Content Warning: This section of the guide includes substance use and addiction.

The memoir considers how the Van Halen brothers were affected by their experiences as the children of a professional musician and a mother deeply invested in their musical education. Alex and Eddie Van Halen’s father, Jan, was a musician “who’d played all over Europe in orchestras and jazz groups” (5). Once the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Pasadena, California, Jan continued performing professionally, playing regularly with a jazz group in Pasadena. The boys absorbed their father’s knowledge and love of music, and were also driven by their mother, Eugenia, to pursue and excel at classical piano. Alex Van Halen credits both parents with instilling the desire for musical excellence: “our mother may have forced us to learn piano, but our father taught us about musicianship by example” (16).

A lot of Jan’s teaching was about musical theory; he also transmitted to his sons his passion for music as an art form with a long and complex history. According to Alex Van Halen, “our dad didn’t need to verbalize his reverence for music. He transmitted that to us through the way he lived.