A collection of Eddie Van Halen's gear will go under the hammer later this year as part of what's been billed as "the ultimate Van Halen guitar auction".

The auction includes offerings from the virtuoso’s long-time guitar tech, Zeke Clark, and a Van Halen superfan named Nick D’Andrea. The lots are dominated by some choice electric guitars, as well as some weirder picks. In total, they are expected to sell for over one million dollars.

Two Clark-customized 5150 Kramers from 1986 and 1987 headline the auction. The earlier model is described as “a holy grail artifact from the peak of Van Halen’s stadium-rock dominance”.

As per EVH’s preferred shred-ready recipe, they both feature a Floyd Rose trem with a D-Tuna, a sole bridge humbucker, and the famous stripes design. They also feature some of Eddie’s guitar picks from the 5150 tour, and even have a stage-used cigarette lodged beneath the low E string on the headstock.

They were reportedly present throughout the band’s first three albums with Sammy Hagar: 5150, OU812, and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

From Eddie’s Ernie Ball era is a Translucent Gold-finished EVH model that was used between 1993 and 2002. It is signed by the Van Halen brothers, former bassist Michael Anthony, and their three vocalists: David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, and Gary Cherone.

The guitar sports zebra-style twin ‘buckers, a maple fretboard, and another dive-bomb-friendly Floyd Rose. It's said to be in used condition, given how much Eddie Van Halen relied on it during tour.

Elsewhere, there's also an EVH-branded Wolfgang from 2012, which was presented to D’Andrea to commemorate his 400th time watching the band live. It was signed by the band after Eddie used it on stage.

As for amps, three Marshall JMP Mk 2 tube amps from 1977, ’87, and ’80-’86, feature, as does the 1960s Sears Silvertone 1465 head and cab, used to record Finish What Ya Started. There’s also a stripes-laden drill that Eddie used to play Poundcake with in the mid-’90s.

Stompbox offerings include a 2004 Jim Dunlop signature Phase 90, a 2006 EVH Flanger, while stage-used picks from 1991-’92 and 1995 tour dates represent another more understated option.

There’s even a pair of Eddie’s sneakers (signed) currently selling for $2,000.

Away from Eddie’s gear is a Michael Anthony-owned 1988 Aria Pro II Integra bass that made it out on the road with the group, a used Ludwig drum kit, and a mic used by DLR between 2007 and 2008.

The auction is being handled by Backstage Auctions, and runs until August 8.

See Backstage Auctions for more.

Elsewhere, Sammy Hagar has reached out to David Lee Roth in a surprise showing of support following the recent cancellation of his tour, and Steve Vai has championed the quality of Eddie’s library of unreleased music.

Sammy Hagar has sent David Lee Roth kind words of support after the latter was forced to suddenly pull the plug on his current US tour.

Van Halen’s two most prolific vocalists have often been at odds with one another. Roth even trolled the Red Rocker last August, in response to his claims he wrote a song with the late Eddie Van Halen in a dream. This time, things are playing out differently.

Roth kicked off his current US tour in April, and has spent a portion of his sets reflecting on his humble songwriting beginnings with Eddie Van Halen. However, he’s now removed all but one live date from his website, with no explanation given. Hagar has voiced his concern.

“Hey Dave, Sammy here. I just got a call from [ex-Van Halen/current Hagar solo bassist] Michael Anthony about your tour getting canceled,” Hagar says in an Instagram reel.

“I wanna say from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry. I hope you’re well. I hope there’s not a physical problem. Honestly, Mike and I love the fact that you’ve been out there doing it, supporting the greatest band in the world that we were both part of.”

Hagar is back on home soil after taking his Best of All Worlds tour with Joe Satriani and Mike Anthony to the UK. In September, the show will have its second Las Vegas residency.

“I’m really sorry,” he continues in his message to Roth. “That’s fucked up. Supporting what we did in this band to keep this music alive. You and I, Mikey, Al [Alex Van Halen], Ed, cannot be replaced. So, when you’re ready to carry on, you go, brother. Mike and I support you.

“I hope you’re well, I really do. God bless, brother.”

Roth was slated to play six shows between July 24 and September 4. Now, the only date listed on his site is in Sturgis, South Dakota on August 7. There has been no public comment on the show cancellations, nor an explanation.

Wayne Charvel, the visionary guitar maker whose namesake brand changed the guitar industry, has died at the age of 85.

The news was announced in a statement posted to Dignity Memorial, which confirmed he passed away earlier this month on July 12.

Charvel leaves behind a legacy as one of the guitar world’s most influential change-makers.

“Beyond his remarkable craftsmanship, he was a devoted father, grandfather, family member, and friend,” the post on Dignity Memorial notes. “He will be remembered for his kindness, integrity, wisdom, and his great sense of humor.

“His greatest legacy is not only the beautiful guitars he built, but also the love, values, and inspiration he shared with everyone around him. He will be deeply missed and forever remembered by all who knew and loved him. His impact in the music world, and his loving spirit will live on for generations.”

Few luthiers have had the same impact on the guitar scene as Charvel. When he opened Charvel’s Guitar Repair in 1974 in Azusa, California, he unwittingly sparked a guitar custom shop revolution.

Charvel originally performed aftermarket customizations and sold parts that allowed players to build their own instruments. He became a go-to partner for the likes of Gibson and Fender, who didn’t provide in-house custom work of their own, and quickly attracted some notable early clientele, Eddie Van Halen included.

“Eddie came by the shop a lot and sometimes would sit on the floor and play the guitar while we repaired some of his other guitars,” Charvel once said.

“One day, Eddie came over to the shop and asked if I had an extra body and neck. I told him that I had an extra Boogie Body neck and an old body in my shop. I gave Ed the parts, and the next time I saw the guitar he had used a spray can to paint it white with black stripes. He used nails to hold the pickup in the body.”

That guitar went on to be known as Frankenstein and changed the face of rock guitar as we know it.

By the dawn of the 1980s and the shred era, Charvel had already begun building its own guitars. They ended up in the hands of the biggest players of the age, including Steve Vai, Jake E. Lee, Warren DeMartini and George Lynch.

Outside the metal world, Jeff Beck and Allan Holdsworth were fans. At Van Halen's own request, Wayne Charvel also built the original Bumblebee guitar.

In 1978, Charvel’s interest in the company was bought out by Grover Jackson, who helped the company level up and delivered Charvels to the masses. But though he was part of his eponymous brand for only four years, Wayne had already left a huge impact on the scene.

A hot-rod enthusiast who inspired players to experiment with their instruments while emboldening them with superior mods and setups, Charvel prioritized speed, sound and quality, pioneering what would later be known as the "Superstrat".

The company’s own instruments continued to follow the precedent set by Wayne, and the resulting instruments virtually became synonymous with the shred scene.

“There was a vibe and a team spirit at Charvel that I never experienced anywhere else,” Grover Jackson once observed. “Sometimes the good intention of the creator gets into the product, against all odds, and this was certainly true of every Charvel that went out the door.”

In 2002, Charvel was acquired by Fender, which helped return the brand to its former glory after decades in the wilderness triggered by the rise in grunge and declining quality.

As such, Charvel’s name continues to be associated with some of guitar’s most iconic instruments and players. More recently, its legacy has been carried by a range of modern virtuosos, from Sean Long and Rick Graham, to Angel Vivaldi, Guthrie Govan and Jim Root.

Charvel is survived by his wife, Susan; his sons, Michael, Richard, and Robert; his daughter, Jennifer; and his grandchildren, Gavin, Glory and Giana.

If Joe Satriani asks you to build an amp to make him sound like Eddie Van Halen – specifically the Eddie we hear and see in Van Halen’s Live Without a Net (1986) – it’s a request you’d better take seriously.

This is exactly what happened to Dylana Nova Scott, founder/owner of Minnesota-based 3rd Power, who was entrusted with handling Satch’s tones on this year’s Sammy Hagar-fronted Best of All Worlds tour. Together they created the DRGN 100 Custom Shop head, packed with a whole range of new features to bring the legendary tones of Van Halen’s 1968 Marshall Super Lead (serial number 12301, to be precise) into the modern age.

The results were so impressive, Satriani continued using the amp in the Satch/Vai band, which then led to Steve Vai switching over to 3rd Power cabinets. For Scott, who rose to fame in the late ’80s as the lead guitarist in San Francisco hard rockers Vain, it’s been a true labor of love – helping one of the world’s most respected living guitarists pay tribute to one of the world’s most sorely missed.

Then there are other 3rd Power designs like the Dumble-inspired Aurora 35 and the Fender-golden-era-rivaling Lyra, housing the sounds of a 1962 brown-panel and a 1965 black-panel in one box.

Here’s the story of how a glam-metal guitarist ended up becoming a specialist builder for the likes of Satriani, Lenny Kravitz, Joe Walsh and many more.

What made you want to start an amp company?

I’m a player myself. That’s what drives the amp company. You can design a tone in isolation to sound good, but there can be a moment when that isolation blows up. That’s where 3rd Power comes in. We live in between the artist and the audience, sitting in a very sacred place.

It’s the moment the lights come on and the audience is screaming. I also know what it’s like when the lights come on and everyone is silent because you have to prove yourself. My job is emotional translation. Whatever comes out of that quarter-inch jack needs to hit the audience.

Where did you learn how to build amps?

I’m self-taught, but I guess I’ve always been a tone-chaser tinkering with gear. I took electronics and computer programming in high school. As a recording artist, I started paying attention to the engineers working around me.

In between tours, I was working at a music store where DigiDesign specialists would train us. I also spent time with legendary sound guy Chip Davis, watching how he would analyze rooms.

He would clap and listen to the reflections, asking me if I could hear the flange coming out of the corner. Then I got into wireless systems, which led to me working at Sennheiser and eventually Line 6. But I started to become more interested in tube amps at a time when everyone else was converting to digital. I was the person listening to records while reading The History of Marshall: The First Fifty Years.

It clearly paid off. Joe Satriani is a big fan.

Joe has said a lot of wonderful things. Yes, I’m a nice person, but he’s not using my stuff because I’m nice. On our first call, he said he’d been talking to Edward’s techs, Zeke Clark and Tom Weber, describing the sound he was looking for.

The 5150 tour was actually Ed’s last tour with the famous Marshall. He had all the candy, but it hadn’t moved into the more modern Van Halen tone. On that tour, they played the old catalog next to the new catalog, and it all translated because the energy was right.

After that, the rig changed and maybe the old songs didn’t sound right – this is according to Sammy – so Joe had to be very specific. Ed’s own techs said the only person that could help was this girl outta Nashville called Dylana Scott. Joe called me and said, “Apparently I should be talking to you.”

What were the main considerations when designing the DRGN 100?

I said, “Let me build the perfect racecar for you to drive.” Did he want more horsepower at this turn or better traction over here or extra acceleration back there?

I’m a big fan of his work, so I also explained that I didn’t want to watch him play a covers set. He asked what I meant and I answered, “Joe, none of us need to see you play note for note; we need you to interpret the essence of the moment while honoring the king.”

Obviously I had to make sure he had all the tones he needed – the intro to Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love is like taking a flint and stone to make a spark.

It’s a two-hour set with moments that also sound creamier. This amp was designed to lift Joe up the whole way through, so that even someone in the last seat of the arena would feel the buzz and stand up.

Some of your other designs, like the Aurora 35 and the Lyra, are completely different.

The Lyra has two classic Fender circuits from the ’60s, alongside tube-driven spring reverb and attenuation. It’s a beautifully authentic amp that sounds great. The Aurora 35 starts out in the hi-fi Fender spectrum, like a Dumble, and then opens up.

The signal path is complicated because of the stacking and gain staging, but you don’t need a Ph.D. to get it right; it’s super-simple. But you still get the mid-switch, just in case you need to voice it differently.

Your amps also have modern functions like the HF Damp and HybridMaster.

The High Frequency Damp is geared toward working professionals. Imagine being a hired gun and the singer says you’re too bright. If you walk back to your amp and turn the treble down, you’ve just made sure you have a bad night. Leave it where it is and you might not get that gig again.

The HF Damp will keep all of your articulation but shave a little bit of treble from the power amp. Your gain structure hangs on your tone stacking, and with this all of your sonic decisions remain intact. It’s a gig-saver. The HybridMaster is a patented micro volume control that I refined over years. I looked at all the soaks out there.

Some were good for a 15-percent reduction, others maybe 10 percent, and some weren’t good at all. I decided to create a hybrid while only showing the customer one knob. Inside the amp, that knob is controlling a myriad of things.

When you turn amps down, you lose the weight of the moment. Everything gets smaller. I found a way to reduce the volume without sacrificing tone. When you attenuate the signal, I increase the volume strategically in different circuits so what remains feels more alive.

You don’t just design amps. You also have your own MagFRAG pickup line.

It’s my spin on what a pickup could be in this day and age. I jumped on forums and read the arguments, but I didn’t think like a regular winder, obsessing over wires, magnets, insulators and turns.

Instead, I learned about the variables and tried to imagine the sound of Alnico II on the treble strings, the sound of Alnico IV on the middle strings, which is where chords and chimes open up, and then Alnico V for the bass strings.

I wanted one magnet to address each pair of strings. Tracii Guns is a big fan; they’re now on his main guitars. The pickups sound beautiful, making your instrument come to life. It’s like throwing glitter on what you hear.

• For more info, head to 3rd Power.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

George Orwell’s novel 1984 envisioned a dystopian future where totalitarian governments ruled the world, and the average person’s attempts to enjoy even the slightest personal pleasure were patrolled and punished by the Thought Police in service of Big Brother.

However, when mankind finally reached that symbolic year, the prevailing atmosphere was more of a hedonistic non-stop party than a period of peril. We have the power of the mighty Van Halen to thank for much of that.

Considered by many – including Eddie Van Halen himself – as the band’s masterpiece, 1984 was one of Van Halen’s best-selling albums and one of the best-selling rock albums of the entire ’80s.

It has earned RIAA Diamond certification for surpassing 10 million units sold – a feat the band only matched with their 1978 debut album, with the two perfectly bookending the beginning and end of Van Halen’s classic era with David Lee Roth fronting the band.

Clocking in at a lean 33 minutes and 22 seconds, 1984 was, as the saying goes, all killer and no filler. Even the best-selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, can’t make that boast (does anyone even remember Baby Be Mine and The Lady in My Life?). 1984 produced an impressive string of four hit singles, with Jump delivering Van Halen’s only Number 1 charting hit single in the band’s entire career.

Panama and I’ll Wait both peaked at Number 13, and Hot for Teacher came in at a not-too-shabby Number 56. Even the album’s “deep” tracks – Top Jimmy, Drop Dead Legs, Girl Gone Bad and House of Pain – were scorchers too hot for the Top 40, but found a welcoming home on more adventurous FM station playlists.

The only outlier is the album’s title track, but Ed’s solo synth performance perfectly set the mood as a brief overture that boldly introduced Van Halen’s brave new world.

Future Control

With 40 years of hindsight, it’s tempting to look back and conclude that the phenomenal popularity of 1984 was primarily due to it being the perfect album released at the perfect time.

However, its success also benefited significantly from several years of extremely hard work leading up to its release, along with a series of high-profile events that brought Van Halen prominently into the public’s awareness.

During the early ’80s, Van Halen had become one of the world’s biggest touring acts. The band sold out every single one of its 83 shows in the United States and Canada on its 1982 Hide Your Sheep tour, and in early 1983 they made their first ever appearances in South America during a month-long leg that introduced the band to thousands of rabid fans.

A few months later, Van Halen staked a claim as the biggest band in the world when they headlined “Heavy Metal Day” on May 29, 1983, at the US Festival, performing in front of an estimated audience of 375,000 – Van Halen’s largest audience ever. Their fee for the US Festival gig was $1.5 million, setting a new world record at the time.

Van Halen was also experiencing a significant upward trajectory in record sales. 1984’s predecessor, Diver Down, was a commercial success thanks in large part to the hit status of the 1982 single (Oh) Pretty Woman, which peaked at Number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

The only previous time that Van Halen cracked the Top 20 was when Dance the Night Away reached Number 15, and that was all the way back in 1979. From their debut effort onward, each album that Van Halen released charted higher than its predecessor, with Diver Down peaking at Number 3 compared to Fair Warning’s top position at Number 5.

Van Halen’s tour, album and single statistics were notable, but what truly catapulted the band into the public limelight was Ed’s increasing celebrity status, even though the guitarist never sought the spotlight and was never comfortable with being called a rock star.

His marriage to popular television actress Valerie Bertinelli led to appearances on mainstream prime time shows like Entertainment Tonight, making the Van Halen name a household word. Ed’s charming, down-to-earth demeanor won over many new fans who would have been shocked by the raucous atmosphere at a typical Van Halen concert, let alone the band’s backstage antics.

But perhaps the biggest turning point that made Ed a bona fide celebrity was his guest appearance on Michael Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller, on Beat It. Jackson wanted to record a rock song, and he knew that getting the world’s most popular guitarist to play a solo would introduce and endear the singer to an entirely new audience.

What Ed didn’t realize at the time was that his performance on Thriller would similarly cause Jackson’s fans to notice Van Halen. Beat It went on to top the charts worldwide, and those 33 seconds of shredding guitar bliss became an immortal symbol of the most enduring cultural crossover of pop, R&B and rock.

Eddie didn’t want his name to appear on Thriller’s credits, mainly to keep the session a secret from his bandmates, but there was no mistaking who performed that solo.

Despite his request to remain incognito, record company and musician’s union agreements led to his name appearing four times in the liner notes, and his wife Valerie and engineer Donn Landee, who had recorded every Van Halen to date, also were thanked for good measure.

It didn’t matter anyways as David Lee Roth immediately knew it was Ed the first time he heard Beat It blaring from a car stereo in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

Brave New World

Edward Van Halen’s creative inspiration increasingly grew during the early ’80s as he broadened his horizons into new musical styles and techniques and explored instruments beyond the guitar.

While he was initially pleased with Van Halen’s fifth album, Diver Down, he wasn’t happy with the rapid-fire approach to the sessions, which were completed in a mad rush over a period of 12 days.

On the band’s previous album, Fair Warning, Ed had finally become comfortable with spending considerably more time recording and crafting multiple guitar tracks in the studio while also experimenting with a broader palette of guitar tones. He felt that the slam-bang live performance blueprint used on Diver Down was a regression to the band’s first three albums, and the outcome left him creatively unsatisfied.

“I was always butting heads with (producer) Ted Templeman about what makes a good record,” Van Halen said in 2014. “Diver Down was a turning point for me because half of it was cover tunes. When we made Fair Warning I spent a lot more time with [engineer] Donn Landee working on my sound. I became much more involved in the recording process.

“To me, Fair Warning was more true to what I am and what I believe Van Halen is. We’re a hard rock band, and we were an album band. I like odd things. I was not a pop guy, even though I have a good sense of how to write a pop song. When we started work on 1984 I wanted to ram it up Ted’s poop chute and show him that we could make a great record without any cover tunes and do it our way.”

In order to be able to do things his way, Ed took dominant control of the creative reins by building a professional multitrack studio at home in 1982. Initially, the plan was to build a studio for recording demos, but as work progressed the guitarist realized that, with Landee working by his side, he could record Van Halen’s next album there.

“I did not set out to build a full-blown studio,” Ed admitted. “I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys. I never imagined that it would turn into what it did until we started building it. Slowly it turned into a lot more than I originally envisioned.

“Everybody else was even more surprised than I was, especially Ted. They thought I was just building a little demo room. Then Donn said, ‘No man! We’re going to make records up here!’ Donn and I had grown really close and had a common vision. Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well… yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots.”

Ed’s new home studio, named “5150” after the California law code for taking a mentally disordered person into custody when that person is considered a danger to others, was completed by the end of 1982.

In a recent interview with Greg Renoff for Tape Op magazine, Landee recalls that the first recording session took place on January 2, 1983, with Ed on synthesizer and his brother Alex Van Halen on drums.

Although Ed said in his 2014 Guitar World interview that he didn’t want to record cover tunes, ironically the very first song ever recorded at 5150 was a cover of Wilson Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour.

