“It sounded awkward in terms of being egomaniacal”: Alex Van Halen admits he and Eddie felt weird about naming Van Halen after themselves
50 years after the band’s formation, Van Halen is nothing short of a household name. But Alex and Eddie Van Halen had trepidation about their one day iconic rock outfit after themselves at first.
In a new interview with Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, Alex explains that the Van Halen name was actually suggested by vocalist David Lee Roth at first.
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“We can give credit for that to Dave [Lee Roth], believe it or not,” he recalls. “He was someone who suggested it. A few years after we had started getting some kind of recognition in the LA area, Gene Simmons [of Kiss] said, it sounds like a shift company. Change it to… I forgot what it [was]… He wanted ‘Virus’ or something.
Alex goes on: “With all due respect, he’s been there. So you take his opinion with a little bit more weight than you would somebody who’s not done it before. But it just didn’t sound right. So we stuck with Van Halen.
That decision proved to be a massive payoff; Van Halen became one of the biggest rock bands of all time, putting out 12 studio albums and amassing tens of millions of album sales. They continue to be hugely popular, with hundreds of millions of streams across streaming services.
But that’s not to say the brothers didn’t find it strange at first to have their band named after themselves.
“It sounded awkward in terms of being egomaniacal,” Alex says. “And that just wasn’t who Ed and I were. But we kind of warmed up to it. And then the rest is history.”
Listen to the full Talk Is Jericho podcast episode with Alex Van Halen below:
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