Undone by the loss of his brother Eddie, Alex Van Halen looks back in a new memoir : NPR
Brothers Alex (top) and Eddie Van Halen in an undated photo. HarperCollins hide caption toggle caption HarperCollins When guitarist Eddie Van Halen died of cancer in 2020, his older brother Alex was overwhelmed by grief. Only 20 months apart in age, they had grown up together as “a yin and yang … the two halves of a whole,” Alex says. Raised by a Dutch father and an Indonesian mother, the brothers immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands when Alex was 8 and Eddie was 6. In California, they learned to play music — mostly classical and military marches — but their focus switched to rock once they started listening to The Beatles and The Dave Clark Five. In 1974, they formed the band Van Halen, with vocalist David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony. Initially, Alex was the guitarist in the family, but he discovered that he had “no connection with the instrument,” he says. “I just wasn’t feeling it.” His brother’s link to the guitar, on the other hand, felt like fate. “The …