It’s very likely that this was a calculated move on Ed’s part to appease David Lee Roth and Templeman, perhaps hoping to convince them that the studio was indeed up to the task after they worked there and heard the results. The fact that the song was never released and is still locked up in 5150’s vaults suggests that Ed may have never actually wanted to record it in the first place.

However, Ed boldly revealed his hand with his next move. Over the previous few years, the guitarist had worked on a synth-dominated song that would later be named Jump after Roth wrote the lyrics, and with the studio up and running he recorded an instrumental demo of the tune, performed on an Oberheim OB-Xa synthesizer with accompaniment from Al on drums and Michael Anthony on bass.

“When I first played Jump for the guys nobody wanted to have anything to do with it,” Ed said. “Dave said that I was a guitar hero and I shouldn’t be playing keyboards. But when Ted heard the demo and said it was a stone-cold hit, everyone started to like it more. Ted only cared about Jump. He really didn’t care much about the rest of the record and just wanted that one hit.”

The band worked diligently recording new material for most of 1983, with the exception of the month of May, which they spent preparing for their appearance at the US Festival. Ed particularly reveled in having “unchained” freedom to experiment whenever and for as long as he pleased.

This included some explorations he wouldn’t have tried at a regular studio, like when he backed up his 1970 Lamborghini Miura S near 5150’s doors and miked its mighty roar. Initially intended for use during the chorus of Jump, the Lamborghini’s forceful growl eventually found its immortal home on the bridge of Panama.

Necessary tools for the party

In addition to equipping 5150 with a solid selection of classic studio gear that included a Universal Audio console purchased from United Western Studios, 3M M56 16-track tape machine and various items of high-end outboard gear such as Eventide Harmonizers, Teletronix LA-2A and UREI 1176 limiters, Lexicon Prime Time digital delay and EMT140ST plate reverb, Ed also added a wide variety of new instruments to his creative arsenal.

Ed had become enamored with the Oberheim OB-Xa polyphonic synthesizer and its updated version the OB-8, and they played a major role in three of the album’s songs.

Keyboards had actually prominently appeared on all three of Van Halen’s previous albums – a Wurlitzer electric piano on And the Cradle Will Rock… (Women and Children First), an Electro-Harmonix Mini-Synthesizer on Saturday Afternoon in the Park and One Foot Out the Door (Fair Warning) and a Mini Moog on Dancing in the Street (Diver Down) – but they were distorted and usually employed as ersatz guitars. With 1984, Jump and I’ll Wait, there was no mistaking that Ed was playing synths.

However, Ed was still a guitarist at heart and to his core, and he made many new additions to his guitar collection. The most notable newcomer was a rare vintage 1958 Gibson Flying V that Ed bought from Dan Martin of Missouri’s St. Charles Guitar Exchange – the first of many vintage guitars Ed would buy from the dealer over the years.

The V was Van Halen’s primary guitar on the album, used to record Hot For Teacher, Girl Gone Bad, the main riff of Drop Dead Legs and, as recently discovered, quite possibly for Jump [researcher Allan Garber has uncovered a behind-the-bridge pick scrape in the isolated guitar track, corresponding sonically with the V’s tailpiece configuration].

The guitarist had also acquired a few of Steve Ripley’s stereo guitars, featuring hexaphonic pickups (essentially each string had its own individual pickup) and panning controls for each string.

Ed put the Ripley to good use on Top Jimmy, using an open D7 tuning (DADACD, low to high) and playing harmonics that bounced across the stereo soundscape. This is probably the song called Ripley on a Warner Bros. memo that Ted Templeman wrote on August 23, 1983.

Ed later recycled the title for another song he wrote for The Wild Life soundtrack since it also used the Ripley guitar. That song later became Blood and Fire on Van Halen’s 2012 A Different Kind of Truth album.

Photos taken at 5150 during this period show a Veilette-Citron Shark baritone guitar, but apparently any songs where he might have used it didn’t make the final cut on the album. That Warner Bros. memo lists a song called Baritone Slide – very likely an unreleased or unfinished track featuring this instrument.

Ed had given conflicting reports over the years about the use of his original Frankenstein guitar or his Kramer 5150 to record the album. He had officially publicly retired the Frankenstein starting with the tour in support of 1984, but it’s plausible that he used it for one last hurrah.

However, Ed also had a habit of immediately putting new guitars to use once they orbited into his universe. As the 5150 became his favorite main guitar on albums recorded for the remainder of the ’80s, he may have played it on 1984. But one confirmed constant throughout all of Van Halen’s first six albums was the use of his 1968 Marshall Super Lead 100-watt head with its voltage reduced via a Variac.

“I had my old faithful Marshall head and bare wooden 4x12 cabinet facing off into a corner,” he recalled. “Al was in the other corner, and we set up some baffles to have isolation between my guitar and the drums. Because the space was so limited, Alex had to use a Simmons kit except for the snare.”

Ed employed effects much more sparingly than he had on previous Van Halen albums. Most notably, he used a pair of Eventide H910 or H949 Harmonizers that were slightly detuned and individually panned left and right to provide a stereo spread and subtle chorus effect on many guitar tracks.

Panama made good use of rhythmic delay, and the studio’s EMT plate reverb was employed tastefully on that song as well as Girl Gone Bad and House of Pain. However Ed’s usual MXR flanger and phaser pedals are absent.

Ministry of Truth

The finished product exceeded all expectations and then some. 1984 was a document of a band at its prime, where years of relentless touring had made their sound tight and their improvisational communication almost psychic.

Ed’s songwriting talents had expanded and grown, with his knack for pop hooks balanced by ambitious excursions inspired by progressive rock and fusion jazz.

Perhaps the most surprising element of 1984 is the fact that the first note of guitar is heard after more than two minutes have passed. This was partly the result of Templeman’s late comment that he wished the album had a song called 1984.

Landee realized that he had about 45 minutes of Ed improvising solo on the Oberheim that could be edited down to an instrumental intro, and voila! He had his wish. The 1984 synth instrumental made the perfect dramatic statement and lead in to Jump.

Jump was pure pop perfection that fit right in with the synth-crazy mid-’80s, but Ed’s dynamic guitar solo was the secret weapon behind its success, giving Van Halen a competitive crossover advantage with a hard rock audience that would never be caught dead listening to groups like the Human League, Depeche Mode or Soft Cell.

Panama may be the ultimate classic Van Halen tune, with Roth’s raunchy “fast car and faster girl” lyrics perfectly capturing the So Cal party vibe that made the band so irresistible from day one. It’s also one of two songs on 1984 that were inspired by AC/DC, which was not a bad move considering how Back in Black had already become the best-selling hard rock album of all-time.

The infectious, bouncy energy of Top Jimmy made it a strong contender for a fifth single or at least a hell of a B-side. However, it was probably held back by the difficulty of switching from open D7 tuning to standard for the solo’s delirious whammy bar workout, which prevented Van Halen from ever performing the song live.

Drop Dead Legs similarly should have been a hit, partly thanks to its relentless pile-driving Michael Anthony/Alex Van Halen rhythm section groove.

“That was inspired by Black in Black,” Ed admitted. “I was grooving to that beat, although Drop Dead Legs is slower. Whatever I listen to somehow is filtered through me and comes out differently. It’s almost a jazz version of Back in Black – I put a lot more notes in there.” It was never played live until the final 2015 tour.

Jump and its supporting music video may have made Van Halen seem harmless and cuddly, but Hot for Teacher was the opposite, exposing the band as the bad boy party animals they really were.

Alex Van Halen’s galloping Simmons drum intro sounds like a nitro-fueled dragster revving up before he switches to a Billy Cobham-meets-Buddy Rich swing that pushes Ed’s hot-rodded tapping into overdrive.

Roth’s schoolboy-in-heat lyrics are given extra punch and verve by Anthony’s high-pitched harmonies, while Ed keeps things loose and raunchy with ZZ Top-inspired bluesy finger-plucked riffs.

I’ll Wait was the album’s other synth-driven hit, with the yin of Ed’s sophisticated keyboard chords and a chorus with smooth yacht-rock lyrics penned by the Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald counterbalanced by the yang of Roth’s semi-goofball rants about “heartbreak in overdrive” and “such good photography!”

The guitar solo similarly provides a contrast between Ed’s melodic phrasing and fusion-esque flourishes with explosive vibrato bar noise.

When the album’s final sequence was being prepared in late 1983, no-one had any inkling that the band’s classic era with David Lee Roth would soon come to a close, yet the final two songs on 1984 delivered about as perfect a send-off as any fan could ask for.

Girl Gone Bad is simply epic and the closest thing to a progressive rock song that the band ever recorded. Ed delivered a tour-de-force performance with dynamic shifts in emotion from elegiac tapped harmonics to dark, drama-filled riffs. This was Van Halen’s equivalent to Led Zeppelin’s Achilles Last Stand with the added bonus of a truly blazing Van Halen solo heavily inspired by Allan Holdsworth.

Dating back to Van Halen’s early club days (demos were recorded in 1976 with Gene Simmons and in early 1977 for Warner Bros.), House of Pain was the only song not completely written fresh for the album, although the only element that remained from the early versions was the song’s main riff.

“I guess nobody really liked it the way that it originally was,” Ed said. “The intro and verses are completely different, and the fast part in the middle for the solo and the groove at the end are almost like entirely new songs.”

House of Pain showed that Van Halen had grown and evolved considerably over the preceding seven to eight years without losing any of their hunger, intensity and power.

Gin-scented tears

All good things must come to an end. They were too good to last. Always leave the people wanting more. These may be overused clichés, but it’s difficult to think of better ways to describe the aftermath of the 1984 album, its ambitious supporting tour and the eventual breakup of Van Halen’s classic David Lee Roth lineup.

Did success spoil Van Halen? Yes, and no. Eddie Van Halen’s ever-growing musical ambitions and desire to pursue different sonic paths collided with David Lee Roth’s incessant adoration of the spotlight and aspirations to pursue a career as a movie star.

With two diametrically opposed forces in conflict, the tensions inevitably sucked all the air out of the room until no one could comfortably breathe. Trying to outdo 1984’s success would have been an unfathomable challenge for any band, so it sadly made sense for Van Halen to end that chapter at the top of their game.

Van Halen fans both new and old maybe didn’t get exactly what they wanted, but instead they got what they needed. The Van Halen brothers and Anthony joined forces with Sammy Hagar and his growing legion of fans to take the band in a different and arguably more progressive direction it couldn’t have tried with Roth.

5150 didn’t reach the staggering commercial sales heights of 1984, but it became Van Halen’s third all-time best-selling album with 6x Platinum certification. It was also the first Van Halen album to finally reach the #1 spot on the charts. [1984 likely also would have achieved that feat, but it had the disadvantage of going head-to-head with the best-selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which was in the beginning of several extended periods where it completely dominated the charts for several months.]

Meanwhile, Roth put together one of rock’s greatest supergroups, recruiting the extraordinary talents of guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Gregg Bissonette to keep the rip-roaring party going full blast.

Roth’s first full-length album Eat ‘Em and Smile was nowhere near as commercially successful as the albums he recorded with Van Halen, but with Vai and Sheehan’s instrumental pyrotechnics and Roth’s inimitable character it kept the white-hot flame burning very brightly for classic Van Halen fans.

The split resulted in a Dave vs. Sammy argument as incessant as it is meaningless. For some fans, the change truly was the best of both worlds, but it didn’t last. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. Van Halen had won the victory over itself.

While Eddie Van Halen was Van Halen's linchpin and chief songwriter, the Sammy Hagar era saw the Red Rocker prove himself as a songwriter in his own right.

Coming into the band, Hagar had something of an upper hand: the Van Halen brothers were already fans of the material he had recorded with Montrose in the mid-’70s, while his solo career was already on the rise.

Therefore, it was no surprise that Hagar brought his own ideas to the fore – even if Alex Van Halen wasn’t so keen at times. Eagles Fly, which ended up on Hagar’s 1987 solo record, I Never Said Goodbye, was one such track.

“When I sing Eagles Fly, it's about being born,” Hagar tells Total Rock when asked to pick the song he enjoys singing the most from his vast repertoire.

“And once again, I had a vision. It wasn't a dream. I was wide awake, and I had a feeling in a special place. I was in a special place.”

He continues, “I showed him [Alex Van Halen] that song, and Eddie's going, ‘Wow, wow, wow.’ And Alex goes, ‘Yeah, yeah. It sounds like John Denver; it's cool.’”

Hagar explains that, at the time, Alex “wasn’t about me writing songs for Van Halen,” preferring that Eddie handle the musical composition while assigning Hagar “the lyrics and the vocals.”

However, the drummer soon did a 180 when he heard it as a fully-fledged track on Hagar’s ninth solo album – and his first solo effort since becoming Van Halen’s front man. Eddie not only stepped in as the album’s co-producer – alongside Hagar himself and David Thoener – but also laid down the low end and a quintessentially Eddie guitar solo.

“When it came out, and we finished my solo record, Alex heard it, and he goes, ‘Hey, why the fuck didn't we put that on a Van Halen record!’” Hagar says.

“I went, ‘Well, Al, if you don't remember, I can remember you said it sounded like John Denver,’ because I was playing it on acoustic guitar!”

In more recent Van Halen-related news, Joe Satriani recently recalled being approached by David Lee Roth for a Van Halen cover band – when Eddie was still alive.

A genuinely unique character, whose taste for Jack Daniel’s is only equalled by his love for classic rock ’n’ roll, Michael Anthony has earned a reputation as one of the most hard-rocking bassists of his generation.

He’s played in several now-legendary bands, with Van Halen alone selling upwards of 80 million albums worldwide, snagging a Grammy and entering the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

But long before the arena tours and platinum-selling albums, Anthony was just another Southern California kid hauling gear into backyards, playing fraternity parties and dreaming of making a living through music.

“Snake was the first power trio I ever played in,” said Anthony in the November ’95 issue of Bass Player. “I played bass guitar and sang lead; we did a lot of ZZ Top, Cream, Allman Brothers, and Doobie Brothers covers. We were playing backyard parties when I first became aware of the Van Halen brothers.

“I was going to Arcadia High School California, and we had a carnival on our field, and they played. Back then they were called Mammoth – it was Ed on guitar, Al on drums, and some bass player. Ed was singing lead.”

Anthony later attended Pasadena City College, where the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth were also enrolled.

“My father wouldn't let me major in music, so I was majoring in psychology – but I took a couple of music classes, like jazz improvisation, theory, and piano to learn how to read bass clef. After about a year, my father finally let me major in music, so I switched all my classes.

“Around that time, Snake opened up for Van Halen – Roth had just joined the band, and they asked me if they could borrow our PA. Theirs had blown up.

“I'd see Alex coming from his Jazz Improv class, and I remember Roth coming over to me; he was wearing this little vest, had a cane, and his hair was dyed like a skunk. He said, ‘How do you like my boys?’ I stepped back and thought, ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ Little did I know what it would lead up to!

"A while later, Ed told a friend of mine that the band was going to be getting rid of their bass player. My friend told Ed, ‘Hey, Mike might be interested in joining.’

“I had never played with musicians like Eddie and Al before, because Snake was straightforward 4/4 rock. I mean, these guys had played Gazzarri's in Hollywood, and the biggest thing I had done was a backyard party. They ran me through beat changes and different time signatures, and we just jammed.

“Afterwards, Ed and Al asked me if I wanted to join. I thought about it for half a second and said, ‘I'm in!’ I learned five cover tunes a day so we could play parties. We eventually started playing clubs, and we also did weddings.

“We played everything from the Ohio Players to K.C. & the Sunshine Band. You would love the sight of Van Halen doing Get Down Tonight! But by the third set, when everybody was good and tanked up – boy, we'd be blazin’!

“I soon realized that my two Acoustic 150 amps weren't cutting it, because by this time, Ed had found his 100-watt Marshall. So I bought my first SVT stack and retaliated. I remember thinking, ‘I'm in the big leagues now!’”

Anthony and the boys weren't in the big leagues yet, but they were close. In 1976, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons took the foursome under his wing and produced a five-song demo, but all it yielded, said Anthony, was “a good tape.”

One year later, at a Monday-night gig at Hollywood's Starwood Club, Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin and producer Ted Templeman saw the band and offered them a deal. In February 1978, Van Halen hit the stores; globe-circling tours, platinum records, and the usual rock ’n’ roll excesses followed, until the negative effects of stardom started taking their toll in 1984.

“During our '84 tour, there was a lot of tension – Ed had written Jump, and it turned out to be the biggest single Van Halen ever did. Dave never liked Ed playing keyboards, but Ed finally said, ‘Fuck you!’ Then he met Valerie Bertinelli, and I think that pissed Dave off more.

“At the end of that tour, we fired our tour manager because of some skeletons we found in his closet. So Ed, Al, and I were in the studio starting to work up some music, and Dave decided he wanted to record a solo EP with California Girls. We knew he was testing the water to see how he'd do on his own. All of a sudden, the dream was over and Dave had left.

“At that point, we didn't know if the band would continue, but we eventually realized that the music was coming from us, not Dave. A lot of people thought he was Van Halen – even our record company wanted us to change our name. When Dave left the rest of us hanging, we thought, ‘What do we do now?’”

What they did was hook up with ex-Montrose singer Sammy Hagar via a recommendation from Eddie Van Halen's car mechanic (as fate would have it, he was Hager’s mechanic, too).

Their first collaboration, 5150, became Van Halen's first #1 album, and it has since sold over six million copies.

Joe Satriani may be filling Eddie Van Halen’s shoes during the Best Of All Worlds tour with Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar, and Jason Bonham; however, he’s recently revealed that David Lee Roth tried to recruit him for a Van Halen cover band when the sorely missed guitarist was still very much alive and active.

“I remember in the mid-’90s, around ’95 or ’96, David Lee Roth called me and he wanted to put together a band to do Van Halen songs,” Satriani tells Thinking About Guitar in a new interview. “He went on and on about how we were the only guys who could really do it right.

“He had all these crazy plans, and I said, ‘But Dave, Ed’s still alive. He’s still making amazing records. He’s still on tour. What guitar player would ever try to imitate him while he’s still working?’ I said, ‘It makes no sense.’ And of course, I said, ‘Look, I’m not the guy.’”

Ultimately, Roth’s project didn’t transpire, and Satriani could breathe a sigh of relief. Following Van Halen’s death in 2020, though, the Surfing with the Alien virtuoso was once again approached for an Eddie Van Halen tribute.

“When he and Alex [Van Halen] called me after Ed had passed away, it made a little bit more sense, even though I tried to convince them I was not the person who could do it justice. I told them I had tried to avoid playing like Ed for so long that now I really couldn’t.”

He even tried to pitch a couple of other names for the job. “I called and said, ‘Really, are you sure you don’t want to call Nuno [Bettencourt] or Steve [Vai] , or someone obviously more well-suited to sound like Ed? Someone who has demonstrated playing this stuff live?’ But they were adamant that I was the only guy who was going to do it justice.”

Fast forward to 2024, and Satriani found himself joining Hagar on his Best Of All Worlds tour, which heavily celebrated his era with the legendary band.

When asked by Guitarist what it takes to tackle EVH’s parts live, he replied, “It’s all in the fingers; that really is true. We’ve heard Eddie play acoustic guitar, and it’s freakishly just as good as electric. I don’t know how he did that. I’ve seen players online get close, but there’s that magic thing that Eddie had, which was his personality and his heart. No one comes close to that.”

Elsewhere in the Guitarist interview, Satriani revealed the gear he uses to play Van Halen’s parts – and the level of dedication and practice required to nail them.

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.

Joe Satriani has never been someone to do things by halves, so when he was tasked with honoring Eddie Van Halen in Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, he knew he needed a custom amp to nail his tone.

Naturally, he went straight to the source for help, and the late virtuoso’s electric guitar techs all pointed to one person: 3rd Power’s Dylana Scott.

“Ed’s own techs said the only person that could help was this girl outta Nashville called Dylana Scott,” the amp builder tells Guitar World. “Joe called me and said, ‘Apparently I should be talking to you.’”

