Brothers

Alex Van Halen believes that Eddie’s type of creativity mixed well with Roth’s type of creativity. Still, Roth was jealous of Eddie’s artistic sensibilities because his creative inclinations lacked depth. In 1981, after the Fair Warning tour ended, the band needed a break, so they decided to release a single instead of an album “to slow everything down without completely disappearing” (193). MTV (the Music Television channel) had launched the previous year, and Roth loved the idea of recording a cover song and filming an elaborate music video. The band’s version of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” and the accompanying video became a hit, so the label rushed them into the studio to record a full album to profit.

The ensuing album, Diver Down, included four other covers so that it could be completed quickly. While the Van Halen brothers hated doing the covers and the album in general, they loved that their father agreed to play clarinet on the song “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now).” Alex Van Halen found that the experience transformed the relationship: “it was a very humbling experience recording with him. He was getting very uneasy, and now it was our turn to walk him through a professional experience.