Rock and roll is full of stories of brothers in bands who do not get along. The Kinks and Oasis are to name just two. Sadly, there seem to be more brothers who detested each other while making great music than ones who were happy to be in the same group.
Such was not the case with Alex and Eddie Van Halen, though. They were always the foundational pieces of Van Halen no matter who the singer was or who played bass. Without Alex or Eddie, Van Halen simply would have ceased to exist.
There are different eras of the band, however. In the early years, the band was more straightforward rock (and quite a bit of fun) with vocalist David Lee Roth. The band's sound changed when Sammy Hagar became the singer. Van Halen, for better or worse, could do more ballads. Some fans like the Roth years and some prefer the Hagar years. Few don't have an opinion of who they like better between Roth and Hagar, however.
The first person Alex Van Halen called after Eddie Van Halen's death was David Lee Roth
After Roth left the group in 1985, things were strained between Eddie Van Halen and Roth. There was a temporary truce in 1996 and Roth recorded a couple of songs with the band, but there was another split. The friction seemed to mostly be between Eddie and Roth. Alex had a different view of what was happening over the years.
The drummer felt, especially when the band began, that Roth was an equal part of who Van Halen was along with Eddie and Alex. In an interview with Billboard, Alex revealed that he felt Roth was such a part of the band that when Eddie died from a stroke in 2020, Roth was the first person Alex called.
Alex said, "(The split with Roth was) the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother. He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out. That’s why…the first person I called when Ed died was Dave, because I felt like I owed him that (because of) the work we had done together, and the fact that our families knew each other, and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level – if you will – when we first started."
Alex Van Halen also spoke about the potential of "new" music from the band, but potentially using AI to help create full songs from the snippets of guitar work that Eddie had recorded. That might not make for the best Van Halen songs ever, but still listenable. We hope.