Satriani is a huge Van Halen fan, and he had a specific era of Eddie’s tone in mind, since he was to be playing both David Lee Roth- and Sammy Hagar-era material.

“On our first call, he said he’d been talking to Edward’s techs, Zeke Clark and Tom Weber, describing the sound he was looking for,” Scott details. “The 5150 [in 1986] tour was Ed’s last tour with the famous Marshall. He had all the candy, but it hadn’t moved into the more modern Van Halen tone.”

After conversations with Hagar, Satriani had homed in on the band’s Live Without a Net live album from that tour, because it captured such an important tonal transition and was, err, the best of both worlds of the band’s two most distinct eras.

The resulting amp – and the one that Satch has been pushing air with on the road – is the DRGN 100. To bring it to life, Scott had one request: “Let me build the perfect racecar for you to drive.”

“Did he want more horsepower at this turn, or better traction over here, or extra acceleration back there?” she posits. “I’m a big fan of his work, so I explained that I didn’t want to watch him play a covers set. I said, ‘None of us need to see you play note for note; we need you to interpret the essence of the moment while honoring the king.’

“Obviously, I had to make sure he had all the tones he needed – the intro to Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love is like taking a flint and stone to make a spark,” she adds. “It’s a two-hour set with moments that also sound creamier.

“This amp was designed to lift Joe up the whole way through, so that even someone in the last seat of the arena would feel the buzz and stand up.”

With the DRGN 100, Scott more than lived up to her reputation, with Satriani later purring that the “harmonically rich and touch-sensitive” tube amp is “my favorite new amp.”

After a raft of choice guitar mods, it was the final ingredient needed to Van Halen-ify his rig.

Elsewhere, Satriani has opened up on the failed Van Halen tribute tour that would have seen him take EVH’s place in a Roth-fronted Van Halen, and named the two guitarists he felt would have nailed the gig better than him.

Scott’s full interview can be found in the latest issue of Guitar World. Print and digital copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

Steve Lukather has spoken out about the new Van Halen album he’s working on with Alex Van Halen, and he can’t believe how good the songs are.

The Toto man, and a dear friend to the late Eddie Van Halen, was handpicked by Alex to help bring a posthumous EVH record to life, and while he remains coy on a lot of details during his new interview with Guitar Player, what he can say certainly whets the appetite.

As previously confirmed, Lukather won’t play a note on the album, since it was virtually complete before Eddie passed in 2020. Luke does reveal, though, that the music is one hell of a swan song for the beloved virtuoso.

“I’m telling you, this is not throwaway shit,” he attests. “When I heard them, I said to Al, ‘How fucking come you didn’t use these?’ And the answer was because nobody could write to it. So if you think this is a bunch of throwaway crap that we’re trying to Mickey Mouse together to suck the dollar out of poor, unsuspecting Van Halen fans, it’s not.”

While he admits he doesn’t know what the project will be called – he’s just Alex’s “sidekick,” he says – he sees it as a passion project that will give Eddie the send-off he deserves.

“This is not about money,” he confirms. “This is about love of the guys and trying to help. I’m not gonna be involved in an obvious way.”

Recently, Steve Vai revealed he was made privy to EVH’s vast library of unused material before EVH died and was stunned by its quality. It seems that Lukather reacted similarly when the Van Halen vault opened to him.

Lukather, onboard as the album’s co-producer, has laughed off the “ridiculous” rumors that he was essentially replacing Eddie in Van Halen, saying “there’s no need for another guitar player”. He did, however, reveal who plays bass on some of the tracks.

“It’s not pieces on the floor that have to be snapped back together and try to Mickey Mouse something together that might be sellable,” Lukather notes. “These are finished tracks with Ed and Al, and Ed’s playing bass on a lot of it. That’s all I can say right now because it’s a much bigger picture, and it’s Alex’s story to tell.”

That confirms that Michael Anthony, who played bass on all Van Halen’s albums – save 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, which featured Wolfgang VH – is not in the picture. Nor are David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, with the band reportedly on the hunt for a vocalist after a high-profile rejection.

So, expect one more album from the guitarist who changed the world, which will follow the release of Unfinished – a previously unheard Eddie Van Halen track that was shared by Alex back in 2024.

David Lee Roth had to fight back tears at a recent show as he reflected on his friendship and songwriting partnership with Eddie Van Halen.

The pair achieved rock superstardom together in Van Halen, and though Alex Van Halen has since blamed the failed Van Halen tribute tour on DLR’s refusal to play tribute to the late guitar hero, at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday (May 19) Roth did just that.

“Most of these songs that I wrote with Ed, we wrote in a very, very tiny little space,” Roth told his audience with a classical guitar in his lap (via Blabbermouth). Roth's current tour finds him playing Van Halen material exclusively.

“When I first walked into Ed’s room, it wasn’t even a room. It was identical to the way I grew up,” he remembers. “You had to go from the backyard to the kitchen, and you moved through what they called his room, but it was just a little alcove for a washer and a dryer – and then, ultimately, me.”

He pauses as he starts to well up, with cries of “we love you” coming from the crowd.

“He had an electric guitar, and his mom wouldn’t let him plug into the amp,” he then says. “So I would have to listen to the electric guitar without an amp, and it’d be so close that our knees would touch.

“I’d sit there with a tape recorder, go home, write the lyrics, take it back, and go, ‘I think it’s a song about running with the devil. What have you got next?’”

Roth admits that there was “friction” in their relationship, but notes that “we loved it.”

Some 30 years, world domination, and an era with Sammy Hagar at the helm later, Roth and Eddie Van Halen were reunited. Despite now being couped up in Eddie’s “multi-million dollar recording studio,” it was just like old times.

“I was sitting in the middle of the room, and I was on a chair, and I was reading a paperback, waiting on him,” the singer remembers. “When he came in, he put a cigarette in his mouth, brought a chair right in front of me, and sat down in it and scooted forward till our knees touched. That’s how I wrote the last two songs. Full circle.”

Van Halen released A Different Kind of Truth, their first album with Roth since 1984, in 2012. But for Roth, the closeness of their songwriting partnership never changed.

In related news, Alex Van Halen has teamed up with Steve Lukather to bring one final Van Halen record to life. Steve Vai has heard archival tapes of Eddie’s unreleased work, and he believes fans are in for a treat when the album is finally released. But they need a singer first.

Alex Van Halen has bid to “put the record straight” regarding Michael Anthony’s absence from Van Halen’s final reunion with David Lee Roth, claiming he was offered the gig.

After a brief second era with Sammy Hagar from 2003 to 2005, Van Halen’s third era, with Diamond Dave once again fronting the band, began in 2006, with Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, unveiled as their new bassist. But he only got the gig after Anthony ghosted them, Alex claims.

“We did call,” he tells Brazlian outlet KazaGastão. “To put the record straight, we did call Mike because we owed him that, and he just didn't answer.

“We had the same manager,” he adds. “Come on! He was important for the band.”

So, when “nobody showed up” at the studio to accompany the Van Halen brothers, the job eventually went Wolfgang, who ended up impressing Eddie and Alex during a jam.

Alex adds: “People think there were family influences in how he [Wolfgang] became part of the band, which is simply not true.” He insists the then-teenager got the job on merit

Wolfgang has said that the reunion hinged on his involvement, and with Alex’s claims, it’s easy to see why. And he even had to keep his dad in check at times. Alex, meanwhile, is glad Wolfgang has gone on to be “his own man.”

“He’s very careful that he doesn’t want to be Ed Jr,” he continues. “He was in a very tough spot. He could have just continued with the Van Halen stuff, but he decided he was his own man.”

Indeed, Wolfgang said it would have “ruined” his life had he messed up covering Van Halen at Taylor Hawkins’ tribute show as he bid to carve out his own path. He’s kept his late dad close by, occasionally recording with Eddie’s beloved Frankenstein guitar, and carrying the torch of his tapping legacy, but his band, Mammoth, operates in a whole other sphere.

And as EVH the brand updates Wolfgang’s namesake guitar, Alex is busy working on a new Van Halen album with Steve Lukather.

Steve Vai, who has praised the quality of the unreleased Van Halen he's heard, believes Lukather is “the best guy” to complete material. It was recorded during Eddie Van Halen’s lifetime and intended as a successor to the 2012 album, A Different Kind of Truth.

Steve Vai has revealed he’s heard a raft of unreleased Van Halen material and is in high hopes for the band’s highly anticipated forthcoming release, which will revive some of Eddie Van Halen's older demos.

Alex Van Halen recently caused a stir when he revealed that he and Steve Lukather were working on a posthumous Van Halen album using material the band recorded before Eddie's passing, intended as a successor to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth.

The two rock heavyweights have a wealth of ideas to work with. And it turns out Vai has heard some of it.

“I was up at Edward’s house once, in his studio,” Vai tells Guitar Player in a new interview. “He had a room filled with tapes, and he was pulling them out, and we were listening. He would just sit, record, and play.

“I’ll tell you, nobody plays like they do when they’re sitting in their room alone,” he continues. “It was a whole library of tapes, and it was such great stuff.”

He adds that he asked Eddie about the prospect of turning his swathe of riffs and ideas into a solo album. The late virtuoso said that “he always felt that Van Halen was his solo records”.

In turn, Vai has given his blessing to the Lukather-guided project. Lukather is, he says, “the best guy to help with this” given how close Eddie and Lukather were.

However, after early rumors got out of hand, Lukather was quick to clarify his role in the album shortly after its announcement, explaining that he won’t play a single note on it after fans reacted to the news.

While details of the record remain scarce, we do know that Bad Company vocalist and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Paul Rodgers turned down the opportunity to front it.

Former bassist Michael Anthony, meanwhile, who was replaced by Wolfgang Van Halen in the band’s latter years, has his own thoughts on how the record should be released, and such a move would render the need for a vocalist redundant.

Vai, of course, has his own chapter in the band's history, having been chosen by Diamond Dave for his solo band. He says he got the gig with a little help from Billy Sheehan.

Billy Sheehan knows a thing or two about holding down the low end for some of the world’s top virtuosos, having worked with everyone from Paul Gilbert and Mike Portnoy to David Lee Roth.

And, it just so happens that Sheehan who introduced another virtuoso – a certain Steve Vai – into the fold when he was playing alongside the former Van Halen vocalist.

In 1984, Vai found himself replacing Yngwie Malmsteen as the lead guitarist of Alcatrazz, with whom he recorded their sophomore album, Disturbing the Peace. However, Vai was soon recruited to join the solo project of post-Van Halen David Lee Roth – although, as Sheehan recalls, Vai wasn’t his first pick.

“The original idea was Steve Stevens, but he was busy with Billy Idol and wisely decided to stay with him,” Sheehan remembers in a new interview with Guitar Player.

“I told Dave I know another Steve, ’cause at the time my band Talas was on Relativity Records out of New York City, and Steve was also on that label, and we’d talked about doing something together before the Roth thing happened.

“Steve, because of his association with Frank Zappa, had a sense of humor about his playing, which was very important for the Roth band.”

As Sheehan describes it, Vai’s stint with a musician as left-field as Zappa left an imprint on his playing, which became “kind of quirky”.

“He had all the fundamentals very, very down, then added the quirkiness from the Zappa thing. So Vai came in and was just awesome, a great, great player,” he continues. “So he was in, and we had a great time putting that Eat ’Em and Smile tour together.”

As for what he remembers from those heady days with Vai, Sheehan immediately replies, “He’s such a dedicated player. We’d be in the dressing room before the show, and he’d be there for hours, just working on stuff, head down for hours at a time before every show, pretty much.

“That also shows how much he cares about the audience, too, ’cause you want to do the absolute best for them all the time. Steve is definitely in that club.”

Later on, Sheehan would join Vai on some of his solo tours as part of his backing band, The Breed.

“It was always a blast,” he recalls. “ We had so much fun on those tours – no nonsense, no drugs, drinking, disrespectful rock star bullshit. We were all just legitimately having fun, and it was like a 24-hour comedy show.

“There was a lot of mutual respect in the bands I played in with Steve. I have nothing but great things to say,” he concludes.

And speaking of Vai, for those in the hunt for their own top-tier home studio, the guitar maestro just listed his LA property – which comes fully equipped with his famed Harmony Hut studio – for $11.7 million.

Back in April 2024, Jerry Cantrell thought that his beloved 1984 “Blue Dress” G&L Rampage – which has been used on almost everything he has ever recorded and defined the sound of grunge – had gone missing.

“I was freaking out for three or four days,” he shares in a new interview with Guitar World. “We couldn’t track it down. It was a pre-album thing, and we were doing a video and a photo shoot and then going back for rehearsal, and shit was moving around, and I lost track of it.”

Thankfully, the “Blue Dress” G&L was just misplaced, but Cantrell had previously experienced his fair share of missing guitar trauma after one of his prized possessions went missing for nearly 20 years.

“I’ve had a guitar that meant a lot to me go missing, where I was lucky to get it back, and that was a goldtop Music Man that Ed [Van Halen] gave me. Alice In Chains were on tour with Van Halen, and I got two from him,” he relates.

“One was a goldtop and was a trans blue where you could see the wood flame through the finish. The goldtop went missing when I was making Degradation Trip [Jerry’s 2002 solo album] I didn’t see it for 18 or 19 years. It disappeared, and it broke my heart because my fucking dude gave me that guitar.

As he had previously specified in another Guitar World interview, “Somebody lifted it out of the A&M studio,” but two decades later, a couple of dedicated Alice in Chains fans managed to track it down.

“[They] tried to do a sting on this kid who had it and was trying to sell it,” he continued. “He went dark on the first guy, who was from Florida. The second guy was a separate collector from San Diego. Between the two of them, it took about two weeks for me to get that guitar back… after 19 years!”

Therefore, losing the G&L, even for a mere few days, was, understandably, devastating. “When I thought that was what happened to the G&L, I was crushed for a couple of days,” he now admits.

Fortunately, the Rampage hadn't been stolen – it had just been misplaced.

For more from Jerry Cantrell, plus new interviews with Randy Bachman and Don Henley, pick up issue 604 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

In more recent news, the Alice in Chains guitarist recently looked back on the “walk-off home run” of Ozzy Osbourne’s final show.

Van Halen was the world’s biggest rock band at the beginning of 1985. Their 1984 album had sold more than five million copies in the U.S., reaching Number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (their highest position to that date, held back only by the juggernaut that was Michael Jackson’s Thriller album) and delivering their only Number 1 single, Jump. The supporting tour was a massive success, selling out all 101 shows.

Eddie Van Halen hoped to propel the band to even greater success, starting work in early 1985 on new musical ideas at his 5150 studio with Donn Landee, who engineered all six of Van Halen’s previous albums and had become the guitarist’s studio sidekick.

Meanwhile, singer David Lee Roth released the four-song Crazy from the Heat EP, recorded with Van Halen’s producer Ted Templeman and released in late January 1985.

Eddie didn’t mind the singer’s extracurricular activity at first and spoke positively about Dave’s solo record in interviews. The EP’s music bore no resemblance to Van Halen material, and the general consensus among the band members was that Roth deserved the opportunity to release some creative steam as long as it didn’t interfere with the band.

However, when Roth showed up at a handful of sessions to write lyrics and work on melodies for the next Van Halen album, he seemed detached and disinterested. Eventually, he stopped showing up altogether, choosing to conduct interviews and promote his EP instead.

One evening in late March, Eddie invited Dave to his home to discuss Van Halen’s future plans. The guitarist was shocked but not surprised to find out that Roth had received an offer from CBS Studios to star in a film with a $20 million budget.

While Ed wanted to release the next Van Halen album before the end of 1985, Dave wanted to take a full year off to make his movie. The singer suggested a short summer stadium tour as a compromise, but the guitarist refused to go out without any new material. Roth also invited the band to record music for the film’s soundtrack, but Van Halen shot that offer down as well. A stalemate was reached, with both parties refusing to budge.

Many sources cite that meeting as the end of Van Halen’s classic era with David Lee Roth, but the singer’s departure actually became official and final almost four months later.

Dave assumed that his bandmates would wait for him to return to Van Halen after the film was finished, while Eddie was convinced that the singer would eventually come to his senses and join the band in the studio.

The situation became more complicated when the band fired its manager, Noel Monk, after he demanded a new contract that would have paid him more than any individual band member. Without an authoritative mediator to guide and advise them, the friction grew.

Initially, Ed pitched the idea of making an album with several of his favorite singers.

“We bounced around the idea of doing a record with me writing all the music and having everyone from Joe Cocker to Phil Collins to Mike Rutherford sing a different vocal on each track,” Van Halen told Steven Rosen in May 1986. “But Alex talked me out of it. He said that would be just a one-shot project, and it made me realize that I wanted a family.”

Ed also reached out to Pete Townshend around this time to pitch ideas for a collaboration, but that effort never went further than the exchange of a few telegrams.

When the guitarist found out that Roth was putting together a band to record music for his movie and had reached out to Billy Sheehan (who accepted) and Yngwie Malmsteen (who declined), he realized Van Halen should probably start looking for a new singer as well. He made a genuine offer to Scandal vocalist Patti Smyth, but she turned it down because she was pregnant and concerned about the band’s reputation as hardcore partiers.

News of Roth’s and the Van Halen camp’s extracurricular activities appeared in music publications like Rolling Stone, convincing many fans that the band was finished.

Privately, Eddie Van Halen clung onto hope that Roth would return, but his attitude soon changed thanks to some matchmaking assistance from his friend, exotic car dealer Claudio Zampolli. One day in late June 1985, Sammy Hagar dropped by Zampolli’s L.A. shop on Wilshire Boulevard to check out Ferraris.

Ed had purchased several Lamborghinis from Zampolli, and during a recent friendly chat he mentioned that he was looking for someone to replace Roth. Zampolli told Hagar about Van Halen’s predicament; Hagar gave Zampolli permission to pass along his phone number to Ed; Ed called to set up a meeting and audition.

Hagar was an enticing prospect to replace Roth. His solo career was on an upward trajectory at the time, with his three most recent albums (Standing Hampton, Three Lock Box and VOA) achieving Gold certification and VOA ascending toward Platinum, thanks to the ongoing popularity of his need-for-speed anthem I Can’t Drive 55. In between he joined the supergroup Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve (HSAS), which showed that he could be a team player as well as a solo frontman.

The Van Halen brothers were also big fans of the albums Hagar recorded as lead vocalist for Montrose in the mid-’70s. An added bonus was that Hagar had recorded the Montrose and Paper Money Montrose albums as well as VOA with Van Halen’s producer Ted Templeman.

Ed remained unwilling to give up on Roth until July 15, 1985, when Hagar dropped by 5150 to play and record a few new songs with the band. As Van Halen played the first song, Summer Nights, Hagar came up with lyrics and a vocal melody on the spot. “In 20 minutes we had a complete song,” Edward told Rosen. “We all freaked out.”

“Believe it or not, I just started singing summer nights for the chorus,” Hagar told John Stix in 1986. “They all looked at each other and said, ‘Wait a minute, the guy can sing!’”

Although the Van Halen brothers and Michael Anthony decided to hire Hagar on the spot that day in July, the public announcement followed a few months later, even though the news leaked almost immediately.

In August, the band issued a statement confirming that David Lee Roth was no longer a member of Van Halen. However, Hagar’s official induction waited until September 22, 1985, in the middle of Hagar’s final concert performance with his former backing band at the Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.

Actually, co-host Gary Beaty of The Nashville Network prematurely spilled the beans during the live broadcast a few seconds before Eddie Van Halen joined Hagar on stage, confirming the rumors once and for all.

Before the duo played their first notes, Sammy fumbled with a banner and joked that it read, “My dick’s too small.” From that point onwards it became obvious that the Red Rocker was not going to be David Lee Roth 2.0, as the former Van Halen frontman would never speak of “Little Dave” in such self-deprecating terms.

Hagar and Roth both were high-energy, dynamic performers who let expletives fly like a sailor with his dinghy caught in a zipper, but Hagar was more down-to-earth and less intimidating, with more working-class appeal.

Hagar’s lyrics may not have been as clever as Roth’s – Sammy’s sexual innuendos were more single than double entendre – but they were direct, to the point and arguably more relatable, if perhaps also too obvious.

