique, he was individual, there's only one Ed."

"Unfinished" is featured in the audiobook version of Brothers, and it's also available for downloading or streaming on the band's website, Van-Halen.com.

AND......

More cowbell, Alex! Latin Percussion has just introduced the Alex Van Halen Signature Cowbell. It comes embossed with both Alex’s signature and the Van Halen logo. The company says: “This 8-inch chrome-plated cowbell pumps out high pitch with dry overtones, which is great for punching accents into any big rock groove." It sells for $99.99.

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EARLIER UPDATES TO BELOW ORIGINAL STORY.....

Alex Van Halen stopped by the Robert Frost Auditorium in Culver City, California, on Thursday to promote his newly released memoir Brothers and discuss his tenure in Van Halen and growing up with his brother Eddie Van Halen.

Read More: Alex Van Halen Talks DLR Audition at Book Event: Photos and Video |

Alex Van Halen has released the full version of "Unfinished," the final song he recorded with his late brother Eddie.

The instrumental is featured in the audiobook version of Brothers, Alex's book that will be published this Tuesday. He made the song available for downloading or streaming on the band's website, Van-Halen.com.

And, in more news surrounding the book, despite David Lee Roth quitting Van Halen and not being easy to work with in subsequent years, including 86ing an Eddie Van Halen tribute tour with Alex and Michael Anthony, Alex, in an interview with Billboard, says he harbors no ill will.

“I’m not angry at all with Dave. He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out. That’s why I mentioned (in my memoir, Brothers) that the first person I called when Ed died was Dave because I felt like I owed him that, to the work we had done together and the fact that our families knew each other and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level, if you will, when we first started. I don’t know where things went wrong…I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave and his work ethic. I just think some of his choices were really strange to me, but that’s not my job to figure it out.”

Alex goes onto say that Roth quitting the band in 1985 was "the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother.”

Alex made his first public appearance since Eddie's death on October 6th, 2020 when he did an in-store signing of Brothers at noon yesterday at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York. Today, when Brothers is published, he'll be at Books & Greetings in Northvale, New Jersey at 6 p.m.

Then on Thursday, Alex will be he'll be back in Los Angeles for Live Talks LA at the Frost Auditorium in Culver City.

And on October 29th, he will do a virtual event that starts at 8 p.m. The $50 admission (plus $11 in fees) not only gets you access to his live conversation with the book’s co-author, Ariel Levy, but allows you to watch it on video-on-demand for the next five days. Plus you receive a copy of the book signed by Alex. To purchase tickets go to LiveTalksLA.org

Check out his latest post about it here from his Official Instagram page.

AND, IN OTHER VAN HALEN RELATED NEWS...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is getting sued. Rock photographer Neil Zlozower has filed the suit, alleging the used a copyrighted image of Van Halen without permission. Zlozower claims that the copyrighted image of Van Halen without permission “willfully and volitionally copied and displayed" the photo as part of an eight-foot-tall exhibit. His lawyers go further, stating that the Hall should have known better since they’re a big company. "Defendant is a sophisticated company... in an industry where copyright is prevalent,” Zlozower’s lawyers state. The photographer also apparently has a history with suing people…they’ve has filed over 50 similar lawsuits over the years. Zlozower is seeking statutory damages which could go up to $150-thousand per infringement.

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Alex Van Halen has done a bunch of interviews recently to promote his memoir Brothers, which will be released tomorrow.

In it, he contrasts the Sammy Hagar-fronted version of Van Halen with the original run with David Lee Roth as singer. He says, "What happened after Dave left is not the same band. I'm not saying it was better or worse or any of that. We always gave it our best shot, but the magic was in the first years when we were willing to try anything."

Despite having been asked, Alex did not choose to participate in Hagar and Michael Anthony's recent The Best of All Worlds Tour with Joe Satriani and Jason Bonham, who was replaced by Kenny Aronoff when he had to drop off to deal with some unspecified family issues. Asked about it, he responds, "I'm not interested. They're not doing the band justice. They can do what they want. It's not my business." He never explains why he feels they didn't do Van Halen justice.

He also says that his auction of some of his drum equipment in June was "misinterpreted" as a sign that he's quitting music, but was merely a way to clean out some storage space. He insists that he's "not quitting." And although he has been battling spinal issues for some time, he says modern technology should enable him to "be OK in about five years."

Also eye opening is that he says he'd like to see Brothers made into a movie.  

IN OTHER VAN HALEN RELATED NEWS....

David Lee Roth has shared another unreleased song that he teased on The Roth Show in 2016. Check out "Red Bull and Pop Tarts" in the below video.


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