Alex Van Halen with Ariel Levy at Live Talks Los Angeles discussing his memoir, "Brothers." The event was held in Los Angeles on October 24, 2024.
Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love.
Alex Van Halen is the co-founder of the rock band Van Halen and its original drummer. Born in Amsterdam and trained as a classical pianist, he graduated from Pasadena High School.
Ariel Levy was Alex Van Halen’s collaborator on Brothers, and is the author of her own New York Times bestselling memoir The Rules Do Not Apply. Levy has received a National Magazine Award for her work at The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 2008. She is the host and co-creator of the podcast The Just Enough Family.
Alex Van Halen wrote Brothers, a love letter to his younger brother, while still mourning Eddie‘s untimely death.
He recounts their childhood in an 800-square foot house in Pasadena, with an itinerant musician father and proper Indonesian-born mother—how they arrived in the US from the Netherlands and struggled to fit in. He also shares stories of musical politics, infighting and bad-boy behavior. The book includes never-before-seen photos from the author’s private archives, as he sets the record straight on his brother’s life and death in the first-ever accurate account of his family and the band.
