Wolfgang Van Halen isn't ruling out getting heavier, he's just not there yet. In a new chat with Australia's Everblack podcast, Wolfgang Van Halen opened up about the idea of launching a heavy side project and why he's not just diving in headfirst despite loving heavier music.
"If it was something like that, I would probably wanna just play drums or something," he said, casually, "just be able to focus on one thing." Right now though, Wolfgang's all-in on proving himself through Mammoth. "I feel like I haven't proven myself enough as my own sort of musician yet," he explained. "That's why I'm still sort of drilling with Mammoth and just enjoying that."
That said, don't count him out when it comes to future chaos: "I could definitely see myself down the line being like, 'Hey, let's take a break and do something crazy.' So who knows?"
As it turns out, "crazy" might already be brewing on the tour bus. Wolfgang revealed that he and live guitarist Jonathan Jourdan have been dabbling in some very non-Mammoth territory: "We were making these random Meshuggah-y demos just for fun to fill the time," he laughed. "We were trying to make these djenty rhythms where we were counting numbers out — random stuff that was just fun."
And while he's not short on his own creative outlets, Wolfgang isn't shy about dream collaborations either. Namely with a member of Tool.
"After doing the Rock Hall thing for Ozzy, I hit it off with Maynard [James Keenan, Tool], which is kind of crazy 'cause he's one of my favorite singers of all time," Wolfgang revealed. "Tool was a very important band to me. So the opportunity to work with Maynard — I think that would be really fucking cool. I would be into that, if he was into it."
And if that isn't ambitious enough, Wolfgang has a wild idea that involves the multi-instrumental dream team of Foo Fighters drummer Ilan Rubin: "Ilan has his own band where he plays everything. Dave can play everything. So I thought it'd be a fun idea if the three of us did something and played a different thing on every song," he said. "That'd be a fun idea."
