PRS is teaming up with Jon Jourdan – the touring guitarist of Wolfgang Van Halen’s Mammoth – on a single-pickup, single-control guitar, modeled after Jourdan’s main touring instrument.

While PRS has launched a few single-pickup models over the years – most notably the LP Junior-style PRS SE One, which developed a cult following – these are much rarer releases for the brand. In fact, Jourdan’s signature is a limited run, as just 200 guitars are up for grabs.

Featuring an all-mahogany guitar with a single PRS Metal pickup in the treble position, Jordan had the volume control moved to the tone pot's traditional location, as he typically plays with the volume wide open. This tweak ensures he won't accidentally hit it when going all out on stage.

When asked why he opted for scaled-back specs, Jourdan says, “At the end of the day, my guitar is a tool. I want it to do exactly what I need it to, so we took out all the ‘extra’ stuff I don’t need. This guitar sounds huge and is incredibly fun to play.

“There’s something about taking out any unnecessary wiring and removing the neck pickup so its magnets aren’t pulling on the strings that makes it feel alive. I can’t imagine anyone playing this guitar having a bad time.”

Other specs include a 22-fret Pattern Regular mahogany neck, ebony fretboard, and PRS adjustable stoptail bridge.

PRS’ quintessential bird inlays have been eliminated – as well as any other inlays, for that matter. However, the guitar does feature green Luminlay side dots so players can easily mark fret positions.

Priced at $4,200 (SE version, please!), there are two attractive finishes to choose from, Gunmetal Metallic and Platinum Metallic – which Mammoth fans can expect to see first-hand at the band’s ongoing The End Tour shows.

Head to PRS Guitars to find out more.

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.

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.

In 2023, Greta Gerwig's Barbie became a worldwide phenomenon – and, alongside it, a soundtrack that featured musical heavyweights such as Billie Eilish and Haim.

However, an even bigger surprise appearance came by way of Slash, who added his quintessential classic rock flavor to the track I'm Just Ken – sung by Ryan Gosling *ahem* Beach Ken – which also featured Wolfgang Van Halen and former Guns 'N Roses and Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese.

Slash further committed to the shtick by wielding his Les Paul at the 2024 Oscars, alongside Gosling... and a hundred Kens. And, according to the actor himself, that now-iconic performance hinged on Slash's appearance.

“I was just hoping that Slash would show up,” Gosling reveals in an interview with Josh Horowitz.

“I basically sold them on this idea that the only way I could do it is if we had – I forget what the number was – but, like, a hundred Kens, and a Busby Berkeley [pioneering film director and musical choreographer] number and Slash. I thought I gave them an impossible [task]. And they were like, ‘We'll do it.’”

There was one further – and significant – hurdle to overcome, however.

Gosling continues, “[They said], ‘Slash is going to be in Thailand the night before, he can't…’ And I was like, ‘Well, then I can't, because it's all about Slash at the end. We don't have Slash, we don't have a show.’”

Thankfully, Slash was also keen on the idea. “They're like, ‘Slash says he'll get on a plane and he'll do it,’” Gosling recalls.

“So we were rehearsing for weeks with the idea that Slash might come, even through to the dress rehearsal, right before we did the show. I came down the hallway and I saw this guitar case, and it had a skull with a top hat on it, and I knew that Slash had arrived.”

As for the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s performance, Gosling aptly says, “He shredded. He was so cool. He had been working on the part, memorizing it. He just couldn't have been cooler, and he saved the day. I don't think that show works without Slash at the end.”

The Barbie movie spawned many trends, including ones that impacted the guitar world. Beach Ken turned out to be a guitar aficionado after all – even donning a Gibson Jerry Cantrell acoustic in the movie.

Wolfgang Van Halen has proved himself a phenomenal guitar talent – but he didn’t learn it from his dad, who he has previously called a “great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher”.

So much so, in fact, that Eddie once phoned fellow virtuoso Paul Gilbert to ask if he could give Wolfgang lessons – but they never took place.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Gilbert has revealed what caused him to pass on teaching the young Van Halen.

“I would have loved to get together with Wolfgang, but we were just getting ready to go on a really long tour,” he says.

“[I said,] ‘Ed, that would be great. But you know, the flight’s tomorrow and I won’t be back for three months.’ By that time, I think whatever Wolfgang needed to know he had figured out.”

Ultimately, the lessons never came to pass. But were Gilbert to approach them today, he would likely take a different tack, as his teaching style has changed over the years.

“I realized not everybody should play like me,” he reflects. “So I try to listen to them. My goal is, I want to make things easier, see what they're doing and go, ‘There's an easier way to get that done.’

“I always have a plan B, like, ‘Well, if it doesn't work for you, that's OK.’ If I took a lesson from a Nashville guy on hybrid picking, I'd be like, ‘That's impossible for me.’ I'm never going to do that technique ever, for whatever reason. It just doesn't match my physiology.”

Gilbert isn’t going to force anyone to learn a technique that won’t help with what they want to play. But he isn’t adverse to showing them abilities they may never be able attain, either.

He admits he has developed a certain nostalgia for his early VHS instructionals – and is thinking of reviving the kind of woodshedding that changed the game for many aspiring shredders.

“The original way I taught was I wanted to show off a lot… and everybody loved it! I was very popular. Then I was also like, ‘Well, you shouldn’t do that, because you're just showing people stuff that is out of reach.’

“Lately, I've been thinking I should probably get back to that. I think it's inspiring, and [students] will still get something from it.”

In fact, Gilbert has found the urge to burn up the fretboard hard to resist of late, as evidenced on new album WROC (Washington’s Rules of Civility).

“There’s this athletic element where you want to prove that you can still swim – like you’re [23x Olympic medalist] Michael Phelps, ‘I can still swim just as fast as I did when I was 22!’” he said.

“That’s a hard thing to resist. And obviously, there are a lot of places where I didn’t resist and went crazy.”

Recording at Eddie Van Halen's legendary 5150 Studios is an experience most mere mortals can only dream of. Holding some of his gear, including the iconic Frankenstein, and examining it up close, is another beast altogether.

Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti got to do both – and it got their creative juices flowing.

The band was given the opportunity to record their self-titled eighth album at Van Halen’s studio with the blessing of longtime friend and former Tremonti bassist – and Eddie’s son – Wolfgang Van Halen.

“Wolf was incredibly kind enough to bring that offer up with our manager,” Myles Kennedy reveals in the latest issue of Guitar World when asked how this enviable opportunity came about.

“We were like, ‘Really?’ We knew the history of all the incredible music that had been made there. Just the fact that he trusted us enough to come in and not totally ruin the legacy really meant a lot.”

“It made us want to be better musicians and take advantage of the moment we had,” adds guitarist Mark Tremonti.

“When you have your guitar in your hand, and you're playing in that studio in the same spot those guys played in, there's no slop coming out. It's got to be on point. You’ve got to man up, you know?” Or, perhaps more aptly, “You’ve got to band up when you're in that situation.”

“If you know you're going into this sacred ground where all these incredible riffs have been constructed and recorded, the last thing you want to do is show up empty-handed,” continues Kennedy. “It was definitely fuel for the creative fire.”

As for whether the band encountered any of Van Halen's iconic gear during recording, Kennedy replies, “There were pieces of gear there they had set out, but nothing super iconic. We weren’t tracking with Frankenstein.

“Have I held Frankenstein? Yes,” he teases. “Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don't even know how to articulate that, but I got emotional – that was a pretty special moment.”

And it seems like Eddie himself would have approved of the band recording at 5150, as the Van Halen legend once attended an Alter Bridge show when Wolfgang was filling in on drums.

For more from Alter Bridge’s Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy, plus exclusive interviews with Joe Perry and Danielle Haim, pick up issue 602 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

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.

When Ozzy Osbourne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the second time in late 2024, Wolfgang Van Halen put years of virtuosic rivalry and shredded Crazy Train at the ceremony – but what did Ozzy make of the performance?

When the Prince of Darkness launched his post-Sabbath career with Blizzard of Ozz, Randy Rhoads became an immediate guitar hero, and to many, a worthy adversary to the incendiary talents of Eddie Van Halen at the time.

It seemed fitting, then, that Wolfgang would be the one to bring the two names together. On the night of Ozzy's induction, the Mammoth leader teamed up with Tool frontman James Maynard Keenan, Robert Trujillo, Chad Smith, and Andrew Watt to perform the track.

During his acceptance, Ozzy confessed, “If I hadn't met Randy Rhoads, I wouldn't be sitting here right now,” and it seems Wolfgang’s Rhoads impression received his seal of approval.

“At first I was like: ‘Was that good enough?!’’” Wolfgang, in a moment of self-reflection, says of his reaction to the performance in a new interview with Classic Rock. It turns out, any lingering self-doubt was unnecessary.

“His [Ozzy’s] exact words, I believe, were: ‘It was bloody brilliant,’” Wolfgang adds. “He gave me a hug. That meant everything. And I got him to laugh.”

Touring commitments with his band, Mammoth, forced him to pull out of his scheduled appearance at Ozzy's farewell show, Back to the Beginning. So when the legendary singer passed just weeks later, he produced a tear-jerking cover of Mama I’m Coming Home in his honor.

“It sucks that we are in a world that doesn't have Ozzy Osbourne anymore,” he said before playing the song. Wolfgang had heard of Ozzy's passing during soundcheck and knew that “just mentioning it wasn’t enough.”

Elsewhere, Wolfgang has discussed what he believes is an underrated aspect of his dad's playing, and explained why Allan Holdsworth's avant-garde approach to guitar has become an important pillar of his own six-string identity.

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.

Wolfgang Van Halen was only 16 when the EVH 5150 III dropped in 2007. Since then, the guitar amp his father Edward made famous has become a huge success.

With that, Wolfgang has made an observation, telling GW, “I feel like you can’t be in a metal band without at least having a 5150 or using a ripoff of some sort.”

“It’s one of the most successful amp brands of all time,” adds Matt Bruck, the man who helped EVH develop the amp. “The legacy continues. We were incredibly fortunate to have Ed for the time that we had him. I’m humbled and honored by what it is, but I’m not surprised.”

“There’s a lot of pride involved,” says Van Halen, who plays 5150 IIIs live and in the studio. “I certainly have no problem representing and using it at every opportunity. The amp is really Matt and my dad’s baby. I’m just happy to be here and see it happen.”

What do you remember about how this amp was put together?

Bruck: The process was long and difficult, because the amp was reimagined from the ground up, which meant we had to establish a new foundation to build up from.

This meant a new chassis and formulating the transformers, which are amazing, built like a tank, and over spec’d – the way they should be if you’re going for something great.

Van Halen: I remember Dad testing it up in the studio. You could hear it from the bottom of the house, this slight feedback. As you went up toward the studio, it started to get louder. Then you opened the door to the first room, and it was a little louder.

When you opened the door to where the guitar was, there was a guitar sitting there, with every knob pinned, feeding back. He literally kept it there for a week, just to crash test it and make sure it didn’t explode. [Laughs] I think that’s the most rigorous testing an amp could go through.

Bruck: I wrote down all this shit so I’d have some facts, but I forgot about the story Wolf just told. I’m so happy he laid it out because it’s true. We were just getting to the end of development, which took about a year and three quarters, and the last phase was called “crash testing.”

Was “crash testing” a phrase Eddie coined, so to speak?

Bruck: It was where he would just try to destroy a piece of equipment. [Laughs] It was so when it went to market, it would be reliable. He just dimed the thing, left it leaning against the cabinet, and created this eternal feedback loop. I was terrified the place was going to burn down.

What was Eddie’s reaction to that?

Bruck: I was saying, “It’s going to get hot. It’s going to explode. We’re going to have a fire.” He was like, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll see how long it goes.” After about five days, he was like, “Okay, it passed the test.” That gives you insight into the uncanny genius and how much of an outside-the-box thinker Ed was.

Van Halen: It was like Dad’s version of how they test video game controllers – where they have a robot pressing a button three million times before it breaks. It was the amp version of that. [Laughs]

• Review: EVH's 5150III 50-Watt 6L6 Head is the perfect gigging and studio amp for discriminating players
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

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.

Wolfgang Van Halen has opened up on how some listeners are still caught up with unfairly critiquing his guitar chops by refusing to separate him from his late father, Eddie Van Halen.

As the mastermind behind Mammoth, a band with whom he writes and records all the parts, he’s carving out a name in his own right, away from his dad’s shadow.

Back in 2021, Wolfgang had said, “Dad would rather people not try and sound like him but sound like themselves,” and, following the release of his epic third album, The End, he is proving to be doing just that.

Yet, after years of reputation-building with Mammoth, he feels some fans still get hung up on his lineage.

“People tend to lose focus,” he tells Song Cake [interview below]. “They just sit there and go, ‘Oh, he doesn't play as well as his dad,’ or ‘It's not as good as this Van Halen song.’ It's all focused on the fact that I might not be tapping well enough in their opinion, or not playing well enough, rather than, hey, isn't it cool that I created this whole thing by myself with all these different pieces, all these different parts?

“It's about the song construction at the end of the day, for me, as it was for Dad, even though people seem to focus on the playing,” he develops. “It's about creating the song. Because if you don't have that, you just have shredding through scales. And there's not really much soul on that.”

To that, he points to one of the world’s foremost guitar players – one who was ranked the 8th best guitarist of the last two decades in a 2024 poll conducted by UK retailer guitar guitar, given the influence of her super stardom.

“Do you see Taylor Swift shredding scales?” Wolfgang asks. “I don't think so. She writes a song that makes you feel [something]. If you’ve got a melody and a song that makes you feel things, makes you remember somebody you lost, makes you miss something, makes you think of being back home, at the end of the day, that's what a song is about.”

That’s not to say Wolfgang doesn’t let loose. “There’s room for shreddiness,” he concedes.

He’s recently showcased his two tapping approaches – one of which a new Hot for Teacher–inspired Mammoth track springboards from.

In related news, Wolfgang has reflected on the risk of covering Van Halen songs live. Reflecting on his stint in the family band, he's also said that he often had to keep his dad in check.

Wolfgang Van Halen was one of the most notable absentees from Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s historic farewell show, Back to the Beginning. Now, Nuno Bettencourt has reflected on his absence, and discussed the incomparable pressures that come with performing the band's biggest hits.

Wolfgang was set to feature on a lineup that also boasted the likes of Jake E. Lee, Billy Corgan, Metallica, Halestorm, Tom Morello, Bettencourt and more. However, touring conflicts meant he had to drop out. It turned out Mammoth was kicking off a tour with Creed around the same time, making for a logistical nightmare.

In fact, Wolfgang was on that very tour when the news of Ozzy’s passing broke, resulting in him playing an emotionally charged Mama I’m Coming Home in tribute.

And while Wolfgang dropped out reluctantly, Bettencourt has suggested it could have all worked out in his favor.

“I got a call [saying] Wolfgang Van Halen just dropped out, and I was like, ‘What are the songs [he was meant to play?’” he says on the Steve and Rik's POTcast.

“I said, ‘Yeah, he’s dropping out because he’s smart! Nobody wants to play those fucking Randy Rhoads or Jake E. Lee solos!’ Nobody wants to do it because if you go down in flames on that stage with Ozzy there and all your peers watching, your career is over!”

