The song where Alex and Eddie Van Halen found their perfect balance: “I’m not trying to brag”
Having a sibling in your band might sound like hell for some, but for Van Halen, it evidently worked a treat being helmed by two brothers.
Eddie and Alex Van Halen were perhaps up there with the finest examples of how to make it work, operating as the core of their namesake band for the entirety of their 48-year run. They may have cycled through plenty of other members, yo-yoing between frontmen David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar on multiple occasions, but the one thing that remained constant about the band was arguably the one thing that made them so identifiable – the Van Halen brothers.
Other siblings who share a stage together will frequently end up barneying all the time and drawing more attention to themselves for their familial tiffs rather than for their music. This is something that could have been said was true of Oasis for well over a decade while they stayed dormant, and while the Gallagher brothers appear to have patched up their differences for the most part, people are constantly waiting for the next fallout to happen and derail their long-awaited comeback.
For the Van Halen family, something just clicked, and it was perhaps a case of them both being exceptionally gifted at their respective instruments that they were able to survive so long in their band. That isn’t to say that other sibling duos don’t have the same level of musical aptitude that the Van Halens did, but to say that there are plenty who immediately come across as better suited to one another would be false.
Eddie was a known virtuoso on the guitar, constantly celebrated for his innovative finger-tapping style and his ability to write both crunching riffs and soaring solos. Not only that, but as the primary songwriter for the group, it was his ideas that drove the band towards more adventurous sounds, and his unabashed love of pop music, fused together with hard rock, was what made them such a unique prospect when they emerged.
All the while, Alex was perhaps less spoken about as a drummer, but still capable of far more than many others have been able to produce in their careers. Solid when he needed to be, and flashy when Eddie wasn’t having his moments in the spotlight, Alex Van Halen was the perfect foil to his younger brother.
Together it worked, and didn’t they ever know it. In fact, Alex Van Halen went as far as to argue that their chemistry was unmatched, and on that one song in particular, you can hear just how well they manage to gel as a pairing.
“I’m not trying to brag when I say that I’d be very surprised if anyone else could replicate our sound, our voice as brothers,” he proclaimed in his autobiography. “I’m not saying we’re the best or better than anyone else, I’m saying we’re us. We sound like us in the duet on ‘Outta Love Again’. My contribution is a beat that’s almost like jazz, but it swings, and it’s rocking.”
You might want to argue that Angus and Malcolm Young are a sibling duo who rival the chemistry of Alex and Eddie, but given how they offered two different instruments and were able to bounce off each other so effortlessly as if speaking their own language, there probably hasn’t ever been a better sibling partnership in a rock band.
