Alex Van Halen has revealed that he is working on a new album alongside Toto guitarist Steve Lukather.
The legendary rock drummer, who co-founded Van Halen with his younger brother Eddie in 1972, appeared on the Metal Sticks podcast on Thursday (January 1), hosted by Iron Maiden’s Nick McBrain, and spoke about his current musical projects.
“I’m getting ready to do this record with Lukather and a couple of other people,” Van Halen said. “It should be exciting.”
It is unclear whether the album will be a new Van Halen album or a side project. The band have not released a studio record since 2012’s ‘A Different Kind Of Truth’, and have been inactive since Eddie’s death from complications from throat cancer in 2020 at the age of 65.
A report from De Telegraaf last year suggested that Alex was working on a collection of unfinished Van Halen songs alongside Lukather, with the drummer saying: “[Eddie] and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can” (via Guitar World).
“Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true,” Lukather responded. “Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”
Alex has said in the past that there are “three or four” more Van Halen records to be made from the music that is saved in the band’s vaults, telling the Talk Is Jericho podcast (via Blabbermouth): “There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember, when in the thick of it, sometimes the really great stuff kind of passes you by. And it’s not until you revisit it going, ‘Whoa, I forgot about that. This kicks ass.’ But that takes time. And you wanna do it right. I wanna do it right.”
In 2024, Alex released the full six-minute version of ‘Unfinished’, the final song he wrote with Eddie, as part of the release of the audiobook of Alex’s memoir Brothers.
The public acrimony between Alex and former Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar, meanwhile, is ongoing, and last year, Hagar wondered if jealousy was the reason why Alex had not spoken to him for 21 years.
