Eddie Van Halen struggled with addiction his entire life.
After doctors gave him steroid pills to combat swelling after surgery to remove a brain tumor near the end of his life, the legendary guitarist began to abuse them, his brother Alex told Rolling Stone in an interview published on Tuesday.
One day, Alex said, he realized Eddie had taken an entire bottle of pills because they made him “feel like Superman.”
“I didn’t see the bottle, but the bottle had, like, a thousand pills in it,” he added. “If two’s good, 20’s better. That was our mantra.”
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Eddie and Alex Valen Halen together in 1980. (SGranitz/WireImage)
Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020 after a massive stroke after a battle with throat cancer.
“You know, he fought until the end,” Alex told Rolling Stone. “Anybody who thought he was anything less than that can suck my you-know-what. … If you knew what he had to go through to beat the cancer — he wouldn’t do traditional treatment. Some of the off-the-wall s— caused such a toxic mix in his body. And, yeah, you shouldn’t drink with it, Ed!”
Alex said Eddie went to Switzerland for experimental cancer treatments before his death and continued to make music while there.
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“I don’t know what was driving him near the end,” Alex confessed. “There was something, an itch that he couldn’t scratch, something he needed to do. Up to the very end, he was making music. … Quite frankly, it wasn’t very good. But that wasn’t the point. That’s what he did.”
Alex admits that his brother’s death broke him. Alex was even diagnosed with PTSD.
Van Halen — drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Michael Anthony, singer David Lee Roth and guitarist Eddie Van Halen — in 1978. (Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)
“I shut down,” he told the magazine, with what he called “oceanic grief.”
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“I was yelling and screaming. I was beside myself,” he said.
Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen and Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, in 2007. (Steve Granitz/WireImage)
“There is a part of me that’s common sense. If this is going to f— me up, why would I do that? … Common sense was not Ed’s strong point.”
Alex, who is writing a memoir about his relationship with Eddie called “Brothers,” said their father was an alcoholic who gave Alex his first drink at 6 years old, and they both struggled, but Alex eventually sobered up around the millennium, buoyed by the support of his wife of 24 years, Stine Schyberg.
“There is a part of me that’s common sense. If this is going to f— me up, why would I do that? … Common sense was not Ed’s strong point.”
Alex said Eddie continued to make music until the end of his life. “That’s what he did.” (David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images)
Alex said Eddie’s “biggest curse” was his massive “talent.”
“The fact was that Ed was an incredible player, but in the end, he paid for it with his health, paid for it with his life,” Alex said of his brother, who died at age 65, adding Eddie became “overwhelmed with the burden of” being labeled the greatest living guitarist.
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Eddie talked about his drug and alcohol abuse in a 2015 interview with Billboard.
Eddie Van Halen’s ex, Valerie Bertinelli, with their only son, Wolfgang Van Halen. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
“I didn’t drink to party,” he explained, adding that while on tour, when the rest of the band went out to look for women, he would stay in his hotel room writing music while drinking and doing cocaine.
“Alcohol and cocaine were private things to me,” he continued. “I would use them for work. The blow keeps you awake and the alcohol lowers your inhibitions. I’m sure there were musical things I would not have attempted were I not in that mental state. You just play by yourself with a tape running, and after about an hour, your mind goes to a place where you’re not thinking about anything.”
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Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie’s ex-wife, opened up about their relationship earlier this year, writing on Instagram that it “rapidly declined into drugs and alcohol and infidelity” after they met when he was 26 and she was 20.
“I loved Ed more than I know how to explain. I loved his soul,” Bertinelli wrote in her 2022 memoir, “Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I am Today.” “I hated the drugs and the alcohol, but I never hated him. I saw his pain.”
