When Alex Van Halen auctioned off 350 lots of memorabilia, including drum kits, cymbals, and more, earlier this year, many thought he was leaving music for good. But the drummer recently clarified to Billboard that the auction was ‘misinterpreted.’
“I’m not quitting. I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “I’ll die with sticks in my hand.”
Van Halen noted that he is still dealing with long-standing spinal issues, including a recent injury sustained during a visit to a shooting range in 2022. “But with modern technology we have now I should be OK in about five years,” he added.
Rumors about his retirement from music partly resulted from Alex’s step back from the spotlight after his brother Eddie’s death in 2020. The drummer refused to join Van Halen tribute shows in recent years, even turning down Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony’s ‘Best of All Worlds’ tour. But he revisited some of his old recordings with Eddie Van Halen for the audio version of his memoir, ‘Brothers.’
In addition to releasing a new instrumental track called ‘Unfinished,’ Alex plans to share more material recorded at Eddie’s 5150 studio “when it feels right.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” he shared. “I do have a certain obligation to keep it to Ed’s standards. He was meticulous and he was a pain in the ass…and I need to have access to the right takes, ’cause not every day did we play at our best. But we always had the tape recorders running.”
“We didn’t go in the studio like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna make a record from beginning to end.’ We had little pieces here, little pieces there, you put ’em away until the time comes and you go, ‘Hey, I think I like that piece…’ and then go back to it and build something from there.”
Alex Van Halen’s autobiography of his relationship with Eddie will be released on October 22.