It was a pressure Bettencourt knew all too well. He had his work cut out for him at Back to the Beginning. His role during the event certainly wasn't risk-free.

“When I got the call to do that, everybody was playing two songs, and they knew I was able. It's like, ‘Great, I'm on it.’ Then I get a call three or four days later, like, ‘Can we throw three more at you?’...and then another three. I ended up playing 12 fucking songs,” he says.

“Instead of [just] learning them, I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got to own this shit!’ I only learned it was being streamed globally two days before. I'm playing all these other songs I've never played before, on stage with a band that I've never played with before.

“So I was in here for weeks for four or five hours a day, standing up, performing the fuckers. I just wanted to respect the songs, [and] go all in.”

Having said that, Wolfgang himself – who joined Van Halen as a youngster – is certainly no stranger to high-stakes and intense pressure. At Taylor Hawkins' tribute concert, he flawlessly covered two Van Halen classics. In fact, his covers were so good, some people thought he was miming. He probably would have relished the chance to play Sabbath at Back to the Beginning.

Elsewhere, Bettencourt has launched his own guitar brand, confirming the identity of the mystery guitar he played in Birmingham.

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.

Wolfgang Van Halen has once again sung the praises of Intervals virtuoso Aaron Marshall, highlighting what it is about his playing that sets him apart from some of his contemporary metal guitar peers.

From the titillating tandems of Polyphia and Animals As Leaders to the “alien” techniques of Spiro Dussias, the future of modern metal guitar is in safe, and highly virtuosic, hands. Yet, in conversation with Guitarist, Wolfgang Van Halen has praised Marshall for one skill in particular, which he believes distinguishes him from the pack.

“Aaron Marshall from Intervals is one of the few modern metal hero guys who isn't afraid to throw in a bluesy riff every now and then,” he reckons.

“You have all these modern players, people like Tim Henson from Polyphia who are amazing musicians playing crazy stuff that sounds incredible, though they very rarely choose to bend anything.

“That's why Aaron is my favourite. He has this iconic and recognisable voice on guitar.”

That’s not to say Henson’s melodious touch isn’t instantly recognizable, though. His G.O.A.T. riff is undeniably unique, and quickly earned its place among the greatest guitar riffs ever written.

But he has often distanced himself from what he calls “boomer bends.” He wants there to be a degree of separation between different generations of guitar playing, even if Kirk Hammett hit back at his comments.

Wolfgang, however, champions Marshall’s ability to bridge those generations and genres with a playing style that is certainly modern, but not severed from his predecessors.

“His melodic sensibility is something I really appreciate, especially considering he's making instrumental music,” Wolfgang purrs. “He's practically the singer in the band as well as the guitarist. He has this ability to find the hooks and shred balls at the same time, and it's always very tasteful. I can’t get enough of it.”

The pair have developed a strong connection over the years, with Wolfgang even shipping Marshall one of his new EVH SA-126 signature guitars in February. Marshall has also said that “Wolfgang knows more Intervals songs at any given moment than I do.”

Having said that, Marshall isn't the only guitarist who, in Wolfgang's opinion, steps out from the pack.

“I also think what Misha Mansoor has done with Periphery is amazing. He has his own sound and it's very iconic,” he says. “I love how he's able to merge his unabashed love for Meshuggah with his other influences. I don't think people give Misha enough credit.”

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy of Guitarist to read WVH's interview in full.

Meanwhile, Wolfgang has discussed how the “gamble” of playing Van Halen songs live paid off, reflected on the time his dad asked Paul Gilbert to give him a guitar lesson, and revealed that he looked to a Nirvana classic when writing one of The End's most memorable guitar solos.

It was September 2024, and Wolfgang Van Halen was flying out for his first-ever live shows in Mexico, opening for Metallica, when it hit him. Something was not right. It was a panic attack, a big one, and he had never experienced anything like it.

The experience left such a mark on him that it would inform the lyrics for Mammoth’s latest studio album, The End – a recording shaped by panic, anxiety and dread.

Speaking to the Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast, Van Halen elaborates on exactly how bad it was. He was already wound up pretty tightly before they took off. These shows were a big deal and they were being played at altitude. Mexico City is 7,350 feet above sea level. That got into Van Halen’s head big-time.

“Being a singer, anytime I’ve been in a place that has a really high-altitude elevation, it’s very tough,” he explains. “You’ve always got to prepare yourself, like, for a show in Denver stuff like that. And after looking at the elevation and seeing it was going to be the highest show I’d ever played, I was super nervous just for a show of that magnitude, obviously on that crazy stage.”

He had good reason to be nervous. Performing at altitude is not easy. It’s harder to breathe up there. The air is drier. Singers, in particular, have to be meticulous with their preparation. It didn’t help that Van Halen is a nervous flyer.

“I’m really good at psyching myself out anxiety-wise, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep before the flight,” he continues. “I already hate flying to begin with. I’m just a very anxious person.”

On the plane, Van Halen tells Rolling Stone that it was everything, everywhere all at once happening to his body.

“My vision started closing,” he explains. “I thought I had had a panic attack before. If you think you’ve had a panic attack, you probably haven’t. It’s like your body betrays you.

“My vision closed up. I felt like I was gonna throw up. I started sweating profusely, but I was freezing – and it was really crazy. I’d never been aware of how badly that could happen. That feeling of feeling like everything was over and ending.”

He has learned to use this anxiety in Mammoth’s songwriting. Speaking to Guitar World, he says writing is “therapeutic” – a release for all those tensions.

When writing for The End, he not only had the panic attack as source material, he had the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025, when he had some of his late father, Eddie Van Halen’s most-sacred gear packed up and ready to go at a moment’s notice. All of that was weighing on his mind.

“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,” he said. “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.

“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.”

Wolfgang Van Halen's full interview with Guitar World is available to read online.

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.

In 2007, Eddie Van Halen launched a tube amp under his EVH gear banner, the EVH 5150 III, that continued the legacy of one of guitar music’s most beloved high-gain amps.

As such, it should come as no surprise that Van Halen took the development of the amp very, very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he developed a mad-scientist torture test to ensure the amp was borderline indestructible.

As EVH leaders Wolfgang Van Halen and Matt Bruck recall in the new issue of Guitar World, that test involved plenty of volume, lots of feedback, and (above all) patience.

“The process was long and difficult, because the amp was reimagined from the ground up, which meant we had to establish a new foundation to build up from,” Bruck says of the amp, which has been selected as one of the most influential pieces of gear of the 21st century.

He adds, “This meant a new chassis and formulating the transformers, which are amazing, built like a tank and over spec’ed – the way they should be if you’re going for something great.”

While Bruck is quick to point out the lengthy R&D phase, Wolfgang highlights the testing phase, for which his father devised “the most rigorous testing an amp could go through”.

“I remember Dad testing it up in the studio. You could hear it from the bottom of the house, this slight feedback,” he remembers. “As you went up toward the studio, it started to get louder. Then you opened the door to the first room, and it was a little louder.

“When you opened the door to where the guitar was, there was a guitar sitting there, with every knob pinned, feeding back. He literally kept it there for a week, just to crash-test it and make sure it didn’t explode.”

Bruck says Eddie called it the “crash testing” phase, and while those around him were a bit skeptical of his methods, Van Halen himself held his nerve.

“It was where he would just try to destroy a piece of equipment,” Bruck adds. “It was so when it went to market, it would be reliable. He just dimed the thing, left it leaning against the cabinet and created this eternal feedback loop. I was terrified the place was going to burn down.

“I was saying, ‘It’s going to get hot. It’s going to explode. We’re going to have a fire.’ He was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll see how long it goes.’

“After about five days, he was like, ‘Okay, it passed the test.’ That gives you insight into the uncanny genius and how much of an outside-the-box thinker Ed was.”

Safe to say Eddie Van Halen’s “crash testing” methods left an impression. A few years ago, his rig builder Dave Friedman spoke about his guitar amp “torture test”.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features a rundown of the most important gear releases of the 21st century.

Wolfgang Van Halen’s Mammoth have just released their third album, The End, and, understandably, fans have been poring over its guitar solos – owing to Wolfgang’s guitar hero lineage descending from the late, great Eddie Van Halen.

Across his records – and with a little advice from his old man about how to make solos memorable – Wolfgang has proven to be a very safe pair of hands when it comes to sizzling leads. And one of the best takes from the new record takes its cues from Nirvana’s smash hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit.

“I tend to compose my solos,” he tells MusicRadar when asked about his lead cut on Same Old Song. “I like writing them almost as if they’re these little songs or movements in themselves.”

The solo has its roots in Take a Bow, which is from his second album. It’s laced with tapping licks in a virtuosic tribute to his late father, whose passing inspired the multi-instrumentalist to kickstart the project in the first place. It was even tracked using the Frankenstein Strat.

“Take A Bow is another good example of that, where the solo section just ebbs and flows and crescendos,” Wolfgang agrees. “I’ll write solos like that by looping the chord progression, spending hours trying to figure out what works best.”

However, penning the solo for the grunge-driven Happy was a little more straightforward.

“I wear a lot of my influences on my sleeve. There’s a magical dissonance to the stuff Jerry Cantrell tends to write,” he says of the Alice In Chains influence behind the song’s barre chord foundation. But it’s Kurt Cobain that he channels for the solo.

“We basically said, ‘Shall we do the Smells Like Teen Spirit thing?’” he confesses. “I loved my vocal line, so I decided to follow it on guitar with some crazy-ass effect just like the Nirvana song.

“It’s fun to have shreddiness, but at the end of the day, the melody has to come first,” he admits. “Even my dad would say the best solos are the ones you can hum and sing.”

The solo on the 1991 banger isn’t the most technical, but it’s undeniably memorable – and the song’s influence and cultural significance is underscored by the fact that the Lake Placid Blue Fender Mustang Cobain played in its music video sold for $4.5 million, making it the second most expensive guitar ever auctioned.

“Of course, there are moments for fun and tapping,” Wolfgang extends, “but if you can play something that people can sing and it sticks in their heads, that’s what it’s all about.”

His dad’s Frankenstein features again on The End, cropping up for the slapping riff of its title track. But despite its mythical status, it’s a guitar that has its limitations, he’s revealed.

And for all his dad’s soloing advice, it turns out that Eddie Van Halen was a terrible guitar teacher – and he once reached out to Paul Gilbert to show Wolfgang the ropes instead.

Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstein is one of the most iconic electric guitars of all time. Built, upgraded, and heavily modified over the late 1970s and early 1980s, the guitar is emblematic of Eddie's genius both as a player and as a visionary of the instrument.

That said, the guitar is by no means a dream to play – according to Eddie's son, Wolfgang Van Halen, it has its fair share of shortcomings.

“The guitar I wanted to play did not exist,” Van Halen had once said of Frankenstein. “What I wanted was a cross between a Gibson and a Fender”

As Simon Alkin’s excellent free-to-air documentary on the virtuoso’s modding addiction showcases, that’s exactly what the guitar is. By meshing the body of a Strat with a humbucker and a Floyd Rose, EVH crafted an enduring guitar symbol that is instantly recognizable to this day.

However, speaking with Ultimate Guitar, his son, Wolfgang – who owns the guitar and used it guitar to track parts of Mammoth’s new album – says the guitar isn’t immune to issues.

“You really have to work for it,” he explains. “I played it also for the solo on Take a Bow [from 2023’s Mammoth II], and on that, one of the first bends for the solo, you can really hear the sustain almost die out really quickly. You have to really pull it out of the guitar.”

The truth of the matter is that, while Frankenstein is a legend of the electric guitar world, it was one of Eddie’s first mod jobs. It was never going to be perfect for every player. That’s why he played other guitars as his career developed. Wolfgang is quick to acknowledge that.

“Obviously, it was a tool that dad used for a certain amount of time and then moved on to something else,” he says. “He was always working on stuff and making it better that fit his needs at the time. And so that kind of fell out pretty quickly.

“So, while it very much has that sound of that era there, it definitely has its limitations. It's fun to bring it out; you can really hear that on Take a Bow, but for The End, it was just about locking into that groove. I think when the pickups aren't as hot as something you would be normally used to, it's really about getting that percussive roll with that."

For the song’s slapping riff, which needs a high level of dexterity to pull off, the guitar isn’t trying to go out all guns blazing. As Wolfgang explains, the output of that ‘bucker helps give it that more cutting feel.

That percussive approach bleeds into The End’s main tapping lick, with the guitarist previously explaining how he categorizes the technique his dad popularized into two areas. Handily for us, he showcased how these two approaches differ to Ola Englund during a recent interview.

When it comes to soloing, Wolfgang says he's taken one piece of advice from his father to heart more than most. During his chat with Ultimate Guitar, he pointed towards the opening track of his forthcoming album, also called The End, as proof of him taking that advice and running with it.

“One of a Kind is a good example is a good example of growth between the last album and this one, I'm really proud of how that turned out,” he says. “It set the pace and direction for the record. I'm really happy with the solo output this time around.”

But as good as Eddie was at shredding, it turns out he was a terrible teacher: Wolfgang revealed that his father once asked Paul Gilbert to give his son a guitar lesson instead.

It would be safe to assume that if your dad was one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, your own guitar-playing journey would be in safe hands. But that, surprisingly, wasn’t the case for Wolfgang Van Halen – his dad was a “terrible” teacher.

The Mammoth multi-instrumentalist is on the promo trail for his third album, which has already given us a cheeky Hot For Teacher tribute and tapping licks that Ola Englund daren’t try to imitate; now, he’s revealed that he has Paul Gilbert to thank for his earliest six-string skills.

“My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher – he’d tell you that himself,” Wolfgang reveals to Guitar.com. “He even called Paul Gilbert one time and asked him if he would give me a lesson, and he laughed his ass off.”

Aside from his exemplary shredding in Mr Big, Racer X, and across his multi-faceted solo career, Paul Gilbert has got plenty of teaching experience under his belt. He had a column in Total Guitar, spanning 30-plus issues, had previously done likewise for Guitar Player, and has taught the likes of Buckethead and Satchel from Steel Panther.

“That just shows you how he felt about being a teacher,” Wolfgang continues. “And, yeah, he was right. He’d be like, ‘Just do it like this.’ ‘Well, how?!’ You’re at such a different level, you’re just not even thinking in the same way.”

That doesn’t mean his pop didn’t impart any knowledge to his son. Speaking with MusicRadar last summer, he said the biggest guitar solo lesson he ever got was from his dad, who instilled the need for melody over virtuosity to make them stand out.

“Not every song needs a solo,” he had said. “You can play a solo that's one note that can be way more impressive than a solo that's 2000 notes. It's not really the speed at which you play.”

He pointed to Intervals’ Aaron Marshall – whom he recently gifted his new signature guitar – as an example of a player taking his dad’s philosophy on board. He had called him “a singer as a guitar player.”

Elsewhere, Wolfgang has spoken of the risk of covering Van Halen songs live, and why recording Mammoth songs with Eddie's infamous Frankenstein Strat makes him feel “closer to Pop.”

Wolfgang Van Halen has reflected on the “doomsday energy” of the LA wildfires, during which he kept his dad’s legendary Frankenstein in his car for three weeks as part of precautionary evacuation plans.

