During a recent appearance on the Talk Is Jericho podcast, Alex Van Halen revealed the reason he won’t release Eddie’s vault material in the near future.
“They will stay there [in the vault] until we figure out how and why and what to do with them,” the drummer said. “And again, you have to remember, it has to be on the level of where Ed and I, where we used to play.”
He added, “We’re not just gonna shovel it in. We have access to some of the greatest musicians on the planet, and a lot of ’em are more than willing to take a chance on some of the stuff.”
In October, Alex released the last song he wrote with his brother, called ‘Unfinished.’ He also told Billboard that the unreleased Van Halen music might not be for everyone.
The rocker explained, “I know people want to hear it…the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” In the meantime, he said he was “looking forward to getting some people involved…other musicians and producers,” adding: “You have to have the right team, because not everybody can do everything. So we’ll see.”
Sammy Hagar also said in July that he would be open to working on the tapes Eddie left behind, but Alex is difficult to convince. The singer noted, “I don’t think Alex is user-friendly. I don’t know why, but he’s just not.”
“If Al were user-friendly, I would get with Al, and Wolfie and go in there, go through it, pick the pieces I could make a song out of, and write the lyrics and melody and make a song out of it, and piece it together. And yeah, get Mikey on board and go in there and we can have a Van Halen record. I guarantee you Eddie’s got a ton of stuff,” he went on.
Hagar also shared, “But Alex would have to be involved. And of course, Wolfie would be user-friendly; Wolfie’s got no angst against nobody. He should be the happiest kid in the world right now, I’m so happy for him right now I can’t tell ya.”
Wolfgang Van Halen previously said he doesn’t think any more of his dad’s music should be released. He believes the songs that were released are the ones his dad thought were the best.