“See, what most people don’t realize is the band’s named after me!” Alex Van Halen jokes, his absurdity punctuated with a fit of hysterical laughter. “Hey, I was in the womb first,” he continues, explaining with more laughter, “I’m the prototype.”

No question about it, the distinct sound and complexity of Alex’s style of drumming is equally as important to the Van Halen chemistry as his brother Edward’s ability as a guitarist. Having started creating music together at an early age—Edward as a pianist and Alex on the saxophone—the two brothers, along with bassist Michael Anthony, remain the core of the band twenty years after the release of their groundbreaking debut album. With an almost unprecedented string of platinum albums to their credit, the group has continually reinvented themselves, from the early vaudevillian days of original vocalist David Lee Roth through the years with Sammy Hagar.

The summer of 1998 has been particularly eventful for the band. With new vocalist Gary Cherone at the helm, the band is in the midst of a world tour promoting Van Halen III, an album that Alex describes as musically taking a chance. Although reaction to the disc has been a fervor of scrutiny, the live performances have been celebrations of the band’s history, almost a rejuvenation that reveals the band playing with a renewed enthusiasm. As the band gears up for a return to Cherone’s home territory of New England with a pair of shows (August 13th in Mansfield, Massachusetts and August 29th in Hartford, Connecticut), Alex took some time to share his extremely captivating personality with Prime Choice, talking about the on-stage excitement of the band for which he is the namesake.
 

You guys are out on tour right now and I’m curious, how does it feel to be on stage playing songs that you probably haven’t played in more than a decade?

It’s great. Not only playing the songs, but seeing the response from the audience—that goes hand-in-hand. It’s just incredible. Originally, when we discussed playing music from the very beginning—y’know, from ‘78 on—from the very beginning, we said, “Gary, you pick the songs because we’re not quite sure which ones to go with.” And he, being a fan of some of that stuff, y’know, he picked and chose what he wanted to do and it’s been great.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think he definitely has a fan’s perspective concerning that material.

Oh, yeah. We’re also our own biggest fans, but it was hard for us to pick.

I saw you guys up in Boston when you did that initial eight city run in the States, and I tell ya, hearing “Romeo Delight” was just the coolest thing. That was pretty wild. It was interesting because some of the really younger fans who were around me, I think they were kind of watching me like, “Well, why the hell is this old guy singing along?”

[Laughs hysterically] You’d be surprised. In ‘95, we did one of the stadium tours, one of those five-or-six-band-type extravaganzas that kind of travel the country. There were so many people who thought that Balance was our first record.

Y’know, it’s funny that you mention that because I noticed when we were leaving the Fleet Center in Boston that night, the bulk of the people wearing Van Halen t-shirts, they were all Balance t-shirts. It was the oddest thing.

Yeah, yeah.

With your live shows, have you considered incorporating any of Gary’s old Extreme material into the show?

Not as of yet, but we’re flexible. We don’t take anything as seriously as to say “no” before we even toy with the idea. But right now we’re trying to—y’know, we have two hours on stage and it just doesn’t seem like enough. There’s so much stuff that we wanna do, so it’s just kind of a nightly change-up of what songs to play.

Again, after seeing the show in Boston, I think what made the biggest impression on me was the fact that you, Eddie and Mike seemed to be playing even better than you have in a long time. Christ, it really looked like you guys were having fun!

Yeah, we are. It’s a new beginning for us, not just psychologically, but the energy level. It’s amazing, the dynamic that goes on in a band when you’ve got four people who—y’know, we eat together, travel a lot, we make music together, we create together in the studio. If you spend a lot of time together and if everybody’s not on the same wavelength, it can be like, one thing is just dragging everything else down. All it takes is one-out-of-four to be out of whack, so to speak, and it can really put a mojo on things. And I’m not saying Sammy was that kind of person, but it was obvious that we were not getting along and it showed. It started to show.

Y’know what’s interesting? I think it was maybe last autumn, we went to go see one of Sammy’s shows, and obviously, he did some of the Van Halen material.

Yeah, he can’t get away from it, can he? [Laughs]

No, no. But what was really cool was that when he was playing the stuff and he’d intro the songs, he didn’t come across with any animosity. It was more like, “At the time when we did this, it was magic.”

That’s good.

It was just really kind of cool and I think people kind of appreciated it.

Good to hear.

At that show up at the Fleet Center, my wife—who happens to be our staff photographer—took pictures of the show. She’s actually an Extreme fan from way back in the old days before they got signed. And she said that Gary’s performance that night at the Fleet Center reminded her a lot of the night that they got signed following a showcase at a club in Providence. I thought that was a rather unique perspective that said a lot about the energy that Gary’s bringing to the band. It’s almost like he’s still really hungry.

Oh, absolutely. And he’s not jaded. I think his excitement is genuine; it’s not something that he feels he needs to put out. Y’know, part of the reason why we spent so much time in the studio making this record was to really get to know each other. Under those circumstances, when you’re locked in a box with no windows, you really do get to see the good—and the bad side of people. Having made it through this record and coming out of it closer was definitely—you get to know somebody; you know when they’re bullshitting you, and you know when they’re not. The excitement that’s on stage is genuine. It’s not prefab, it’s not something that everybody feels they need to show the audience.