Alex Van Halen commemorated his own 68th birthday yesterday by posting a new tribute to his recently deceased brother Eddie Van Halen.
“First birthday without you, Ed,” the founding Van Halen drummer wrote in a statement posted on VHND.com. “The view from my drum set will never be the same. VH forever! #vanhalenforever.”
It’s the second public comment Alex has made since Eddie died after a long battle with cancer in October 2020. Two days after his brother’s passing, Van Halen wrote another brief message: “Hey Ed, love you. See you on the other side.”
The Van Halen brothers founded Van Halen in 1974 alongside singer David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony. Eddie and Alex were the only two members who never left the group. Anthony was replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen on bass in 2006. Roth was replaced by Sammy Hagar in 1985 and then by Gary Cherone in 1996 before rejoining the band in 2007.
Wolfgang, who will release his debut solo album Mammoth WVH next month, paid his own birthday tribute to his “badass” uncle Alex yesterday.
In a 2008 interview, Eddie Van Halen said he had “tons” of unreleased music in the vaults at his 5150 recording studio. Speaking to Howard Stern in November 2020, Wolfgang said he knows fans are “chomping at the bit” to hear his father’s unreleased work, but insisted “that’s not the priority right now.” “I don’t want people to be sitting there with their watch,” he said. “Mark my words, there will be a time that we go through it. Just not right now.”
“My dad would be pissed off at me, really,” he explained. “He’d be like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Go do your shit. What are you doing? Don’t go through my old shit. Go do your new shit.’”