While Roth was prone to unapologetic braggadocio, Hagar offered a less threatening approach and more modest personality – consider Roth’s Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love compared to Hagar’s Why Can’t This Be Love, or “guaranteed to satisfy” in Ice Cream Man to “you’re never satisfied” in 5150.

After the Farm Aid appearance, the new line-up of Van Halen spent most of October 1985 writing and completing material for their first album. Recording started in November at Ed’s 5150 studio with engineer Donn Landee behind the mixing console.

The band wanted Ted Templeman to produce the album since he had already produced nine albums in total with Hagar and Van Halen, but much to their dismay they discovered that Templeman was unavailable due to his commitment to produce David Lee Roth’s Eat ’Em and Smile.

Instead, Ed and Donn presumed the producer roles until December, when they hired Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones, who previously co-produced all of his own band’s albums.

“Sammy and [us] were all thinking we didn’t want to do the whole thing on our own because we need an outside opinion,” Van Halen said. “Mick was playing in town with Foreigner and called Sammy to invite him to the show. Sammy asked if Mick wanted to co-produce our album and he said yes.

“Actually we were almost done with it, but Mick helped us organize everything and polish it up. He changed a few things, especially on Dreams, which is like a different song than it originally was. He got a hell of a vocal performance out of Sammy on that song, too.”

Eddie Van Halen’s guitar tone on 5150 went through a dramatic sonic shift compared to the albums he recorded with Roth. Although he previously used an Eventide H949 Harmonizer on various earlier Van Halen tracks, here he used it almost nonstop to create a stereo chorus-style effect by using one H949 panned right with a slight pitch detune, another H949 panned left with a different micropitch detune setting and his dry signal panned to the center.

Landee occasionally patched in delay from a Roland SDE3000 or Lexicon PCM70 to add space and reverb-like resonance. The guitar’s midrange was also more focused, providing more breathing room for Anthony’s bass.

5150 was also the first album that Ed recorded without using his faithful original Frankenstein guitar, now replaced in the pecking order by the Kramer 5150 guitar he built himself, featuring a single Seymour Duncan JB humbucker and Floyd Rose vibrato.

Previously he tuned his guitar down ¼ to ½ step to accommodate Roth’s vocals, but here he generally used standard pitch. For 5150, Ed used his 1958 Gibson Flying V tuned down a half step (to D#) with the low E string tuned further down a whole step drop D tuning-style (to C#) to record the main rhythm track and overdubbed the solos using the Kramer 5150.

Good Enough features Ed’s Kramer 1984 guitar with the low E string replaced by a low A string from a bass (tuning low to high is AADGBE) to provide the vibe of a baritone guitar on the rhythm parts while allowing Ed to still play his regular lead parts.

Ned Steinberger gave Ed a Steinberger GL2T headless guitar with a TransTrem system at the 1985 Summer NAMM convention in New Orleans. Ed immediately put this new toy to good use, writing the songs Summer Nights and Get Up only a few days after first receiving it and expertly employing the TransTrem system.

“You can use the vibrato bar to take whole chords up or down and they’ll stay in tune,” he said. “You can also lock the bar in different positions to instantly transpose keys. It’s kinda like a capo, but you can go up or down in pitch.”

Other guitars featured on 5150 include a Fender Stratocaster with the bridge/middle pickup setting on Best of Both Worlds and a Kramer Ferrington acoustic-electric for the acoustic guitar tracks on Dreams. Ed’s number one 1968 Marshall model 1959 Super Lead plexi remained his amp of choice, plugged into a single 4x12 Marshall cabinet miked with either Shure SM57 or SM58 mics.

Ed’s keyboard excursions continued to evolve on 5150, with several songs prominently featuring synths. An Oberheim OB-8 preset with a sweeping sawtooth oscillator patch provided the ersatz distorted “guitar” riff on Why Can’t This Be Love. Organic-sounding OB-8 string patches layered with an acoustic Steinway piano with MIDI controller capabilities provided lush textures on Dreams and Love Walks In.

Ed played Fairlight CMI and E-mu Emulator II sampling keyboards for the horn section hits and slappy bass on Inside, which unfortunately instantly made it the most dated-sounding track Van Halen ever recorded.

When the newly revamped Van Halen released 5150 on March 24, 1986, the album proved that lightning can indeed strike twice. The album benefitted from the momentum of 1984’s phenomenal success, and Sammy Hagar brought along a new group of followers to compensate for many of the David Lee Roth die-hards who broke ranks.

It was also the first Van Halen album to reach Number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, reaching that milestone only one month after its release date, although it took about eight years to reach the stunning 5x Platinum sales figure that 1984 achieved in just one year.

Of course, 5150 also ignited a David Lee Roth vs. Sammy Hagar debate that still rages today, even as it becomes more meaningless and trivial with the passage of time. Although Roth didn’t match his previous band’s success when he teamed up with the incredible line-up of Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan and Gregg Bissonette to record Eat ‘Em and Smile, he delivered one hell of an album to satisfy the old-school fans.

Meanwhile Van Halen 2.0 (a.k.a. Van Hagar) maintained a large dedicated following and found new fans as they provided a perfect soundtrack for the remainder of the dayglo/just say no Eighties.

As Hagar sang on perhaps his most eloquent performance with Van Halen, it was the best of both worlds.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Donn Landee, a key figure behind the shaping of Van Halen’s sound, has died from natural causes aged 79, Van Halen News Desk reports.

The recording engineer was a longtime collaborator with Ted Templeman, Van Halen’s original go-to producer, and was a pivotal figure in the building of the band’s 5150 Studios in the early ‘80s.

Landee was involved in recording the band's 1978 self-titled debut album as they carved out a reputation as one of rock’s brightest new stars, and remained part of the band's inner circle for their next seven studio albums.

When Templeman jumped ship to produce David Lee Roth's debut solo album, Eat 'Em and Smile, Landee assumed his place at the helm, co-producing 1986's 5150 and OU812 two years later.

The first Van Halen record he was not part of was 1991's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, after he abruptly left the music industry. He would, however, go on to remaster a slew of VH records later down the line.

Landee was also the one who came up with the name 5150, which he’d overheard on police radio. It referenced the California Welfare and Institutions Code for involuntary confinement of a mentally unstable person deemed to be a danger to themselves and/or others, which was ideal, given that Eddie had dubbed the studio an “asylum.”

“It was all Donn’s magic,” Eddie Van Halen told Guitar World of the mammoth task of building 5150 Studios. “When we needed to find a console, Donn said that United Western Studios had a Bill Putnam–designed Universal Audio console that we could buy that he was familiar with.

“We went to take a look at it, and it was this old, dilapidated piece of shit that looked like it was ready to go into the trash. Donn said, ‘Let’s buy it,’ and I was going, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ Donn used to work for the phone company, so he was an expert at wiring things.”

Vitally, this desk was almost identical to the desk that Templeman had used to record their first five albums, and Landee’s know-how helped turn Eddie’s home-studio dreams – originally intended for demo recording – into a stunning reality.

“Donn was involved with the design. I certainly didn’t know how to build a studio. It was all Donn’s magic,” Eddie told GW.

“We had grown really close and had a common vision. Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well…yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots. His approach to everything was genius.”

Donn Landee might not be a household name, but he had his finger on every single guitar riff that turned the band into megastars, and the band recognized his talents ten times over.

Recently, Alter Bridge became a rare group outside of the Van Halen family to record at 5150 Studios, with Tremonti left to reflect on the “emotional” honor of tracking at the fabled home of EVH, which took a white lie to build.

Fender Master Builder Andy Hicks has looked back on his early days as a guitar builder – and recalled the moment he received a surprise visit from Eddie Van Halen, who came to oversee the making of his signature guitar.

After various partnerships with the likes of Kramer, Peavey, and Music Man, Van Halen began working with the Fender corporation to build his Wolfgang signature guitar under the newly formed EVH brand.

Around that time, Hicks had started cutting his teeth on the Fender production line, and after a stint shaping necks at the Jackson Custom Shop, he soon found himself making necks for the Wolfgang. Little did he know Van Halen himself was popping in to inspect how things were getting on.

“It’s Fender – we have tours all the time,” Hicks tells Premier Guitar of the day he met Eddie Van Halen. “This guy comes over, leaning on me, and he looks like some dad wearing a baseball hat. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, Eddie Van Halen is just standing here watching us work.’

“The guy I was working with was in the middle of complaining: ‘Man, these stainless steel frets. With just these Wolfgangs, we’ve gotta do 12 stainless steel necks today.’ Eddie [playfully] said something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry my guitar is such a pain in the butt.’ It was incredible.”

The pair survived the embarrassment of putting their foot in their mouths in front of the late legend, and Hicks’ stock would continue to rise. Soon, he was moved away from the production line to build bespoke electric guitars for the stars, including Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith.

But his EVH story arc didn’t end there. Before he moved over to the Gretsch Custom Shop – which is still part of the Big F family – Van Halen played a friends-and-family show at the L.A. Forum. Everyone who had helped build Eddie’s Wolfgang guitars was invited with a +1, and Hicks invited his dad, who encouraged his passion for the guitar from a young age.

“My dad was sitting next to Tom Morello, telling him that his son made Eddie Van Halen’s guitar,” Hicks laughs. “I had to say, ‘Dad, please stop talking to Tom Morello. And also, I didn’t make his guitar. Chip [Ellis] made his guitar. I make Wolfgang guitars.’ He was so excited to talk to somebody, and he just happened to be talking to Tom Morello.”

In related news, Hicks was part of a Master Builder roundtable last year, where he offered his theory as to why some of the most famous Fender guitars are so heavily worn. Meanwhile, speaking to Guitar World last year, Hicks' colleague, Paul Waller, detailed what he believes is the heart and soul of a guitar.

Coca-Cola has enlisted Steve Vai to reimagine the Van Halen classic, Jump, as an anthem for the 2026 FIFA World Cup – and yes, it's got shredding galore.

One of the world’s biggest sporting competitions, the 48-team soccer tournament is being hosted by the USA, Canada, and Mexico this summer. To celebrate, Vai has lent his virtuosic hands for a lead-laden version of the track.

Vai’s licks pepper the song like confetti, with whammy bar wails, luscious harmonies, and a flash of tapping – in a nod to the song’s co-writer, Eddie Van Halen – characterizing its tasteful but impressive guitar solo.

“I never know what might come across my desk as an inquiry, but this was a taker,” he says of the wild reworking of the track, which also features Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, Colombian vocalist J Balvin, and American singer-songwriter Amber Mark.

It also continues Coca-Cola’s tradition of reworking a classic track in honor of the World Cup, having been an official sponsor of the competition since 1978.

Van Halen released Jump in December 1983, and it became the band’s first and only song to top the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It was also nominated at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards, losing out on Best Rock Performance to Prince’s Purple Rain.

Despite its success, Eddie initially had to work hard in order to convince the band to put it on the record.

“When I first played Jump for the band, nobody wanted to have anything to do with it,” EVH told Guitar World in 2014. “Dave said that I was a guitar hero and I shouldn’t be playing keyboards. My response was that if I want to play a tuba or Bavarian cheese whistle, I will do it.”

The track has been covered countless times, including a percussive acoustic version by Mike Dawes and an all-star live performance by Billy Idol, Steve Stevens, and Derek Sherinian.

Meanwhile, Alex Van Halen says a new Van Halen record was virtually finished before Eddie passed away. The project, which includes Steve Lukather, is now looking for a vocalist after Paul Rodgers turned them down.

Michael Anthony has weighed in on the developments surrounding a prospective new Van Halen record by suggesting the direction he thinks it should go in.

In March last year, Alex Van Halen announced out of nowhere that he was working with Steve Lukather on a new Van Halen record. Later, Luke asserted he’d never “play a guitar note on a VH song”, but it was confirmed the two were indeed working on Van Halen material together.

That material, it was recently revealed, was old demos that had been tracked before Eddie Van Halen passed away. In fact, Alex says the band had practically finished an album before the electric guitar legend died.

Lukather had been brought onboard to help piece the project together and, in another twist to the tale, Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers had been approached to sing on the record.

Rodgers, it’s since been revealed, turned down the approach, saying he was in his “acoustic, zen phase of life”.

For Anthony, though, that’s just as well. In his mind, the new Van Halen project should be kept instrumental – and leave the spotlight firmly on Eddie’s playing.

Speaking to WNCX (via Ultimate Classic Rock), the former Van Halen bassist offers, “The way I personally feel about it is, if they wanted to do it justice, [the best idea would be] to just finish it up as a great instrumental nod to Eddie [Van Halen].

“You know, because getting a new singer in there, we're not forming a new band, and then you've got to work on lyrics and all that stuff. And who knows when anything would be put out at that point.”

In Anthony’s mind, whatever unheard material that Eddie recorded before he passed away should be front and center on the new record. Having a new vocalist to go with it – and, by extension, another artistic vision in the mix – would simply detract the project from what it should be: a tribute to Van Halen’s guitar greatness.

It's unclear when this Van Halen record will be released, but by the sounds of it, Lukather and Van Halen are still busy working on it. In 2024, Alex releasedUnfinished – the last song he worked on with his brother.

As Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather continue to work through archival material for a new Van Halen album, iconic British rock vocalist Paul Rodgers has explained why he declined the chance to front the band.

There’s been much talk – and mystery – about Alex Van Halen’s forthcoming Van Halen project. The drummer temporarily broke the internet last year when it was revealed that the late Eddie Van Halen’s longtime friend Steve Lukather, of Toto fame, had been tapped up to get the project moving. Soon after, Lukather made moves to clarify his role in the album’s creation, and that he wouldn’t be playing a single note on it.

Last week, in an interview with Brazilian outlet KazaGastão, Alex Van Halen shed more light on the album, explaining that it had been written and mostly recorded during EVH’s lifetime, and intended as a follow-up to 2012’s David Lee Roth-fronted LP, A Different Kind of Truth.

The project’s efforts, he said, were now going into finding a frontman, with Diamond Dave and Sammy Hagar, who’s been pedalling his Best of All Worlds tribute tour in recent years, reportedly not under consideration. Rodgers, however, was, but turned the gig down.

Consequently, Rogers – who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Bad Company in November – became a fixture in the rumor mill. As such, he’s taken to social media to burst that bubble and state that his health, which led him to miss the Rock Hall ceremony, was cause for concern.

“To squash the rumours, my health is good. I feel fit and strong, and I am rehearsing to perform on March 2nd at the Adopt the Arts Sound and Vision Awards in Palm Springs,” he writes. “Thanks to Van Halen for inviting me to work on a track with them, but I am in my acoustic, zen phase of life.”

Indeed, there’s certainly pressure and baggage that comes with fronting the band, given the heights they reached with both DLR and Hagar behind the mic. That was something that the one-time vocalist, Gary Cherone, felt when he joined the band in 1996. Speaking to KNAC in 2009 (via Van Halen News Desk), he admitted it was an “intimidating” gig.

And so the search goes on. Alex Van Halen previously hoped that Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant would get involved in the project. One could assume that, having asked Rogers, Plant has already distanced himself from the project.

The other caveat here is that Rodgers was invited to work on just one track. So was it intended as an audition, or could the pair be planning an all-star cast of singers? Only time will tell.

So far, there has only been one posthumous Eddie Van Halen recording, with Alex releasing the last song they wrote together, Unfinished, to promote his book, Brothers.

Alex Van Halen has shed yet more light on the elusive Van Halen album that he’s seemingly been working on with Steve Lukather – and it’s closer to being finished than any of us previously thought.

In fact, according to Alex himself, the record effectively is finished – and it sounds like it was finished before Eddie passed away in 2020. The only thing the band was missing was a vocalist to sing on the new tunes.

Last year, Alex Van Halen caused quite a stir when he revealed that a new Van Halen album was in the works. At the time, he said Lukather was onboard to help finish it, and while Lukather initially confirmed this, he later said, “I will not ever play a guitar note on a VH song ever!”

As Lukather explained, he was simply brought on to help go through a “ton” of unfinished recordings that Alex and Eddie had put together that “never saw the light of day”.

Now, Alex has set the record straight, revealing that an entire Van Halen album had practically been completed prior to Eddie’s death, complete with drums, bass, and – most notably of all – Van Halen’s guitar parts.

When asked if Eddie’s old recordings were going to be used for this next album, Alex explained to KazaGastão (via Blabbermouth). “Well, these are recordings that were going to be the next [Van Halen] record, and that were stopped because [Ed] didn't live that long.

“The drums are already recorded. The drums, the guitar and the bass are already in there,” he continues. “What we didn't have is a vocalist, and obviously the subtleties and the glue – we call it the glue or the spackle.”

Van Halen confirms these recordings also feature Wolfgang Van Halen on bass, and that he and Lukather had attempted to recruit Paul Rodgers to sing on them: “It was very difficult for him to bring himself to say, 'No, I can't. Count me out.' I respect that.”

As for Lukather’s involvement, Alex says he was brought in to help smooth over the missing “glue” and “spackle”. He was on hand to help sort through the recordings and provide some "connective tissue”.

“Luke can play anything,” Alex notes. “I went to Steve's house several times and we played a piece of music and he goes, 'Yeah, I got it. That's it. That's all we need.' Then he can do all the connective tissues. He knows where to put the solo, as far as structure and organization.

“I've been fortunate enough to have Steve Lukather, who was a good friend of Ed's, and we're working on putting a record together, but it has to be of the quality and the level of where we left it. Not just to say, 'Hey, here's some music that we made. If you like it, that's great.' No. It has to be the quality that we expect.”

When the album will see the light of day remains to be seen. There’s been no official word about the project as of yet, and all that’s known has been pieced together from Alex’s various interviews. But, whatever the case, the new Van Halen record is very real, and it will be coming.

Back in 2024, Alex Van Halen shared Unfinished – the last song he ever wrote with his brother.

To mark what would have been Eddie Van Halen's 71st birthday on January 26, his brother and Van Halen drummer, Alex Van Halen, shared a snippet of their childhood – and Eddie's precocious talent – on social media.

The muted clip shows a young Eddie joyously strumming an acoustic guitar, shortly before the camera pans to a grinning Alex. The heartfelt video is accompanied by a short quote from Wolfie – “‘Al, you and dad changed the world of music’ - Wolfgang Van Halen. January 26th, 1955- October 6th, 2020.”

In related Alex Van Halen news, it was recently confirmed by the drummer on the Metal Sticks podcast that he was working on a new record, with Toto guitarist and session legend Steve Lukather allegedly involved in the project.

“I’m getting ready to do this record with Lukather and a couple other people,” said Van Halen. “It should be exciting.”

In an interview with De Telegraf from March 2025, Van Halen commented, “Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”

Lukather later clarified his apparent involvement in what many speculated to be a new Van Halen record, stating, “I will not ever play a note on a Van Halen song!”

In more recent Van Halen news, a new compilation album of old Van Halen rehearsals with Eddie, Alex and Wolfgang has reportedly been released – and it doesn’t feature a singer.

Whether igniting Billy Idol’s biggest anthems or unleashing fiery flamenco on his own, Steve Stevens has never played it safe and never stood still.

More than 40 years into his career, he remains sharp as ever. As Idol’s long-time right-hand man and collaborator, Stevens helped define the sound of the ’80s but refuses to be just a relic of that era.

With a recent Billy Idol album, an ambitious tour and new signature gear, he continues to set stages ablaze with the same passion and precision that made him a guitar hero. Here, Stevens joins us to reveal how he’s been able to stay relevant in an ever-changing musical landscape.

The latest Billy Idol album, Dream Into It, dropped earlier this year. Has your songwriting process evolved over the years?

As far as Billy and I go, nothing’s really changed: it’s still two guys in a room with acoustic guitars. We’ve always felt that if a song works acoustically, you’ve got something. If it only works once you layer technology on top, maybe it’s not strong enough. That’s always been our litmus test.

But we also had other collaborators this time like our producer Tommy English, plus Joe Janiak, who we’ve worked with before, and Nick Long, who we had worked with a little bit in the past.

These guys are younger, but they grew up with Billy Idol’s catalogue. They’re excited about the legacy and they know how to bring in elements from the past without just recycling it. That kept things fresh.