The fires caused monumental damage to the city, with thousands of buildings – many of them homes – reduced to ash. Primus guitarist Larry Lalonde and Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith were among those to lose their homes.

Though Wolfgang Van Halen's home and 5150 Studios were spared, the Mammoth leader had a plan to keep his family – and Eddie Van Halen's most famous electric guitar – safe, should the worst happen.

“I thought, I’ll have Frankenstein and my wife, and we’re good,” he tells Premier Guitar (via Guitar.com), revealing the guitar lived in his car in case a quick escape was needed.

“And then we had a U-Haul filled with whatever else we felt was worth saving, which was very tough,” he adds. “Luckily, it didn’t come to that, but it was a traumatising time we’re still working through.”

Wolfgang’s band, Mammoth, kicked off the promo campaign for album three, The End, several months later, and those experiences ultimately inspired its apocalyptic lyrics.

“That’s where most of the anxious, doomsday energy in the lyrics comes from,” he admits of its lead single. “I couldn’t focus on my things.”

Speaking in the upcoming issue of Guitar World, Wolfgang elaborates on those experiences, saying, “The vocals were recorded in January while we had everything in 5150 packed up and ready to go at any moment.

“I was thinking about all of my dad’s instruments and all of his belongings before I could even think about mine. At one point, there were four separate fires within two miles of us. It was the winds that were the scariest, just how they would carry over miles.

“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 is safe.’”

Fittingly, The End’s harmonic-laden slapping and tapping parts were recorded on Frankenstein.

You can read Wolfgang Van Halen’s full interview in the upcoming issue of Guitar World, which lands on October 7 via Magazines Direct and includes a cover feature with Guns N' Roses.

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.”

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.”

A full-fat rock band like they used to make in the 1970s, the recently rebranded Mammoth features Ronnie Ficarro on bass alongside guitarists Jonathan Jourdan and Frank Sidoris, drummer Garrett Whitlock, and Wolfgang ‘Son of Eddie’ Van Halen on guitar and vocals.

“First and foremost, Wolf plays everything on the album,” says Ficarro. “In fact, he's a monster bass player! So my job is to try and recreate his basslines whenever we play live.”

Amid the heavyweight sounds of his bandmates, Ficarro’s live bass guitar parts punch through with great clarity and power – and you can attribute a lot of this to the new EVH bass gear he’s been using.

“With Mammoth I play an EVH prototype that was built by Chip Ellis at the Fender Custom Shop. The relic finish is vintage white over black, which matches Wolf’s EVH SA-126 guitar. There are only two that exist!

“It’s fitted with EVH custom bass humbuckers and a 6-way pickup selector switch, but I keep things in the second position most of the time, which is everything on. It’s the setting that sounds the closest to my Gibson G3.”

If you’re wondering where Ficarro gets his pickup-trashing pick approach from, check his influences. “I started with The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, and The Stones, but the bass player I gravitated to the most was Paul McCartney.

“Later on I discovered Mike Dirnt’s bass playing with Green Day. I’d never heard a bass sound like that before. I was using flatwound strings, and felt picks! But Mike’s bass was bright, and alive! I was hooked.”

In terms of his tone, Ficarro sticks to a tried-and-tested approach. “I’m pretty aggressive with my right hand, which in itself creates a tone that I like. New strings also help me get the bounce and response against my pick. I don’t scoop any mids. Your tone can make or break a sound of any band.”

What were you doing before Mammoth?

“I played in a few touring rock bands, and worked with some pop artists. The most notable would be I Am Ghost, Falling In Reverse, and JMSN.”

When did you first take up the bass?

“I found my Dad’s Höfner bass in his bedroom closet when I was 13. Piano wasn’t doing it for me, and trumpet made my lips bleed, but the Höfner was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Inevitably, my dad caught me playing it one day.

“I thought he’d be mad, but he took me straight to The House of Guitars! We walked out with my first bass, which was a MIM Fender P-Bass in Arctic White.”

How has your bass playing evolved since then?

“I’ve spent a lot of time working on my tone. New gear helps, but I always wanted to have my own sound. I used to practice all day, everyday, but I’ve never had a bass lesson, so any kind of evolution has just come naturally.”

What sort of gear did you have in those early years?

“I had a Fender P-Bass and a Peavey Basic 50 amp, and then a Peavey 210 combo. I ended up trading my P-Bass for a 1978 Gibson G3 bass.

“My first Ampeg was a SVT-3 Pro, and that thing was a tank! I also had a SVT-2 Pro with an SVT-810E Classic cabinet. Nowadays, I play a Fender Super Bassman through a 610 Neo cab. I also have an EICH T-900.”

What bass sound do you aim for when you play live?

“I take a DI out of my pedalboard, and another DI out of my amp, so the signal is split. I set one to be dirty and quite bright, while the other is more round and full. Then I mix them both together, which gives me the best of both worlds.”

Fingers or pick?

“I prefer the sound of a pick, but it ultimately depends on what the song calls for. Each has their own vibe.”

Can you play slap bass?

“I’m self-taught, so I have my own way of playing slap bass. I never really had an application for it until Wolf put a slap bassline in the new single, The End. Luckily I can play it!”

What was it like making the video for The End?

“If you’re not having fun playing a rock anthem like that then you’re in the wrong business! The video was so much fun. It was directed by Robert Rodriguez, with a bunch of cameos. At one point Slash is just chillin’ while some people get eaten.”

Are you a 4-, 5- or 6-string man?

“4-strings! That’s all Jaco needed! If I ever need a lower note then I'll just grab another bass and de-tune it.”

Are you a bass player who spends hours practicing?

“I’ve always spent hours practicing, which includes learning any songs that I like. I’ll learn songs by ear, and just try to figure out how the bass player got that particular sound. I still play everyday, even when I’m home from tour.”

How would you define your role in the band?

“My role is to support the low-end, as well as cut through a wall of guitars. As much as anyone else, it’s the bass player’s job to make the song feel good. I just try to be cool, and be on time!”

Wolfgang Van Halen has paid tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne with a beautiful and heartfelt performance of Mama, I’m Coming Home in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Mammoth bandleader had pulled out of Back to the Beginning due to scheduling conflicts, but from the other side of the Atlantic, while supporting Creed on a US tour, he paid homage to the man who helped forge the sound of heavy metal.

“It fucking sucks that we are in a world that doesn't have Ozzy Osbourne anymore,” he told the crowd. “It was right before we went out to soundcheck that we found out, and we felt like we had to do something. Just mentioning it wasn't enough.

“We've played through this maybe three times,” he adds, his voice breaking. “So please bear with us, and sing the fuck along with us.”

The weight of the song, and what covering it means to Wolfgang Van Halen, is clear throughout the performance, and his voice is absolutely superb throughout. The guitar solo he unfurls on his gorgeous green-colored EVH SA-126 Special isn’t half bad, either.

“Love you, Ozzy,” he says as the final notes are drowned out by a screaming crowd.

The guitarist had seemingly put the decades-long Eddie Van Halen-Randy Rhoads rivalry to bed last year when he joined Andrew Watt, Chad Smith, and Maynard James Keenan to cover Crazy Train at Ozzy’s Rock Hall induction.

After soundcheck that night, Wolfgang had shared an image of himself and a smiling Ozzy, looking like the royalty he is, on a pitch black throne. The shot was taken backstage at the Rock Hall ceremony.

“Legend,” his caption read. “Thank you for everything, Ozzy.”

Mammoth are currently readying their third album, The End, having released a blockbuster horror-themed music video for its opening track. But he says not all songs on the record will be as laden with shred.

“Not everything needs a guitar solo,” he believes. “That might be stupid for the son of Eddie Van Halen to say, but, for me, what brings me purpose with Mammoth is writing the songs.”

Elsewhere, the tributes to the Prince of Darkness have been pouring in, while Tony Iommi has spoken at length about what Back to the Beginning meant to Ozzy.

Wolfgang Van Halen may have descended from one of the greatest guitar soloists who ever lived, but that doesn’t mean he’s tied to the concept of guitar solos. Instead, he has very much his own approach to songwriting – and it’s one that doesn’t see solos as a necessity.

This year, Wolfgang has released two show-stopping singles from his forthcoming album under the Mammoth moniker. Title track, The End tipped its cap to the Hot For Teacher music video with a glitzy guitar solo, but The Spell doesn't quite follow suit in the fretboard pyrotechnics department

As such, he says listeners shouldn’t expect him to light up his fretboard on every song as he outlines the key differences between his and his father’s distinct playing styles.

“I think the songwriter leads more than anything,” he tells SiriusXM (via Blabbermouth). “What makes me happy, what brings me purpose with Mammoth, is writing the songs. That is why I think there are some songs that don't even have a guitar solo.”

He understands that adopting this approach on some of The End’s impending cuts might result in kickback. But he isn’t concerned about the naysayers.

“Whenever there is a song that doesn't have a guitar solo, people are, like, ‘Dude? What?’” he explains. “It’s more about the song and how it is crafted together. Not everything needs a guitar solo. That might be stupid coming from the son of Eddie Van Halen to say, but, for me, that is where I get my most joy from, crafting the song piece by piece.

“There are definitely more guitar solos [on the album],” he develops, before shifting the focus. “But again, that is not what it is about for me. But it is there, and I am going to give my A-game.”

The guitarist, who believes that his dad’s game-changing shredding “kind of ruined” guitar music for a while as a legion of copyists came out of the woodwork, has revealed that parts of The End were tracked on Eddie’s famed Frankenstrat.

During the moments he does let rip, however, Wolfgang always has sage soloing advice given to him by his father.

Mammoth’s third album follows the release of his EVH signature guitar, the SA-126 Special, and a well-received budget version. “The goal was to put together a guitar that didn’t exist yet,” Wolfgang had said upon his signature's release.

Wolfgang Van Halen has explained why he’s dropped the ‘WVH’ tag from his newly rebranded band Mammoth, after he stealth-launched the moniker change with their latest single, The End.

After processing the star-studded, zombie-plagued, and Hot For Teacher-referencing music video that launched the track, fans were curious to note Wolfgang’s initials had been removed from the band name, which changed from Mammoth WVH to Mammoth.

It’s a subtle change, but one that Wolfgang says reflects his initial vision for the group.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted it to be. It’s just that we didn’t have the trademark,” he explains to KOMP 92.3. “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.”

As Mammoth WVH, the band has released two albums. Notably, on the covers for both those releases, Mammoth I and Mammoth II, there was no sign of his initials anywhere.

Though he admits his initials made the name “a mouthful” from a marketing standpoint, there was certainly some logic in it. When your dad was one of the greatest guitarists to ever walk this earth it doesn’t hurt to lean into the family name.

But Wolfgang has always stated that he wants to do things on his terms and be remembered as the guy from Mammoth, not the guy whose dad is Eddie Van Halen.

“I think people are sitting there waiting for me to outdo my dad in some way, but that’s impossible,” he said last year. “I’m not him. I’m doing my own thing.”

While there is an element of musical and reputational separation, Wolfgang is still keeping his late father close in other ways: He tracked The End’s slapping parts on his famed Frankenstein Strat.

He’s also taken one lesson from his dad about soloing to heart, and even walked down the aisle to a song EVH had written about him.

In related news, he guitarist recently become the first star to pull out of Black Sabbath’s final show due to scheduling conflicts, as Mammoth set out on tour in the US with Creed.

Wolfgang Van Halen has announced that he’s had to pull out of Black Sabbath’s blockbuster final show, Back to the Beginning, less than 10 days before the event starts owing to a scheduling conflict.

The Mammoth multi-instrumentalist was one of the first notable names spotted on the star-studded poster when it was first revealed. That led to many expecting him to reprise the role he played during Ozzy Osbourne’s Rock Hall induction last year, when he played Crazy Train and seemingly put the decades-long Van Halen-Randy Rhoads rivalry to bed.

However, he has now become the first casualty of the show, but his decision is entirely logistical.

“I, unfortunately, had to back out because of the Creed tour,” he tells Detroit's Meltdown on 101 WRIF. His band, Mammoth, who dropped a horror-themed, Hot For Teacher-nodding music video for new single The End last month, is set to support Mark Tremonti’s group on a US jaunt starting July 9.

“The tour starts the day after, and I [wouldn't] be able to pull it off, unfortunately,” he continues. “I'm very excited to watch it, but I, unfortunately had to back out.”

The good news is that Tom Morello, who is curating the event with the hopes of creating heavy metal history, has a buffet of virtuosic talent to choose from to fill his spot. It seems unlikely that he’ll look beyond its all-star bill for a replacement.

Wolfgang kept his cards close to his chest regarding what he would have done on the night, with Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s sets expected to be littered with guest stars. Sammy Hagar has already confirmed the song he’ll sing during Ozzy’s set – and one Ozzy will handle – while Jake E. Lee, set to play with Ozzy for the first time in nearly 40 years, says the show couldn’t have gone on without his involvement.

He’s also revealed that he may not be physically able to play Bark at the Moon on the night, and has confirmed he has a backup song in place.

So, with WVH pulling out and question marks elsewhere – Tony Iommi has opened up on his concerns about Ozzy and Geezer Butler’s ailing health conditions – it seems Morello has his work cut out in the lead up to the big day.

In related news, Adam Jones has revealed Tool weren't originally going to perform at the show. However, Morello was so persistent that his former schoolmate eventually signed up, and helped form a supergroup with Billy Corgan.

For those unable to attend the historic Villa Park show, next weekend’s entertainment is available to livestream.

Meanwhile, WVH has revealed that he tracked the tapping parts of The End on his dad’s world-famous Frankenstrat guitar. He says it helps him feel closer to the late guitar hero as he continues to forge a musical career in his own image.

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.

What is it?

Most EVH builds are historical recreations of Eddie Van Halen's many notable axes – see pre-relic’d Frankensteins, his Danelectro/Charvel hybrid offset, and wildcard Shark, providing some of the best shred guitars out there. But the SA-126 proves it does more than revivalism.

Wolfgang Van Halen’s fully-fledged signature model, the SA-126 Special, arrived on 26 January 2024 – on Eddie’s birthday, no less, hence the 126 name – and the Standard follows up having slashed $800 off its price tag.

Designed as a semi-hollow guitar that can handle high-gain tones without ear-splitting feedback, it makes an intriguing addition to the EVH roster.

Its silhouette is reminiscent of Eddie’s signature brew, fittingly named Wolfgang, but this is the first time its recipe has been hollowed out. It typifies WVH's wanting to stray away from his father's shadow while keeping his vivacious flame burning. But does it work?

Specs

• Launch price: $999/£779/€899
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Semi-hollow electric guitar
• Body: Chambered nyatoh with nyatoh centerblock
• Neck: Baked maple EVH Modified C-shape
• Fingerboard: Rosewood, 12" to 16" compound radius
• Scale length: 24.75", 628mm
• Nut/width: GraphTech TUSQ, 1.75" (44.45 mm)
• Frets: 22, jumbo
• Hardware: EVH T.O.M bridge, EVH Keystone tuners
• Electrics: EVH SA-126 passive humbuckers, three-way switch, 2x Volume, 2x Tone controls
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Piano Black, Pelham Green, Win Red, Vintage White, Pelham Blue (Sweetwater exclusive)
• Case/gig bag: None
• Contact: EVH Gear

Guitar World Demo

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

It's hard to fault the quality for the price, and it proves that contemporary Indonesian builds are not to be sniffed at; its creation has been handled with care.

