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“I can’t believe I have to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, lost his long and hard battle with cancer this morning,” wrote Wolfgang Van Halen, who has been with Van Halen Bass for several years. juice. He was the best father she could have wished for. Every moment on stage with him was a gift. “My heart is broken and I don’t think I will ever fully recover from this loss.”
The Van Halen band was a family business: Father Eddie played the guitar, son the bass, and Eddie’s brother Alex the drums. “Most people want to go to Hollywood,” the musician once told Esquire magazine in one of his rare interviews. “They want to be stars, they want to be rock stars. We never had that thought in the Van Halen family. “
“Nobody had more luck in life”
“I can’t imagine anyone who has had more luck in their life than me,” Eddie Van Halen once said. “I’ve been through a lot of nonsense in my life, but I’ve been in the band with my brother from the beginning and now with my son as well. I don’t think anyone else in the music world can say that about themselves. I don’t know anyone who makes music with his son and his brother. “
With members of the band who do not come from the family, there have always been problems in the course of the history of the band. Founding singer David Lee Roth has been replaced multiple times and has officially returned since 2007, but both parties openly admitted that working together was not always easy.
Several hits and a hit
The Van Halen brothers were born in Amsterdam, Holland and immigrated to California with their parents as children. His father was a professional jazz musician. They started playing guitar and drums at a young age, won music competitions, and eventually founded the Van Halen band while still in school. “Jump” became an international chart hit in 1984 and remains a party classic today. It was followed by hits like “Panama”, “Why can’t this be love?”, “Dreams” or “When it’s love.”
The band maintained its success for decades, but privately it was more difficult for Eddie Van Halen. He divorced his first wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, in 2007. In 2009 he married Janie Liszewski. Over and over he spoke openly about his addiction to alcohol and drugs. According to his own statements, the guitarist knew how to overcome both. In 1999 he had a new hip and a year later he developed tongue cancer. The cancer came back later, this time in the larynx.