There’s “probably three or four” records’ worth of unheard Van Halen material, according to Alex Van Halen
We got 12 studio albums from Van Halen during their near-50-year tenure, but there’s loads more unheard material locked away in the vaults, according to drummer Alex Van Halen.
Speaking on a new episode of Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, AVH – who recalls his relationship with his late brother, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, in his new memoir, Brothers – mentions the possibility of releasing said music.
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“I’ve talked about it loosely, and I am rather superstitious, but I can say a couple of things that I’ve mentioned before,” he says [via Blabbermouth]. “We’re gonna go through the ‘vault’ and go through some of the musical ideas that were there.
“On the one end of the spectrum is the fact that little licks don’t make a song. On the other end of the spectrum, some of those licks are so unbelievably powerful, it’s too bad that they ended up in the back of the vault, rather than being records.”
Alex explains that while Van Halen’s approach as a band in the studio was to experiment – which led to a lot of musical ideas being created and ultimately shelved – there is, in fact, so much material in that vault that it could feasibly make up “three or four” records.
“I’m serious,” he says. “There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember, when in the thick of it, sometimes the really great stuff kind of passes you by. And it’s not until you revisit it going, ‘Whoa, I forgot about that. This kicks ass.’ But that takes time. And you wanna do it right. I wanna do it right.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Alex recounts the final years of his brother Eddie’s life, expressing his regret at the lack of closure he was granted due to Covid.
“Ed and I were tight. We worked together, we played together, we did whatever. But when he was near the end of his life, because of Covid it was very difficult to visit him in person and to see him. There was always either a glass barrier or a plastic something surrounding [him]. The times that we could actually touch him were few and far between. And that really put everything in a strange kind of — I can’t explain it, but it didn’t feel right. So we really had no closure, in that sense, and everything was hurried near the end.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
