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Wolfgang Van Halen has said his appearance at the Taylor Hawkins tribute show was “like closing a book” as he honored his late father before marching down his own path in the industry. But he knew that, had he failed that day, his career might have gone down in flames.
The son of Eddie Van Halen was flanked by Dave Grohl on bass, frontman Justin Hawkins, and session drummer Josh Freese at Wembley Stadium in 2022. Armed with his semi-hollow EVH signature guitar, Wolfgang led the band through three Van Halen classics, On Fire, Hot For Teacher and Panama, and though his tapping work and music videos with Mammoth have since nodded to his father’s glittering legacy, he’s steered clear of most things Van Halen since.
The consensus was that he nailed the set, but he knew he might not have recovered had he not brought his A-game.
“It was my way of being able to not only honor Taylor, but honor my dad by playing some of his material, and keep out of the mess,” he tells Andy Guitar (via Blabbermouth). “So it was definitely a do-or-die thing for me.”
“I was losing it that day,” he adds. “’Cause to me, it was, ‘If I don’t do this right, if I don’t serve this justice, then my life will be over.’”
As Andy Guitar says, the performance did little to expose those fears, but it was a big moment in his life and career, as he had only debuted Mammoth the previous summer, having played bass in Van Halen’s final chapter before that. The band has allowed him to move away from the shadow of his ultra-successful family and into his own light, but only because he “ended up playing it pretty all right.”
“I still made mistakes,” he confesses, “but it was all live and in the heat of the moment. Having Dave, Justin, and Josh there to support me, and being able to play with three idols of mine while doing such an emotional and difficult thing for me, was really special. I don’t think I could’ve done it without them. That was a day of catharsis, for sure.”
Wolfgang has previously admitted he harbored doubts about whether he could actually pull off playing Van Halen in front of such a staggeringly big audience – and one multiplied manyfold by the show’s livestream. Truth is, he made it look easy.
Mammoth released their third album, The End, last year as the band continues to rise through the ranks.
