Alex Van Halen Talks Rumored Tribute Tour, Plans with Ozzy Osbourne
Alex Van Halen releases his memoir, Brothers, this week. News of the memoir was announced in February, and up until about a month ago, little has been released about the highly-anticipated book. Now, AVH granted an interview with Rolling Stone, and he dropped some truly stunning stories.
To begin with, Alex talked about that heavily rumored Eddie Van Halen tribute tour following the death of his guitarist brother in 2020. He confirms that it was in the works, and that he and David Lee Roth were rehearsing for it. Alex said he was in contact with Queen’s Brian May to get some ideas on how to honor Eddie during the shows, similar to how Queen honors Freddie Mercury during their present-day shows.
According to Alex, this idea made Roth snap. He said, “The thing that broke the camel’s back, and I can be honest about this now was I said, ‘Dave, at some point, we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgment of Ed in the gig.’ … And the moment I said we gotta acknowledge Ed, Dave f—in’ popped a fuse.… The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.”
Rolling Stone noted that DLR declined to comment on this story. Oddly enough, Alex said he and Roth are still in touch and that his first phone call following Eddie’s death was to Roth.
This isn’t the first time Roth has been blamed for there not being a proper Van Halen tribute following EVH’s death. Former bassist Michael Anthony told The Hook Rocks! podcast in May about the rumored tribute, “All I can say is — I’m not gonna point fingers — but through all of this, one of the ingredients was not, let’s say, playing ball with everybody else … And you’ve read it probably with Wolfgang [Van Halen]’s interviews, too, that he’s been doing this past year.”
Wolfgang Van Halen has said a number of things about the dysfunction around and within Van Halen in recent years. One of the more pointed things he said was to Classic Rock in October 2022. Wolfgang said, “When it comes to Van Halen and entities surrounding the band it’s unfortunate … I don’t know what it is with some bands but certain personalities just can’t get over themselves to work collectively for one purpose – that’s been the curse of Van Halen for its entire career … Hell, it was difficult to make plans even when the band was active.”
A Van Halen Album with Ozzy Osbourne?
As if that whole situation was unbelievable, Alex also shared how in 2001, he and Eddie had a sit-down with Sharon Osbourne about having Ozzy Osbourne front a Van Halen album. Things were looking well for the project, but then MTV came calling. A meeting with the network led to The Osbournes, the super-popular reality show, and then the Ozzy/Van Halen album fell by the wayside.
Unlike Roth, Ozzy did issue a comment on the story to Rolling Stone and confirms that the project was being discussed. The Prince of Darkness said if he and the Van Halen brothers ended up working on music, it would have been “phenomenal.” He referred to Eddie and Alex as “great friends of mine for a long time” and called the dropped project “a regret of mine.”
Brothers comes out on October 22 and is currently available for pre-order at HarperCollins.com. The audiobook version is available for pre-order at Amazon.
