ALEX VAN HALEN On Why He Ended The Narrative Of His Book “Brothers” In 1984: “After That, I Don’t Know, But It Wasn’t The Same”

In a recent interview with Bringing It Back To The Beatles, Alex Van Halen talked again about the fact that his new book, “Brothers”, stops its narrative in the year 1984, leaving out the later years of the legendary band with Sammy Hagar at the mic. Apparently, for Alex, it wasn’t just a timeline choice; it was a statement about what the band was — and what it became.

“Because the original band was the band that was the driving force. That was the connection between the disparate parts of the musical world, if you will. And we were young. The first record going platinum — it’s incredible. That’s something you can really never expect to happen again,” he said.

The band’s early success was exhilarating, but it also came with its fair share of challenges. Alex described those years as a mix of chaos, excitement, and trial-and-error moments that defined their identity. “Later on, it was different — that’s for another book — but the excitement and the confusion and the groping in the dark, if you will, and all the mistakes that we made, and all the B.S. we had to endure, and then to recognize at the very end, maybe we had one more record in us, it was very… You can’t take it back, but those are the things that are in the back of your head.”

Reflecting on the highs and lows of the era, Alex added, “The old expression of, if you don’t go over the edge, then you can’t come back. You have to go too far to come back in. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, we’re human and we made some bad choices. The US Festival, for instance, was just a clusterfuck. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. All we said was, ‘You make sure you have enough power, and we’ll play.’ That’s it.”

When the interviewer remarked that this raw approach was “true rock and roll,” Alex wholeheartedly agreed. “Bingo. That’s exactly right,” he said. “You just hit the nail on the head. After that, that’s why the book ends in 1984 because that was true rock and roll. After that, it became much more — I don’t know; I can’t explain it. But it’s not to say that it was not any good. We always did our best at whatever we were doing, but it wasn’t the same.”

Alex’s decision to end “Brothers” in 1984 also stems from his personal reflections on the band’s trajectory. Earlier in the interview, he said, “I think I picked up where Ed left off in terms of saying… His example was that we were happier playing in clubs than we were when we hit the so-called big time, because in the clubs you weren’t quite sure what you were doing, you could, at the drop of a hat, change directions, you can play anything you want and there’s nobody that holds you accountable or they have expectations of any sort. You just go on and you play. And it’s intimate. You’re right there, two feet away. People are right there in front of your face. And that kind of goes away when you get to the place where you have five lines of security people. And we always kept it to a minimum, but that was the soup du jour.”

In an earlier conversation with USA Today, Alex sort of echoed these sentiments, however emphasizing how the band’s spirit changed after David Lee Roth left. “For me, the spirit of the band ended in 1984,” he said. “We did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential, the looking to the future together, all of that stuff, our mutually strange backgrounds — that’s what made Van Halen. Ed and I were outsiders. Dave was an outsider. Those kinds of intangible things make the fabric of how we were tied together.”