It’s been a year since Eddie Van Halen passed away but the posthumous biographical content of the legendary shredders’ life has only just begun to surface.
The first cab off the rank for 2022 in this category is in the form of the guitarists’ first wife Valerie Bertinelli’s new book Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today.
Bertinelli, a renowned author and essayist in her own right, touches on her relationship with the rockstar, revealing what his final words to his family before passing were “I love you.”
“‘I love you’ are the last words Ed says to Wolfie (the couples’ son Wolfgang Van Halen) and me,” Bertinelli reveals, “and they are the last words we say to him before he stops breathing.”
Also present at his time of passing was Eddies wife Janie Liszewski and brother / bandmate Alex Van Halen.
Having married Eddie in 1981, Bertinelli was up close to Van Halen at the legendarily hedonistic height of their fame, revealing that “we were portrayed as a mismatch…the bad boy rock star and America’s sweetheart but privately, Ed wasn’t the person people thought he was and neither was I.
“I hated the drugs and alcohol but I never hated him. I saw his pain.”
The couple split in 2005 but remained friends, with Eddie apparently gifting Bertinelli a gold bar in 2019.
“I hope you don’t think it’s weird, you know, that I bought my ex-wife this gift and didn’t get my wife anything,” he is said to have told her then. “I just love you.
“He wants me to know he messed up (during our marriage),” Bertinelli says.
“I contributed to our troubles too and I am also sorry.”
Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today is set for release on January 18th.
