Wolfgang Van Halen on recording new album in dad's studio: 'Feels like a rite of passage'

Wolfgang Van Halen knows he carries great expectations on his shoulders.

The son of late guitar legend Eddie Van Halen and actress/author/TV host Valerie Bertinelli silenced skeptics with the 2021 self-titled debut from his band Mammoth WVH, which earned a Grammy nomination for best rock song (“Distance”).

An abundantly talented musician who played every instrument on the album – as he does on “Mammoth II,” out now – Van Halen, 32, learned a songwriting style that meshes serrated guitars, thundering drums and honeyed harmonies from his lifetime of musical immersion.

Those qualities are spotlighted in new songs such as “Miles Above Me,” the epic eight-minute “Another Celebration at the End of the World” and “I’m Alright,” the music video for which features a cameo from Bertinelli.

Though Van Halen is a longtime road warrior – he played bass in Van Halen starting in 2007 ‒ Mammoth WVH is also already battle-tested, having opened for Guns N’ Roses in 2021 and Metallica’s European stadium tour this spring (as well as current U.S. dates) and shared bills with Alter Bridge and Dirty Honey. On Nov. 4, Mammoth WVH kicks off a six-week headlining theater tour.

In conversation, Van Halen is soft-spoken, funny and forthright as he talks about the evolution of his music, honoring the memory of his father, his affinity for cats and why he loves his mom.

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Question: Let’s start with that album cover – you’ve got a skeleton, fireworks, desert and a coyote. What’s the theme there?

Van Halen: Both (Mammoth covers) have been by (artist) John Brosio. We added the logo on the TV and the Easter egg of the peace sign by the carousel. I think this album lyrically and musically is a bit darker compared to the first one because the first album came out in 2021, but I recorded it from 2015 to 2018. This album you hear me working through everything. I lost Dad in 2020 and I think people would have expected to hear (songs about that) on the first album.

What was your writing process like with this one?

All I wanted to do was avoid the sophomore slump. That was my mission statement. Almost everything on this was a new idea. I think I had five or six song ideas from March 2020 and then I went creatively bankrupt and lost every bit of desire while I was taking care of Dad and watching the state of the world. After we toured a little bit, in early 2022, the creative spurts kind of happened. The first album was, this needs to be a big introduction. With this one, I wanted a 10-song album, no fat, a tight 48-50 minutes.

Even though you have a band, you still played everything yourself on the album. Why?

From its inception, Mammoth has been my own personal artistic expression outlet that now it’s like, this is how we do it. Plus I have such a good time. I don’t get to play drums too much anymore; now it’s only when I’m recording. Would I be against doing it with a band in the future? Not at all. But this has been working so far and I have a wonderful time doing it.

You recorded at your dad’s studio, 5150, again. When you’re in there, do you feel any spiritual guidance?

I’ve been going up there my whole life. It just feels like home. To a lot of other people, they think it’s a public studio they can visit, but it’s very much a private home studio. And now it’s my private home studio. It feels like a rite of passage thing. It’s my duty to be making music in it for the rest of my life.

You’ve got another big road trip coming up this fall. What have you grown to love and loathe about touring?

If there is anything that would come close to the area of loathing, I shuffle it away. It is work. It’s my job. If there's something I don’t like about it, tough (expletive). It is long bus rides and I don’t get sleep, and it’s like, too bad, you still have to play the show. Particularly, this last European run was tough. It was very hot and our bus decided not to have air conditioning. We in America have grown accustomed to things being cooler. We like our air conditioning.

And ice! They don’t have ice there either.

They look at you crazy when you’re like, "Hey, can I get ice?" I don’t know what they have against ice. Everybody on tour was like, "Damn, where’s the ice?" Every gas station stop? No ice.

So it was a little hot on the bus …

And yeah, aside from that, the shows were wonderful. It’s sort of the payoff because writing and recording an album is such an introverted experience and now it becomes theirs instead of yours. To have the opportunity to open for a crowd like Metallica’s is such a valuable thing for a band of our stature. If five people out of the 5,000 walking into the venue say, “That’s cool, I’ll look for that on Spotify,” then it’s a win.

You and Justin Hawkins (from The Darkness) pulled out some Van Halen classics at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert last year. Was that also your way of saying, "OK, here’s your Van Halen, now let it go"?

If there was going to be one time to do it, it was going to be that time. I never say never, but it really was my way of saying goodbye to that stuff. I don’t want to play that music without my dad and my dad’s not here, which means I don’t want to play that music. I know Taylor would have lost it. He would have loved it and I know Dad would have been proud. I don’t want to just play Van Halen stuff. I’d rather build this on my own. I think it would be very hokey and soulless to just be playing “Panama” every night.

I see you on social media a lot and you always have great smackdowns, but it has to be exhausting warding off the constant “When are you going to get Van Halen back together”?

I don’t think people realize how much it is exhausting. The aggressive negative stuff is always exhausting, but even from a positive perspective … sometimes I just want to go online and look at cat videos and funny memes.

How is your mom, by the way?

She’s doing great, speaking of cats! She has so many cats, two specific ones that belonged to my grandparents and when they passed they moved to my mom’s and now they’re pretty much mine and my fiancee’s. I’m a cat person. Nothing against dogs, but there’s just something about cats. But my mom is wonderful. I love my mom.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wolfgang Van Halen reflects on Mammoth WVH album, his father and cats