Cost-saving measures on this budget-friendly guitar are wise without being cruel – nyatoh and ebony for mahogany and rosewood are sensible trade-offs – but premium features like the heel-mounted truss rod spoke wheel thankfully remain.

Elsewhere, the more ornate skirted black plastic dials have been swapped out, although I'm a big fan of the black speed knobs that take their place. The EVH Harmonica bridge has lost out to a more affordable T.O.M bridge that is trustworthy without being show-stopping, and the keystone tuners are robust while the intricate (E-for-Eddie) f-hole feels like its aesthetic USP.

It all makes for a pretty accurate rendition of the Special, keeping the quality high, but minimizing the damage it’ll do to your piggybank. This is a well-put-together guitar I'd happily take home to meet my mother.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Interestingly, the SA-126 has the Gibson-preferred 24.75” scaling. That makes it smaller than PRS’ Piezo-laced SE Custom 24 (25”) and Tom DeLonge’s Fender Starcaster (25.5”), but it feels a natural fit for a guitar that growls like the secret evil cousin of an ES-335.

The biggest issue is its weight distribution. Despite having a chunk taken out of its body, this thing still weighs plenty and sitting down, the weight seems to gather beneath its quartet of dials. It sits on my lap pretty comfortably, but it always wants to slide off, bottom first. I find myself constantly fighting to keep it in place.

The neck’s natural satin finish could feel a little smoother, but its shape is comfortable and welcoming. It’s thin enough to encourage accelerated playing – without reaching shred-machine top speeds – and there is, conversely, a nice thickness that makes digging into chords a joy.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Pickups are usually the first thing to be downgraded for cost, but, commendably, the Tim Shaw-designed humbuckers have survived the rescaling. They’re better suited to blues, hard rock, and a little country twang than metal; chords are amplified to seismic proportions, but it struggles when I really push the heavy.

Plugging into a modeled 5150, I was surprised that its semi-hollow warmth got in the way of the amp’s snarling attitude. It can be scooped out, but tone sculpting is more drastic than subtle. It feels at home with mid-gain JCM800 tones, and I discovered its innate warmth takes to fuzz pedals superbly. With its tone knob backed off this thing gets sasquatch hairy without losing clarity. It’s a surprisingly killer stoner rock machine.

The p'ups shine with leads. All three pickup positions have oodles of sustain for David Gilmour-esque solos; fast flourishes remain crystal clear when drenched in delay and reverb.

Riffs with lots of resonance are moody and atmospheric, especially with a little drive, but its cleans underwhelmed me. I expected that big-body sound, but it lacks oomph and there’s too much ‘chink’ of the pick attack for my liking.

Verdict

I want to like this guitar more than I do. Sure, it handles high gain levels impressively, but unlike the guitar’s weight – for me its biggest pitfall – its pros and cons are finely balanced.

I don’t think it’s a guitar to be bought on a whim. If hollow-bodies are your thing but you’d like extra grit, then this will triumph. As can often be the case with signatures, it’s a little too niche to be a versatile catch-all.

Guitar World verdict: A well-built hard rock machine that gives the warmth of a semi-hollow body without being a feedback nightmare with the gain cranked. It has its tonal limitations, and peculiar balance issues threaten to spoil the party, but in the right settings, this guitar can fly. And boy does it.

Also try

• EVH SA-126 Special review

Wolfgang Van Halen has shared a clip of him tracking the slap guitar section of his new song, The End, on his late father's legendary Frankenstein guitar.

After dropping his initials from the band name and releasing a new Mammoth single – which boasts a star-studded, horror-theme music video that’s a must-watch for many reasons – Wolfgang has now offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the song's making. As always, his dad’s presence shines on with him.

“Fun fact,” his new Instagram post reads. “I recorded the main tapping of the song, and the slap part with the Frankenstein! Makes me feel closer to Pop that such an important part of his history can live with mine every time I record.”

The heavily modded six-string, which boasts that iconic red, white, and black striped design, was one of Eddie Van Halen's most cherished axes. It was his weapon of choice as Van Halen changed the face of guitar music with Eruption in 1978, and it barely left his side thereafter.

Notably, Wolfgang has used the guitar in the studio before, and it can be heard on each Mammoth record so far. On Mammoth I it was used for the solos in Mammoth and Feel, and on Mammoth II it was used for his show-stopping, tapping-lavished Take a Bow guitar solo.

“You feel the history,” he had said after using it on his debut album, a record he finished in the wake of his dad’s passing. “It’s kind of terrifying holding it, just because arguably it is the most famous guitar in musical history. It’s definitely quite the thing to hold it.”

“It's kind of crazy,” Wolfgang later said of the instrument while on the promo trail for Take a Bow. “There are certain notes where it's like, ‘Wow, that sounds like Van Halen I.’”

This time around, Wolfgang is continuing to enjoy the connection that the Frankenstein creates between him and his late father.

Further still, the slapping part itself is indicative of Wolfgang’s musical mentality. He doesn’t want to be known simply as ‘Eddie Van Halen’s son’ and is intent on establishing himself as Wolfgang the artist – but he still wants to honor Eddie’s legacy while doing so.

Here, he's embracing modern techniques beloved by the likes of Tosin Abasi and his personal guitar hero, Intervals’ Aaron Marshall – who have both given him their seal of approval in the comments – as a reflection of his voice on the instrument. The solo, meanwhile, is blazingly Van Halen, and with it, he keeps things firmly in the virtuosic family.

Breaking down the slapping technique in the comments section, Wolfgang explains, “[My] right hand is slapping and then popping two separate strings to get those harmonics and the left hand is filling in the sort of percussive rhythm.”

In related news, filmmaker Simon Alkin released an exhaustive documentary on Eddie’s guitar-modding journey and how the Frankenstein came to be late last year. Told in Eddie’s own words via a score of interviews captured over the years, it gives a unique insight into the legendary instrument.

“The guitar I wanted to play did not exist,” Van Halen had said at the time. Now its future remains in very safe, and very familiar hands.

Wolfgang Van Halen and his band Mammoth (which has now seemingly dropped the ‘WVH’ tag) have returned with a wild new song that goes big on the two-hand tapping – and it's joined by a horror film-inspired music video video that boasts an all-star, werewolf-fighting cast.

There’s a wiff of From Dusk Till Dawn in the video for The End. The band arrives at a club and are greeted by Danny Trejo, who tells them that certain regulars don’t like loud noises – playing ballads would be advised. The mystery letter that had sent Mammoth there, however, asks for a rock show that will kill – and that it does.

Telling his band to keep things “civil”, Wolfgang launches into an unapologetically incendiary tapping run that nods to his late, great father, Eddie Van Halen, as none other than Slash looks on approvingly.

Wolfgang then hurtles into a nifty, harmonic-laced verse riff, backed by some commendable slap bass from Ronnie Ficarro.

Trejo had strictly told the band “No solos!”, but as the band go about their business, half the audience gets savaged before their eyes by, erm, zombies, werewolves and vampires. In the crowd, there's also a now-zombified Myles Kennedy, who goes on an impressive killing streak.

Wolfgang, meanwhile, then struts through the maelstrom while delivering a tastefully virtuosic solo. Full of EVH-inspired tapping licks and fast-but-tasteful runs, it stays true to his father's solo lesson about melody first, virtuosity second.

The way he looks into the camera as he does so, waltzing over the tables as chaos ensues around him, is a direct salute to his father's moves from the Hot For Teacher video.

Wolfgang has also nailed the fine balance between honoring his father's playing style and establishing his own. We've seen him deliver some other show-stopping tapping solos, but this might be his best, and most individualistic, yet.

Wolfgang's mother, Valerie Bertinelli, who recently shared her thoughts on a Van Halen biopic, also features, throwing punches while Slash continues to look nonchalantly on, enjoying the show.

Fretboard pyrotechnics aside, this feels like the first big rock video in quite some time and, importantly, neither the song nor the playing gets overshadowed by the blood-soaked visual entertainment. Horror effects icon Greg Nicotero (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Sin City) has more than played his part.

“I’ve had the tapping idea on the intro for The End since before Mammoth,” Wolfgang reveals. “I was able to fit it into this world. It’s still over-the-top and shreddy, but it’s also melodic and controlled.

“Overall, I was doing some different things on the record, and I knew this was going to be a big step. Once we finished The End, it felt really special to me.”

The dropping of the ‘WVH’ moniker feels like a big moment for the band, too. Historically, Wolfgang has written and performed all instruments on their records and has previously said he’s a drummer first. But this might be the dawn of a more collaborative future for the band.

Either way, the song is great, the video is sheer class, and it’s a genius promotion for the band’s Autumn U.S. run, with Myles Kennedy in support. How’s that for marketing?

The tour starts, poetically, on Halloween in a currently unspecified location, and lasts through to December 7, where the tour wraps in another to-be-confirmed location. It’s all very mysterious.

Before that, Wolfgang will feature at Black Sabbath’s blockbuster final show in Birmingham, England, this summer, having played Crazy Train at Ozzy's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year.

Wolfgang has also recently spoken about how he helped bring Van Halen back from the brink in the early 2000s, and gifted his guitar hero his brand-new signature guitar, the EVH SA-126 Standard.

After giving guitar fans a glimpse of its upcoming releases at NAMM earlier this year, EVH has now officially launched the Wolfgang WG Standard T.O.M. – a new electric guitar that delivers on the firm's long-awaited hardtail promise.

Available alongside the already-available-to-buy Wolfgang Special T.O.M., the Standard variant serves as the collection's more affordable alternative, and doubles down on EVH's pivot away from Floyd Rose tremolos in favor of a more readily accessible hardware set up that will appeal to a broader pool of players.

With a $599.99 price tag, this cost-conscious version boasts a fawk bound basswood body with a “comfort cut” forearm contour for “enhanced playability,” a bolt-on baked maple neck with graphite reinforcement, and a spoke wheel for easy truss rod adjustments.

It also includes a 12”-16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard, 22 jumbo frets, and black dot inlays, and is kitted with dual EVH Wolfgang humbucking pickups that are wired to black speed volume and tone knobs with 500k pots for more “precise tone control.”

And for the aesthetically inclined, it comes in Gloss Black, Cream White, and Sea Foam Pearl Metallic finishes.

In a 2023 interview with Guitar World, EVH's Matt Bruck commented on Eddie's lasting impact on the brand. Bruck, Eddie Van Halen’s former guitar tech and business partner, has worked alongside Wolfgang Van Halen to carry on Eddie’s legacy following his passing in 2020.

“Ed left a lot of ideas for us to develop,” he said. “We are committed to delivering all of them. We worked with Ed for a very long time, and we know what he would want.”

Additionally, it’s important to note that this model – as well as the Special – is available strictly as a hardtail model. This marks a departure from previous Wolfgang releases, which came fully equipped with the Eddie-approved Floyd Rose locking tremolo, signaling a new direction for the brand.

As Bruck asserted, “More people play stop-tails than guitars with locking tremolos. We dig both and we want to show people what we can come up with.”

As mentioned above, although the Standard version has stolen the spotlight for this particular release, the premium Special edition is also available with a $1,299 price tag. It is described as a “purebred music-making machine” that combines “stunning style, giant sound, and high-speed playability.”

Features include a basswood body with an arched top and a graphite-reinforced bolt-on quartersawn baked maple neck, carved and rolled to Eddie's exacting specifications – plus a hand-rubbed satin urethane finish on the back.

Elsewhere, custom-designed EVH Wolfgang Alnico 2 humbuckers guarantees “dynamic yet articulate voicings” as well as “endless sustain for powerful chords and melody lines.”

For more information about these new models, visit EVH.

With Bob Dylan's biopic A Complete Unknown becoming a film critics' darling, and The Beatles' four-movie biopic officially confirmed – not to mention pop star Lizzo locked in to star as Sister Rosetta Tharpe – it's no secret that biopics have become a lucrative way to sustain an artist's legacy. However, it's the one thing Eddie Van Halen's former wife, Valerie Bertinelli, doesn't want to happen – at least not until after she's dead.

“Oh god, I hope they never do one of Van Halen,” Bertinelli said on Monday's episode of The Drew Barrymore Show [as reported by Entertainment Weekly]. “Make sure I’m dead. I told Wolfie [son Wolfgang Van Halen], ‘Make sure I’m dead,’” to which Barrymore responded, “Oh, you know they’re gonna do one of Van Halen.”

However, when asked who her dream casting would be, she replied, “Oh… Selena Gomez. She would be amazing. But Selena, don’t do it! Please don’t do it!”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bertinelli, who was married to Van Halen for over two decades, addressed the longstanding narrative that she was the one responsible for the band’s numerous shakeups throughout the years.

“Well, I have been called Yoko in my day,” she quipped, a nod to the narrative Ono has also faced over the decades in relation to the Beatles.

“As if I had the power to break up a band. Yoko's an amazing woman. She's an artist, and she did not break up the Beatles. The Beatles had their own issues.”

She also clarified that Van Halen were having internal issues that led to tensions within the band and countless departures. “And it wasn't all Ed's fault. Okay, I'm just going to put that out there. Everybody loves to blame Ed, and he can't defend himself. Nowhere near was it all Ed's fault... He just wanted to write his music and play his music.”

Bertinelli might have to address her stance on biopics with another Van Halen family member, however.

Last year, Alex Van Halen revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone that he's slowly working on a Van Halen biopic – and is currently on the lookout for a producer, even saying, “It’s just a long-term plan. I mean, to put things in perspective, the Queen movie took 30 years to make.”

This follows the Van Halen drummer and co-founder’s tell-all memoir, Brothers, released last October, in which he chronicled his career and relationship with Eddie.

Billy Corgan and Eddie Van Halen go way back. Heck, he even interviewed EVH back in 1996 for this very publication – a meeting of the minds that saw both guitarists, from different genres, eras, and schools of guitar, delve into the nuts and bolts of what makes Van Halen, well, Van Halen.

Fast-forward 29 years, and Corgan is recreating the infamous Guitar World interview with Van Halen's son, Wolfgang, on his own podcast, The Magnificant Others – and even offers an EVH anecdote or two of his own.

“I saw your dad back in the day [in] ’84, last tour with the original lineup,” he reminisces. “I sat there and studied it all like every other nerd. But when you're like this, as far away as you are [referring to the GW interview], and he's playing, you're like, ‘Holy Mother of God, how do you play like that?’”

However, upon his meeting with Eddie, it was soon Corgan's turn to flex his guitar chops... an experience which he recalls as nothing short of intimidating.

“He's talking and he's smoking and he's making jokes, and he goes, ‘You play, right?’ And I go, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Play.’ And he hands me that guitar or whatever.”

He continues, “[He goes] ‘Play the guitar. Let me see what you got.’ So I'm like, ‘Holy... What am I gonna play him?’ And I'm not gonna play Van Halen.

