Brothers

In 1982, Eddie got a phone call from legendary record producer Quincy Jones, inviting him to play on Michael Jackson’s record Thriller. Two years earlier, Eddie had said that he would never work on someone else’s record because Van Halen was his family. However, now Eddie agreed to play a guitar solo on Jackson’s song “Beat It.” This added to the already existing tension in the band, as Alex Van Halen told his brother that “it’s not in Van Halen’s interest for you to be playing with other acts” (202). The song “Beat It” “went number one all over the world” and Eddie’s “cameo on Thriller became one of the most famous solos in rock” (203). Roth felt betrayed by Eddie’s solo work, but it also gave him “a leg to stand on when he wanted to do things without the rest of the band” (204).

Around the same time, Eddie befriended Frank Zappa, the legendary musician who lived near him and who was once with Warner Bros. as well. Eddie wanted to be able to record in his home like Zappa, convinced that “the only way to have real freedom was to build his own studio” (205). The Van Halens named Eddie’s studio 5150, the police code for the involuntary confinement of someone who is a danger to themselves or the community: “calling it 5150 was our way of claiming the space as our own personal lunatic asylum” (208).

The studio lived up to Eddie’s hopes, as “5150 was a place where Ed felt liberated to create” (210). There, the band recorded their next album, 1984, which became Van Halen’s best and produced their only number one single, “Jump.” Eddie told a journalist some years later that one of the reasons he built the studio was to make sure “Jump” ended up on 1984 because “everyone hated it” (210). Roth and Templeman were opposed to the song—Roth because Eddie was playing the keyboards instead of guitar and Templeman because it sounded like pop. Alex Van Halen counters that terms such as “heavy metal” and “pop” are just marketing categories, rather than meaningful descriptions. In fact, he claims that 1984 is the album “that came closest to the sound we were always shooting for” (212).

The breakup of Van Halen’s original lineup “started with Dave telling us he was going to do a solo EP—and that Ted was going to produce it” (218). Roth believed that the band was holding him back, but Alex Van Halen argues that the reality was that “we were all propelling each other forward” (218-19). Roth was not only planning a solo EP, but he had also written a memoir and a screenplay; he left the band to pursue those projects.

Despite the hard feelings about Roth’s departure, Van Halen knew that something was lost without him. For Alex, the conflicts between bandmates often led to artistic breakthroughs: He believes that “creativity is an argument among friends” and writes that they “never fought better with anyone than we did with Dave” (220). 

Alex Van Halen compares the breakup of the band with the death of his brother. While he acknowledges that the two events are not of the same magnitude, the former was like “a preview of the oceanic grief that came over me when my brother passed” (221).

Alex Van Halen provides a series of testimonials that he received after Eddie died. These are presumably from fans; many reference Eddie’s addictions. After these notes, Alex continues to eulogize his brother as he did in his Overture and Interlude. He ends by averring that “we were brothers. We’re still brothers. Even death can’t change that” (226).