What unexpected influences found their way onto the record?

One of the bands that influenced me and Billy early on was Suicide, the New York duo of Alan Vega and Marty Rev. When Billy first moved to New York, we must have seen them three or four times. They had this primitive, lo-fi electronic thing going.

So when we used synths or drum machines on this album, we wanted them to feel stripped-down, raw and almost primitive. These days, plugins can sound massive, so we went the opposite direction and kept it small. Those raw textures worked really well with my guitars.

Lyrically, Billy wanted the songs to reflect his life story. We knew he had a biopic film coming out this year [Billy Idol Should Be Dead], so it made sense to tie the record to his journey. Even though I wasn’t with him back in England where he started, I’ve certainly been there since he arrived in New York. Here we are 42 years later, still working together, so there’s a lot of shared life experiences to draw on.

How did you approach your guitar tones for this record?

I’m old-school, so I like to just plug straight into an amp. I’ve got my Friedman Steve Stevens signature head and my Knaggs guitars. Where I did experiment was in creating soundscapes. Since we didn’t want keyboards dominating the record, I used plug-ins and effects to get textures with the guitar.

That was kind of the concept even back on Rebel Yell. We started recording it back in ’83 when all these records were out with tons of keyboards and we didn’t want to sound like everyone else. I remember telling our producer, Keith Forsey, ‘Let me try it on guitar first. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll add keys.’ And most of the time, guitars carried the weight.

Live, how do you approach material from albums such as Charmed Life and Cyberpunk that you didn’t play on originally?

Funny enough, I’m usually the one saying I want to do tunes off those albums because I love interpreting them; it’s almost like doing a cover song. I mean, I’m a Billy Idol fan as well as his guitar player.

I remember when we did Prodigal Blues from Charmed Life, we played an acoustic version and I approached it almost like a Ry Cooder tune.

Billy said, ‘Wow, where did you get that idea?’ and I just told him, ‘I listened to the song and that’s the way I heard it.’ We do that a lot. I get to reinterpret the songs, sometimes even using a guitar synth, and it’s such a great challenge.

Tell us about your new Ciari Steve Stevens Signature travel guitar.

I came across a video of this folding guitar that fit into a backpack. I understand mechanical design a little bit so I thought, ‘Wow, this looks cool.’ As a touring musician, I always have my laptop and a guitar with me for writing, laying down tracks and even recording stuff for other artists, but I’ve always been nervous about travelling with a guitar and checking it at the airport as baggage. The Ciari guitar looked like a great solution.

I contacted [Ciari Guitars founder] Jonathan Spangler whose background was in [medical device technology], and I thought, ‘How do you go from that to designing guitars?’ [Laughs] But the mechanics were incredible.

I started travelling with one, and eventually Jonathan asked if I’d be interested in doing a signature model. We put in custom Bare Knuckle [Ray Gun] pickups made exclusively for this guitar along with an ebony fingerboard, coil-taps and even a tuner built into the pickup ring. It’s invaluable on the road and I use it on stage for our encore every night.

You’ve been in the spotlight for decades now. What’s been the key to staying relevant without chasing trends?

I think it’s always been cool to like Billy Idol, and our records were never something you could pigeonhole. I came from the rock side with guitar heroes like Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, a little prog, some new wave and New York punk.

Then you have Billy with the punk-rock/Elvis thing, and our early producer Keith Forsey came from working with [Italian composer] Giorgio Moroder on dance records like Donna Summer. So, because we’ve always had this gumbo of different styles, we were never pigeonholed when it came to writing music.

Even though we had our biggest success in the ’80s, Billy’s roots go back to 1977 London. I think that’s served us really well. He’s got a timeless image and people appreciate that. He’s a real-deal rock ’n’ roll star. Honestly, we sound better now than we did back then.

You’ve worked on many side projects over the years.

I was fortunate in the ’80s because, as a sideman, people approached me probably more than if I’d been tied to a band. I got offers from Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson and, of course, Top Gun. I was able to do all those one-offs while still working with Billy.

I like working with artists outside my comfort zone. For example, I worked with Ben Watkins [of Juno Reactor] on soundtracks like Once Upon A Time In Mexico and The Matrix. I love his records and wanted to understand how they were made, like sampling, loops and all that early ’90s electronic stuff. I like working with flamenco players and world artists, too.

The worst thing would be if someone asks me to do something for them that sounds like Rebel Yell. That’s exclusive to Billy Idol and I don’t want to retread; I turn down those requests.

Speaking of flamenco, didn’t you do a flamenco record at one point?

Yes, it’s called Flamenco A Go-Go, released in 1999. After a run playing with Vince Neil, opening for Van Halen for about six weeks, it just got to be total rock ’n’ roll excess [laughs]. I came off the road and had to reassess why I was even playing guitar.

One of my first loves is flamenco and my first guitar teacher was a flamenco guitarist. I remember going to see Paco de Lucía and that reignited this spark in me. I stopped playing electric guitar for a year. I went to Japan, France and England to make that record and travelled the world with just my nylon-string guitar.

When you’re playing genres other than rock, do you feel more creatively challenged?

Absolutely. One of the unique things about my style is how I was influenced by early synthesizers and keyboards like Keith Emerson with The Nice, Rick Wakeman, all that stuff. A lot of my guitar ideas come from keyboard sounds from the ’70s.

Same with flamenco rhythms applied to my acoustic work. I also listen to a lot of film scores and classical music.

Their arrangements are incredible. For me, being a successful guitarist is about coming up with parts that move the song along and not just doubling the bassline. I always want a guitar part that’s independent.

Are you consciously thinking ‘keyboards’ when you’re playing or does it just happen naturally?

Definitely consciously. Take the middle of Rebel Yell, during the ‘I walk the world’ section. That guitar line is me thinking of Emerson’s Lucky Man solo [Emerson, Lake & Palmer]. I’m not thinking guitar. Same with orchestral-style chord voicings.

On Flesh for Fantasy, for example, those chords are influenced by Allan Holdsworth but also by Rick Wakeman’s use of 9ths and 7ths. I never just play straight major or minor. There’s always something extra.

You’ve worked with many different artists over the years. Who else is on your bucket list?

Peter Gabriel. I love everything he’s done and I think he would be incredible to collaborate with. I enjoy working with artists that have influenced me. I got to share a stage with Neil Young once. When I got my first decent acoustic guitar, I played a lot of his stuff so it was amazing to play on stage with him.

What’s important, especially after decades, is not forgetting that feeling you had when you first picked up the instrument. You can’t let mortgages or taxes creep into your head. You’ve got to stay excited.

Thinking back to the ’80s, there was a lot of pressure to be able to shred, but you didn’t really fall into that.

I wasn’t from LA. I didn’t grow up watching Van Halen thinking, ‘Oh shit, what do we do now?’ A lot of guys did. Eddie shook up the world, no doubt. I became friends with him later, but I never wanted to play like him. Record labels were signing anyone who could tap and shred. The good ones, like Warren DeMartini and George Lynch, found their own voices, unlike guys that were just Eddie clones.

But, really, my true love is collaborating on a good song. I’m definitely not looking for my moment of glory three minutes into a song, waiting for the guitar solo. I enjoy being part of the band more than anything and having that dialogue with the guys on stage, playing and locking in with the drummer.

Dave Friedman claims you were very hands-on when it came to designing the Steve Stevens signature tube amp.

[Laughs] Yeah, Dave and I go way back, before he was even building amps. I’d moved to LA and my live rig was in bad shape so he rebuilt it for me. It started as a good Marshall ‘Plexi’-inspired amp with a great master volume. Then we expanded by adding a clean channel and we just kept refining it from there.

To my ears, I’m just replicating my favourite early ’70s records, especially the English ones and the glam stuff like T. Rex, Bowie, Sweet. Those records always had amazing guitar sounds. Those are the guitar sounds that I like to hear.

Tell us about your touring rig.

Dave Friedman built my rig for this tour, [it’s] all pedals now. I use a Fractal FM3 for delays, chorus and harmonies, a custom wah from Oxbow Studios that nails the Hendrix-era Vox sound, and I’ve also got the Rockaway pedal that I designed with J Rockett, which is like a Klon but with a graphic EQ.

Also there’s a couple of Ernie Ball volume pedals, a ring mod sequencer… I change things a lot. That’s the fun part about using pedals. It’s easy to switch stuff in and out.

We’re using in-ears, so no cabs on stage. I worked closely with several companies to develop my own IRs [impulse responses]. I went to front-of-house and compared my mic’d cabs to the IRs, and the IRs sounded better. A lot of players fool themselves with their stage sound and don’t realise that the audience is not hearing what they’re hearing.

With IRs and a great front-of-house guy, my live tone is more consistent record-quality. I used to hate in-ears, but I’ve learned how to make them work using specific reverbs, house mics blended into the mix and other little tricks. Now I can hear everything clearly without blasting my ears.

Don’t you miss that wall of sound behind you?

I’m 66 years old – I’m too old for that now [laughs].

• Dream Into It is out now via Dark Horse.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Eddie Van Halen's 5150 Studios was, at the time of its construction in 1983, almost as groundbreaking as the man's playing.

Even for a band like Van Halen, who were by 1983 headlining shows to many thousands of people, the traditional record company hierarchy still ruled. Eddie Van Halen's shattering of the electric guitar rulebook didn't necessarily matter much to the band's label, Warner Bros. – hits were the order of the day.

That hierarchy asserted itself in the form of the band's producer, Ted Templeman, who pushed for the band to focus on bankable singles, wherever they came from, in lieu of artistic progression – a tale as old as time. This dichotomy came fully to light with the band's acclaimed, influential, but slower-selling 1981 record, Fair Warning, and its covers-heavy '82 follow-up, Diver Down, which indeed produced the sort of hits Warner craved.

Bursting at the seams with ideas as he was, though, Eddie Van Halen had no interest in becoming best known to the public as a virtuoso who found his greatest commercial success with re-workings of others' material.

Going forward, he wanted the space – a space – to work up original material without someone looking over his shoulder, reminding him of commercial obligations, and without racking up those dreaded and formidable per-hour studio tabs.

Now under the proud stewardship of his son Wolfgang, 5150 Studios was originally envisioned by Eddie Van Halen as more of a personal workshop.

Ever behind on the times, record label suits still saw proper, established studios as the only environs in which a successful record could be made (see the absurd saga of Boston's enormously successful debut album, where executives demanded guitarist Tom Scholz re-record his home demos in exacting detail, but in a professional studio.)

“I didn't initially set out to build a full-blown studio,” Van Halen explained to Guitar World in a 2014 interview. “I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys.”

Workshop or something more, though, there were some hurdles to clear first...

“Back then, [Los Angeles] zoning laws disallowed building a home studio on your property. I suggested that we submit plans for a racquetball court,” Van Halen told GW.

“When the city inspector came up here, he was looking at things and going, ‘Let’s see here. Two-foot-thick cinder blocks, concrete-filled, rebar-reinforced… Why so over the top for a racquetball court?’ I told him, ‘Well, when we play, we play hard. We want to keep it quiet and not piss off the neighbors.’ We got it approved.”

Much to the surprise of even the guitarist himself, though, the band's longtime engineer, Donn Landee, had a plan to level 5150 up from its original plan to a one-stop shop studio.

“Slowly, the studio turned into a lot more than I originally envisioned,” Van Halen recounted. “Everybody else was even more surprised than I was, especially Ted. Everybody thought I was just building a little demo room. Then Donn said, ‘No man! We’re going to make records up here!’”

You'd think the powers that be would be thrilled – no more worrying about studio costs! But this also meant a lack of oversight, the label surrendering control of the recording process to the artists, who would now theoretically be free of the pressure to put a lid on experimentation, due to time (and therefore cost) constraints.

“When Ted and everybody else heard [the plans for a full home studio], they weren’t happy,” Van Halen said.

Nevertheless, the album that became 1984 was the first to be recorded at 5150, and if you're reading this, you probably know how that went. A #1 hit single, an incredible 10 million copies sold – Van Halen's insistence on doing things their way, in their own environment, paid off handsomely.

Though labels obviously still keep a close eye on the progression of their artists' recordings, the ever-increasing ease of home recording (without having to build anything resembling a top-of-the-line studio like 5150) has rendered the you-need-the-professionals-around attitude obsolete – one can hardly imagine a C-suite figure sternly requiring that home studio loyalist Billie Eilish re-record tracks at Electric Lady.

As Van Halen told GW upon 1984's 30th anniversary, the album's monster success was a vindication of his singular, un-meddled-with vision, and further proof that labels needn't always fear their artists taking the reins of the recording process.

“Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well… yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots.”

Wolfgang Van Halen has reiterated his claim that too many guitarists are unable to look past the flashy aspects of his dad’s playing, highlighting another facet of his virtuosity that doesn’t get enough recognition.

On a new episode of the Cody Tucker Show, Wolfgang champions a rather different aspect of his dad’s musicality.

“I think everybody looks at him as Mr. Tap, and he’s Mr. Shred, but I think that’s just a flavor of what he did,” he explains (via Blabbermouth). “And I think it’s the fact that he was such a good songwriter and rhythm guitar player, which allowed him to be the shredder guy on top of it.

“There are plenty of people who are just great shredders, and they’re just running through scales and stuff, and that’s not as interesting,” he adds, echoing recent comment he made about the appeal of Taylor Swift's music.

Wolfgang also singles out another underrated guitarist in his book, AC'DC's lesser-championed Young brother, Malcolm.

He says, “Obviously, Angus is very in your face and dancing around, while [Malcolm] was just in the back, but I think he is the greatest rhythm guitar player in history. He just had such a grit, and he’s absolutely one of my favourites.”

In related news, Wolfgang recently spoke to Guitar World about his dad, Allan Holdsworth, and his unintentional Van Halen-isms, and explained his two distinct approaches to tapping.

A new, unheard album of Van Halen songs has reportedly been released.

Sidelining the age-old David Lee Roth versus Sammy Hagar conversation, the new compilation album comprises instrumental recordings pulled from the soundboard during rehearsals for their 2007 tour.

As Van Halen’s final iteration – featuring Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, on bass – prepared for their debut tour, the group, sans singer, rehearsed tirelessly.

The material, which included run-throughs of Unchained, Runnin’ with the Devil, and Hot For Teacher, were recorded at 5150 Studios between November 2006 and January 2007. The recordings have been compiled and release by writer and filmmaker Andrew Bennett, who was documenting the band’s activity at the time.

“Eddie, Alex, and Wolfgang Van Halen were rehearsing full set lists twice a week,” a description of the album reads. “And since this was prior to the return of Dave, these recordings are performed with no singer. Finally, no Sam versus Dave debates.”

Bennett’s two-week spell in the heart of the band was documented in his 2020 book, Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen. It came two years after Bennett was sued by the group and prevented from releasing a documentary featuring ‘from the vault’ footage of 5150.

There's been no word from the Van Halen camp at this time concerning claims of copyright.

“I had the honor to film numerous jam sessions at 5150,” Bennett says. “During this time, the engineer would give me the uncompressed files from various rehearsals. These tracks are a new way to hear the genius details of the band.

“I hope that when you drop the needle on this record player, your reaction is, ‘Holy shit! I have never heard Van Halen like this.’”

Head to VH Sessions for more.

Late last year, Alex Van Halen sent the internet into a frenzy when he said he was open to using AI to turn unfinished riffs and ideas from the late Eddie Van Halen into full songs.

He may have kickstarted his career playing bass alongside his dad in one of America’s most important rock bands, but over the past four years Wolfgang Van Halen has proven he’s very much an artist in his own right.

So much so that he’s written and recorded everything you hear on the three Mammoth albums released thus far – including latest full-length, The End, which sees him taking his songwriting to new creative peaks.

Naturally, the son of Edward Van Halen is no slouch on guitar. You can hear plenty of fret-burning wizardry on the title track and other impressive cuts such as Same Old Song and I Really Wanna. But it’s the sheer quality of his compositions that’s helped set him apart from his peers, reimagining the stadium-conquering hooks of groups like Foo Fighters and Alter Bridge through his own melodic lens, often with staggering results.

This album, he explains, came from a more relaxed state of mind, having already escaped the preconceptions that go hand-in-hand with having one of the most instantly recognizable surnames in rock ’n’ roll…

The top-line melodies on this latest album could be your catchiest ones yet. How do you go about finding the right hooks?

Honestly, that’s one of the most important things for the average listener. They tend to listen to the vocals and main melodies. I have fun with the instrumentation and that’s always there for the musicians who want to hear something fun with the riffs here and there. But at the end of the day, the melodies are the most important thing about my music. That’s what I tend to toil [over] most.

Can you envisage where the notes are before you even pick up the guitar?

Sure, there’s a lot of stuff that comes like that. Some of the best ideas come so quickly you almost feel like you’re this vessel for the music, rather than the person creating it. Bob Dylan had this great quote where he once said, “If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often!”

It’s like he was saying it’s not even a choice. These ideas come to you and reveal themselves to you as you keep working on them until you deem them ready enough. I’m not the world’s biggest Bob Dylan fan – obviously he’s an icon and a legend – but I really loved and related to that quote.

How do these ideas usually present themselves to you?

It’s just any time, really. You just have to be ready to get it down, which is why my list of voice memos is in the thousands.

I have a button on my iPhone that goes straight to voice recording because the ideas can come fast. I might hum them in, but if I’m lucky enough to have a guitar nearby I will pick that up – and the same goes for drum beat ideas. You always say, ‘I’ll remember it,’ and then you forget within two minutes.”

It’s interesting how you sometimes only use parts for very specific sections. Something New, for example, has these higher-string dyads that only come in at the very end before the closing stabs.

It’s all about using the right things at the right time. If you do certain things too much, then you’re overdoing them. It’s nice to sprinkle these little ideas in that make people want to go back and re-listen to the song. Over-seasoning music can make things quite repetitive and boring.

You’ve worked with Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette as your producer on every album so far. What have you learned from him about the art of capturing and blending sound?

He’s the other half of the band, so to speak. Even the Beatles had George Martin. It’s important to have an outside perspective to keep the artist from second-guessing. I trust him explicitly and could never see myself doing it without him.

I don’t ever take in much information in terms of what I’d do in the future without him because I’ll always let him handle that stuff. I focus on the writing and the playing. I leave the capturing of it all to him. I trust him more than I trust myself when it comes to production.

Do you listen to The Beatles much, then?

For sure. It might be a bit overplayed, I guess, but I would say Abbey Road is a really special album to me. Front to back, I really love everything about it. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) was like metal before heavy metal existed, you know? I love that album.

Everybody has a Beatles phase at some point and there will be one album they couldn’t live without. For me, it’s definitely Abbey Road, with maybe Revolver not far behind.

You released your EVH semi-hollow signature guitar back in 2024. Is that what we’re hearing on the album?

Yeah, it was the gold relic EVH SA-126 that I got last year. That guitar ended up being the backbone of this whole record, going through the 5150 III 6L6. I used it for 95 percent of what you hear. I got the Frankenstein out for the tapping part on The End and the slap part, but other than that, it really was just one guitar.

With the second album, it was a different guitar but still the second or third prototype of that SA-126. I’ve come to know what works best for Mammoth and that’s my semi-hollow through the 5150 III, for sure.

A lot of your leads are based around the minor pentatonic scale. Which blues players left the biggest mark on you?

It’s funny, I wasn’t much of a blues guy to begin with. But I think out of all the blues-based players, I really love Angus Young from AC/DC. He sticks to what is generally pentatonic stuff but has this anarchistic way of attacking it.

That’s what makes it so attractive to me. It’s almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and it’s all about the way he does it, rather than the notes he’s playing. When you listen to him, it’s incredibly blues-based, but it’s the aggression he plays with that makes me enjoy it. I guess it was the same kind of thing with my dad.

Which album do you find yourself listening to the most?

Powerage is one of my favorite records. In Down Payment Blues, right after the first chorus, there’s this solo where he plays just one note for eight bars. It’s how he’s playing, instead of what he’s playing. Stuff like that is so badass. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

You can hit one note with attitude and that’s all that matters. And Angus’s tone is unbelievable, with all those Marshalls just cranked to hell. The last time I saw AC/DC was on the Black Ice tour. They leave you deaf for days – it’s the best! I don’t think I’ve ever been at a show that loud; it must have been around 120dB. It was otherworldly. I started bringing earplugs to shows after that, but it’s okay if it’s Angus – he’s earned it.