“So [then] I'm just like, I got nothing to lose, so I just start playing. And he goes, ‘You can play.’ I think he thought I was just some alternative creep! [laughs]”

Corgan discusses how after that encounter, he forever gained the respect of EVH. “After he saw that I could play the guitar, the conversation went totally different yesterday, and now we were talking about music and amps, and so he really opened up.”

EVH has also looked back on the Billy Corgan interview – recalling the moment Corgan tried his rig, and was shocked by the setup.

Is musical talent genetically inherited? If your test sample is the Van Halen family, the answer undoubtedly would be yes and the proof would be the current Van Halen tour, which features the Van Halen brothers – Alex and Ed – on drums and guitar respectively, as well as Ed’s 16-year-old son Wolfgang on bass.

Although Wolfgang picked up the bass less than two years ago, his comfort on arena stages in front of crowds of 20,000 fans suggests that it was always in his DNA to be a performer.

Wolfgang’s membership in the band may now seem like fate, but Ed was careful from the beginning to let Wolfgang’s musical interests and talents develop naturally, even though Ed often hinted that he hoped his kid would follow in his footsteps.

“I’m going to let Wolfgang be whatever he wants to be,” he stated in 1995 when Wolfgang was only four. “I don’t see how he won’t somehow be into music, being exposed to it all the time. But I’m not going to force him to play piano or take music lessons like my parents did to me.”

Wolfgang’s guest appearances on guitar during Van Halen’s 2004 tour showed that Ed’s kid had not only taken an interest in music, but he had also quickly developed true talent as a musician. Even so, devoted fans were taken by complete surprise when Ed revealed in late 2006 that Wolfgang was Van Halen’s new bass player.

A few months later, when news leaked that David Lee Roth was returning as the band’s vocalist and a tour was in the works, critics wondered if Wolfgang was truly qualified. Playing one of the most anticipated tours of the past 20 years is a hell of a first job for anyone, let alone someone who was just 16 years old and had never played in any other bands before.

What seemed like a risky move on paper proved instead to be an overwhelming success as Wolfgang breathed new life into the band with the right balance of youthful enthusiasm and devoted reverence to the band’s classic songs, all of which were recorded years before Wolfgang was even born.

While the tour gives Van Halen fans an opportunity to see the band with David Lee Roth again, the presence of Wolfgang onstage opens the door to a new chapter in the band’s history. What lies ahead in the future is anyone’s guess, but with Wolfgang joining the band, their foundation is now stronger than ever, as is their potential to grow in new directions.

Talking with Ed and Wolfgang, several unusual qualities become evident. There’s no generation gap between the two, but more importantly, they reveal an undeniable mutual respect and admiration for each other that even Wolfgang’s occasional rebelliousness and Ed’s playful displays of parental authority can’t hide.

The two are truly in awe of each other’s talents. One gets the feeling that Wolfgang would be a huge Van Halen fan even if his dad wasn’t in the band and that Ed would want to make music with Wolfgang even if Wolfgang wasn’t his son.

With rave reviews coming in for the band’s current tour and a lifetime of possibilities lying ahead to explore, the future for Van Halen as a band looks very bright thanks to the addition of a new family member. As the saying goes, the family that plays together stays together, and this family positively jams.

How did Wolfgang join the band? Did you ask him to join?

Wolfgang Van Halen: “I didn’t ask to join.”

Ed Van Halen: “I asked him. We were in the studio one day. Al was in the drum room. The drum room is in the back of the studio so we couldn’t see Al and Al couldn’t see us.”

Wolfgang: “We were standing behind the console in the control room. That's where we stand when we rehearse.”

Ed: “That way I can engineer and it’s so much easier to monitor all the instruments. It’s really fuckin’ loud and crystal clear. It’s like making a record, because I have the ability to mix while we’re playing. So Wolfgang picked up a bass, and I put the bass in Al’s headphones.”

Wolfgang: “It was in the summer of ’06. My dad had said, ‘Hey, do you want to jam?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’”

Ed: “We were just jamming on some stuff. I’ll never forget it. You played the blonde five-string bass with four strings on it.”

Wolfgang: “Oh yeah!”

Ed: “Al had no idea that it was you. I put you in his headphones. It was the first time in 30 years that Al’s had bass in his headphones. Al said, ‘Hey! How are you playing bass and guitar at the same time?’ I got on the talkback and said, ‘Say hi, Wolfie!’ and you went [in high voice], ‘Hi, Uncle Al!’ Your voice was a lot higher then. Al went, ‘Who’s playing bass?’ I told him it was Wolfie, and it blew Al’s mind.”

Wolfgang: After that, Al asked if I wanted to jam again. I said, ‘Yeah!’”

Ed: “That’s when I asked him if he’d like to be the bass player in Van Halen. He said, ‘Yeah, as long as I don’t have to do a certain thing,’ which I won’t mention. [laughs deviously]”

Wolfgang: “I can say that: I said, ‘Sure. I just don’t want to do a bass solo.’”

Ed: “Even though you do have a couple of solo spots that show everyone that you are a world-class player.”

Wolfgang: “Yeah, whatever. Then we just made it a religious thing on every Wednesday and Saturday to play. We just kept playing relentlessly and eventually we thought, ‘Hey, we’re pretty damn good!’”

So in the beginning everything happened organically.

Wolfgang: “We didn’t lay out a plan or anything. It just fell together. We played together a good four months without any vocals, and we just looked at each other and knew it was awesome.”

Ed: “It’s like Dave says, ‘Three parts original, one part inevitable.’ And it was inevitable.”

Wolfgang, you play several instruments – guitar, drums, keyboards... What drove you toward the bass?

Wolfgang: “Well, it was the only open spot. [everyone laughs] And the people filling the other spots – drums and guitar – are the two greatest players of those instruments in the frickin’ world. I find the bass safe. You don’t have to go out on the line.”

Ed: “I remember another thing you said at the very beginning: ‘Can I just groove?’”

Wolfgang: “I just like to be there to groove and keep the song going.”

Your dad always says he wishes he was the bass player.

Wolfgang: “I love being a bass player. It’s just me and Al – a groove section. Just boom, boom, boom, and we’re good.”

Ed: “He is so on. Hey Wolf, wanna switch gigs?”

There are huge expectations on you, Ed.

Wolfgang: “But you’ve got to admit that there were huge expectations on me before the first show.”

Ed: “Before we went on tour a lot of people were saying that Wolfgang got the gig just because he’s my son. But after that first gig, forget it. It’s just hands down, hands up, hands sideways: he’s a musician and a Van Halen.”

Was the time in between when the tour was announced and when you played the first show difficult?

Wolfgang: “I just wanted to get it over with. I wanted to be where we are now. There was so much weight on my shoulders to fill the shoes and prove that I could do it. I knew I could do it, but I wanted to say, ‘Everybody, hey, I can do it!’”

Ed: “We rehearsed probably six months before Dave showed up. We were almost over-rehearsed. We got to the point where we were goofing around.”

Wolfgang: “That’s when we started playing Little Dreamer in double time.”

Ed: “When Dave walked in it blew his freakin’ mind.”

Wolfgang: “That night was magical. That was the first time I heard vocals with everything.”

Ed: “Dave couldn’t believe how good you are.”

Wolf, you’ve gone directly from rehearsing with your dad and uncle to playing some of the biggest venues in the world. Was it difficult for you to make that transition?

Wolfgang: “Because we rehearsed so frickin’ much, from spending six months in 5150, then at Center Staging and then for a few weeks at the L.A. Forum, I felt that we had done enough preparation for me to feel safe. Plus when you’re on the stage, you’re far enough away from people that you feel comfortable. Sometimes I can just close my eyes and feel like we’re in that room at 5150 again.”

Ed: “It’s a lot different than rehearsing in the studio. It’s probably more comfortable than being in the control room with a bunch of people staring at you.”

Wolfgang: “When there are only 10 people around, I get nervous. But when there are so many other people, I feel more comfortable. Then it’s just the four of us doing our thing.”

How did your dad help you prepare for the tour?

Wolfgang: “He didn’t really help me prepare. He just told me what not to do.”

Ed: “I taught him what my dad taught me, which is you can learn from everyone what to do and what not to do.”

Wolfgang: “That, and practice.”

Ed: “Actually, he helped me more than I helped him.”

Wolfgang: “Yeah, I had to teach him how to play the songs again.”

Ed: “Because I couldn’t remember the damn songs, and I don’t know how to work a fuckin’ iPod. He had one with all the songs on it. We hooked it up in the control room, and he’d go, ‘No dad, it goes like this!’”

Did you teach yourself how to play the songs?

Wolfgang: “Yeah, I did. The night before we started practicing, I sat down in my music room and I listened to every single song and just played to them. I didn’t do exactly everything that’s on the recordings. I put my own spin on – I kept it as close as possible but added just a little… spice. A little WVH flair. [laughs]”

Ed, What’s it like to be onstage with your son as a band member, not just a special guest like he was on the previous tour?

Ed: “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m just so truly blessed. I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I’ll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn’t wait for the day I’d be able to make music with my son. I don’t know what more I could ask for.”

Even after playing about 40 shows together, do you still have moments?

Ed: “Oh yeah. Every night. Sometimes we actually talk while we’re playing. I’ll go, ‘Hey! Are you all right?’ because sometimes he’ll look at me funny. When I give him a kiss or a high five or a low five, it’s from the heart. It ain’t bullshit. It’s just pure love.”

Wolfgang: “That doesn’t happen to me every night, but sometimes when I’m playing I’ll forget to sing or play a certain note I’ll look up and go, ‘Whoa, this is crazy!’ That feeling is always there, but I don’t always have time to think about it because I have a job to do.”

Ed: “I trip. You blow my mind. To be playing together is something I’ve always dreamed of. Believe it or not, I didn’t know you’d be this good. He scares the shit out of me. He plays drums like a pro, too.

“The first thing he does in the house is start playing And the Cradle Will Rock on the piano. Once Janie, my girlfriend, walked by and said, ‘Oh! I thought that was you.’ But it was Wolfie. Drums, guitar, bass, keyboards… shit! And singing!”

What’s it like to be in a band with your dad and uncle?

Wolfgang: “It feels right.”

Ed: “That’s the perfect way to put it. It just feels right.”

Wolfgang: “I don’t ever go, ‘This is weird. I’m with a bunch of older people.’ I feel like we’re all the same age. It’s just what we do.”

Ed: “I was going to say the same thing. Every now and then when we’re onstage playing, I’ll look at him and go, ‘God, that’s my son!’ He’s only 16, but he’s not ‘16.’ He’s an equal. Age doesn’t matter.”

Wolfgang: “There’s nobody else my age on the tour, but I feel like I’m an equal. I hope that everybody thinks of me the same way.”

Ed: “I believe they do, but you wouldn’t believe the legalities we had to go through to have him be the bass player in Van Halen.”

Wolfgang: “I still have school.”

Watching the band play, it’s like Wolfgang has been a member for a long time. Why do you think you get along so well together?

Wolfgang: “We’re blood.”

Ed: “It’s innate. The way Wolfgang plays bass is very similar to the way I play guitar. It’s very unorthodox. His style is interesting. When other bands come by, like Green Day, I’ll go, ‘Close your eyes and listen to him.’ People freak out.

“[Poison guitarist] C.C. DeVille left me a message and he didn’t compliment me at all. He did say I was on top of my game, but my son really impressed him. Do you know how proud that makes me? I couldn’t ask for more. Not only has he proven himself but he also takes this stuff further. He does all the wicked shit on the bass that I do on guitar. It’s fucking amazing.”

Wolfgang: “It’s like a genetic metronome. When we end songs, we don’t even look at each other. We all feel it. It’s good music and I love playing it.”

How are your friends reacting to your first job?

Wolfgang: “My friends just see me as me. I'm Wolfie, doing my thing.”

Ed: “But they must trip.”

Wolfgang: “They do. But they all really support me.”

Ed: “I’m sure they’re proud of you.”

What music do you listen to?

Wolfgang: “Mainly rock stuff. Nothing too out of the ordinary. I really like Tool, which is one of my favorite bands, and I love Primus and Sevendust, too.”

Ed: “You were totally into AC/DC for a while.”

Wolfgang: “AC/DC is in all of our hearts because they rule.”

Ed: “You listen to us, too.”

Wolfgang: “Not any more. I haven’t listened to us for a while.”

Ed: “That’s because you’re playing it now. I remember when I picked you up from school one day and there were boxes of records sitting in the shop at the studio. You looked at them and went, ‘Is this all you dad?’”

Wolfgang: “Oh yeah. I probably was, like, five.”

Ed: “No, I think you were 10.”

Wolfgang: “Whatever.”

Ed: “It blew my mind that I totally forgot to turn him on to all the music that I’ve written. All he knew was what he heard on the radio.”

Wolfgang: “Like Jump, and that was it.”

Ed: “I’ll never forget when we were coming home from Castle Park [a family entertainment center]. Hot for Teacher came on the radio and Wolf was going, ‘Who is that singing?’ I said, ‘That’s Dave.’”

When did you start listening to your dad’s recordings with David Lee Roth? What do you like about them?

Wolfgang: “I’m not sure when I started.”

Ed: “You had to listen to them to learn them.”

Wolfgang: “Yeah, but I’m not sure when I started. I love it for the same reason everybody else loves it. It’s awesome. It’s just good music. It lasts. It was made a while ago, and it still lives today.”

Van Halen music has never lost its adolescent appeal. For example, Panama was featured in the movie Superbad, and it fit perfectly even though the movie is set in the present day.

Wolfgang: “I love that movie.”

What is it about Van Halen music that makes it so timeless?

Wolfgang: “It rocks.”

Ed: “It just lives and breathes. It’s real. It’s not contrived, premeditated or anything. It’s just whatever comes out. If you try to write a song to please people and they don’t like it, you’re fucked because you’re not pleasing yourself, for one. And if they don’t like it, you’re double fucked.”

You write a lot of material. Do you have a gauge in your head that lets you know when something is ready to serve up to the table?

Ed: “There’s a lot of stuff I like that the rest of the guys don’t. It’s like that with Panama. I rarely start on the one, and Al hears what I’m playing backward. I’ll never forget when I wrote Little Dreamer, which is one of the few where I do start on the one and he played backward to that, too. Onstage when we’re playing…”

Wolfgang: “…Oh God, I have to watch you! At the end of Unchained we have to go eight or nine times before we freakin’ end! Sometimes it’s three. Sometimes it’s five. It’s always an odd number.”

Ed: “I can’t count for some reason. It’s always threes or fives for some reason. I only go by feel.”

Wolfgang: “And sometimes that feeling is wrong! [laughs] But we always somehow manage to pull it together for the ending.”

Ed: “We fall down the stairs and land on our feet together. Onstage, I look at Wolfie because he can count!”

Has it always been that way, even before Wolfgang?

Ed: “Yeah! But now I’ve got two people to help me, because both Al and Wolfie can count.”

How do you approach your solo section every night?

Ed: “There are certain things that I feel the fans really want to hear me play. Eruption. Cathedral.”

Wolfgang: “Spanish Fly. The Little Guitars intro.”

Ed: “I noodle a bit. About the only complaint I get is that my solo is too long. Half the time I’m looking over at Matt Bruck and going, ‘Shit! Where do I go from here?’

