ALEX VAN HALEN SAYS VAN HALEN DID THEIR “BEST WORK” WITH “[DAVID LEE] ROTH”

In continuing with his interview with Gastão Moreira of Brazil’s Kazagastão, Alex Van Halen Alex Van Halen was once again asked why he made the decision to end his Brothers book in 1984 and not cover any of the band’s later years, including those with Sammy Hagar

Van Halen stated (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net), “Well, I can only answer it one way, that was the publisher never mentioned it. They said this is the meat of the story. Yeah, there was good music made and all that, but the essence and the spirit and the balls to the wall was the first model. And that’s nothing to do with…than everybody has a peak in their life. I don’t care what anybody says, because it’s simply not true. Just because you sell more of anything doesn’t make you better or more creative. It’s just you learn how to sell more [laughs], like BIC lighters. So it was not meant to be anything other than he wasn’t there during that time period. And if somebody really wants to, that’ll be the next book. [Laughs]”

After Moreira noted that he personally prefers the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen over the Hagar era,Van Halen said, “There’s one thing to remember, and that was, this book, it was selfish, if you will. It was my way of putting all these open-ended things to bed. My brother [legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen] died [as] he tried to create more stuff. He didn’t have to do it. I don’t know whatever reason prompted him to do it, but he died trying to go further. And this is not just about playing more hits, about more Number One records. That stuff is gonna fade. We’re glad that we had them. I don’t wanna lay on my deathbed and look up and go, ‘Man, Ed, I wish we should’ve done this,’ because you can’t take it with you. We did our best work with Dave.”

Asked if he thinks the band was a unique, Van Halen replied, “I think it was an interesting collection of different influences. Because of the exposure from my dad, who we worked with, and the different kind of musical tastes. And the fact that Dave is a very restless kind of guy. He couldn’t settle on one thing for one day. The next day he’s on something else, which some people might think is a negative. And it is, if it’s left alone by itself to fester and become something that it shouldn’t. In my personal opinion, if you see what happened when he went solo, that was it. You need conflict. You need open space. You need contradiction. You need friction. Without friction, you got no heat. Without heat, you got nothing. I can’t think of the rest of the lyrics. [Laughs] But, no, a creative environment is an extremely different, difficult kind of a thing to foster and to keep in check and keep it balanced. Now, you don’t want it completely balanced because then it becomes inert, then it becomes predictable, it becomes another record. And we were very concerned about ending up doing the same thing over and over again. The real question comes, are you doing something new just to be new or because you’re hearing something different? And you have to be honest with yourself. Yeah, we could have cranked out more records, more Number One records, whatever, but that wasn’t the point. And sometimes you make mistakes. Ed and I, we made some really bad choices.”

Read more of Van Halen‘s interview with Gastão Moreira of Brazil’s Kazagastão, where he discusses the new album he is working on with Toto guitarist, Steve Lukather, here.