What kind of riff do you play to test out a guitar?

I think it would be something by AC/DC. I’ll usually do Night Prowler because it has those big chords, which can tell you a lot about guitar. And then for single notes I might do Beating Around The Bush or something like that. I think those classic open chords can show you what a guitar is about right away. You can hear how the acoustics resonate together.

Your first big gig was playing bass in Van Halen. A lot of the material probably came very easily to you, but what would you say were the more challenging songs on the setlist?

I think it was mainly a matter of delving into the feel. The big hits were about the groove and locking in with my uncle [Alex Van Halen on drums] to create a great rhythmic base. Me being a drummer first helped because I could understand what was needed. I also had to keep dad in check whenever he made a mistake.

On the last tour in 2015, I really tried to get the guys to play every single B-side we possibly could, stuff like Dirty Movies, which is a really unique song. Michael Anthony [bass] was doing these interesting harmonics for that intro. Stuff like that was really experimental and I don’t think he gets enough credit for what he did.

His contributions to that track in particular were quite out there for a person who is usually holding down the groove. Dirty Movies was one of those tracks where I had to really remember how it was played on the record and check myself every time in order to ensure I didn’t mess it up.

In Mammoth you are very much going for a modern rock style that’s notably different from the sound your father pioneered in Van Halen. But the rhythmic slap and harmonic idea from The End is something that could have sat on 1981’s Fair Warning, with a Mean Street kind of feel.

Totally. It’s very percussive. It’s funny because it wasn’t supposed to be a Mean Street thing. It was actually a slap bass part. I was showing Elvis this idea but only had a guitar, so asked him to imagine it on bass. And he told me it sounded cool on guitar. It was his idea to have it carry on through the verse.

That’s when I asked him how the hell I’m supposed to sing and play it all on stage and he said, “That’s a problem for future you!” So while I was writing the melody, I was trying to play the part without thinking and eventually got it right where I was able to separate what I’m singing from what I’m playing.

I think it helps that I’m a drummer first because I’ve gotten used to that kind of separation. It was tough, but I figured it out. We’ve been playing it live and I feel confident enough.

You have forged your own path as a musician, but were there any things your dad showed you early on, to help speed up the process?

Dad never really pushed me in any direction. He just let me organically follow whatever I wanted. That was his main mantra – “Just play” – that’s why I’ve got it tattooed on me in his own handwriting, which came from a Christmas letter he gave me.

That’s as detailed as it gets. Just play. It’s that simple, really. You need to enjoy yourself and follow what makes you happy. That’s what music is all about. It should give you purpose and make you happy, and help forget about all the bullshit.

What do you remember about your first guitar?

I remember that dad got me a custom-made little Wolfgang for when I was 12. Later on, when I was in middle school, I really liked the band System Of A Down and got an Ibanez Iceman because their guitarist Daron Malakian had one. So I got one of those and had fun playing along to old-school riffs like Toxicity.

Your dad took a lot of influence from jazz fusion mastermind Allan Holdsworth, who also inspired some of the modern metal players you would later listen to.

My dad and him were very close. Allan played an incredibly avant-garde and dissonant style of guitar. I think his whole approach was so cool.

I love how Allan was very much himself. He never tried to follow any trends; it was always about his own vibe, which was very abstract and experimental.

That’s why his legacy is so apparent when it comes to players like Fredrik Thordendal in Meshuggah, who are one of my favourite bands. Allan was always very much his own artist, and truly one of a kind.

• The End is out now via BMG
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Michael Anthony has come a long way since his days as an exuberant kid with a battered P-Bass, ratty bell-bottoms, and three-inch platforms.

He’s been inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, sold in excess of 80 million records with Van Halen, and still has plenty to say about playing bass guitar for one of rock ‘n’ roll's most iconic bands.

Committed fans will recall Anthony’s proudest moment, a thunderous bass solo performed during Van Halen's live shows – delivered via a Jack Daniels bottle-shaped bass, following a swig from the requisite half-empty bottle of J.D.

In the November 1995 issue of Bass Player, Anthony remembered his own awe-inspiring moment – finding himself face-to-face with the self-proclaimed “greatest bass player in the world”, Jaco Pastorius.

Jaco, who was always a firebrand on stage and never predictable off it, crossed paths with Anthony while on tour with jazz fusion powerhouse Weather Report.

“It's funny – during our first Japan tour, around 1979, I met Jaco at a Tokyo hotel,” said Anthony. “I got into the elevator, and here was this guy wearing baggy shorts, a beret, and a loud Hawaiian shirt. I introduced myself, not knowing who he was, and he just said, ‘I'm Jaco Pastorius.’”

“We had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar,” continues Anthony. “And he told me about Weather Report. He also mentioned that he was familiar with our band. I don't know if he was a Van Halen fan, but he had heard our stuff. I think we were both more intent on getting drunk than anything else!”

Prior to their meeting in Tokyo, Weather Report’s 1977 epic, Heavy Weather, had sealed Jaco’s reputation as a four-string phenomenon. From the fretted bass guitar melody line line of Teen Town to the brilliance of Havona, it’s essential listening for bassists of all stripes.

Somewhere along the way, Jaco had also became the showman of the group.

“He’d take a solo every night and end it with the bass on the ground with a note sustaining,” Jaco’s close friend and contemporary, Michael Brecker, once said. “He’d do a running flip over the bass and dampen the note as he was in mid-air.”

Despite being given a similar platform to showcase his own bass-playing prowess, it’s always been one of Michael Anthony’s assertions that a great bassist should be able to speak volumes through their basslines, rather than the tendency today for bass players who feel soloing is the only way to really show the world what they can do.

“There are so many different kinds of bass players. Some of them use their instrument like a lead guitar. I enjoy listening to a few of those guys, but that’s not me at all. If you really pushed me I’d have to be honest and say that I see myself as a solid eight-out-of-10 bass player, I guess, but I’m happy with that.”

“Playing with Eddie Van Halen, he would just go off, and if you weren’t right there playing what you were supposed to it could get really confusing.

“At times it holds you back because you want to go out and showboat a bit, show the people what you can do, but the most important thing is to really be the anchor. That’s the secret, isn’t it?”

What is Wolfgang Van Halen’s go-to track to test out a new electric guitar? Does he riff through Another Celebration at the End of the World? Tap up Eruption? Or is his new harmonic slap workout from The End the ultimate fretboard tester?

Turns out, it’s none of the above. Instead, the Mammoth multi-instrumentalist dives into the repertoire of another classic rock ’n’ roll group whenever he needs to test out a new six-string. And, no, he doesn’t play any of the Forbidden Riffs.

Having developed the game-changing EVH SA-126 – a versatile semi-hollow that’s suitable for metal and rock – Wolfgang knows a thing or two about gauging the behaviour of a guitar.

“I think it would be something by AC/DC,” he says when asked in the new issue of Guitarist about his guitar-testing tracklist. “I’ll usually do Night Prowler because it has those big chords, which can tell you a lot about guitar.

“And then for single notes I might do Beating Around the Bush or something like that. I think those classic open chords can show you what a guitar is about right away. You can hear how the acoustics resonate together.”

Wolfgang defaults to AC/DC songs to test out his guitars for good reason. In that same conversation with Guitarist, he highlighted Angus Young as a key blues-based rock influence – and drew similarities with the playing approach of his father, the late Eddie Van Halen.

He continues, “I wasn’t much of a blues guy to begin with. But I think out of all the blues-based players, I really love Angus Young from AC/DC. He sticks to what is generally pentatonic stuff but has this anarchistic way of attacking it.

“That’s what makes it so attractive to me. It’s almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and it’s all about the way he does it, rather than the notes he’s playing. When you listen to him, it’s incredibly blues-based, but it’s the aggression he plays with that makes me enjoy it. I guess it was the same kind of thing with my dad.”

For Wolfgang, Young’s ability to get more out of less is a key trait of his playing. That’s probably why his riffs make such good material for testing out a guitar: it doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to work.

“It doesn’t need to be complicated,” he concludes. “You can hit one note with attitude and that’s all that matters.”

Elsewhere in his Guitarist interview, Wolfgang discussed what sets his favorite modern metal hero apart from his peers, and looked back on how he’d have to keep Eddie in check during early Van Halen gigs.

Pick up the new issue of Guitarist at Magazines Direct for further interviews with Kiki Wong, Joanne Shaw Taylor and Jared James Nichols.

Wolfgang Van Halen's advice is timely. With Black Friday fast approaching, now is the best time to pick up a new electric guitar for a bargain. It might be wise to brush up on Night Prowler and Beating Around the Bush for when you take delivery of a new guitar...

Visit our guide to the best Black Friday guitar deals to see what savings are about.

Charlie Sheen's long-running sitcom, Two and a Half Men, featured its fair share of celebrity cameos, with Elvis Costello, Steven Tyler and ZZ Top all making an appearance on the show.

And, hardcore Two and a Half Men and Van Halen fans would know that Eddie Van Halen was also part of this roster of rock-stars-turned-actors, appearing in the opening episode of the seventh series, titled 818-jklpuzo, which aired on September 21, 2009.

Speaking about Van Halen's appearance in an interview with Loudwire, Sheen has recalled making the episode with the guitar icon, noting he wasn’t afraid to improvise in his acting, either.

“With Eddie Van Halen, during the table read for that episode, he made a change in one of the lines of dialog,” Sheen explains. “And you're not supposed to do that in like that kind of environment.

“His change was brilliant. The alternate that he added was brilliant. And he went ahead and just said it and didn't read the line that was there.”

He continues, “It's the thing where I'm constipated and he's at the studio, and then he comes out of the bathroom, and I think his line is, ‘Two burritos and a root beer float,’ something like that.”

And Van Halen being Van Halen, it would have been remiss not to have him shred a little in the scene.

“Then he plays that amazing lead, just shredding,” Sheen exclaims. “And I'm like two feet from him. I mean, can you get a better, private concert with Van Halen, anywhere, ever? They did five takes of it. And I'm like, ‘Are you sure we don't need a six?’

“But his idea, and it made such perfect sense, was Eruption. And that would have meant I would have been front row, like the only row, for a live Eruption! That was taken from me.”

We can only assume it was the productions concerns over royalties that ultimately prevented what would have been the ultimate poetic pairing of shred icon and bathroom humor.

In other recent Van Halen news, Wolfgang Van Halen recently recalled his time on bass duties with the band – noting he felt part of his role was keeping Eddie in check.

Wolfgang Van Halen’s first gig was playing bass alongside his father in one of the world’s biggest rock bands – but his duties in Van Halen went far beyond laying down the low-end.

When Wolfgang was sworn into the band in 2006, replacing golden-era bassist Michael Anthony, Van Halen were teetering on the edge. Wolfgang’s inclusion pulled them back, facilitating a hotly anticipated second reunion with David Lee Roth.

Naturally, as Eddie Van Halen’s son, he was well accustomed to their music, but the gig wasn’t without its challenges.

“I think it was mainly a matter of delving into the feel,” he says of the gig in the latest issue of Guitarist. “The big hits were about the groove and locking in with my uncle [Alex Van Halen on drums]. Me being a drummer first helped because I could understand what was needed.”

Wolfgang, who writes and plays all instruments in his band, Mammoth, has often alluded to how his drum-first sensibilities have shaped his musicality. But for this early gig, once his foot was in the door, he had to do more than just play well. He had to keep Eddie in line – and help shape the setlist.

“I also had to keep Dad in check whenever he made a mistake,” he reveals. “On the last tour in 2015, I really tried to get the guys to play every single B-side we possibly could, stuff like Dirty Movies, which is a really unique song.

“Michael Anthony [bass] was doing these interesting harmonics for that intro. Stuff like that was really experimental, and I don't think he gets enough credit for what he did. His contributions to that track in particular were quite out there for a person who is usually holding down the groove.

“Dirty Movies was one of those tracks where I had to really remember how it was played on the record and check myself every time to ensure I didn't mess it up.”

Last month, Mammoth released their third album, The End, and Wolfgang revealed that a grunge classic inspired one of its guitar solos. He's also recently discussed his two distinct approaches to tapping and what he feels sets his favorite modern metal guitarist apart from his peers.

Pick up a copy of Guitarist from Magazines Direct to read Wolfgang’s new interview in full. The issue also features an in-depth look at the guitar mastery of T-Bone Walker and a fresh chat with blues great Joanne Shaw Taylor.

For Pat Faherty of Canyon Lights, starting at the source is the only way forward. When the former GA-20 frontman listens to the blues, more often than not it’s going to be originators like Hound Dog Taylor or T-Bone Walker.

And when he reaches for inspiration to create the riffs behind his new band’s rolling early ’70s rumble, he’s coming from the same place as guys like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.

“All of those guitar players who started the concept of the guitar riff, they were learning comping before the style even existed,” Faherty says. “They were learning to back up the melody, not take over the melody with their guitar playing. I think what helps me for Canyon Lights is that the riffs come from the comping style of playing rhythm guitar.”

Faherty and drummer Tim Carman, his bandmate in GA-20 – a band that, incidentally, recorded an entire album of blues covers, 2021’s Try It... You Might Like It: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor – formed Canyon Lights after jamming on riffs and song ideas that didn’t fit the more conventional blues of their previous band.

Modeled in the mold of power trios like the James Gang – whose Walk Away they covered and released earlier this year – and Cream, Canyon Lights paints with a much broader brush.

Breathe Easy, their debut album’s title cut, is rooted in a bluesy shuffle and accented with slide licks, but Faherty’s approach to vocals and harmonies carries the song deep into the disco decade. And the single-note picking in the intro to Song Behind Those Tears rings like a long-lost Byrds tune before he lays down the stomping main groove.

Faherty’s ability to move seamlessly from chunky riffing to slinky funk to ripping slide reveals his virtuosity. After all, he’s schooled in jazz and once took on the role of Eddie in a Van Halen cover band; he even posted YouTube tutorials on how to play some of the late guitar legend’s solos during Covid days.

“I grew up with a lot of different sounds in Boston in the ’90s. I have a basic rock background, but I was also playing punk, hardcore and metal,” Faherty says. “All of that coalesced into certain kinds of vibes that just weren’t going to work with GA-20.”

Breathe Easy has the organic tones and feel of garage rock’s glory days, but those blues touchstones are still Faherty’s north star.

“That live video of Buddy Guy doing First Time I Met the Blues in 1970 that was in the documentary Chicago Blues – if I could ever even get close to the feel or touch of that performance, I'd be able to die a happy man,” Faherty says.

• Breathe Easy is out now via Canyon Lights.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Van Halen’s third album with frontman Sammy Hager, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, was released in summer 1991, just as the Seattle grunge revolution was poised to explode.

Notable for its absence of keyboards and ballads (apart from the piano-dominated Right Now), it was an immediate success, debuting at #1 on the Billboard charts and spawning several hit singles as well as a hugely successful world tour. It also demonstrated that Van Halen remained a vital force amid changing musical times.

As he had since the band's 1978 debut, Michael Anthony provided the basslines and the high vocal harmonies that remained as much a part of the band's signature sound as Eddie Van Halen's guitar pyrotechnics.

“I loved making that album,” Anthony told Bass Player back in 2018. “Working with producer Andy Johns was great – he wanted a big bass guitar sound, and I think it really came out. The band was firing on all cylinders. It was a great time.”

The lead single, Poundcake, features a thunderous 16th-note bassline that provides much of the track's heaviness and power, while also supporting the other musicians and serving the song.

“I hold things together so Ed can play anything he wants. I don't get to flash as much as I'd like to, but I'd say to any bass players who are critical, ‘Let me see you lay down a groove like Poundcake.’ To me, that's harder than getting up there and soloing.”

While a few earlier Van Halen songs such as Mean Streets featured 16th-note basslines, they generally followed the guitar riff. On Poundcake, however, the bass works in contrast to Van Halen's syncopated riff, driving the track relentlessly from down among the low frequencies.

“Back then, we always tracked everything live as a band – we would play, and Sammy would sing or scat any ideas that he had. A lot of times when Eddie would show us a riff, Alex would just bust into a beat and we would jam.”

In the case of Poundcake, he notes that “the openness of the chords and the beat pretty much lent itself to a 16th-note pulsating groove underneath.”

The track begins with Eddie Van Halen revving up a power drill before Alex Van Halen's four-bar drum groove. Anthony enters with a booming swoop down the E string, and then he immediately starts laying down 16th-notes under the sparse guitar riff. Chromatic, melodic, and bluesy minor-pentatonic licks provide contrasting tension-and-release to the steady flow of root notes.

For the first verse, and Sammy Hagar's vocal entrance at 00:53, the constant rumble of the bass is especially striking under the false harmonics provided by Eddie Van Halen.

The pre-chorus at 01:58 is the only part of the song where Anthony’s bassline doubles the guitar riff for an extended period. He returns to previous form for the second chorus, and a brief bridge at 02:34 .

The guitar solo begins at 02:52, marked by a key shift up a whole-step to F#, and a funk-inflected bass groove by Anthony for the first eight measures (before returning to 16ths for the final 12 bars). The return of the pre-chorus at 03:38 is also a whole-step higher, to correspond with the guitar-solo key.

The final chorus finds Anthony shifting up an octave for the first seven measures (and an octave higher yet for the eighth). To play the part requires excellent time, considerable stamina, and an ability to groove without sounding mechanical.

“I suggest you get out the metronome, set the tempo, and just start locking into it. You do not want to sound like a machine playing the line; you have to make it pulsate, rather than playing it straight. That's when you get it grooving!”

Anthony used Rotosound roundwounds, and he believes he played a Music Man StingRay on the song, although he isn't certain. The amp was an SWR.

“I don't remember which model it was, but it was a bi-amp system, with one 4x10 speaker cabinet and one 1x15 cabinet.”

Don’t let the finality of The End fool you. Despite the connotations of the title of Wolfgang Van Halen’s third and latest album as Mammoth, the hard rocker’s thrilling new era has only just begun.

When Guitar World catches up with him over Zoom, the musician – progeny of Eddie Van Halen, and a dynamic master-tapper in his own right – is riding high from leading his live band through a series of opening dates on Creed’s Summer of ’99 tour. It’s put the ever-rising act in front of huge arena crowds and had Van Halen sharing laughs backstage with his old Tremonti bandmate and Creed guitarist, Mark Tremonti.

Each night so far, Mammoth has electrified the masses with The End, the tapped-and-slapped ripper that roared to the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts over the summer, and which is likewise affixed to one of the most memorably goofy-and-gory music videos of 2025 – featuring vampiric maulings aplenty and a scene where Wolf’s mom, Valerie Bertinelli, punches out a ghoul during a mid-concert bar brawl.

It’s been a fun few months, to say the least, but Van Halen also explains that The End arose out of a long period of tension and turmoil – its songs reflecting an existential dread informed by terrifying natural disasters and general anxiety.

“During the last show we played with Metallica in Mexico in 2024, I had a really traumatizing panic attack on the airplane,” he says. “I’d never had that before, and that was the impetus of my lyric writing when it came to the subject material on The End.”

As such, The End marks a highly personal exploration of identity, the weight of expectation, human connection and more. But despite that heady thematic whirl, The End – recorded at his late father’s 5150 Studios with longtime collaborator and producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette – remains a jubilantly rocking offering full of energized anthems, phase-glazed soloing, grungy melodicism and daringly funkified struts.

It feels like you’re poking at some interconnected ideas on songs like The End, Same Old Song and Something New.

With the way I write, it’s very much a therapeutic release. Working those thoughts out is a way of calming the voices in my head and subduing my anxiety. I was working through a lot this time around. The vocals were recorded in January while we had everything in 5150 packed up and ready to go at any moment, because of the Los Angeles fires.

So there’s a lot of nerves, stress and anxiety there. I was thinking about all of my dad’s instruments and all of his belongings before I could even think about mine. We had a U-Haul truck filled with everything. It was tough to be creative in that environment, and I’m already a really anxious person, you know?