“Sometimes I don’t know where to go because I forget all of the stuff that I’ve done. It’s like what you asked me about why Van Halen’s music has held up. It’s because it’s spontaneous and real. I’m not saying there’s no thought behind it. Obviously it has to have some kind of structure. But spontaneity is the main ingredient.”

Now that you’ve thoroughly road tested the EVH 5150 III amps, how do you feel they’ve improved or changed your tone?

Ed: “It’s just a natural progression. It’s an extension of me, just like the guitar, which I named after my son even before he was in the band. The tattoo on my arm [“Wolfgang”] says it all.”

You still use an old-school setup with a guitar cable and wedge monitors, and you control your own effects from an onstage pedalboard. Why?

Ed: “Because that’s what I like. I don’t like digital shit. My pedalboard is homemade. It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.”

The wah pedal is the newest addition to your rig.

Ed: “It might appear that way to you, but I’ve used a wah since the early Nineties. I dig it, too. I use it more now than I ever have. I couldn’t afford one back when we were starting out, but I always wanted one. The reason why I never used any kind of fuzz or distortion box is because I couldn’t afford them.”

What kind of wah are you using?

Ed: “It’s my own model made to my own specs by Dunlop. I just go by my ear and tell people this is how I want it to sound. A lot of people don’t quite understand. Matt Bruck and I bust our asses to get people to understand what tone means. We’re tone chasers, and until we get there we don’t stop. That’s what keeps us going.”

You’ve brought a lot of different Wolfgang guitars on this tour, but you usually play one particular one at a show. However, at another show you may play another entirely different Wolfgang guitar that night. How do you choose which one you want to play that night?

Ed: “The Wolfgang guitars I have are prototypes. I generally play the latest prototype. Hopefully it sounds better than the previous one, and if it does, I end up playing it. I like the white one I’m playing better than the sunburst one, which I like better than the black ones.”

Wolfgang, how did you choose your bass rig?

Wolfgang: “Matt Bruck helped me a lot with the Sound City amps. When we were practicing Matt told me that he had these really cool amps, and we hooked them up. They rule.”

Ed: “Nobody gets a bass sound like he does. He uses EVH Brand 5150-III 4x12s. The same cabinets with EVH Celestion 12-inch speakers that I use.”

Wolfgang: “They’re really out of the ordinary, but it works.”

Ed: “Everything starts here.” [Ed holds up Wolfgang’s fingers.]

Wolfgang: “I split the signal between the amp and a DI, and I have a preamp as well. But the amp is the meat and potatoes of the sound.”

What basses are you playing?

Wolfgang: “I’m playing a Franken-bass, if you want to call it that. It’s based on my dad’s Frankenstein guitar…”

Ed: “Except it has four strings instead of six.”

Wolfgang: “I got the red one for Christmas last year. Chip Ellis built it, and he told me he was going to make a backup, so I asked him to paint it blue. Ever since I was little I wanted my own stripes. Blue is my favorite color, so we tried it and I think it looks pretty cool.”

Do you eventually see yourself having a solo segment onstage?

Wolfgang: “I don’t. I like having my own moment for five seconds, like the So This Is Love? intro and the tapping part in Romeo Delight. That’s enough for me. I’m more than fulfilled being a team player.”

What was your best personal moment so far on this tour?

Wolfgang: “When we did the rehearsal show for friends and family in L.A., it was just the beginning and I didn’t feel I had ripened. When we came back to L.A. and did the first Staples Center show, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I was much a better player. I felt like a member of the band.”

Ed: “For me it’s the fact that I get to play with my son, my brother, and Dave. Every night is special. Doing an interview with my son right now is special. It’s all special.”

This feature is from the April 2008 issue of Guitar World magazine.

NAMM 2025: EVH is bringing the goods by honoring the legacy of Eddie Van Halen – guided by his son, Wolfgang Van Halen. Alongside the already-announced SA-126 Standard – which introduced Wolfgang's first signature model into the sub-$1,000 category – EVH is also treating guitarists to two other models: the Wolfgang Special T.O.M. and the Wolfgang WG Standard T.O.M.

Wolfgang Special T.O.M.

Tried and tested in arenas around the world, the $1,299.99 Wolfgang Special T.O.M. is described as a “purebred music-making machine” that combines “stunning style, giant sound, and high-speed playability.”

First off, it features a basswood body with an arched top and a graphite-reinforced bolt-on quartersawn baked maple neck, carved and rolled to Eddie's exacting specifications – plus a hand-rubbed satin urethane finish on the back.

The 12”-16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard is outfitted with 22 jumbo frets and black dot inlays, while a pair of flagship, custom-designed EVH Wolfgang Alnico 2 humbuckers guarantees “dynamic yet articulate voicings” as well as “endless sustain for powerful chords and melody lines.”

A “sturdy” EVH compensated bridge and tailpiece, fine tuners, a volume knob with a treble bleed circuit and a 500K EVH Bourns low-friction pot, and a 250K Bourns high-friction tone pot on the tone knob round off this meticulously spec’d guitar.

Moving on to aesthetics – the EVH Wolfgang Special T.O.M. is available in attractive Gloss Black and Husk White colorways with black hardware and Oxblood with gold hardware.

Wolfgang WG Standard T.O.M.

Meanwhile, EVH is also releasing a more affordable counterpart, the Wolfgang WG Standard T.O.M., with a $599.99 price tag.

This cost-conscious version boasts a fawk bound basswood body with a “comfort cut” forearm contour for “enhanced playability,” a bolt-on baked maple neck with graphite reinforcement, and a spoke wheel for easy truss rod adjustments.

Like the pricier version, it also includes a 12”-16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard, 22 jumbo frets, and black dot inlays – but is kitted with dual EVH Wolfgang humbucking pickups instead, as well as black speed volume and tone knobs with 500k pots for more “precise tone control.” And for the aesthetically inclined, it comes in Gloss Black, Cream White, and Sea Foam Pearl Metallic finishes.

In a 2023 interview with Guitar World, EVH's Matt Bruck commented on Eddie's lasting impact on the brand. Bruck, Eddie Van Halen’s former guitar tech and business partner, has worked alongside Wolfgang to carry on Eddie’s legacy following his passing in 2020.

“Ed left a lot of ideas for us to develop,” he said. “We are committed to delivering all of them. We worked with Ed for a very long time, and we know what he would want.”

Additionally, it’s important to note that these two guitars are available strictly as hardtail models. This marks a departure from previous Wolfgang releases, which came fully equipped with the Eddie-approved Floyd Rose locking tremolo, signaling a new direction for the brand.

As Bruck asserted, “More people play stop-tails than guitars with locking tremolos. We dig both and we want to show people what we can come up with.”

For more information about these new models, visit EVH.

NAMM 2025: Without question one of the biggest guitar gear launches of 2024 – one can certainly make the case that it bagged the top prize – was that of the EVH SA-126 Special, Wolfgang Van Halen's first signature guitar.

Envisioned as a hybrid of sorts, the SA-126 is a semi-hollow guitar designed to handle the high-gain, speedometer-testing heat you'd expect from someone from the Van Halen family, without any of the dreaded feedback.

“The SA-126 is way beyond a typical semi-hollow,” Wolfgang explained to us last year. “It’s like a hot rod, but with a souped-up modern engine. Nothing like this existed until we made it.”

Van Halen chose to kick off the SA-126 line last year in the mid-price, sub-$2,000 range, but now, EVH has unveiled the SA-126 Standard, which brings the model into the sub-$1,000 category.

A quick look at the SA-126 Standard's headstock reveals that it's an Indonesian build, reflecting a broader industry trend of turning to that country for low price range builds.

Nitty gritty-wise, the 24.75”- scaleStandard retains the Special's mahogany body, but also utilizes mahogany for its centerblock, in contrast to the Special's basswood centerblock. Like half of the Special models, the Standard boasts a maple top (two of the Specials were adorned with quilt maple tops).

Aside from the wood – rosewood, in contrast to the Special's ebony – the fretboard is the same; 22 jumbo frets, with a 12”-16” compound radius. It does, however, come with some slightly different block-style inlays. A spoke wheel truss rod adjustment has also made its way over from the spec sheet of its big brother.

Sonics, meanwhile, are led off by a pair of fire-breathing but versatile humbuckers designed by pickup guru Tim Shaw, controllable by a pair of volume and tone knobs apiece, with a three-way toggle switch for further tonal tweaking.

A T.O.M bridge and stop-bar tailpiece, oversized strap buttons, and keystone tuning pegs round out the spec sheet.

In terms of looks, the SA-126 Standard is available in Piano Black and Satin White finishes with black hardware, Pelham Green with chrome hardware, and Transparent Wine Red with gold hardware.

“In 2025, we will once again challenge the ‘norm’ with the introduction of the SA-126 Standard, a groundbreaking hybrid guitar that redefines versatility and performance,” reads a statement from EVH.

Available starting in May, the SA-126 Standard will ring up at $899.

For more info on the new model, visit EVH Gear.

Because there is always another guitar out there that’s just perfect for you, we will always be on the hunt for fresh gear. Whether it’s the search for better tone or that instrument that brings out the best in our playing styles, that’s just how we are wired as guitar players.

Thankfully – or not, depending on how bad your G.A.S. is – the music industry is here for us, and in 2024, seemed to bring us more new acoustic and electric guitars, guitar amps, stompboxes… You name it.

Every day, something new came out and that can be hard to keep track of, so here, we have in one convenient place a list of all the new stuff that caught our eye and made us look at the collection and think, ‘Okay, maybe there is room for one more.’ And maybe, that one more was a double-neck.

EVH SA-126 Special

Good things, as the old adage goes, come to those who wait. Having been teased by Wolfgang Van Halen two years ago, following an intensive period of testing on the road and in the studio, the SA-126 Special semi-hollow was finally made available to the public in May.

Given that it was the first instrument designed without any input from Eddie, it marked a new chapter for EVH Gear, while still referencing the guitar hero’s January 26 birthday.

It comes with a chambered mahogany body, a basswood center block and a pair of hot humbuckers designed by Fender pickup guru Tim Shaw for more aggression and punch than typical guitars of this ilk.

Despite this, it can handle high-gain situations without feeding back and also deliver more chimey tones on cleaner settings. “The SA-126 is way beyond a typical semi-hollow,” Wolfgang told us. “It’s like a hot rod, but with a souped-up modern engine. Nothing like this existed until we made it.”

$1,799 / EVH Gear

Warm Audio Warm Bender Fuzz

Studio specialist Warm Audio has certainly come a long way since launching its first pedals back in 2020, recreating the mythical tones of the Klon, ZenDrive and OCD for a fraction of the price – and with great success.

This year’s Warm Bender Fuzz could very well be their finest offering to date, housing two legendary British fuzz circuits, the MKI Tone Bender and Professional MKII, in one box – as well as a modern silicon voicing.

All in all, it packs five NOS germanium transistors, three silicon transistors and a sag switch to starve the voltage by a third to create that infamous “dying battery” tone for extra spit and crackle.

Whether you’re trying to sound like vintage masters like Keith Richards and Jimmy Page or going for a more modern take in the vein of Jack White and St. Vincent, the Warm Bender Fuzz will get you there without any fuss.

$199 / Warm Audio

Strandberg Boden Essential  

When you hear the words “ergonomic guitar,” Strandberg will usually be one of the first brands that come to mind. Favored by artists such as Plini, Sarah Longfield and Charlie Griffiths, their incredibly lightweight and user-friendly designs are built to bring out the best in every player, making the physicality of performance as seamless as can be.

The only problem thus far is that their instruments haven’t exactly been accessible to those working to lower budgets – until this year, that is, with the introduction of the Boden Essential.

It features a meranti body, a roasted one-piece maple neck with their trademarked EndurNeck profile and two pickups controlled via the five-way selector with options for full humbuckers, inner coils, outer coils and even a parallel mode.

The three finishes (Elemental Blue, Astro Dust, Black Granite) might not be exactly the most enticing from the company’s catalog, but to get a highly conceptual machine like this for under a grand makes it a winner in our eyes.

$999 / Strandberg Guitars

BOSS Dual Digital Delay SDE-3

It’s virtually impossible to find another pedal brand that can rival the level of consistency we’ve grown to expect from Boss – the Japanese innovators have long-nailed the holy trinity of quality, durability and affordability.

So it’s hardly surprising that the announcement of the SDE-3, a scaled-down version of last year’s mammoth SDE-3000D – which recreated the effect of the Eighties Roland rackmount of the same name – was met with fevered anticipation.

As you’d expect, it can run two delays simultaneously with a tap tempo function, advanced and immersive stereo modes, MIDI connectivity and a maximum delay time of 1600ms.

Famous users of the original unit included Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton, the Edge and Steve Lukather – which should be enough to demonstrate the sheer versatility to expect from its newest incarnation.

$219 / Boss

Danelectro 6/12 Doubleneck

Jimmy Page might have dominated headlines earlier this year with the release of his Gibson Collector’s Edition 1969 EDS-1275, but with a $50k pricetag, it’s the kind of extravagant purchase very few would even dare to consider.

Which partly explains why news of Danelectro releasing their own 6/12 Doubleneck, coming in at under a grand, was such a cause for celebration.

With a White Pearl finish, rosewood fretboard, a quartet of lipstick pickups and the bonus of being surprising light thanks to its semi-hollow construction, there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to write your own Stairway to Heaven on an instrument like this.

And let’s not forget, it was typically a Danelectro six-string in the Led Zeppelin guitarist’s hands for DADGAD tracks like Kashmir, so there’s that, too.

$899 / Danelectro

Positive Grid Spark 2

Though they started out as specialists in amp-modeling software, in recent years Positive Grid have taken the practice amp world by storm with the Spark line. This year saw the launch of its second iteration, with Guitar World’s Paul Riario teaming up with Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Gilbert and Periphery guitarist Jake Bowen for the live premiere on YouTube.

In terms of updates, the new model boasts twice the processing power, 25 percent more volume, a brand-new looper mode with drums, AI technology for more HD amp models and the option to use a Spark Battery, offering 12 hours of play time on a full charge.

The speakers have also been tweaked for a wider stereo imaging and broader frequency response, resulting in a practice amp that’s loud, versatile, intuitive and affordable. Bettencourt went as far as saying the “Spark 2 is like taking Madison Square Garden wherever you go – epic and versatile.”

$299 / Positive Grid

ESP LTD Kirk Hammett KH-V

There’s been a lot of noise about the Gibson and Epiphone Greeny models over the last few years – and rightly so – though for metal purists in search of Kirk Hammett’s stadium-conquering distorted tones, it might not have been the first axe they’d associate with him.

Which is precisely where ESP come in, with the new korina-bodied 24-fret KH-V signature guitar boasting active EMG humbuckers and pointy ends to really emphasize the aggression and attack pioneered by the thrash metal masters.

Other notable appointments include the TonePros Locking Tune-O-Matic bridge with strings coming through the body, increasing both stability and sustain, with more reassurance provided by the locking tuners, and extra tonal reinforcement from the neck-through design.

Available in Black Sparkle, Red Sparkle and Metallic Gold, Hammett described the line as “a perfect hybrid of reality and my vision” that gave him goosebumps on first inspection.

