44 pages • 1-hour read
Brothers
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes sexual content.
Van Halen’s growing success allowed them to open for musicians they loved. Where on an earlier tour they were the opening act for the rock band Journey, “when we toured the UK for the first time, we were no longer traveling with bands whose music didn’t speak to us. We were opening for Black Sabbath,” a band they all “worshipped” (119). Music critics and legendary Black Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne and Tommy Iommi agreed that Van Halen stole the show throughout the tour. In his 2017 book about his time managing Van Halen, Noel Monk points out the unusual professional and personal respect between Black Sabbath and Van Halen: This “sort of upstaging almost never happens,” so it “is something of a mystery” (126) why it did not destroy the rapport between the bands. Alex Van Halen suggests that this is because Van Halen did not think of themselves as upstaging the more established band, but rather as paying homage to performers they idolized.
The European leg of the tour was the first time that the brothers were back in their homeland of the Netherlands since childhood. This tour also represented the last of the band’s anonymity: At this point, Van Halen still “could go wherever we wanted to shop, drink, eat, because we were still almost completely unknown” (128). On the Japanese leg of the tour, the band fired manager Marshall Berle because they realized he “did not have what it took to get Van Halen as far as [they] intended to go” (130). Initially, they wanted to manage themselves, but after realizing there was not enough time, they promoted Monk from road manager to full time manager. During the months of the world tour, their album went platinum; it would stay on the charts for over three years. Their lives were completely transformed in ways they could not have prepared for: “we were ready for the big time musically, but in every other respect we had no idea what to expect or how to handle what was thrown at us” (133).
Chapter 10 Summary
When Van Halen finally returned home to Pasadena after their first tour, they could not go anywhere without being recognized and mobbed: It was “a very foreign experience, very strange and unnerving” (137). While the Van Halen brothers were uncomfortable with fame and thought of themselves as musicians, “Dave had been waiting his whole life to be famous” (138). Along with the shock of their newfound fame, they were also startled to learn just how bad their contract really was. Although they had sold two million copies of their debut album, the small amount they were earning per sale did not cover the cost of the tour. “[T]his is when we started losing our innocence” (142).
Because of the money the band owed Warner Bros., they were rushed back into the studio to record a follow up record, Van Hallen II. Nevertheless, Van Halen was pleased with the album because it was a true expression of their musical style: “sounding on the record the way we sounded live was a point of pride for us” (146-147). Alex Van Halen now thinks of the tour supporting Van Halen II as the band’s first real tour, because this time around they were the headliners.
On the tour, Alex Van Halen contracted a sexually transmitted infection. The experience was a consequence of his feeling of sexual freedom: “I was promiscuous at that time in my life, because I was young and virile and I could be” (151). However, this kind of sexual expression soon felt “very one-dimensional, like telling the same joke every night to a different audience” (151).
Chapter 11 Summary
The recording of the band’s third studio album, Women and Children First, and the subsequent tour, led to rising tensions and conflicts between the Van Halen brothers and Roth.
Alex Van Halen was happy with the record because, unlike the first two, it had no cover songs. Roth wanted legendary photographer Helmut Newton to shoot them for the album cover, but Alex and Eddie felt that Newton was really only interested in shooting Roth, and that what Roth really wanted was to be on the cover alone. Although Roth did not get his wish, “the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. Dave was already starting to try to steer the band into a zone that just wasn’t who we were. We were at cross-purposes” (161).
The album went gold within a week of being released. Early in 1980, the band began a tour to support it. At their show in Cincinnati, 177 concert-goers were arrested and Roth was charged with inciting the crowd to violate the ban on open flames inside the Riverfront Coliseum.
Conflicts arose between Roth and the other members because Roth’s “passion for publicity created a dilemma” (170). While Roth’s love of attention and doing interviews was great because no one else wanted to, “you can’t have one person out there representing Van Halen, creating the impression that he is the band” (170).
Chapter 12 Summary
Eddie met actress Valerie Bertinelli, who was a fan, after a show in Louisiana and they immediately began dating. According to Alex, Roth was negative about the relationship from the beginning because “there was this new celebrity energy around the band that had nothing to do with him” (174). Bertinelli’s fame was “sucking up some of the attention in the Van Halen orbit and it drove [Roth] crazy” (175).
