Updated 10/18: The Books & Greetings event is now sold out.
Alex Van Halen announces three-city book tour for “Brothers”. In anticipation of his upcoming new book, Alex Van Halen will make three book signing appearances this month. He’s scheduled to be in New York, New Jersey, and California. The final will be a Live Talks virtual event.
If you are not able to travel to attend any of these events in person and still wish to order a signed copy of Brothers, we will be producing an exclusive slipcased Signed First Edition w/COA. To get on the waiting list for this book, enter your email in the form below. This special collector’s edition will be available on a “first come, first served” basis and will be limited to only several slipcased copies.
Book Signing Details
Please call to verify the event for each date. Tickets may be required.
October 21 @ 12pm
Barnes N Noble Fifth Ave, New York, NY. Phone number: (212) 697-3048.
October 22 @6pm
Books & Greetings , Northvale, NJ
October 24 @8pm
Live Talks LA @ The Frost Auditorium (In Person & Virtual)
Culver City, LA
https://livetalksla.org/
Brothers
“A chronicle of family and talent and the passion to create … the definitive take on Edward Van Halen’s life and death from the one who knew and loved him best.” – Brothers editor, Sara Nelson
In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music, and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and bandmate.
Told with acclaimed New Yorker writer Ariel Levy, Brothers is seventy-year-old drummer Alex Van Halen’s love letter to his younger brother, Edward (Maybe “Ed,” but never “Eddie”), written while still mourning his untimely death.
In his rough yet sweet voice, Alex recounts the brothers’ childhood, first in the Netherlands and then in working-class Pasadena, California, with an itinerant musician father and a very proper Indonesian-born mother—the kind of mom who admonished her boys to “always wear a suit” no matter how famous they became—a woman who was both proud and practical, nonchalant about taking a doggie bag from a star-studded dinner. He also shares tales of musical politics, infighting, and plenty of bad-boy behavior. But mostly, his is a story of brotherhood, music, and enduring love.
“I was with him from day one,” Alex writes. “We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800-square-foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic. Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming famous, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I’ve spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime.”
There has never been an accurate account of them or the band, and Alex wants to set the record straight on Edward’s life and death.
Brothers includes never-before-seen photos from the author’s private archive.
“A chronicle of family and talent and the passion to create … the definitive take on Edward Van Halen’s life and death from the one who knew and loved him best.” – Brothers editor, Sara Nelson
- Hardcover
- 256 pages
- Photo Color Insert
- Dimensions?: ? 6 x 0.93 x 9 inches
- Item Weight: ? 1.4 pounds
- ISBN-10: 0063265702
- ISBN-13: ?978-0063265707
- Publisher: ? Harper Collins
- Release Date: Oct 22, 2024
Alex Van Halen
Warner Bros. signed the band in 1977, and the band’s debut album was released a year later. Prior to their disbandment in 2020, following Eddie’s death, Van Halen released 12 studio albums, and the brothers were the only two constant members of the band.
Career
Alex and Eddie Van Halen had several early bands before the formation of Van Halen. In addition to The Broken Combs, there were The Space Brothers, The Trojan Rubber Company, and Mammoth.
In 1972, the brothers formed Mammoth with Mark Stone on bass and Eddie on lead vocals. The band rented David Lee Roth’s PA system for their shows. Soon after, Eddie became tired of singing lead, and asked Roth to join the band. Later, in 1974, since the name Mammoth was already taken by another band, the name was changed to Van Halen, and Stone was replaced by Michael Anthony. Roth has claimed that it was his idea to rename the band Van Halen, and that he actually named it after Alex. In addition to his musical duties at this time, Alex handled managerial duties, such as booking gigs, and the like for the band. Their 1978 self-titled debut album Van Halen was released to much fanfare, influencing many musicians in hard rock. Van Halen had released eleven more studio albums since then, and officially disbanded a month after Eddie’s death on October 6, 2020.
Although the term “brown sound” is generally associated with Eddie’s guitar, it was actually coined by Alex to refer to the sound of his snare drum.
Alex never recorded any music without his brother being involved, with Michael Anthony saying that “the only person that he plays with is Ed.” The only recording Alex has made outside of the band is playing keyboards on the Eddie Van Halen instrumental “Respect the Wind”, done for the Twister soundtrack and earning the Van Halen brothers a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
In June of 2024, Alex auctioned off all of his drum gear he had in storage for decades. This led people to believe that he will no longer be involved in music without his brother Edward on stage with him.
Alex is set to release a book called Brothers on October 22, 2024.
Van Halen
Van Halen was an American rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1973. Credited with restoring hard rock to the forefront of the music scene, Van Halen was known for their energetic live performances and for the virtuosity of its guitarist, Eddie Van Halen. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
From 1974 to 1985, Van Halen consisted of Eddie Van Halen, his brother Alex Van Halen on drums, David Lee Roth on lead vocals, and Michael Anthony on bass guitar.[6] Upon its release in 1978, the band’s self-titled debut album reached No. 19 on the Billboard 200 and would sell over 10 million copies in the United States, achieving a Diamond certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). By 1982, the band released four more albums: Van Halen II (1979), Women and Children First (1980), Fair Warning (1981), and Diver Down (1982), all of which have since been certified multi-platinum. By the early 1980s, Van Halen was among the most commercially successful rock acts.[7] The album 1984, released in the eponymous year, was a commercial success with U.S. sales of 10 million copies and four successful singles. Its lead single, “Jump”, was the band’s only number one single on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1985, Roth left the band to embark on a solo career and was replaced by former Montrose lead vocalist Sammy Hagar. With Hagar, the group released four U.S. number-one, multi-platinum albums over the course of 11 years: 5150 in 1986, OU812 in 1988, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge in 1991, and Balance in 1995. The group also released a double-platinum live album, Live: Right Here, Right Now, in 1993. Hagar left the band in 1996 shortly before the release of the band’s first greatest hits collection, Best Of – Volume I. Former Extreme frontman Gary Cherone replaced Hagar and recorded the commercially unsuccessful album Van Halen III with the band in 1998, before parting ways in 1999. Van Halen then went on hiatus until reuniting with Hagar in 2003 for a worldwide tour in 2004 and the double-disc greatest hits collection, The Best of Both Worlds. Hagar again left Van Halen in 2005. Roth returned in 2006, but Anthony was replaced on bass guitar by Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen. In 2012, the band released their final studio album, A Different Kind of Truth, which was commercially and critically successful. It was also Van Halen’s first album with Roth in 28 years and the only one to feature Wolfgang. Eddie was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, and died of the disease on October 6, 2020. A month after his father’s death, Wolfgang confirmed that Van Halen had disbanded.
As of March 2019, Van Halen is 20th on the RIAA’s list of best-selling artists in the United States; the band has sold 56 million albums in the U.S. and more than 80 million worldwide, making them one of the best-selling groups of all time. As of 2007, Van Halen is one of only five rock bands with two studio albums to sell more than 10 million copies in the United States and is tied for the most multi-platinum albums by an American band. Additionally, Van Halen has charted 13 number-one hits on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. VH1 ranked the band seventh on its list of the “100 Greatest Hard Rock Artists”.
