Alex Van Halen recently opened up about his current relationship with David Lee Roth in a chat with USA Today.
Alex Van Halen talks about David Lee Roth
Speaking about his memoir, ‘Brothers,’ the rocker was asked about the part of the book where he mentioned he first called David Lee Roth when his brother Eddie Van Halen died. In the book, he mentions Ed & Dave in the very early days of Van Halen shared a bond of getting stoned together
“I think Dave is laying low right now. I don’t know his mental state in terms of how he’s dealing with all of this,” the rocker said about their relationship. “I was taught early on that the music field isn’t about the notes and things, it’s about relationships and what we all had [in Van Halen] was deeply entangled.”
He continued: “I don’t hold [Roth leaving Van Halen in 1985] against him. We’re not here to hold you prisoner. But it was very telling how the dynamic of certain entities got warped by the people around him. Dave was in the middle of [huge success] where he wasn’t thinking clearly, and he would admit that now. That’s the reason I called him first – only to find out that 23 years changes people.”
In ‘Brothers,’ the drummer opened up on Roth parting ways in 1985 in detail and does not focus much on the years that followed, including the time with Sammy Hagar. He described the split as ‘the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust.’ However, that was ‘until I lost my brother.’
The relationship between the band and Roth has been difficult for many years, but Van Halen told Billboard he wasn’t angry with the singer. “He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out.”
He added: “That’s why…the first person I called when Ed died was Dave, because I felt like I owed him that [because of] the work we had done together, and the fact that our families knew each other, and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level – if you will – when we first started.”
Alex recently released the full six-minute version of ‘Unfinished,’ the last song he wrote and recorded with his late brother. The song is part of the audiobook for ‘Brothers.’
