Brothers

Brothers is Alex Van Halen's account of his life with his younger brother Edward, written while he was still mourning Edward's death. Alex, the drummer of Van Halen, was seventy when he wrote it, working with Ariel Levy, a writer for The New Yorker. He describes it as a love letter to Edward, who was always "Ed" and never "Eddie", and tells it in a rough but warm voice, quite unlike the usual rock-and-roll memoir.

Alex begins with the brothers' childhood, first in the Netherlands and then in working-class Pasadena, California. Their father was an itinerant musician. Their mother, born in Indonesia, was very proper, the kind of woman who told her sons to always wear a suit no matter how famous they became. She was proud and practical, and thought nothing of taking a doggie bag home from a star-studded dinner.

The book also covers the politics of the music business, infighting in the band and plenty of bad-boy behavior. At its heart, though, it is about brotherhood, music and lasting love. Alex recalls how the two arrived in a new country and worked out how to fit in, sharing a record player, a small house, their parents and a work ethic. Later they shared a tour bus, alcoholism, success, fatherhood and more hours in the studio than Alex has spent on anything else.

Alex says there has never been an accurate account of the brothers or the band, and he sets out to put the record straight on Edward's life and death. The book includes photographs from the author's private archives that have never been published before.