During a recent interview on the Talk is Jericho podcast, Alex Van Halen revealed the reason why he is choosing not to make previously unreleased songs by Eddie Van Halen available – at least, not anytime soon, though he does see it happening in the future, with 3 to 4 albums worth of new material.
“They will stay there [in the vault] until we figure out how and why and what to do with them,” the drummer said. “And again, you have to remember, it has to be on the level of where Ed and I, where we used to play.”
Alex continued, explaining that if they decide to finish and release some of Eddie’s music, he wants it to be done right: “We’re not just gonna shovel it in. We have access to some of the greatest musicians on the planet, and a lot of ’em are more than willing to take a chance on some of the stuff.”
Last month, Alex released “Unfinished” – the last song he and his brother worked on together. But, in a recent interview with Billboard, he admitted that he doesn’t think unreleased Van Halen music would have mass appeal.
“I know people want to hear it…the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he said, adding that he is “looking forward to getting some people involved…other musicians and producers… You have to have the right team, because not everybody can do everything. So we’ll see.”
This past July, singer Sammy Hagar also revealed that he would be open to working on the music Eddie left behind, but that Alex continues to be very hesitant. “I don’t think Alex is user-friendly. I don’t know why, but he’s just not,” Hagar said.
“If Al were user-friendly, I would get with Al, and Wolfie [Van Halen] and go in there, go through it, pick the pieces I could make a song out of, and write the lyrics and melody and make a song out of it, and piece it together. And yeah, get Mikey [Anthony] on board and go in there and we can have a Van Halen record. I guarantee you Eddie’s got a ton of stuff,” he added.
“But Alex would have to be involved. And of course, Wolfie would be user-friendly; Wolfie’s got no angst against nobody. He should be the happiest kid in the world right now, I’m so happy for him right now I can’t tell ya.”
Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, however, said in an interview with Brave Words last year that he doesn’t think any of his dad’s unfinished music should be released. He believes that if it wasn’t already released by his late father, then it’s because he didn’t think it was good enough.
“In my dad’s own words, when he talked about it, he’s like, ‘I released all the good stuff.’ The stuff that’s there is the stuff that fell by the wayside… Without dad here, it feels unfair to make that assumption that anything should be… like that’s a decision that can’t be taken lightly,” Wolfgang explained.
