Wolfgang Van Halen was interviewd by Mick Burgess from Metal Express Radio on Oct 15th while he was on a short UK tour with Tremonti Project.
Wolf talks about how he landed the gig with Mark Tremonti, the current and future situation with Van Halen, and Wolfgang doing backing vocals for Halestorm’s latest release.
Regarding Eddie Van Halen recovering from surgery for a nasty case of diverticulitis: “He’s doing really, really good. He actually came out to our show in Kansas City, and I posted a picture of all of us on Twitter, and everybody was going crazy over it, saying how good he looks.
Regarding old, unreleased Van Halen demos and creating ‘A Different Kind of Truth’: “There’s so many, and I love them all! I felt like, digging deep into the classic era, where my dad was in the mindset of writing ‘Running with the Devil’ or ‘Dance the Night Away,’ it would be great to reach in and … put Al, my dad and Dave back into that head space — so we could start writing classic-sounding Van Halen tunes. We actually made the first demo [for the new album], ‘She’s The Woman’, in August 2009. We kept playing all of those songs, and changing them here and there, and making them better.”
Regarding playing in Tremonti Project compared to playing in Van Halen: “It really isn’t that different. People always ask me, is it weird playing smaller places or what’s it feel like to be doing this, but as long as I am playing music, and playing for people that enjoy it, there really is no difference.”
Regarding Van Halen’s future: (The Tremonti tour has wrapped up) “We [Van Halen] don’t have anything slated until next year. We’re all just hanging out, and enjoying this down time while we wait for dad to get better and then get back out there. My dad is always writing and we still have a litany of ideas from the back catalog that some people have never heard. My dad actually called me a couple weeks ago and said, “You’ve got to hear this idea” and he puts the idea up to the phone. He’s always got ideas going. We’ll probably play around in the studio once dad starts feeling better.”
Listen to the interview here.
We already knew that Wolfgang is an extremely talented musician and singer. And after listening to this new interview, it’s also surprising how mature and articulate he seems for such a young age (21).