Eddie Van Halen Left A Studio Archive With ‘Close To A Million” Records Of Music

Eddie Van Halen Left A Studio Archive With ‘Close To A Million” Records Of Music | I Love Classic Rock Videos

Eddie Van Halen live in 2015 - DWTH / Youtube

The late Eddie Van Halen left his studio rich with unreleased music, according to a recent posthumous tribute.

According to a newly-published piece by Rolling Stone that quoted a 2008 interview with writer Brian Hiatt, Eddie Van Halen said that he recorded tons of unreleased music that amounted “close to a million CDs, cassettes, boxes and boxes and boxes.” EVH wasn’t planning to hide them forever either, as he said: “The stuff is gonna come out. Hopefully people will enjoy the many sides of me. I trip on it myself.”

While “millions” might have been just a figure of speech, Van Halen’s work in his 5150 home studio has been well documented. Manager Irving Azoff notes that the EVH’s family members will be scouring his vault for unreleased cuts. In an interview with Pollstar, Azoff said: “Wolf and Alex will go up to 5150, the studio in Ed’s house,” as “there’s been a lot of recording” that happened in the studio over the years. He put up a disclaimer that it’s too early to tell what might be uncovered, saying, “I can’t predict that for sure there will be anything new, but for sure they’re going to look at it.”

EVH’s 5150 home studio was built in 1983 to allow him to work at home, where the vault’s contents were curated and accounted for on a computer but were eventually lost, according to a 1998 Van Halen interview with MTV due to a faulty hard drive. Eddie said, “The computer took a dump on us,” and was hesitant to do a follow-up catalog because “The only person that can do that is me because nobody knows what I like.”