$1,799 / ESP Guitars

Donner Jack White Triple Threat

Jack White has shown us many things over the years – one of which being how musicians don’t necessarily need to rely on expensive equipment in their search for world-conquering tones.

Partnering with budget brand Donner at the beginning of the year, the signature Triple Threat is a three-in-one analog effect unit combining a high gain distortion they describe as a “threatening rock sound,” a phaser based on their Pearl Tremor stompbox and an analog voiced echo harking back to Donner’s debut pedal, the Yellow Fall delay.

It also scores very high in the aesthetics department, with a yellow on black finish, lightning bolts, stripes and Jack White’s very own Third Man Hardware graphics. And that’s not the only release from the Seven Nation Army writer – he also teamed up with Fender for the signature TripleCaster Tele, featuring custom Tim Shaw pickups, a Bigsby B5 vibrato and custom controls.

$99 / Donner Music

MXR M309 Joshua Ambient Echo

Described by some as “U2 in a pedal”, the Joshua Ambient Echo can easily handle basic delays, but really excels at all things ethereal.

There are buttons for secondary repeats and toggling the Trails mode, plus dials for Delay, Modulation, Voice, Regen, Division and Mix, as well as a tap tempo mode.

It’s no secret the Edge has mainly been known for using Electro-Harmonix Memory Man Deluxes, Korg SDD-3000s and TC Electronic 2290s to handle his trademark repeats in the past, and despite coming in a small Phase 90-sized box, the Joshua Ambient Echo can keep up with any of them.

If you’re into heavily processed, dreamlike soundscapes where your guitar sounds like its being beamed from a long-distant planet, or like having enough controls to fine-tune everything from fast slapbacks to cathedral-like atmospheres, this will certainly be of interest.

$239 / Jim Dunlop

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson Custom 1957 SJ-200

One of our favorite acoustics of the year arrived in the form of Epiphone’s 1957 SJ-200. This latest addition to the (awesome) Inspired By Gibson line pays tribute to the historic super jumbo seen in the hands of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and many more. Its reputation as the “King of the Flat Tops” made it the go-to weapon of choice for folk and country artists halfway into the 20th century.

Features include a thermally-aged sitka spruce top and figured maple back and sides, scalloped X-bracing, an Indian laurel fingerboard and LR Baggs Element Bronze VTC electronics.

And it certainly looks the part, too, thanks to the Gibson “open book” headstock, graduated crown mother of pearl inlays, engraved pickguard and open moustache bridge. An all‑rounder in every sense.

$1,499 / Epiphone

Fender Player II Stratocaster

Launched in 2018, the Player series replaced the Standards and ended up becoming Fender’s best-selling line thanks to the juxtaposition of classic features and modern ingenuity, all delivered at their affordable “Made in Mexico” price point.

This year saw the introduction of the Player II – which, while incorporating some of the improvements with the Player Plus models of 2021, sticks with the vintage concept over anything too contemporary.

Key differences between first and second editions include a rosewood fingerboard in place of pau ferro – arguably its most significant upgrade – this time with rolled edges (a feature more associated with midrange and premium guitars) and ClassicGear tuners.

But there’s so much they got right the first time round, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the new models share much in common with the highly successful originals.

$799 / Fender

Gretsch Limited Edition Electromatic Pristine Jet

If you’re looking for the most visually striking guitar of 2024, the Gretsch Electromatic Pristine Jet should be somewhere on the list, and that goes for any of its three finishes (Mako, Petrol or White Gold).

The combination of two-tone colors with metallic tops and rich stained bodies and necks, exquisitely complimented by the gold hardware, makes for an eye-popping elegance that will hold attention in just about any setting.

As you might expect, it boasts a chambered mahogany body with a maple top, FT-5E Filter’Tron pickups with cream inserts and a Bigsby B50 vibrato tailpiece. Other key appointments include a master volume with treble bleed circuit, 22 medium jumbo frets and pearloid Neo-Classic thumbnail inlays.

Users of the Jet series include Malcolm Young, Danielle Haim and George Harrison – and higher-gain players like Kirk Hammett and Chris Cornell.

$749 / Gretsch Guitars

PRS S2 Custom 24-08

Bridging the gap between the budget SE line and high-end Core models, the PRS S2 series can sometimes be a bit of a hard sell – perhaps partly because once over the $2k mark, some may wish to carry on saving for something well and truly top of the line.

That said, this year’s Custom 24-08 could be the most enticing release in the range to date, especially when you factor in the new addition of USA-made pickups and electronics, which replaces the import sets found on models thus far.

This is of even greater importance with the advanced switching of their 24-08 design, allowing users to coax eight different pickup voicings, thanks to the two mini-toggle coil tap switches found in between the volume and tone controls.

Apart from that, it’s business as usual, with a 25” scale length, mahogany body and maple top, a mahogany neck and rosewood fingerboard – rounded off nicely by the PRS patented tremolo.

$2,349 / PRS Guitars

Yamaha Pacifica Professional

Originally introduced in 1989 as a custom shop model for session players, the Yamaha Pacifica ended up serving proudly as one of the finest entry-level guitars money can buy, guaranteeing beginners an instrument of high enough quality to encourage them to carry on playing.

Which is exactly why the new Professional models became a big talking point at NAMM – reimagining the model as a high-spec workhorse meticulously crafted in Japan, nodding back to the late-’80s originals.

With options for either a rosewood or maple fingerboard, the new flagship features newly designed Reflectone pickups made in collaboration with studio wizard Rupert Neve, a carved neck joint heel and premium Gotoh hardware, plus increased body resonance, thanks to the 3D modeling and intensive science behind Yamaha’s Acoustic Design technology. A legend gets reborn.

$2,199 / Yamaha

ThorpyFX Electric Lightning Valve Overdrive

Let’s face it, most of us have looked at footage of British guitarist Chris Buck at some point or another and felt like we needed to up our tone game. Given that he’s often sworn by pedals made by Major Adrian Thorpe MBE – who started the company after 16 years working as a bomb-disposal expert in the British army – an official partnership for his first signature stompbox made perfect sense.

As well as the impressively dynamic 12AX7-powered overdrive, the Electric Lightning offers a high-headroom boost to fatten up cleans or provide an extra push where needed, with its own dedicated pre-gain Lows control.

There’s a three-band EQ to help shape your tone, a dedicated 12v power supply and a housing that looks bomb-proof – which, given Mr. Thorpe’s previous field of expertise, can probably handle anything you throw at it.

$499 / ThorpyFX.com

UAFX Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp Pedal

With a crème de la crème list of famous users ranging from Eric Clapton, SRV and Carlos Santana to Robben Ford, Larry Carlton and Joe Bonamassa, Alexander Dumble’s mythical creations have long sat at the ultra-expensive end of the gear wishlist.

After the boutique amp veteran passed away in January 2023, however, his heads and combos became even more collectible, which could explain why Universal Audio chose to unveil its own pedal version of the Overdrive Special back in September.

Powered by UAFX dual-engine processing and UAD modeling, the pedal offers pristine cleans and rich overdrives through its Jazz, Rock and Custom modes, as well as nine classic mic/speaker combinations and more customizations and mods through the UAFX Control app.

UAFX has certainly put in the hours to “give you the sound of the most wildly expensive and coveted guitar amps in history.”

$399 / Universal Audio

Klōs Guitars Carbon Timber Grand Cutaway Mini

Based in Utah and founded almost a decade ago, Klōs Guitars have become one of the most exciting new names in the carbon fiber world, using their extensive research to create highly durable and resonant electrics, acoustics, basses, mandolins and ukuleles.

Of course, there will always be some players who prefer the traditional look of acoustic tonewoods, but there are many advantages to be found with carbon fiber – particularly when it comes to smaller travel guitars, which may be subjected to extreme environmental changes.

The Grand Cutaway Mini comes with a 24.75” scale length, 20 frets and Graph Tech Ratio tuners, and there are upgrades available for electronics. There’s also an option to use carbon timber as the material for more of a classic wood-like appearance.

$1,959 / Klos Guitars

VOX VRM-1 Real McCoy & V846 Vintage Wahs

“1967 is back!” Vox boldly declared at NAMM, where they launched reissues of the world’s first production wahs – the Clyde McCoy original, which was accidentally created while redesigning the Vox Super Beatle amp in 1966 and initially targeted to trumpet players, and then the V846, which came soon after.

The pedals found their way into the hands of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and the rest, as they say, is history. SRV was also a big fan of these wah pedals and even acquired one of Jimi’s V846 units after his brother Jimmie opened for the Purple Haze superstar in Fort Worth.

The reissues are said to be “perfect recreations” of the early units, thanks to the 3D scanning technology used to analyze the early designs. In terms of differences, the VRM-1 carries more of a midrange warmth while the V846 boasts an extended sweep range for a sharper and more biting effect.

$279 / Vox Amplification

Neural DSP Nano Cortex

It was a fairly quiet year for Neural DSP – until September, that is, when they unveiled the smaller sibling to their revolutionary Quad Cortex floor processor, which originally stole headlines for carrying arguably the most advanced technology of its kind.

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and weighing just over one pound, the Nano Cortex still manages to pack in Neural’s Capture technology for digital copies of physical gear, with the same resolution and quality as before.

Shipping with 25 captures of famous releases by Mesa/Boogie, Fender and Diezel, an additional 256 amps can be stored, with thousands more available through the Cortex Cloud.

On top of that, you also get 300 studio-quality IRs, each with five different mic options and six positions for what the company describes as “endless tone shaping possibilities.” Few would argue.

$549 / Neural DSP

Taylor Circa 74 Acoustic Amp

They’ve been one of the biggest names in the acoustic trade for decades, but Taylor had never launched its own amplifier until now, with the arrival of the Circa 74. For owner/founder Bob Taylor, the project reminded him so much of his freewheeling startup days, he decided to name it after the year it all began.

With two independent channels for guitar and vocals, plus a master volume to mix an aux in, the 150W amp features a 10-inch speaker, a three-band EQ, room reverb and Bluetooth connectivity.

Much like the instruments the company are renowned for, it’s an acoustic guitar amp that sounds warm, dynamic and incredibly hi-fi. And it certainly looks the part, too – thanks to the vintage-style logo and mahogany cabinet and stand. We won’t be surprised if there’s more to come from Taylor on this front.

$1,199 / Taylor Guitars

Origin Effects Cali76 FET Compressor

The 1176 Peak Limiter, designed by Bill Putman and introduced by UREI in 1967, is one of the most fabled compressors of all time, immortalized on classic albums by the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Aretha Franklin.

Which is why the Cali76 pedal, launched by U.K. builders Origin Effects just over a decade ago, quickly became one of the most lauded dynamic tools on the market, ending up on the boards of tone connoisseurs like David Gilmour, Noel Gallagher, John Mayer and Steven Wilson.

This year’s new FET version comes in a smaller enclosure and features a 10-LED gain reduction meter, as well as an improved sidechain and more headroom from the internally increased voltage.

Though it can happily provide the extreme squish heard on many a country guitar album from the ’80s, where it truly excels is in providing a fullness that makes your tone come to life in more subtle ways.

$369 / Origin Effects

Sammy Hagar has revealed he’s written a tribute song to Eddie Van Halen with Joe Satriani and Michael Anthony.

While Satch and Anthony have their parts recorded already, Hagar says he’s holding the process up because he gets “emotional” when recording his vocals.

After Alex Van Halen revealed that the previous attempt at putting an Eddie Van Halen tribute tour together failed because David Lee Roth didn’t want to pay homage to Eddie’s legacy, Hagar plans to take his tributes one step further.

“It’ll be a single,” he tells Rolling Stone. “We’re working on it right now. Mike [Anthony] and I just finished the bass and the background vocals. I took a shot at a lead vocal, but I don’t know if it’s done yet.

“Joe’s got his parts done. Kenny [Aronoff] played drums. I gotta tell you, it was emotional singing it, because the song, it’s about Eddie. That’s the best I can put it. It’s a thank you to him, and it’s a thank you to the fans, and it’s a thank you to that era.”

He adds that fans can expect its release in “February or March”, but no other details were spilled.

He did, however, say that he and Wolfgang Van Halen “got goosebumps” when they saw each other at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month.

The singer, who has announced the return of his Best of All Worlds shows via a Las Vegas residency at Park MGM in 2025, is full of admiration for Van Halen Jr.

“I walked into Ozzy’s dressing room and Wolfie’s sitting there,” he says. “We caught eyes and he jumps up, and we just fuckin’ hugged and got goosebumps on both of us.”

Wolfgang starred at the glitzy event which saw Ozzy Osbourne inducted into the Hall’s annals for the second time, this time for his work as a solo artist.

Taking the stage to perform Crazy Train – and nailing its iconic solo – alongside Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith, he’d helped pour cold water on the muchly contested Randy Rhoads versus Eddie Van Halen rivalry that began in the early ‘80s and hasn’t been properly quelled since.

“It’s so funny, every time I’ve ever run into him and we embrace, I get the goosebumps because I feel like it’s Eddie,” Hagar says of meeting Wolfgang backstage.

“I really feel he’s the closest thing to Eddie on this planet right now. He looks like him, when you look him in the eye. He does his gestures. He takes his finger and he pushes his hair out of his face like Eddie.

“He did that when I was talking to him,” he continues. “I said, ‘I can’t even look at you, Wolf. I’m getting teared up.’ Yeah, I love him and what he’s doing.”

Wolfgang has, understandably, been cautious about his positioning in regard to his late father’s monumental musical legacy, preferring to tread his own path with Mammoth WVH.

In August he told the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast: “I think people are sitting there waiting for me to outdo my dad in some way, but that's impossible. I'm not him. I'm doing my own thing and if anything I'm outdoing him in that way... I'm a better drummer than him and no one says that!”

Though he did inherit one technique from his dad, in a new chat with Bass Player, he's further distanced himself from his father by dispelling the belief that Eddie taught him every trick from his book.

“My Dad called me a ‘rhythm bassist’, but all he taught me was a power chord and an AC/DC drum beat,” he says. “From there, I just played along.”

Nonetheless, Hagar has previously expressed his desire to involve Wolfgang in the Best of All Worlds extravaganza at some stage, saying “I’m sure our paths will cross”.

Pursue a career in music with a surname like Mingus, Pastorius, or Jamerson, and you can bet at some point you'll be subject to unfair scrutiny of your ability and motivation. If Wolfgang Van Halen – son of the man many regard as the best guitarist of all time – is letting that pressure get to him, he's a master of disguise.

“People always think that dad taught me how to play everything,” Wolfgang told Bass Player. “He called me a ‘rhythm bassist’, but all he did was teach me a power chord and an AC/DC-style drum beat. From there, I just played along.”

On Van Halen’s twelfth and final studio album, 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, Wolfgang Van Halen blazed a bold new trail for the role of bass guitar in the band, stepping up to match his dad note-for-note in tunes like China Town and Honeybabysweetiedoll, and settling into more supportive roles on such songs as Tattoo and You and Your Blues.

“Every time I would go into the back room of the studio, I'd see walls of tapes with music that nobody's really heard. I thought, people need to hear this, because dad wrote this music in the same headspace as songs like Dance The Night Away and Runnin' With The Devil. I wanted to take some ideas out and rework them. I feel it brought him back to that time when he wrote those older songs. That's why I think that record sounds so ‘old’ – in a good way.”