How close had the wildfires gotten?

At one point there were four separate fires within two miles of us – you’re just kind of sitting there watching the news and watching the LAFD be the incredible heroes they are. It was the winds that were the scariest, just how it would carry over miles. We were incredibly lucky. I know a lot of people who weren’t. It was a terrible time to be in the area.

How long did it take to get back into the recording sessions?

There were about two weeks where we couldn’t work more than an hour without getting some sort of alert – I didn’t have the brainpower to focus on it, because I was just like, “I need to make sure Frankenstein [Eddie Van Halen’s iconic parts guitar] is safe.”

Once stuff started to calm down, that’s when we really started slamming. There were two ideas I wanted to finish, but we didn’t have the time. They might show up on something else in the future.

Getting into some of the urgency that is on the record, there’s a really dramatic tempo pivot that kicks off the record, in the intro to One of a Kind.

I thought it’d be fun to really start this off with something different, almost like a jump-scare. You’re kind of lulled into this one thing, and then it explodes. But it was also fun to play with something that we hadn’t before, which was a dramatic time change.

It’s almost Sabbath – not the arrangement itself, but with how Sabbath get halfway through a song, and then they start chugging on something else and it’s badass. I also thought it was fun to tie that to the lyrical motifs of the song.

What’s the song about?

A lot of stuff on the album is about somebody losing themselves to some sort of negative influence. By the end of the song, that negative influence wins. That’s why I thought about ending on that really gross note – how it hits that last note and just feeds back for a little bit.

Something else that jumped out at listeners is the tapping intro to The End.

There’s a little callback in the intro to Source of Infection off of Van Halen’s OU812, where I think maybe Donn Landee says Take one, and then Dad does all this tapping stuff. I actually yelled that into the pickup of the guitar on The End, which was pretty funny.

But yeah… I had that idea for a bit, but it seemed a little over the top. I almost used it as a challenge of, like, “How can I make a song out of this?” It was one of the last ideas I pulled out for pre-pro. It was very inspiring and we had a lot of fun doing it.

People have been trying to sleuth out the slapping technique of your verse riff, too.

I really need to post a how-to video, but I haven’t had the time. But it’s literally just a slap bass part. And you’re plucking harmonics. Originally, the idea was to use it on the bass – like that one moment right before the first chorus, where it drops and the bass is playing it. But when I was showing my producer, Elvis Baskette, I was like, “I have this idea – imagine this on a bass,” and I did it on the guitar. Then he’s like, “Dude, you should do that on the guitar.”

Was it easier to throw that down on bass guitar or to transpose it onto Frankenstein?

On the guitar you almost have to lay back and be real soft with it, whereas with the bass you can dig in more, because obviously they’re bigger strings. But I found that the more I relaxed while doing it on guitar, the easier it was to get the sound I wanted.

An Instagram video you posted reveals you’ve got some electrical tape covering the D string, near the pickups.

That’s just a studio trick to make sure there’s no buzz. It was just to deaden any possible extraneous noise. Obviously, I don’t really have a problem doing the riff live now, but when you’re recording, you just want it to be as quiet as possible.

You’ve used Frankenstein on earlier Mammoth records. Have you learned anything in particular about how to harness the sound of that guitar over the years?

Not really. But any moment I have it in my hands… just being able to hold something that my dad had such a history with is nice, since my dad’s not around anymore. It’s a little bittersweet, but it’s a nice thing to have on the record with me. I think that’s why I try to bring it out on every record.

Do you have that same kind of connection with other pieces of gear at 5150?

Pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, just the fact I’m recording in 5150 is enough. But because Frankenstein is arguably one of the most famous instruments in music history, let alone guitars… the emotional and historical weight of it all is a lot to handle. You almost have to push it to the side and just enjoy the moment.

How defining a factor is your own signature EVH SA-126 on this record?

I have a ’burst – I believe it was the second prototype of the 126 – and that was the backbone of Mammoth II. Pretty much everything recorded on The End was the goldtop 126 I have now, other than the Frankenstein guitar parts. It’s just been so fun to have this instrument that Matt Bruck, Chip Ellis and I put together become the defining sound of what Mammoth has become.

How about the guitar amps?

Amp-wise, it’s pretty straightforward, and it’s what we’ve been using on tour, which is the 50 watts. I have the EVH 5150 III 6L6, and the specific one I have in the studio is the one I used for the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows [in 2022]. The cabinet, too.

I Really Wanna has some great phases running through it. Can I assume that’s a classic MXR in there?

Yeah! The other effects I used were just fuzzy sorts of vibes. We have this Foxx Tone pedal we used a lot. We always had a layer of Uni-Vibe… or maybe it was a Univox? Elvis is the guy for all the effects.

I’m never really relying on an effect unless it’s something extremely specific – like on Happy, we used the MXR Rockman [X100 Analog Tone Processor] for this clean lead over the chorus, so it really cuts through. And during The Spell there’s a lead thing starting in the second chorus where we’re doing wah, just to sweeten it up.

The Spell is driven by those funky sharp-ninths. Where did that song come up in the process?

I was thinking of Lenny Kravitz when I was writing that song, paired with a ’70s rock vibe. It felt vintage, because I’m doing what I guess people call the “Hendrix chord.” But I also think of the last note Dad hits on You Really Got Me – a lot of Van Halen songs end with that big note. But that’s definitely one of my favorite choruses on the record. I’m happy with that one.

You mentioned Happy earlier – that song feels like one of the larger vocal showcases on The End.

With that initial vocal melody in the verse, I was basically thinking of Failure and Nirvana. And in that headspace, I was like, “We should straight-up do a Smells Like Teen Spirit sort of thing and have the guitar solo be that vocal melody.”

That song starts off with the lyric “I need control – it shows.” How could that line speak to the broader experience of making music on your own as Mammoth?

You could certainly make that comparison, but with the overarching theme of the record and anxiety, I think it’s more about trying to find your comfort zone amid chaos. That’s a criticism I never saw coming, honestly. Like, “He’s really selfish because he plays everything.”

I always thought it was just a fun thing for me to do. I’ve been in bands before where it’s been a collaborative effort, and it’s very much still a thing with me and my producer, Elvis. He helps me to avoid second-guessing myself, and he tells me when I should keep digging on something.

But a lot of people say things like, “Why don’t you just have other people on the record? It’ll deepen the sound,” or some real ethereal bullshit like, “You’ll give it more zhuzh if you have more people on it.” [Laughs] I don’t know… this is exactly how I want it, and I’m very happy with it.

The music world faced a great loss this summer with the death of Ozzy Osbourne. The day he passed, you performed his song Mama, I’m Coming Home in Hartford, Connecticut. How did Ozzy’s death impact you at that moment?

I think it was around three o’clock that day when we all looked at our phones and everybody went silent. It was really tough. We felt like we needed to do something, because how could you not? He affected everything we do, forever. It would’ve felt weird to go out there and try to play Crazy Train or Paranoid. Mama, I’m Coming Home felt like the right thing to do.

I was very nervous because I didn’t have all the lyrics memorized, and I didn’t even know how to play it. But we sat in the dressing room and listened to it over and over again. We played through it two-and-a-half times in soundcheck, and then we kept doing it acoustically backstage. I don’t even remember the rest of the show because I was so focused on Mama. I didn’t want to mess it up.

You didn’t play Crazy Train that night, but was that a formative song for you to work your hands around, as a developing guitarist?

Absolutely, which is why it was such an insane thing to be asked by Ozzy and Sharon to play it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction he had last year. And knowing my dad’s connection with Sabbath… he would tell me all the time about that tour in 1978 where Van Halen opened for them. One of my dad’s favorite riffs of all time was Into the Void.

You had to pull out of Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert in Birmingham. What would you have played? Was there a plan in place?

Not really. It was all very down-to-the-wire. The rehearsal schedule kept moving, because obviously it was an incredibly monumental thing to put together. I don’t put missing the show on anyone – it was a crazy thing to organize.

But the rehearsal dates for this tour kept looming over everything, and the rehearsal dates for Back to the Beginning kept changing. We just weren’t able to do both, and that really sucked, but I’m happy I was able to do the Hall of Fame thing, so at least I got to see Ozzy, give him a hug and talk to him a little bit.

Are you excited to transition from doing these six-song shows with Creed into playing the fuller, hour-and-a-half sets on your own headlining tour this fall?

This is going to be our craziest tour yet. Up until now, all the headline shows we’ve done have been mainly performance focused. We didn’t have much of a show built around it other than lights and a backdrop.

This time we’re bringing stuff we’ve never brought out before. And now that we have three albums of material to pick from, I’m excited to really cater the set wherever we go. It’s going to be a good time.

We don’t necessarily want to ruin a surprise, but are you going to be killing any vampires on stage during The End?

[Laughs] No, there’s not going to be much acting. Our show is just going to be a bit more souped up in comparison to what it’s been before.

• The End is out now via BMG.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Fresno, California, 1992: “I'd like to introduce the fourth and fifth members of Van Halen,” announced singer Sammy Hagar. “Prepare yourself for a pint-sized, whiskey-drinkin', crazy mother, because he's about to take the loudest, wildest, and most unusual rock ’n’ roll bass solo you've ever heard. Here they are – Mr. Michael Anthony and Mr. Jack Daniels!”

After a swig from a half-empty bottle of Tennessee sippin’ whiskey, bassist Michael Anthony cruises into his solo. His trademark J.D. bottle-shaped bass guitar pours out mellow, delay-enhanced notes that rise to the rafters.

Moments later the serenity ends, as a brutal blow to the top of Old #7 sends a wave of flanged, fuzz-drenched riffs crashing into the gathering. But Anthony’s just getting warmed up.

Scurrying back and forth on the stage, he quotes a phrase from The Star-Spangled Banner, kicks a stranded beach ball off the stage-right riser, and makes a left-hand turn towards Mt. Ampeg – finding himself face-to-face with 16 SVT 8x10s. (That's 128 speakers!)

And then the crowd-killing finale: standing inches away from the towering wall of cabs, Anthony lashes out and beats them with his hands until they howl with feedback, engulfing him in ear-shattering squeals. The crowd roars its approval.

Welcome to Ultra Bass, a foundation-shaking exhibition described by one writer as “the 4-string equivalent of painting with a sledge-hammer.”

“I started doing the solo during our 1979 tour,” Anthony told Bass Player back in November 1995. “Some kid came up to me after a show one night and said, ‘The New Barbarians were here the other week, and Stanley Clarke played a great solo but man, your solo kicked ass all over that!’

“I thought, ‘Is this the mentality of the people I'm playing for?!’ And I started to look at it as something more than the traditional, ‘Look how fast I can play’ thing.

“I've always loved dicking around with cheap MXR and Colorsound effects, so I tried to put together something that would throw everybody for a loop. One day I played through a fuzz, and the guys all said, ‘That's great!’”

Were you tempted to throw in a tapping part?

“No. The last thing I want someone to say is, ‘Wow, he's trying to be like his guitar player!’ I can do some of the tapping stuff, but in that band, why? Being that I was playing with the guy who invented it, I didn't see the need.”

You've also been known to throw your bass around.

“Yeah – I used to have a Yamaha BB2000 that would get rebuilt after every show. For the Monsters of Rock tour I got a guy to make me a bass with the mechanism from a shotgun that opens the barrels. I would run across the stage doing all these synthesized sounds, hit the lever behind the neck, and ‘break’ the bass over my head while our sound guy played samples of trees cracking!”

And the bass could just be snapped back together?

"Sure, but my tech had to run around the stage and find all the bridge saddles and hardware! The techs back then didn't appreciate what I did during my solo, because they'd have to get the bass working for the next show.”

How did the idea for the Jack Daniels bass come about?

“I used to drink quite a bit of Jack Daniels, and everyone would say to me, ‘You should have a bass that looks like a J.D. bottle!’ So I got together with a couple of guys on our crew, and we put together the first Jack Daniels bass. I had Charvel make the body and neck, and I added the tuners from another bass and got a Zeta piezo bridge. It was slapped together, but it didn't sound half-bad.

“The next thing you know, I had another one built by James Tyler in L.A. Originally, the J.D. bass was more of a novelty, but it was one of those things that caught on. All of a sudden, it became part of the show, part of my personality. [Editor's Note: The original J.D. bass is now on display at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.]”

Sammy Hagar's Best of All World tour is making its way to the UK, with an arena tour kicking off on July 4, 2026. The Red Rocker will be joined by his all-star lineup consisting of Joe Satriani, Van Halen's Michael Anthony, and renowned session drummer Kenny Aronoff.

It's Hagar's first UK tour since 1996 and one which celebrates his five-decade-plus catalog, including a healthy dose of Van Halen. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts will also be joining as special guests, alongside opening act JAYLER.

“I can’t wait to cross the Atlantic with the Best of All Worlds Band,” comments Hagar. “Fans in the UK and Europe have waited a long time – and so have I!”

The supergroup is set to take the stage at Manchester’s AO Arena on July 4, followed by BP Pulse Live in Birmingham on July 5, Leeds’ First Direct Bank Arena on July 7, and finally, the O2 Arena in London on July 9.

Last year's US Best of All Worlds tour saw Satriani tackle some tasty Eddie Van Halen solos – a role that the virtuoso hasn't taken lightly. In fact, Satriani switched up his rig to make sure that it could capture Van Halen's iconic tone, even calling it “a different animal.”

“My rig doesn't work because my live rig is designed so that I can play above the 12th fret on the first strings and still have everything sound fat,” he told Guitar World. “I realized there's no way to play the Van Halen stuff on my rig.”

Elsewhere, Satriani also discussed his years-long search for the quintessential Van Halen tone, which will be on full display during the upcoming Best of All Worlds dates.

Tickets for the UK leg of the tour go on sale this Friday (October 31) at 10 am BST/5 am ET. For more information, visit Sammy Hagar's official website.

Wolfgang Van Halen is an authority on all-things-Van Halen, so when he joined up with Ola Englund to demonstrate how to play his new Mammoth single The End – and deliver a tapping masterclass in the process – we tuned in, ready to take notes.

During the interview the Mammoth bandleader touched on his two distinct approaches to tapping, which he differentiates between two of Eddie Van Halen's most famed guitar solos. Not only that, he explained how to play them.

“Being the Van Halen spawn, I look at tapping in two different ways. There’s Eruption, and there’s Hot For Teacher,” he details, EVH guitar in hand, in the video below. “The Eruption tapping is when you're barring [with your fretting hand] and it's very straight. The Hot For Teacher tapping is more rolling and rhythmic.”

Wolfgang explains it was the Hot For Teacher tapping school of thought that shaped The End, which features an equally explosive lead run during the intro. Rather appropriately the song’s music video also nods to the Van Halen track.

“It’s super simple,” he says of that particular line. “Since I'm a drummer first, I take everything rhythmically. Then you have to try singing on top of it later, which is funny.”

Notably, the rhythm starts with the open E string on the 'four-and' beat of the bar, ensuring that the second group of taps sync with the following bar. In a previous interview, he also explained how his dad’s tapping techniques differ from most players, and it makes a huge difference to the sound.

While speaking to Englund, Wolfgang was also keen to address comparisons between The End’s slapping riff – which he recorded on Eddie’s iconic Frankenstein guitar – and Van Halen’s 1981 hit, Mean Street.

“Obviously, I understand the connection, but I wrote this as a bass slap part, and when I showed it to my producer [Michael "Elvis" Baskette] just before recording, I was like, ‘I don't have a bass, but it sounds like this…’ and he said, ‘You should do it on guitar.’”

Trapping his guitar pick in the crook of his third finger, Wolfgang explains, “What you're doing is, you're slapping [with your thumb] and popping with these two fingers [first and second].”

“Hit the open E, then you're gonna do the mute percussion [one hit with each hand], then you're hitting the A and G harmonics at the seventh fret [with percussive hits in between].”

The end phrase syncopates with a drum flam for added tightness. It's a bit of a mouthful, so it's probably best to watch the master at work in the full video.

In related Wolfgang news, he has spoken about how he took a huge career risk covering Van Halen songs with Dave Grohl, and has revealed he’s stopped listening to his dad’s music.

Wolfgang Van Halen has spent much of his career attempting to step out from under his late father’s shadow, and has worked to forge a musical journey of his own via Mammoth.

That said, many fans still hope to see him play his late father’s best electric guitar licks live, but Wolfgang is all too aware of the risk that comes with trying to pull them off.

Mammoth has allowed Wolfgang to move forward musically after Eddie Van Halen’s passing. The project finds him writing and recording all the instruments – a practice that separates him from the late Eddie Van Halen.

Wolfgang has, however, played Van Halen songs live a few times since his father passed in 2020. He played On Fire and Hot For Teacher at the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows, and later reunited with the Foo Fighters for a fantastic Eruption-themed shred gag in May 2024. He says he put it on the line for those gigs.

“I was like, ‘This is either going to be a nice coda to Van Halen or it’s going to ruin my life,’” a reflective Wolfgang tells Metal Hammer. “I don’t think I would have ever been able to live it down – with how many people who hate me and say, ‘You’ll never be good enough and you have to play Van Halen to be relevant’ – if the one time I played Van Halen on my own, I ruined it and messed up.

“In my mind, it would have ruined my life had I messed up. I took it very seriously.”

Back in June, Wolfgang went as far as to reveal that he’s since stopped listening to Van Halen, although he is keeping his dad close by recording some choice Mammoth riffs and licks on his legendary Frankenstein. And with Mammoth album number three releasing in October, he’s looking to push further away from the family name to carve a legacy out in his own right.

Mammoth have recently dropped the WVH tag from their name as the band readies their third album, having launched their forthcoming LP with The End, which includes a nod to Hot For Teacher in the music video.

Meanwhile, Sammy Hagar is still holding out hope that Wolfgang will appear at a Best of All Worlds show in the future. Going off what he’s saying here, that might be a bit optimistic, although he did admit in June that there would be exceptions to the rule.

“I’ll play it for fun every now and then,” he continues in his Metal Hammer chat. “If Dave Grohl comes to me and goes like, ‘Hey, you wanna do this?’ Like, ‘Yes, Dave Grohl, I would like to do that with you.’ But, overall, it’s really a tough thing for me.”

Sammy Hagar has responded to David Lee Roth’s apparent trolling of him at a recent show by saying he believes the singer’s fairly outlandish 'ghost of Eddie Van Halen' claims.

In fact, he’s read it as an attempt by the Yankee Rose singer to rebuild their broken relationship.

Hagar claimed that his new single, Encore, Thank You Goodnight, was written after the ghost of Eddie Van Halen appeared to him in a dream and showed him a lick. The original statement dates back to 2022, but it wasn’t until he’d tapped up Best of All Worlds bandmate Joe Satriani to complete the song that Eddie’s supernatural shredding saw the light of day, with the song released in April 2025.

In response, Roth told his audience at a recent show in Hampton Beach that he, too, had been visited by Van Halen’s spirit at his hotel room. There, he told Roth that the lick he showed Hagar was actually Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida backwards.

Many thought Roth’s tongue-in-cheek claims were hilarious, but Hagar doesn’t see the funny side. His take is rather different.

Commenting on an Instagram post by Metal Addicts reporting Roth's claims, Hagar wrote: “I can't believe social media is trying to make something out of this. This is the first compliment and real olive branch moment Dave and I have had in 100 years.”

In Hagar’s mind, Roth is trying to find common ground between the band’s two biggest singers after years of tension and animosity.

“Listen closely and you will see that this is not negative whatsoever,” the Red Rocker continues. “And I believe Dave had the dream as well. Dave's a good storyteller, but there's some truth in between the showmanship. All good with me, keep it up, Dave. These songs we both wrote with Eddie need to be carried on forever.”

Hagar’s response may be unexpected, but it’s dignified. The two singers have been perpetually at war with one another since Roth left Van Halen in 1985 and hired Steve Vai to launch a solo career that, he hoped, would overshadow his former outfit.

They’ve both come and gone from the band in the intervening years, and fans have constantly compared and contrasted them. But since Eddie’s passing in 2020, Hagar has been determined to pay tribute to the virtuoso on stages.

