In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mammoth WVH’s Wolf Van Halen shared his thoughts on Van Halen and said that he never hated the band, unlike the widespread accusations about him.
After Eddie Van Halen passed away and Van Halen disbanded, Wolf started to work on his solo career, which he had already been working on since 2015. He established the Mammoth WVH project and released their first album, ‘Mammoth WVH,’ in June 2021.
However, after his time with Van Halen, people expected Wolf to follow his father’s path. Although Wolf has stated that he is on his own journey with Mammoth WVH, fans continued to expect him to play Van Halen songs at his shows.
When asked if it would affect him if a fan waved the Frankenstrat flag on his show, Wolf claimed he had no problem with that. Wolfgang stated that people thought he hated Van Halen. However, he didn’t hate the name or the band since it’s all related to his father and his last name. Wolf said the only thing he wanted to do was play his songs instead of Van Halen when he was up on stage with his band Mammoth WVH.
Wolf Van Halen‘s words about his stance towards Van Halen:
“I don’t have a problem. I feel like my stance on Van Halen has been telephoned so hard, as in the game telephone. People are like, “Oh, don’t mention Van Halen. He hates Van Halen!” It’s like, ‘It’s my fucking name! Why would I hate it? It’s my dad! I love my dad! I was in the fucking band! I don’t hate it at all.’”
He added:
“All I’ve ever said is I don’t want to play Van Halen music at Mammoth shows. I’d rather bomb with my own stuff than gain attention for playing dad’s. We covered [Alice in Chains’] ‘Them Bones.’ And before playing it, I would kind of tiptoe into it and be like, 2OK; we’re gonna do a cover right now.’ And everybody in there is going ‘Van Halen!’ And I was like, ‘And I’m not gonna play a Van Halen song,’ and you’d hear people go like, ‘Awwwww.’ And it kind of turned into a dialogue, and I’d be like, ‘What, you don’t think I love Van Halen?’ I would always say that expecting to hear Van Halen at a Mammoth show is like expecting to hear Nirvana at a Foo Fighters concert. And getting pissed off that they didn’t play Nirvana!”
Mammoth WVH will hit the road with Alter Bridge for their European Tour ‘Pawns & Kings.’ The tour will begin in November in Germany and end in December in England.
