Alex Van Halen claims his new album Van Halen "it's coming" - and Steve Lukather is on guitar.
Alex Van Halen has announced that a new Van Halen album is on the way, with Steve Lukather handling guitar duties.
In the past, Alex has mentioned that there’s enough unreleased Van Halen material stored away to fill three or four albums. Now, reports from the Netherlands suggest that a new record is in development, which comes as a surprise to many.
It appears that Alex is spearheading the project, with Lukather assisting in completing it. In recent years, Van Halen-related news has mainly focused on tribute tours—However, discussions about new material have been scarce, especially following the passing of Eddie Van Halen.
According to De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily morning newspaper, Alex stated, “Ed and Steve Lukather were very close friends and worked together often. There’s no one better suited to help me with this process than him.”
One of the most notable collaborations between Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather was on Michael Jackson’s Beat It, where Lukather played the main riff while Eddie performed the solo.
Lukather, apparently surprised by Alex’s statement, responded, “Did Alex say that? Well, in that case, it must be true. Ed, Alex, and I were close for many years. We did indeed work on it together.”
While the news may be unexpected, Alex has previously spoken about the wealth of unreleased Van Halen material. On Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, he shared, “I’ve mentioned it loosely before, and I tend to be superstitious about these things, but we are going through the vault to explore the musical ideas stored there.”
He continued, “There’s some really great stuff in there. When you’re in the middle of it, sometimes you overlook certain things, and it’s only when you go back that you realize, ‘Wow, I forgot about this—it’s amazing.’ But it takes time, and I want to make sure we do it right.”