Last year, Alex Van Halen revealed that David Lee Roth’s refusal to pay tribute to Eddie was the reason a reprised Van Halen, featuring Joe Satriani, never got off the ground. Since then, Hagar has put the Best of All Worlds band together in its stead to celebrate Eddie’s legacy by playing songs from both Roth and Hagar eras of the band.

Mind, it probably didn’t help the cause that Hagar recently said Eddie Van Halen was a richer musician because of him, believing he was more fulfilled creatively with him in the band.

The beef between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar is showing no signs of simmering down, with Roth firing shots at Hagar after his claims about the origins of his new single.

The Red Rocker released Encore, Thank You, Goodnight back in April, after the late Eddie Van Halen came to him in a dream and showed him a new lick. Joe Satriani and the rest of the Best of All Worlds band were then tapped up to complete the song’s transition from dream realm to the real world, with Hagar seeing it as a celebration of the guitar hero’s life and legacy.

Roth, who fronted the band’s swan song album, A Different Kind of Truth, doesn’t seem convinced that Hagar’s story is true. Now he’s responded in typically flamboyant fashion.

During his recent show in Hampton Beach, the band pulled back midway through Dance the Night Away so Roth could tell the crowd that Eddie's ghost had visited him, too.

“One of my esteemed colleagues, he's a contemporary, he's got a great voice, he's got a great catalog. You all know Sammy Hagar, right?” Roth began, teeing himself up (via Blabbermouth).

“Sammy, aloud, described to the media about six weeks ago that the ghost of Eddie Van Halen had visited him and graced him with a song that he had memorized, and then he went home and recorded it. It's on the internet.

“I don't know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me at the fucking hotel room. I was watching the weather report, and he came in, laughing.

“I said, ‘What did you do now?’ He said, ‘Dave, Dave… Dave, you know that song I gave Hagar?’ I said, ‘What now?’ He said, ‘It's actually [Iron Butterfly's] In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida backwards. Don't fucking tell him.’”

Roth then says the pair shared a “ghost cigarette” before a flash of their wicked sense of humor prevailed.

“I hugged my brother Ed, and I said, ‘Man, do I fucking miss you,’” Roth continues. “And he said, ‘I miss you too, Dave. But you know what? You should still go to hell.’ And I said, ‘Save me a seat.’”

Carlos Santana may be less cynical about Hagar’s story, however. He’s recently claimed that the fingerless spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan visited him in a dream and asked him to play through his Dumble amp so he could vicariously enjoy playing guitar one last time.

Hagar, meanwhile, has been making some other believe-it-or-not statements about Eddie Van Halen, including that he was “dried up” by the 2000s. That's why the band only produced one album after 1998’s Gary Cherone-fronted LP, Van Halen III.

He’s also said that Eddie was more interested in cello than guitar in his final months, but he refused to show his former bandmate what he could do on the classical instrument.

Meanwhile, Steve Vai has opened up on his time in DLR’s solo band, and how he was hired to “beat Van Halen.”

Steve Vai has opened up on his early experiences in David Lee Roth’s band, recalling how he felt destined for the role – and how he navigated inevitable comparisons to the singer's former guitar foil, Eddie Van Halen.

In 1985, Roth – fresh from leaving Van Halen – went about establishing his solo career. In his new band, an elite electric guitar player who could keep up with the level Roth experienced in Van Halen – and one who could hold down a spot previously held by the era’s greatest guitar player – was a priority.

For Vai’s part, though, he saw the Roth gig as one of the most hallowed spots in contemporary rock at the time, and viewed himself as tailor-made for the job – and it wasn’t long before Roth came calling.

Speaking about his experience in Roth’s band in a new episode of Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, Vai remembers, “When the word was out that David Lee Roth was putting a band together and he was looking for a guitarist, I mean, it was probably the most coveted rock guitar position.

“I was in my little apartment on Fairfax Street in Hollywood, and as soon as I heard that news, I turned to my roommate and I said, ‘That's my gig.’

“It was just this intuitive, little voice that said, ‘No matter what you do, even if you don't want it, it's your gig.’ It's just one of those things. The next day, the phone rings and it's Dave.”

Playing guitar for Roth, who had been working with Van Halen up until that point, naturally came with added pressure.

Furthermore, the perception of Roth’s band was one of competition, and although the singer had grand designs for a project that could match up to the might of Van Halen, Corgan ultimately notes, “Dave didn't do what he set out to do, which was beat Van Halen.”

“I just knew that I could make it work, because I had a rock and roll fire that I loved in me,” Vai elaborates of his experience in the band. “I knew that I wasn't going to try to sound like Edward or do anything like him, because people are very hip to that.

“We didn't have the songs. Van Halen had the songs for that kind of success,” Vai adds of the two group’s differing levels of success. “They're good songs, but Eddie, he's got his whole ear for writing. That's the secret. That's the secret sauce. You can't replace that.

“We had great music. I love the music, but when I say we didn't have the songs, I'm talking about those specific things that cross over at radio.”

In the mid-1980s, Vai wasn't the only guitar player in the mix to join Roth's band. Recently, Steve Stevens revealed he too was approached for the gig.

Van Halen’s Eruption is widely regarded as the crème de la crème of shred guitar, and when it was released in 1976, it changed the face of guitar forever. Now, São Paulo guitar prodigy Filipe Rosset has put his own spin on the legendary cut by playing its two-handed tapping parts... with just one hand.

Boasting a handspan that looks like it could stretch across different zip codes, the Gibson-endorsed artist shows formidable finger reach by anchoring down with his first finger. He then lets his other digits dance across the fretboard of his Les Paul Standard. He's made life twice as hard for himself, but it's also twice as impressive.

Rosset has a serious concentration face as he pulls off what is a staggering feat, and who can blame him? Perhaps even more impressive is the cleanliness with which he nails the spot. And it even has a similar tapping-like tonality to it, thanks to his seamless legato techniques.

The number of fire emojis in the comments section of Rosset’s Instagram post, captioned, “Eruption with one hand!” is well warranted. But Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian perhaps ‘said’ it best with his comment – a trio of emojis with their minds being blown.

Looking through the rest of Rosset’s feed, it’s clear to see why Gibson welcomed him into its clan, putting him in good company alongside everyone from Jimmy Page and Slash to new blood guitar heroes Lzzy Hale and Marcus King.

He’s also showing just what’s possible with one hand, if you stretch those digits. There’s a particularly funny moment in one of his Instagram videos when Dream Theater keyboard wizard and Strandberg signature artist Jordan Rudess looks gobsmacked at his hands. Filipe Rosset is most certainly a name to keep your eye on.

Back in May, a painstakingly put-together free-to-watch documentary, charting the release and legacy of Eruption, was released. It features countless interview clips from Eddie Van Halen, along with a pertinent line from the band's producer, Ted Templeman, justifying signing the band, saying, “I just wanted that genius to be recognized by the world.”

Meanwhile, Dweezil Zappa has used Eruption in a thoughtful experiment to see if guitar players at a recent clinic could tell the difference between tube amps and digital modelers.

Mark Tremonti has reflected on the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” of writing and recording Alter Bridge's new album at Eddie Van Halen's 5150 Studios, having been afforded the chance by the late electric guitar legend’s son.

For their eighth, self-titled album – and first since 2022’s Pawns & Kings – Mark Tremonti, Myles Kennedy, and co. said they wanted to “approach the process differently.” Their friendship with Mammoth mastermind Wolfgang Van Halen helped them achieve that, with the band moving into the studios built by Eddie Van Halen, where Van Halen recorded some of their most seminal albums.

In its hallowed spaces, the band and longtime producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette enjoyed writing sessions, pre-production, and drum recording during their month-long stay.

“It gives you the confidence like, ‘We must be doing something right if we’re allowed to be here on this hallowed ground of rock ‘n’ roll’,” says Tremonti via an Instagram post.

“After working for hours, you almost fall into a daydream and forget where you are. Every now and then, you’ll look at the wall, snap out of it, and think, ‘I can’t believe we’re here’. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a dream come true.”

The 5150 sessions were a poignant moment for Tremonti, who had been taken under EVH’s wing during his Creed days.

“I remember Eddie going, ‘Hey, who’s the guitar player?’ and I raised my hand,” Tremonti told Classic Rock last year, looking back on Creed's two shows supporting Van Halen in 1998.

The late shredder was incredibly supportive of a young Tremonti and gifted him his “most prized possession” the next day, with Eddie muscling through a crowd of screaming fans to give it to him.

Over the years, their connection grew. Wolfgang has spent time in Tremonti's solo band and has also helped out in Alter Bridge, leading to a role reversal as Tremonti found himself playing to a crowd that included Eddie Van Halen.

He told Loudwire in January. “He [Eddie Van Halen] came to an Alter Bridge show in LA when Wolfgang was filling in on drums. You'll play a show and see him there, smiling, looking down. It was hard to shake the nerves, but it felt good him being there.

“We went to see them [Van Halen] practice at 5150 Studios, and they were playing the new album [2012's A Different Kind of Truth],” he continued. “They finished a song and I was like, ‘Wolfie, that was a killer song, I loved when you did all the chordy stuff,’ and Eddie was like, ‘Were...were my parts good?’ You're Eddie Van Halen, your parts are always good! But he was always pushing to be the best he could be.”

Tremonti has been road-testing his hotly anticipated pedal line, with one of his creations poised to be “going after the Klon.” These pedals likely feature on the new Alter Bridge album, alongside what he feels is the unbeatable combination of PRS guitars and Dumble amps.

As Halestorm gear up for the release of their new album, Everest, Lzzy Hale has reflected on the guitarists and artists who have inspired her career so far – including the multi-instrumentalist carrying a very famous name who she believes will “save rock ‘n’ roll.”

“He’s a humble kid, there’s none of that ‘I’m a rock star’s kid’ stuff,” she tells Classic Rock, referring to Wolfgang Van Halen.

“I’ve met quite a few of those guys that think that they’re better than everybody else because their dad was famous. That’s never been Wolfie.”

She also recounts the moment the Mammoth frontman took her and the band to Eddie Van Halen's iconic home studio. “He took us to 5150, and it still had all the tapes up there,” she waxes lyrical.

"There was Jump, the old analog tapes, everything marked, everything organized to a T. And we’re like: ‘Are we supposed to be in here?’ He’s like: ‘Oh yeah, Dad won’t mind.’

“I’m like, this isn’t just anybody’s dad’s garage! I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll.

“He’s a part of that small club of rock stars that are like: ‘Hey, you are more than welcome to be a part of this cool thing that we’re doing, but we don’t need you, we’re gonna do it anyway.’”

Meanwhile, the younger Van Halen has dropped the ‘WVH’ tag from his newly rebranded band name, Mammoth, and revealed why he made this subtle yet momentous decision.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted it to be. It’s just that we didn’t have the trademark,” he explained. “And so now that we do, we can finally be what I’ve always wanted to be. I mean, I always say 'Mammoth' at the shows anyway. Now it’s just official.”

When Ross Hogarth stepped into the hallowed halls of Eddie Van Halen’s 5150 studios to work on A Different Kind of Truth, he held one golden rule in mind, and very quickly learned the quirks of the shredder’s recording process.

“You don't come into a Van Halen record and tell Eddie, ‘Well, here, this is how we're going to do it,’” he tells the Agartha Podcast. “You come into Ed's world, and you see what he's doing.”

The producer – who had previously worked on Mötley Crüe's Girls Girls Girls and with acts as diverse as Miley Cyrus and Devildriver – was used to working with big stars. Handling Eddie Van Halen not only proved an easy challenge but a hugely enjoyable one, as he tapped into the virtuoso's love for gear and all things nerdy.

“Most of Ed's records are not double tracked, because he would play the part with all these nuances and squeals,” Hogarth explains of why Van Halen avoided double-tracking his guitar parts.

“Guitar players, when they know they're going to double the guitar, simplify their part so they don't have to worry about learning every little nuance. If you try to double it, you can hear all the imperfections.”

Even with a formidable reputation for rock star wrangling, Hogarth knew better than to push for the guitarist to buck that trend on album 12. But he spotted how to broaden his sound, and Van Halen was wholly receptive.

“He wasn't using ribbon mics – he was using one cabinet, he had two Shure SM57s, and he split them, and he would delay them a little differently. So it wasn't a dedicated analog bounce of stereo left and right,” Hogarth recalls.

Recording at 5150 meant that tapping into EVH's vast, air-conditioned storage units was a doddle, and together they pulled out relics from the band's early days.

“I said, ‘You've got this splitter here that you use for live shows. Do you want to try messing around? Just for me, can we pull out the old Marshall and some of your old gear?’”

EVH had retired his 1967/68 1959 Marshall Super Lead after using the tube amp on Van Halen's first few records. This made for an unlikely return.

“We started having a really good time blending two amps, using two heads and two cabinets with the SM57s,” Hogarth expands. “He already started to like that because the left and right speakers were doing this little stereo air dance.”

The result was a much broader sound, with the two heads dialed in to complement and contrast one another. However, the nature of the SM57 microphones meant that low-end was hard to come by. So Hogarth drafted in his secret weapon, a tube-powered Royer R-122V ribbon mic.

“Ed was amazingly intuitive,” the producer/engineer continues. “I'd watch him sitting there listening to playback, turning the Royers up and down, and he's starting to really get off, because they were bringing natural low end.

“It was bringing in a whole other midrange frequency that made the guitar really start to speak. He totally understood it within five minutes, and he was like, ‘Fuck yeah!’”

Elsewhere, Paul Reed Smith has recalled the time EVH asked him to build a guitar for him.

It’s no secret that soundtracks can make or break a movie – and in the case of the John Wick franchise, its moody theme, courtesy of composer Tyler Bates, gives life to the movies' thrilling action sequences.

However, it was recently revealed that the soundtrack could have perhaps been elevated even further if a certain guitar hero had ended up being involved...

“At one point, we almost had Eddie Van Halen play on the John Wick theme, toward the end of his life,” Bates divulges in an interview with ScreenRant.

“[It was on John Wick 2 or 3.] He came over to my place. It was really sweet of him to come over, and he hung out for a while, but I got the sense he was not in the mindset that he really wanted to do anything.

“He said he hadn’t played for quite a while. We spoke on the phone a couple of times after he split. I wanted him to touch my guitar, but I didn’t want to say, ‘Will you touch my guitar?’

Bates continues, “Anyway, he called me a number of times and I just said, ‘Look, Ed, you live 10 minutes from me. If you want to do this, I’ll set up a guitar for you, and if you don’t like what we do, I’ll just destroy it in front of you. He really, really appreciated that.’”

And while a musical collaboration didn't transpire, a friendship between the two did bloom. “From that point on, the only times we were talking were about his health battles and stuff. I’m imagining he sensed that I’d been through a few things myself, so it was relatable.”

Another high-profile collaboration that could have happened? Keanu Reeves. Despite being a dedicated bassist and, more importantly, the face of the franchise, Reeves refused to get involved on the music front, despite Bates approaching him multiple times.

“I asked Keanu, ‘Hey dude. Why don’t you just play bass on the John Wick theme? No-one even has to know, but it would be cool for all of us just to connect that way. We would love it.’ He was like, ‘Tyler, come on, man. You’ve got to do it.’”

His reason? “He didn’t want to just take some pony ride on the score only to have it leak out at some point, and [he] probably knew that he would get all the credit for the score,” Bates tells ScreenRant.

Despite not managing to team up with either Van Halen or Reeves, the composer did recently collaborate with alt-metal juggernauts Evanescence and singer-songwriter K.Flay on the soundtrack to John Wick spin-off, Ballerina – while Jerry Cantrell recorded his own contribution for John Wick 2 entitled A Job to Do.

Meanwhile, in the Eddie Van Halen universe, Sammy Hagar recently talked about his musical dynamic with EVH and why the virtuoso stopped releasing music in the 2000s.

Wolfgang Van Halen has revealed he no longer listens to his dad’s music, owing to the fact his connection to the legendary electric guitar icon runs far deeper than the average listener.

Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020, and the Mammoth mastermind is still feeling the weight of his absence five years on, saying that his death caused a “black hole” in his life.

Musically, Wolfgang always put distance between Van Halen’s legacy and his own songwriting in a bid to be respected and acknowledged for his talents, not his lineage. And, though WVH had his dad spiritually present at his wedding – his wife walked down the aisle to a track written about him by the late guitar hero – he’s since stopped listening to his music.

“I just don’t listen to Van Halen anymore. I understand, like, that’s the connection that everybody has. But, obviously, my connection was a little different,” he tells Drumeo (via Guitar.com) “When it comes to listening to it, I have the memories.”

He goes on to say that Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s brother and the band’s drummer, is going through similar motions. He sold all his drum gear last year, seemingly putting an end to the hopes of any reunion tribute shows with him involved.

Alex has since published an autobiography focusing on his relationship with Eddie and released the last song they ever worked on together.

“Al was already a private guy to begin with,” Wolfgang continues. “Now, it’s like, why would you want to play? [But] I’m sure he probably keeps the chops up every now and then.

“I’m so happy of the time that I was able to be in that three-piece with Dad and Al,” he adds, simply happy to have shared moments together while they had the chance.

Wolfgang has previously discussed the nerves he faces when it comes to the prospect of covering Van Halen songs live, and the lengths he goes to in order to get the sound right, but doing that has become extremely rare.

“I’m really just not interested in playing it anymore without Dad,” he explains. “And I know he [Alex] feels the exact same way.

“I’ll play it for fun every now and then. If Dave Grohl comes to me and goes like, ‘Hey, you wanna do this?’ Like, ‘Yes, Dave Grohl, I would like to do that with you.’ But, overall, it’s really a tough thing for me.”

Still, he stays close to his father’s spirit. As was the case with his previous records, he’s revealed that his latest single, The End, was partly tracked on his dad’s infamous Frankenstein Strat because it makes him “feel closer to Pop every time I record”.

The track’s music video is going to be hard to beat in 2025: it features guest appearances from Slash, Myles Kennedy, zombies, and a heart-warming nod to the Hot For Teacher video.

Ever wondered about your best gig ever (so far)? Every musician has one – and for Pat Travers, it was sharing the stage with a host of legendary names at Day on the Green, a recurring concert series at the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum. Promoted by rock impresario Bill Graham, the series began in 1973 and drew some of the biggest acts of the era and crowds of around 65,000 people.

“The best show I ever did was 1978 in Oakland, California,” Travers tells tells Rick Beato. “It's Aerosmith headlining, Foreigner, my band [Pat Travers Band], AC/DC, and Van Halen. Five bands starting at 11 a.m.

“So I'm not sure if Van Halen went on first, or AC/DC did. One of them did. It didn't matter. And of course, Bill Graham was the best, and the backstage area had AstroTurf and tables and umbrellas, trailers – and everybody's hanging out together.”

The fantasy lineup of classic rock musicians extended to Travers' backstage encounters – including a comical one with none other than Steven Tyler.

“That was the first time I met Steven Tyler, and that's so funny. Somebody from my record company says, ‘Pat, you got to meet Steven Tyler.’ And I went, ‘Yeah, I've just got to meet Steven Tyler.’

“So they walk me over. He's sitting in a chair underneath an umbrella with a frozen daiquiri, and he's got big mirrored aviators and the biggest dive watch I ever saw, and he's just sitting there, and someone goes, ‘Hey, Steven, this is Pat – Pat, this is Steve.’ And I go, ‘Hey, Steve, how you doing?’”

Tyler’s response? “He goes, ‘My fucking lips are killing me.’ [laughs] I liked him, just loved him immediately. I went, ‘That's my kind.’ He just didn't get it. I mean, he had chapped lips because it was so dry out there, yeah, but he [had] forgotten that, ‘Oh, by the way, your lips are so big you can whisper in your own ear.’ It's funny.”

Another one for the books? An encounter with two guitar greats, and a photo to prove it. “There's a great picture of Eddie [Van Halen], Pat Thrall, and myself backstage. Oh man, we look awesome – three guitar players, just 24 years old.”

In the same Rick Beato interview, Travers revealed he owned three Gibsons by the age of 16 – all of which met an unfortunate demise.