Following the 2006 dismissal of bassist Michael Anthony, the band had re-formed with frontman David Lee Roth, with Ed, Wolf, and uncle Alex Van Halen rounding out the lineup. Our interview from the Bass Player archives took place in April 2012 on a tour stop in Chicago.

How did you come to play bass?

“I started on drums when I was 10 years old, and then went to guitar when I was 12. I picked up the bass guitar when I was 14 or 15. One day, dad and Al were jamming up at the studio, and they asked if I wanted to play with them. A couple weeks went by, and it started to feel like something serious – more than just fun. We called Dave, and the rest just happened.”

Why were you drawn to bass?

“It was the only open position in the band, I guess! And the other spaces were filled by the best guitarist and the best drummer in the business. But the reason I like bass so much is that it's really important to the song, but you're not out in the spotlight. Everybody is focused on the singer and the guitarist.”

Who were the bass players that first got you excited?

“Les Claypool was probably the biggest bass inspiration for me. But back then, it was a lot of AC/DC, Muse, and Tool. Justin Chancellor is one of my favorite bassists. Tool then got me interested in more complicated time signatures, and challenging myself to listen to new music.”

Did you go the route of learning music theory?

“All my friends were in music classes, telling me I needed to learn theory, but I felt like I didn't have the time; we were already rehearsing pretty much every single day. After high school, I'd go up to the studio and play for three hours.”

How did you go about learning the classic Van Halen material?

“I'd sit and listen. At home I have a small setup with my computer and a Line 6 bass amp. I'd learn the basic changes and then add my own flair.”

Do you try to match what Michael Anthony played?

“Not really. I don't try to rewrite it, but I'll play different runs.”

Of the classics, what are your favorites to play.

“I like the older, deeper cuts. Some of my favorites are Girl Gone Bad and Out of Love Again. Of the new songs, I really like China Town and The Trouble with Never. She's the Woman also has a lot of open space where I can mess around.”

How did the material for A Different Kind of Truth come about?

“I think it was August 2009 and we did the first demo of She's the Woman. When we did that, we realized this was really cool. From there, we wrote seven new songs, and reworked seven or so old demos. Reflecting on the simplicity of the older songs put us in a headspace to incorporate that into the newer songs.”

There's a wide variety of tones on the record, from punchy to downright nasty. In terms of ideas and execution, how did that come together?

“It's just what I think sounds best. I feel the dirt actually adds a certain clarity. I've always played through an EVH 5150 III guitar head for dirty sounds, but this time around we dug through some old Ampeg SVT heads. Then we found this awesome Fender Super Bassman. It's got the perfect amount of bottom end.”

It also sounds as if you're playing a lot of double stops and guitar-like techniques.

“I do that a lot. A lot of people think that I'm not even playing – that it's my dad using an octave pedal on guitar. But it's me. Take the beginning of China Town, for example. I was messing around in the studio one day, and I put a capo on the 9th fret of my bass, so the open G is an E. I played the tapping intro with him, and it just sounded really cool.”

You utilize a lot of slides and jumps. Where does that come from?

“That stems from my own boredom, I guess. Dad says I overplay sometimes, but it's just because I get bored. To make things more interesting, I'll just play a riff an octave higher. The slides just come naturally – I don't pay attention to it.”

Do you always play with a pick?

“The only song I play fingerstyle is Tattoo. because I can get a better groove that way. But I'm a pick guy. Because I started on guitar, it just feels more natural. On shuffles, like Hot For Teacher, I definitely prefer a pick.”

What kind of feedback do you get from your dad?

“He just lets me explore and fail on my own. He doesn't really have much control over me! Trial and error – that's how you learn.”

There’s an infectiously lyrical quality to Aaron Marshall’s playing on Memory Palace, the latest album from the guitarist’s Toronto-based prog-strumental outfit, Intervals.

Songs like Nootropics sport undeniably serotonin-surged melodies that get stuck in your head for days – all the more wondrous when you consider how those hooks come framed within neon blurs of selective picking and quizzically complex, tech-chugged syncopation.

In a recent making-of documentary around the album, bassist Jacob Umansky deadpans, “There’s a lot of notes, and it’s easy to miss them.” Marshall likewise admits that the group’s own memory palaces sometimes come crumbling down onstage.

“We’re certainly human, and I think it’s cool to show that we are indeed playing the music in real time; that reminds the audience that they’re not listening to a backing track,” he says jovially of the odd onstage flub. Those fly by quick enough, though, amid the flurry of twists within each Intervals piece. “Do I want a flawless performance every night? Absolutely! Do you get one? Don’t hold me to it… but we try.”

Since 2011, Intervals have somewhat existed as a virtuosic outgrowth of Marshall’s interest in “memory and balance” – the technique and muscle memory guitarists accrue are proof to him that “humans are pretty impressive.”

That adaptability is referenced right on the new record’s Mnemonic Device, its title alluding to tricks Marshall uses to retain complex sequences. For this one, he visualized and channeled the Hamsa – a divine symbol of a hand with an eyeball in its palm – to finger through a frantic rolling-fives motif.

Though clearly hard-wired for complexity, Marshall also knows it’s sometimes just as important to deprogram in order to stay the course. “I’ll modify things to make them easier on me live,” he says. “If that means I’ve got to hybrid-pick the line rather than fully alternate-pick it, no harm no foul. You’ve got to say it with your chest. Don’t play it in a way that scares you. Do it in a way that makes you feel confident.”

Another musician confidently crushing Intervals songs these days is Wolfgang Van Halen, the Mammoth WVH leader who’d previously praised Intervals’ 2020 full-length, Circadian, in the pages of Guitar World. When the two groups finally toured together this past spring, Wolfie couldn’t wait to work through songs with Marshall & Co.

“He knows more Intervals songs at any given moment than I do – on guitar and drums,” Marshall says of a spicy pre-show jam with WVH. “He was busting out licks from Earthing, which is the final track on Circadian. We’ve never played that song live – there’s a bunch of really challenging stuff in there!”

This goes to show that while Intervals’ human-synaptic connections are certainly impressive, the memory palace of a wooly Mammoth is none too shabby, either.

• Memory Palace is out now.

Ozzy Osbourne was honored with a star-studded second induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame over the weekend, this time for his work as a solo artist.

Ever humble, the singer took the opportunity to pay tribute to his former guitarist, admitting, “If I hadn't met Randy Rhoads, I wouldn't be sat here right now,” during a brief but heartfelt speech.

The Prince of Darkness’ contributions to the festivities were few and far between, with the singer remaining on his bat-adorned throne for much of the evening, having recently retired from touring due to his deteriorating health.

So it was up to a few familiar faces from across Ozzy's storied career to provide the sparkle and entertainment, with Jack Black delivering a passionate speech before a revolving all-star band took to the stage for a handful of knockout performances.

Guest instrumentalists for the ceremony included Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde, Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens, and Metallica and former Ozzy bass player, Robert Trujillo.

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith was behind the kit, while Adam Wakeman and producer Andrew Watt were also called into action.

Vocal duties for the evening were delivered by Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, who gave Crazy Train a signature twist. Country Star Jelly Roll sang Mama I’m Coming Home, while Billy Idol crooned his way through a suitably dark No More Tears.

But it was Wolfgang’s contributions that were perhaps the most poignant. The Eddie Van Halen versus Randy Rhoads rivalry is one of the most debated in shred history, with the pair both at the peak of their powers in the early '80s.

As such, watching Wolfgang weave and tap his way through the Crazy Train solo on his EVH signature was a notable footnote to the festivities. It also nicely set the Van Halen/Rhoads rivalry aside and emphasized the legacy that both guitarists have created, and the influence they've since had on the world that adores them.

In truth, both virtuosos were guilty of fanning the flames that licked their rivalry. Eddie once said “everything he [Randy] did he learned from me,” while Ozzy claimed that “Randy didn't have a nice thing to say about Eddie”.

Wolfgang Van Halen is set to join Zakk Wylde, Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens and super-producer Andrew Watt at this month’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, which will see the induction of Ozzy Osbourne.

In April, it was announced that the Prince of Darkness would be among the Hall’s Class of 2024, alongside the likes of Peter Frampton, John Mayall, MC5, Dave Matthews Band, Cher, Foreigner and more.

The ceremony is set to take place on October 19, and according to a report from Rolling Stone, it will feature some high-profile performances from a number of names associated with Osbourne’s career.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Osbourne revealed actor/musician Jack Black would be the one to formally induct him into the Hall of Fame, while Wolfgang and a host of other musicians will be tasked with providing the entertainment.

“I don’t know what to think,” Osbourne said. “I’m still in shock that I’m getting inducted for a second time. But at the same time, I’m very excited.”

Reportedly, the evening will host a tribute honoring Osbourne’s solo career, and although the man himself didn’t comment on whether he’ll be singing for the occasion, he did tease the ceremony won’t be shy of A-list performers.

Billy Idol, Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and country artist Jelly Roll will all perform Osbourne tracks. Wylde – who has been one of Osbourne’s most faithful guitarists since the late 1980s – will be there to take part in the tribute, as will Wolfgang Van Halen and Andrew Watt.

The rest of the rhythm lineup will comprise Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, both of whom, according to Osbourne, make the perfect pairing.

“The rhythm section is the anchor of the band,” Osbourne adds, “and you honestly couldn’t get a better rhythm section than Robert Trujillo and Chad Smith.”

Most of these players all have something in common, of course: they’ve all collaborated with Osbourne in one way or another. Watt helmed production for Osbourne’s last two solo albums. Wylde was once part of his band. Smith featured on 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9. The list goes on.

It remains to be seen exactly what songs Wolfgang and co will perform on the night, but it stands to reason that a handful of Osbourne cuts will be on the cards. Given the fact such ceremonies have proven to deliver historic performances in the past – look no further than Prince’s epic solo from 2004 – so we have a feeling this won’t be one to miss.

Visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to find out more ahead of the ceremony on October 19.

Mark Tremonti has recalled how Eddie Van Halen took him under his wing – and gifted him an electric guitar – during his early Creed days, which gave the young musician a huge boost as he navigated the first years of his career.

Creed supported Van Halen for two shows in 1998, with Tremonti and co supporting the release of Van Halen III. Eddie liked what he saw and singled out the guitarist, who was in his early 20s at the time, for praise.

“I remember Eddie going, ‘Hey, who’s the guitar player?’ and I raised my hand,” Tremonti reminisces in the new issue of Classic Rock.

“He’s like, ‘Come here,’ and he showed me his whole guitar rig and how everything worked. He’s like, ‘What color do you like?’ I said: ‘Black.’ The next day, he brings me a black guitar, the Wolfgang guitar. It’s one of my prized possessions.”

Eddie’s support didn’t end there, though. Speaking to Guitar World in 2021, Tremonti recalled how Van Halen then later singled him out from a crowd in order to pass on some extra words of wisdom concerning the guitar he'd just given away.

“When the show was over, we were backstage underground and there was 300 crew, guests, press everywhere, just swarming the place,” he explained at the time. “We saw Wolf, his mom and Eddie walking out.

“Eddie saw me out of the corner of his eye and walked through hundreds of people to come over and say, ‘Hey I forgot to tell you – you need to take out two springs to make it play right – sorry I forgot to tell you that earlier!’”

If a guitar and sage gear advice from one of the world’s greatest players hadn't already given Tremonti superior bragging power, Eddie’s final parting gift did.

“He gave me a kiss on the cheek and walked right through all the people clamoring for him again,” Tremonti continued. “He did that for me?! He had his kid and his wife with him and knew he’d get caught up by everybody, but he took his time out because he gave a shit about his products and passing on knowledge.”

Eddie was a famous supporter of other talents. Mötley Crüe's latest recruit, John 5, recently recalled playing through Eddie's rig after being invited to the band’s rehearsals. He also helped shape Def Leppard's Hysteria with a single piece of advice.

Elsewhere in his Classic Rock interview, Tremonti discussed another peak moment in his life and career, reflecting on the moment he felt he’d officially made it.

“When we started playing arenas it was like: ‘Alright, this is what I’ve dreamt about my whole life,’” he says. “I remember specifically being in an arena and opening up a guitar case that had my signature guitar, my PRS Tremonti model, like, ‘I can’t believe I have a guitar with my name on it with the best guitar company in the world.’

“We were just college kids from Tallahassee, Florida. We put all our money together from college to buy gear to go on tour and start from the bottom.

“We were a college band that got signed to a brand-new label, and none of us knew what we were doing. We got lucky to be surrounded with a bunch of hard-working people that wanted to make this thing happen.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest copy of Classic Rock.

Wolfgang Van Halen has proposed a theory about the impact his father’s revolutionary electric guitar playing had on the ’80s music scene.

There will always be a surge of those who follow in the wake of trailblazing guitarists and attempt to follow in the footsteps of their heroes. To that end, Wolfgang recently discussed how Eddie’s game-changing shred acrobatics diluted the originality of other guitarists as countless players did their best Eruption impressions.

“In a way, Dad kind of ruined the musical landscape, because instead of everybody wanting to find out who they are, they wanted to be that,” he says in a new episode of the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast [via Exclaim].

Wolfgang goes on to observe that those ’80s guitarists who attempted to do their best Van Halen impressions missed the one thing that was most important about his father's playing, and that wasn’t his dazzling technicality.

“People focus on the guitar playing, but, overall, it was the fact that Dad is a great songwriter,” he adds. “And that’s what I shoot for, too. It’s not about flashy stuff.”

As for his own playing as a direct descendant of the late guitar game-changer, Wolfgang notes that “just sharing blood with my father is enough to upset people”, but he's been “able to carve out my own thing”.

For Wolfgang's own music, he was wary of adding to an over-saturated scene of Eddie-lite licks. Instead, he focused not on what came before him, but rather explored his musical personality to find his own sound; something he feels others should have done.

One of the main ways Wolfgang achieved this was by playing all the instruments on his Mammoth WVH records.

“I think people are sitting there waiting for me to outdo my dad in some way, but that's impossible. I'm not him. I'm doing my own thing and if anything I'm outdoing him in that way... I'm a better drummer than him and no one says that!”

Speaking earlier last month, Wolfgang said his father instilling his songwriting-first approach was one of the most important lessons he ever gave him.

“I approach guitar playing more as a producer and more as a drummer than a guitar player,” he said at the time. “Rhythm is always the first thing for me and melody is the second.

“A really core thing for me that my dad always instilled is that a solo should be melodically memorable… You can play a solo that's one note that can be way more impressive than a solo that's 2000 notes. It's not really the speed at which you play.”

While he champions Intervals maestro Aaron Marshall in his chat with Marc Maron for his “singer as a guitar player” approach, Wolfgang adds another noteworthy guitarist to that pile of OG shredders: Paul Gilbert.

“He’s one of the shredder guys from the ’80s. He was one of those guys that came a little bit after Dad that I think took it in an interesting direction,” Wolfgang notes.

In related news, Sammy Hagar hopes Wolfgang can still participate in the ongoing Best of All Worlds tour, with further dates in Europe and South America eyed.