“He fought it till the very end… he never gave up”: Eddie Van Halen’s final days remembered, including his plans for new music
With Alex Van Halen’s emotional new memoir now out in the world, the drummer has been candidly reflecting on the loss of his late brother, Eddie Van Halen. While Brothers delves into the Van Halen duo’s life both on and off stage, recent interviews have expanded on Eddie’s final days.
In a new interview with CNN’s All There Is With Anderson Cooper, Alex has revealed that the loss of his brother turned his world upside down. “None of us really thought he was gonna die,” he recalls [as transcribed by Blabbermouth]. “He’d always bounced back.”
READ MORE: “I will not take this to my grave”: Sammy Hagar says it’s on his “bucket list” to make peace with Alex Van Halen
After a lifetime of rock and roll excess, it seemed to those close to him that Eddie was strong enough to conquer anything. “He could do more and more drugs than anybody and still wake up the next day and perform,” he says. “I don’t think anybody really thought he was gonna die. So when he passed, it was really a shock.”
Even Eddie didn’t suspect he’d succumb to his illness. “I don’t think he knew,” the drummer explains. “Up to the very end, we were still making music.”
Brothers’ audiobook edition even features the final ever composition Alex and Eddie worked on together. In Eddie’s mind, nothing was going to stop him from making music. “We wondered ‘what are we gonna do next year?’… but it was clear that he was going downhill,” Alex says.
While Eddie was in “a lot of pain most of the time”, Alex explains that he always tried to disguise it. “Most people have no idea what kind of pain he was in — physical, emotional, mental, you name it,” he says. “Then he started to lose the function of his extremities. It all compounded, and every day it was something, some other part that was not functioning anymore.”
Alex was present when his brother tragically passed in October 2020. “We were in the room with him when he actually took his last breath,” he recalls. “We just sat there. Everybody was in their own headspace. All I know is that when he stopped breathing, I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. There were no bells. There were no angels. It stopped. And then the room was empty. That was it.”
“Because of COVID and the restrictions and the rules, they immediately carted the body off,” he continues. “Then we didn’t see him anymore. [It was] a very uneventful ending to an eventful life. But you know what? He fought it till the very end. I wanna think of Ed’s life in terms of that he never gave up.”
As Alex’s heart-wrenching letters to Eddie in Brothers reveal, the drummer is still mourning the monumental loss. “I’m grieving all the time,” he explains. “I’m not running from it, because that doesn’t solve the problem. At times, it can be overwhelming, and the more the more I dwell on it, the more complicated it becomes.”
“When I’m alone and I put on a piece of music and I hear [Ed] play, I break down uncontrollably,” he continues. “But, knowing what I know about the human body, you just let it happen. Otherwise it will happen in the line at the grocery store. And that wouldn’t look so good.”
Of course, Alex harbours some level of resentment from time to time. “Am I angry at him?,” he wonders. “Yeah, there were times when I’d have a jealous scream. ‘Ed, what the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing? Ed, if you stop doing all them damn drugs… You can’t do this to your body and expect to live a full life.’ Had he stopped, he might still be here.”
“My kids don’t have an uncle anymore,” he says. “His son doesn’t have a father. I don’t have a brother.”
While the pain still lingers, Alex is still on a journey of coming to terms with his loss. “Ed’s whole life was searching for something… he was never satisfied,” he reflects. “There was always that itch to do something else. So I don’t know. I’m still grappling with some of those things because, to me, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Brothers is out now.
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