Just how much music lies within the 5150 vault? Probably enough to fill three or four records worth of music, according to Alex Van Halen.
Alex addressed the possibility of future unreleased Van Halen material with Chris Jericho during an appearance on Talk Is Jericho. Below is an excerpt from that segment:
What do you want to do now with kind of the legacy of Van Halen? Obviously, you’re the quarterback and this book is I’m hoping one of many future projects.
I’ve talked about it loosely and I am rather superstitious but I can say a couple things I’ve mentioned before. We’re going to go through the quote-unquote vault and go through some of the musical ideas that were there. On the one end of the spectrum is the fact that licks don’t make a song, okay. On the other end of the spectrum, some of those licks are so unbelievably powerful, it’s too bad that they ended up in the back of the vault rather than being records.
There are so many different variables in the band like ours that it’s not. We don’t just walk in the studio and plan [and say], ‘Let’s make a record.’ Although we have done that to some degree, but it’s not a mechanical process for us. You know, we go in and we play and see what happens. [We] Listen to it, invite a couple of people, and then see what happens with that. And then you listen and you evaluate. If the next day when you come in and listen to it, if it doesn’t kick you in the face like it did the first time, then maybe you should move on and do something else. Don’t hold on to an old idea just because it’s there. It doesn’t. No. That’s not how we did it.
Having said that, there were also a lot of bad ideas! [laughs] That’s always the risk you run. But if you don’t do that, it’ll become inert. It’s called inertia, or whatever the, uh. Entropy. Entropy. Things will fall off and then you become less and less creative. And the other aspect of all of that is that you are in an open marketplace where you are being judged. And if you don’t do well in the marketplace, people are going to go, ‘Eh…you know…maybe it’s time to do something else.’ And that’s. That is a real issue. But now that Ed’s gone, you know, none of those things are really valid. Because all I have and Wolf has is all the recordings in the vault. And they will stay there until we figure out how and why and what to do with them. And again, you have to remember, it has to be on the level of where Ed and I, where we used to play. We’re not just going to shovel it in.
We have access to some of the greatest musicians on the planet and a lot of them are more than, more than willing to take a chance on some of this stuff.
That’d be great. It’s kind of what The Beatles did with the recent recordings of the stuff that they had of John [Lennon] demos, etc. But you don’t just have one or two demos. You’ve got many pieces of music that you could elaborate on.
Oh, yeah, probably three or four records, if not more. [Jericho laughs] No, I’m serious. There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember when you’re. When you’re 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 want to do it right. I want to do it right.
And you released [the song] ‘Unfinished’ with the book [Brothers], which is a great piece of music that you and Ed did. Did Ed play bass on that or is there bass on it?
I think Ed played bass on that.
It’s a great piece of music.
It really is…I don’t use the word spiritual, but there is a connection with. Ed and I were very much a product of how our dad saw the world, you know? And one of his favorite pieces of music was a song called ‘Unfinished’ by Franz Schubert. Actually, it wasn’t until I’d done this that I went back and looked and it turns out [Schubert] had a lot of pieces that were unfinished! [laughs] That seemed to be one of his major traits. So we had this song that was not completely finished yet. It’s one of my most memorable songs that was constantly playing in the house [as a kid]. So I thought it was kind of like a sign from some different dimension, ‘Do this.’ And as you can tell, I go off on a tangent that may or may not even be real. But I believe that stuff, man. There are a lot of things in the world that we do not know. That there is no explanation for them. All you have to do is just sit down…slow down…and listen. Which is easier said than done! [laughs]
And like you said, you’ve got all the music. We dont’ have to get into it. We know there’s a lot of video that’s never been seen before. So it seems like there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to be coming out with Van Halen in the future, which is very exciting.
Yeah. It’ll keep it going, and it’ll also be a way for us to be somewhat in touch with Ed, so to speak. So we’re looking forward to it.
Listen To Complete Alex Van Halen Interview