A remarkable report has emerged from the Dutch newspaper De Telegraf that says a new Van Halen album is in the works, with Alex Van Halen reaching out to Steve Lukather of Toto to fill in for the late Eddie Van Halen on electric guitar.
After Eddie’s death on 6 October 2020, the Van Halen story has been one of tribute tours that have never got off the ground. No one could have foreseen a reality in which we might hear a new album from the band.
Lukather and Eddie were close friends. Both famously played on Michael Jackson’s Beat It, a groundbreaking moment in pop history. They had jammed onstage together. Eddie even played bass guitar on Lukather’s 1989 solo debut, sharing writing credits on album opener Twist The Knife.
The pair would later embrace the festive spirt on Lukather’s 2003 Christmas album, Santamental, Eddie playing on Joy To The World. Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s older brother and drummer for the Californian rock legends, tells De Telegraf [paywalled] that Lukather has the bona fides to join him on this project.
“Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together,” says Van Halen. “There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”
It is no secret that there is a wealth of unfinished song ideas and archive material in the Van Halen vault.
Speaking to Rolling Stone upon the launch of his memoir, Alex shared some previously unheard material, recorded some time post-2000, that “never became anything” but now, perhaps, it’s time may come. And there are many more songs like this, riffs, melodies and the raw materials of songs that could yet be finished.
“They’re all little pieces,” said Alex. “A bunch of licks don’t make a song.” He then admitted that he had reached out to OpenAI about the potential for generative AI to analyse his brother’s ideas and synthesize something from them. He says he has Robert Plant in mind to sing on them.
There was no reporting on who might front the band on this new Van Halen album. David Lee Roth’s last studio work with Van Halen was in 2012 for A Different Kind Of Truth, which has had a troubled legacy. Roth did not like it.
Details about this post-Eddie Van Halen album are scarce. But De Telegraaf spoke to Steve Lukather after Toto’s show in the Netherlands, and he confirmed that he is involved.
“Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true,” said Lukather. “Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”
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