Wolfgang Van Halen plays a lot Apex Legends right now and just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend. Otherwise, in addition to hosting a monthly show on SiriusXM, he’s been enjoying a brief period of “doing nothing” after a long stretch of touring behind his well-received, years-in-the-making debut album, Mammoth WVH — also the name of his one-man band that turns into a real band on the road. Later this year he will tour Europe for the first time and will be a guest at two Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts, one in Los Angeles on September 27th and the other in the UK on September 3rd (Mammoth WVH have also started doing covers “My Hero” on stage after Hawkins’ death).
A year after the release of his debut, Wolfgang hopped on Zoom to share some thoughts on his next album, the future of his career, his time in Van Halen, the tribute his uncle Alex Van Halen was trying to plan for his late father, Eddie Van Halen and many more.
You said your long-awaited album, which finally came out last June, was a product of “trial and error, self-doubt and anxiety…It’s just the way I live my life in general [laughs].
Yeah, well, me too, man. But maybe you can expand on that a little bit because it was a long, long process to get to the debut.There was a lot of work. I didn’t know who I was before it started. I didn’t know what it would be. I just knew that I had this dream of taking Dave Grohl and doing an album all by myself—you know, recording everything, writing everything. And I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I didn’t know if I could sing. But my producer [Michael “Elvis” Baskette], when he heard me sing some demos, he said, “You’ve got this.” I’m generally a very skeptical person. I’ve been raised for half my life with everyone—outside of my inner circle of people who are good to me and family and friends—hating me fiercely and trying to convince me that I’m not good enough. And I won’t lie. That really gets into your head at a young age. And my trust has been abused throughout my life, in many different episodes with a handful of different people who have really shaken me in different ways. And I’m still working on some of that, and a lot of that sort of fallout from those incidents in my life has caused me to have a really bad opinion of myself. And it’s really hard to get your act together and get anything done.
It must make it even more triumphant that you released the album and went on tour and got a great reception.Yes, the feeling is amazing. When you really look at everything we’ve done in the past year, it’s kind of crazy for a new rock band in 2021. So I’m really proud of the whole team. It’s really amazing
When you talk about negativity, you mean online, right?yeah You know, it’s hard. You know, I spend my life trying to get, you know… You want people to like you, you think you’re a good person, you know, and then all these people who don’t know you, they chose the person they are because of who your parents are and what you do. We have become such a cynical place where everything is judged first. It’s who can get the most cynical hotshot, not genuine kindness. The world outside is very unkind in many aspects.
It’s easy to forget that you were just a teenager facing online hate for replacing an original Van Halen member.It’s something we can’t escape in this internet age, and I don’t know, I just get tired of it. It’s like, “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Yeah, that’s why I’m just kidding. At a certain point, man, it’s just like, “Come on.” Even if I hadn’t been in Van Halen before, there would still be people who hated me as much as they did, but that really lit the fire. I will say it is much more positive since Mammoth came out. This is the most positive attitude towards me on the internet.
And what were the betrayals of trust you speak of?I don’t want to call people out or anything, but people in my family have been stealing from me. I’ve had people I thought I was friends with end up taking advantage of me. I’ve had people I’ve been in a relationship with abuse that trust. Cheat me, steal from me. If you listen to the lyrics on Mammoth’s first album, it’s like everything I write is directed at this amalgam of people who took advantage of me.
What have been some of the most important experiences on the road in the past year?Starting with opening for Guns [N’ Roses] it was just thrown into the fire in a really exciting way. That the third show was once at Hershey Park in front of a sea of people was something I will never forget. I can’t thank the entire team at Guns enough. I think it was 28,000 and change.
You played “Paradise City” with them and Frank Sidoris, who’s in your band and in Slash’s band, taught you the old Izzy Stradlin guitar part, right?He was playing it with Slash and I was like, “Dude, you gotta teach me how to play this because I know the song, but I never learned how to play it.” That’s all I did on the bus for that week. One night around 3am I was walking around and played it for about two hours.
When I saw your headlining set in New York, I felt like the crowd were really your fans, which must have been great.Yes, it’s really crazy. It’s really gratifying to see so many people really, really enjoying it.
There was maybe one guy in the audience waving a Frankenstrat flag, but I guess you’re just into that sort of thing?I don’t have a problem I feel like my position on Van Halen has been stated as loudly as in the game phone. People say, “Oh, don’t mention Van Halen. He hates Van Halen!” It’s like, “That’s my fucking name! Why should I hate him? This is my father! I love my father! I was in the fucking group! I don’t hate him at all.”
All I’ve ever said is that I don’t want to play Van Halen music at Mammoth concerts. I’d rather bomb with my own stuff than get the attention of playing dad. We’ve got you covered [Alice in Chains’] “Their Bones.” And before I play it, I’m tiptoeing into it and I’m like, “Okay, we’re going to cover it right now.” And everybody’s going there [whispers] ‘Van Halen!’ And it kind of turned into a dialogue and I’d be like, “What, you don’t think I love Van Halen?” I’d always say that expecting to hear Van Halen at a Mammoth show is like expecting to hear Nirvana at a concert of the Foo Fighters. And they’re mad that they didn’t release Nirvana!
I guess only once did they bring Krist Novoselic on stage and actually play Nirvana encore.yes And when they played with Rick Astley they played a version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. So if anything, it’s a really, really rare occurrence. I think my point still stands! Don’t expect Van Halen from a Mammoth concert.
Just to be clear, you are not opening the door here.No, no, I won’t open the door. If anything, the door is cracked ever so slightly. Simply because you should never say never. But also don’t take what I’m saying right now as “Oh man, they’re going to play Van Halen!” I’d say if I happen to play a Van Halen song in concert in the next 15 years, don’t come back at me like an asshole and go away, [dumb-guy voice] “Well you said you hate Van Halen!”
Well good luck internet fully understanding what you just said.[Laughs.] I’m probably just screwing things up.
You’ve started playing a heavy new song called “I Don’t Know at All” on tour. Will this be on the next album?Most likely. I like it a lot. I don’t know if it will be a single or something. But it’s a song idea left over from the first album. There are about seven or 10 remaining ideas that were written at that time. And since then I’ve written much, much more. So there is plenty to choose from.
Was he writing on tour?Not much, really. It was funny when you go on tour, you’re like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to play video games. I’ll go out and do this, I’ll do that.” And it’s like, “Not really.” Whenever I could sleep I would take it. I was very sleepy. That’s my favorite thing about touring.
I mean you’re all grown up and you’re going on tour. This is not a 22-year-old going on his first tour.I just really care. That’s my job, right? I think most people who just go out there and party and drink and be hungover, that’s fucking bullshit. Like Grow Up Man. And we also had a pretty strict Covid protocol. My overall sentiment is that this is my job. My job is to give people the best performance. And if I was partying somewhere and being a jerk, I wouldn’t be at my best. You know, I’ve been in a lot of different places where that really wasn’t the case. I like to be very professional.
If you weren’t writing on tour, when did you write all this new music?I wrote a bunch of ideas during quarantine. And then, you know, random things here and there. I’ll just have an idea and just bring up my voice notes on my phone. And in any little free time I had from touring, I started doing demos just on this computer right here. So I’ve just accumulated a bunch of ideas that I’m really excited to start working on. Some of them are quite different, which is exciting. I want to keep challenging myself and not just keep doing the same things. Not crazy different, just different vibes and stuff. Maybe even a little heavier, maybe even a little lighter. Just expand the scope of what the band can do…
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