Alex Van Halen opened up about his deep bond with David Lee Roth and what made their partnership so vital to Van Halen’s legacy.
Van Halen reflected on the unique creative chemistry he shared with Roth. He also revealed that Roth was the only person he reached out to following the death of his brother, Eddie Van Halen.
“To me, Dave was a poet,” Van Halen said. “It was the confluence of the complete opposite ends of the spectrum that made it happen. And it was brilliant soup — until it wasn’t.”
He went on to describe a bond that transcended music and survived even their most difficult moments together.
“That’s the important part: Remember the good times,” he continued. “All the fights and disagreements that we had went by the wayside when Ed passed. Dave was the first person I called. He’s the only person I called, because it goes beyond words. It goes beyond the fact that we made music together and traveled together. We were kindred spirits.”
Van Halen also addressed the band’s later era with Sammy Hagar, making clear where he believes the group reached its creative peak.
“[During Sammy Hagar era], there was good music made and all that, but the essence and the spirit and the balls-to-the-wall was the first model,” he said. “Everybody has a peak in their life, and he wasn’t there during that time period. We did our best work with Dave.”
The comments offer a rare and candid look at the personal and artistic ties that defined Van Halen’s most celebrated chapter. The relationship between Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth has never been simple — shaped equally by creative brilliance, personal friction, and a shared grief that ultimately proved stronger than decades of conflict.
In his memoir Brothers, Alex wrote that Roth’s departure from the band in 1985 came down to ego. Roth could not accept that Eddie Van Halen was receiving more public attention than he was. “He couldn’t handle the fact that Eddie was getting more attention than he was,” Alex wrote. He framed the split not as a creative disagreement but as a personal breaking point. Roth left after the release of 1984, one of the band’s most commercially successful albums, to pursue a solo career — a move Alex described as both disappointing and wasteful.
The tension between Roth and the Van Halen brothers did not dissolve with time. Following Eddie’s death from cancer in October 2020, Alex attempted to organize a reunion tour with Roth as a way of honoring his brother’s legacy. Those plans collapsed when Roth refused to include a direct tribute to Eddie during the performances. Alex described Roth’s reaction as explosive and filled with what he called “unbelievable” vitriol. This stood in stark contrast to the emotional phone call the two had shared in the immediate aftermath of Eddie’s passing.
Despite that falling out, Alex’s public statements have consistently returned to a place of respect and even reverence for what Roth brought to the band. The contradiction — a man he called a kindred spirit, yet one whose behavior repeatedly derailed reconciliation — defines much of the complexity Alex has wrestled with since Eddie’s death.
What remains clear is that for Alex Van Halen, the Roth era represents something irreplaceable. The band formed in Pasadena, California in 1973. By the time Roth exited more than a decade later, they had built one of the most recognizable catalogs in rock history. That foundation, Alex has made plain, was never fully replicated — regardless of what came after.
