As Alex Van Halen works on unreleased tracks created by his brother, the late guitarist Eddie Van Halen, one of the band’s former front men Sammy Hagar thinks there’s a way the music can achieve the best of both worlds.
A guitar virtuoso who co-founded the band with his drumming brother and singer David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen died of cancer in 2020. Alex Van Halen first dropped some unreleased music created with his brother with the audiobook version of his memoir “Brothers,” released in October 2024.
More recently, Alex Van Halen has said there’s enough unreleased material recorded while his brother was alive to create a final Van Halen album. Currently, he is working with Steve Lukather, co-founder of the band Toto and a friend of Eddie Van Halen, on helping finishing the album. Also a music producer and arranger, Lukather has said he is not playing on the tracks.
Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, supplied bass guitar, Alex Van Halen told American Songwriter recently. “The drums are already recorded. The drums, the guitar and the bass are already in there.”
In a recent interview with the Brazilian YouTube channel and podcast Kazagastão, Alex Van Halen told host Gastão Moreira he had hoped to recruit as a vocalist Paul Rodgers, who previously served as the lead singer for several bands including Free and Bad Company, and Queen, when the band toured after Freddie Mercury’s death. “But he can’t do it any more,” Van Halen said.
Hagar ‘would love to write a song with Eddie again’
Sammy Hagar, who had two stints as Van Halen’s lead vocalist – from 1985-1996 after Roth’s departure, and again in 2004 – hasn’t been contacted about the project, he told USA TODAY. “(Alex Van Halen) has the right to do anything he wants with his brother’s stuff, but it’s really a shame,” he said. “I would love to write a song with Eddie again.”
Hagar went so far as to say having him and Roth split the vocals – and have bassist Michael Anthony provide backing vocals – “would be a dream come true for Van Halen fans.”
In his memoir, Alex Van Halen didn’t cover the “Van Hagar” years of the band, after Roth left in 1985. “For me, the spirit of the band ended in 1984. 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,” he told USA TODAY in 2024.
“I understand he’s got some problems with me,” Hagar says. “But whatever, you know, I’m busy. But if I got the call, I would drop just about everything, except for my live shows, to do the right thing for that. It would just be so exciting to work with Eddie again in any way.”
Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & [email protected].
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