One legendary band might be releasing music few want to hear
By Lee Vowell
Alex Van Halen is out there doing his best to sell his new memoir, Brothers. The book is set for release on October 22, and as you can probably guess, it is an autobiography about Alex's relationship with his famous brother, Eddie Van Halen. But don't expect a lot of "dirt" to be discussed.
According to an interview with Billboard, Alex Van Halen feels that there is too much negativity surrounding Eddie, and most of what is said is not true. Alex doesn't want to talk trash; he wants to set the record straight. The book, for Alex, is not about talking badly about others but telling the truth about Eddie.
In the interview, Alex discusses an instrumental song called "Unfinished." The tune is part of the audio version of the memoir. This might imply that Van Halen fans will be hearing other unreleased songs from the band. Or, at least, Alex and Eddie.
Alex Van Halen discusses potential future "music" releases involving Eddie Van Halen
There might be a catch, however. Alex told Rolling Stone magazine that he has spoken with the people at OpenAI about helping make some of the snippets that have been recorded over the years into full-length songs. This might mean that once the songs are formed, everything fans hear might not be real humans. In other words, there might not be a lot of Eddie Van Halen in the songs.
Eddie, unfortunately, passed away from a stroke in 2020. He gave fans lots of great music, but what is left appears to be only pieces of songs. To make a complete song, some things will need to be embellished or artificially created.
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Alex even told Billboard that "the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen." So why put the music out? Sure, there will be a market for it to some degree, but could the integrity of the music be lacking? Selling what are only truly snippets of songs but using AI to force them to be longer?
Hopefully, none of that is the case, and Alex will just fine-tune the guitar parts Eddie created and add real musicians to play along with the recorded parts. Otherwise, the whole thing just seems like a money grab.
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