In his new memoir, ‘Brothers,’ former Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen revealed that Roth’s exit from the band in 1985 was due to jealousy over Eddie’s attention. Alex shared that Roth asked Eddie Van Halen to play fewer guitar solos.
“He couldn’t handle the fact that Eddie was getting more attention than he was,” Alex wrote in his book. “He kept asking Eddie to play fewer guitar solos. Dave was convinced he was going to be a movie star.”
‘Brothers’ presents an ‘intimate and open account’ of Alex Van Halen’s story about ‘family, friendship, music, and brotherly love.’ It covers the band’s career up until Roth’s departure and does not include vocalist Sammy Hagar’s time from 1985 to 1996.
The drummer also talked about the part of the book where he mentioned he first called DLR when his brother died. “I think Dave is laying low right now. I don’t know his mental state in terms of how he’s dealing with all of this,” Alex said of their relationship. “I was taught early on that the music field isn’t about the notes and things, it’s about relationships, and what we all had [in Van Halen] was deeply entangled.”
The relationship between the band and Roth has been complicated for many years, but Van Halen told Billboard he wasn’t angry with the singer. “He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out.”
After Alex’s comments both in the interviews and the book, DLR posted a new video on his YouTube channel. The singer was seen dancing to ‘Dance The Night Away,’ a cheerful Van Halen song. The former frontman hadn’t released a similar dancing video in five months before this previous one, so it seemed like a subtle response to Alex’s comments.