Van Halen’s success was surprising because the band was different from the mainstream. At first, “hard rock had been out of fashion when we started out in the clubs” because it was the era of the singer-songwriter (175). Then, what was popular shifted in the direction of “soulful, harmless crooners” and “plastic pop” bands such as The Cars, Devo, and the Go-Go’s (176). Soon, however, Van Halen ushered in imitators in the subgenres of glam rock and heavy metal that became popular later in the 1980s: “whether we liked it or not, a lot of the bands that were hot in Hollywood had been influenced by Van Halen” (177).
During the recording of the band’s fourth studio album Fair Warning, which Alex remembers as “tougher and less buoyant” than their previous albums (178), tensions arose between Eddie and Templeman because Templeman was a “company man” who wanted to churn out records, while Eddie wanted to “keep growing creatively and to experiment with new styles and sounds” (181).
Eddie and Valerie were married in 1981, Anthony got married shortly after, and Alex had two marriages that both ended in divorce. Alex Van Halen then jumps forward to introduce his third and current wife, Stine Schyberg, who was working as an art director for Warner Bros. when he met her in the mid-1990s. Alex became addicted to benzodiazepines during Van Halen’s 1995 tour due to pain he was experiencing from an earlier neck injury. Because of his addiction, Stine left him; ultimately, he decided that “losing Stine was the only price I wasn’t willing to pay for the drug” (187). Alex believes that with Stine, he found a way to protect himself “from fame, from the music business, from drugs and alcohol” (188).
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
As Van Halen’s success transformed them from newcomers with potential to household names, The Nature of Fame also changed. At first, their rising star resulted in professional fulfillment. When the band toured Europe as an opening act for Black Sabbath, they were awed to be playing alongside musicians that they’d worshipped and even had the gratifying experience of having these legendary rock elders admire their work. Fame did not yet prevent them from going anywhere “to shop, drink, eat, because we were still almost completely unknown” (128)—their only tour in which that was the case. In contrast, when they returned to Pasadena, wherever they went, they were mobbed by autograph-seekers, which Alex Van Halen responded to negatively as a “very foreign experience, very strange and unnerving” (137). The difference between musical accomplishment and celebrity became a wedge between the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth. Alex claims that he and Eddie simply wanted to play music they liked; they recognized that “fame was something that came with that package” but they didn’t seek it out or “understand what it entailed” (140)—a point that is somewhat undercut by the fact that Eddie dated and married popular actress Valerie Bertinelli rather than a less well-known woman. However, Alex Van Halen stresses that “for Dave, it was entirely the opposite: fame was the point!” (140).
The Pursuit of Artistic Excellence continued fueling Van Halen despite the pressures they now faced from Warner Bros. and their difficulties finding appropriate management and representation. For example, when making Van Halen II, Alex and Eddie were pleased that the recording was fuller than their first and that they were able to authentically express themselves even though they were under time pressure: “sounding on the record the way we sounded live was a point of pride for us” (146-147). The Van Halens focus on artistic quality created conflict with producer Ted Templeman during the recording of Fair Warning, the band’s fourth album. Templeman wanted Van Halen to produce hit records—i.e., music that repeated what had already worked on previous albums. In contrast, Eddie “wanted the freedom to try new things” (181). While Alex Van Halen scorns Ted as “a company man,” he praises “Ed’s desire—his need, really—to keep growing creatively and to experiment with new styles and sounds” (181). In a small victory, the band did not record any covers for the fourth album, which featured only original music.
Alex Van Halen demonstrates his expertise and understanding of both the business side and the aesthetics of the rock music industry. Complaining about the exploitative contract Van Halen signed with Warner Bros., he compares their experience to that of Black Motown artists of the 1950s and 60s, who were often forced to sign predatory agreements with record labels that left them impoverished despite popularity and success. Another aspect of being a functioning band is having effective management. Van Halen’s growing realization that their first manager was not up to the challenge of guiding their careers, and their subsequent understanding that they also did not have the time to manage themselves effectively, show the importance of learning behind the scenes details alongside the skills of performance. Alex Van Halen also provides his unique opinions of the various subgenres of rock music in the 1970s and 1980s and many of the bands that populated them. He is dismissive of the glam rock and hair metal subgenres that Van Halen’s rise to prominence kicked off: To him, while these bands successfully replicated the visual spectacle of David Lee Roth’s flamboyant persona, they did not have the Van Halen brothers’ musical skills—something that’s harder to imitate given Alex and Eddie’s classical training and multi-instrumentalism.
Unlock all 44 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs