Alex Van Halen: New Details on His Memoir ‘Brothers’

Alex Van Halen is releasing a memoir on October 22, and now, we know more details about it.

Van Halen News Desk reportedly obtained the official blurb of AVH's book titled Brothers. As previously reported, the memoir is 384 pages, and the audiobook is 720 minutes. Considering the title, the book will delve into the story of Alex and Eddie Van Halen. Detailed in the book will be their story of immigrating to the United States from the Netherlands as children. It will also touch on Alex and Eddie's mother and father.

As with any rock and roll memoir, plenty will be discussed about the wild times of the band Van Halen. However, the book will be " ... a story of brotherhood, music, and enduring love."

Alex Van Halen is quoted in the official blurb saying, in part, " ... We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in ... Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming famous, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I've spent doing anything else in this life."

Brothers is currently available for pre-order at HarperCollins.com.

AVH's memoir won't be the first time we've heard about the uniquely American story of Van Halen.

Eddie Van Halen touched on that experience in February 2015 when he took part in the Smithsonian series “What It Means To Be American.” He sat down for a nearly hour-long interview in front of a small crowd discussing his immigrant experience. He also talked about the obstacles he and his brother had to overcome. EVH noted his family came to America with "$50 and a piano."

Before coming to America, the Van Halen brothers dealt with their share of discrimination in the Netherlands. Their father was Dutch, and their mother was of Indonesian decent. Things didn't get much better in America. Neither Eddie nor Alex could speak English at first, which made going to school in America very challenging.

"We already went through that in Holland, you know, first day, first grade. Now, you're in a whole other country where you can't speak the language, and you know absolutely nothing about anything, and it was beyond frightening," recalled EVH in the Smithsonian interview. Eddie said that even though they definitely faced adversity, he thought their experience made him and Alex stronger " ... because you had to be."

Eddie Van Halen was the most influential guitarist of our generation.

Of course, flashy, fleet-fingered guitarists were a dime a dozen in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Eddie was better than all of them, but he was more than that. A songwriter, a keyboardist, a studio wizard, ¼ of Van Halen’s four-part harmony team and a band leader that was able to guide VH through losing the most distinctive frontman of the ‘80s and led them to four chart-topping albums with Sammy Hagar.

Here, we take on the tough task of ranking their top 30 songs. (It was really, really tough to cut any of the songs on the first six albums from this list.)