As a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Van Halen played a big part in my music experience. Their “big sound” was a contrast to the intricacies of “new wave” artists I generally listened to. There’s also no denying that Eddie Van Halen was one of the best guitar players to ever live. I’d read Sammy Hagar’s autobiography several years ago, which is all the more interesting after listening to this audiobook by Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s older brother. Alex doesn’t talk about Van Halen after David Lee Roth left as lead singer. The reasons for this are likely many. I’ll wait to see if Michael Anthony ever pens an autobiography to get the real dirt on that, although, in the prelude to Hagar’s book, he stated that Hagar “tells it like it is.”

The focus of the book Brothers is on the relationship between brothers Alex and Eddie Van Halen. They are the sons of a Dutch musician and his Indonesian wife who immigrated from the Netherlands to California with their two young children. Both Eddie and Alex grew up as outsiders in southern California, finding solace in the music appreciation they inherited from their father. At a young age, Alex was accompanying his father to gigs and no one blinked an eye at the time. Alex began as a guitarist and Eddie as a drummer, which they would reverse in time.

The audiobook is read by Alex himself. I listened to it when I drove to Washington DC recently and it was the perfect length for that trip. Alex is a great narrator, and gives the right emotion when reading the book. At one point, he’s talking about someone who opened for Van Halen and says “You might have heard of him; Sammy Hagar.” There’s an irony in his voice as he reads this that another narrator might not have known to interject. He wrote the book over time after losing Eddie to cancer in 2020, so there’s a part of him that is still mourning the loss. That comes through often.

He spends a lot of time discussing the brothers’ relationship with David Lee Roth. I’d read in other books that they were sort of forced to take him on as a lead singer, but Alex puts that narrative to rest here. They brought him on to augment the music they were playing with the flashy lead singer to get attention, not to mention the fact that he owned equipment they were using. If he were part of the band, they’d save on paying him to rent the equipment. Michael Anthony gets very little coverage in the book.

At the heart of it is Alex and Eddie and how they bonded as brothers when they were very young and never lost that bond. They were Van Halen, and everything else was really part of the sideshow. Alex discusses how despite selling millions of albums they were broke, thanks to how the music industry worked at the time. Almost every musician tells the same story, so it’s hardly unique. Still, it seems that Eddie didn’t come into money until he married Valerie Bertinelli, who was a well-known actress at the time. Alex doesn’t resent her. He points out that their marriage lasted for 25 years.

The one thing that’s missing from the audiobook is the pictures. It’s stated that Alex included pictures from his private collection with the print version of this book. I would like a chance to see them at some point.

If you’re a Van Halen fan and want to know more about how they came to be as successful as they were, Brothers is the best you’re going to get now that Eddie is no longer with us. Alex talks about the good and the bad. I don’t think he’s sugar-coated anything to try and paint either of them in a better light. He talks about Eddie’s obsessions and addictions which both helped and hurt him as a musician. It’s a great piece of insight into what it took to become a successful band during this era, and why Eddie is as highly-regarded musically as he still is.