Brothers Quotes

“Without my brother, I would not be. We fight, argue—we even argue about agreeing on things—but there is a bond and unconditional love that very few people ever experience in their lifetime. We’re not a rock band. We’re a rock ’n’ roll band. Alex is the rock. I’m the roll. —EDWARD VAN HALEN (1955–2020)”
― Alex Van Halen, Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music

“I know I start to sound a little new age when I talk about this, but I don’t care because I really mean it: we’re sharing a moment in time and space with thousands of people, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s our job to set them on fire, emotionally (and to set my drums on fire, literally), for that time. “When the people scream so hysterically for such a sustained period of time, they’re screaming for themselves,” as Dave told Rolling Stone. “Not for me. Not because Eddie is so great. But because they see themselves reflected in us.” For those few hours we are taking over a huge pack of humans: we’re blasting music into their ears, getting them dancing, dominating their emotional and physical lives, bringing them into our traveling reality, making them a part of it.”
― Alex Van Halen, Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music

“That’s how you make art. You clear away your ego and try to shut off the thinking, calculating part of your brain. You can’t make a plan to touch a dragon’s tail.”
― Alex Van Halen, Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music

“One of the things that Ed loved so much about guitar was that suddenly, he had more control over his sound—he had more nuanced ways to express himself because he was now in charge of the strings themselves. “With a guitar you can bend or use vibrato to reach all those microtonal notes and those feelings that fall between the cracks on the piano,” is how Ed put it. “There’s a touch involved with the piano, but you’re not actually touching the strings. So there’s an agent between you and the strings—a middleman.” Ed could now enjoy an unmediated relationship with his instrument, and he made the most of that.”
― Alex Van Halen, Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music

“But Ed and I always had the same thing in mind: music that sounds “like Godzilla waking up” as Ed said.”
― Alex Van Halen, Brothers: An Intimate Account of Brotherhood and Rock Music