I actually have one behind me here. It's in orange vinyl. I suggest that, but the black vinyl is good too. And you just heard a little bit of the title track from that record.
Wolf, how are you doing?
MR. VAN HALEN: I'm doing good, man. It's good to be here.
MR. EDGERS: We are on the big show here, so I wore a button-down shirt for you, you know.
This record came out last week, and how has it been received so far?
MR. VAN HALEN: People have been really excited about it. It's been amazing. Really for me, it's just been a relief to finally have it out, man. It's been so long that it's crazy to be on the other side of this. I didn't think I'd ever make it.
MR. EDGERS: When you say so long, what people don't understand is that--I know you don't call yourself a genius person, but you recorded a lot of this record years ago, several years ago. You wrote it when I sat with you in the studio.
We did an article on Wolf. You can--you know, I know you people love print. This is the article. It came out Sunday, but you can look at it online too.
You know, you were writing these songs five, six years ago, a couple of them even longer ago, but you did not put out this record. It was done in 2018, and the reason is--you tell us.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. My father had his health struggles, and so it was either put the record out and go on tour for 18 months or be with my dad, and I think I made the right choice.
MR. EDGERS: Your dad wanted you to put out this record, didn't he? I spoke to your mom, and he heard everything on it, saw you playing in rehearsals. He wanted "Mammoth WVH" to come out.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. He was very, very happy about it. He would always say it was his favorite album of all time. You know, it's just proud dad talk, but still, you know, I know he meant it.
MR. EDGERS: What I think is notable--there's a lot that's notable, and I actually first contacted you a few months ago before I had even heard a note. You had teased notes, but they were often only half a second long on the internet to mock us. But I loved your personality online because you seemed to get it, the line between sarcasm and mockery and humor and all that stuff.
MR. VAN HALEN: Even when my followers don't get it.
MR. EDGERS: They don't get it. They don't get it, right? Not always.
But the thing that I was really moved by is you seemed to be--I know you say you're not a balanced individual, but you grew up with your father, Eddie Van Halen, arguably the greatest guitarist of our time, and your mother, Valerie Bertinelli, who's a famous and accomplished actress and personality in her own right, and that would seem to make you a prime candidate to be just a train wreck, right? And I have been just so impressed by your way of behaving. Can you explain that at all? I know it's a weird thing to ask you, but how did you grow up not being that train wreck?
MR. VAN HALEN: I don't know. I think maybe, like, emotionally I can be a bit of a train wreck. I'm overly self-aware, and I'm very, very hard on myself. I'm a very anxious person. I'm a very socially awkward person, but, I mean, in terms of how I grew up, I think my mom just really grounded me. It didn't feel like a very glamorous childhood. It just felt normal.
MR. EDGERS: It was so normal that when you were 16, you went on tour with Van Halen, and that's when I first saw you. You became the bassist for Van Halen, and I saw you in the TD Garden. And I looked and I said how is that guy--I remember being 16. I could barely go to a concert on my own. How is that guy on stage? Explain to me what your mother or your father or--I know your Uncle Pat has been very central. What did they do when you were on stage in front of tens of thousands of people, some who loved you, some who were like, "Where's the other guy?" and you were playing the Van Halen songs?
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. My mom had a hard time with it. There was extra security on that tour for sure to kind of make sure I was okay. Everybody was watching me.
But, yeah, you know, I think in terms of doing the job, my dad and my uncle and I had rehearsed so much that it was just in our bones. We started playing together just for fun, and a couple months into it is when it really felt like there was something there. And that's when I called Dave's manager, and the rest is history.
MR. EDGERS: Now, for people who have never heard of Van Halen, I'm just going to bring this up. There's a guy named Dave. He was their first singer, David Lee Roth, and he had left the band in the '80s, and so they tried to reunite, and it hadn't worked out. But here is Wolfgang Van Halen who is 15 or 16, whatever age it was when you called him, calling up and saying, "Hey, Dave, come back," and suddenly, that tour gets going again, which is pretty remarkable. What gave you the confidence to call Dave?
MR. VAN HALEN: I don't know. It just felt like the most neutral way to go about it. We all agreed. It's not like I went rogue and called him myself. It was like--It was like, "I think I should call him," and we all agreed that that would be the most fun thing to do. I mean, I think it worked, considering the three tours that happened.
MR. EDGERS: I would say it did work. You had three tours, and you had another studio album with David Lee Roth.
Tell me something. You didn't necessarily--it's not that you tried to stop me from putting this in the article, but you said, "Maybe don't put that in because it makes me look like a jerk." But you did not play bass until you started rehearsing for that tour, correct?
MR. VAN HALEN: Specifically, not until we had started playing for fun, so I guess kind of, but it just was never really on my mind. And then when Dad and Al were just jamming and I picked up the bass, it was just a fun thing to do. You know, after school, I'd come by and we would jam. I made a playlist of a bunch of songs, and I just taught myself a little list, and we just went through songs. And it wasn't until, you know, rigorous rehearsals and we had been doing it for months that I felt really comfortable playing everything, and that's when it started to get serious.
MR. EDGERS: But your dad--I mean, obviously, your dad loved you, and your Uncle Alex loves you, but these guys are not going to let some kid who's not that great play bass in their little band, Van Halen, right? I mean--
MR. VAN HALEN: No. I mean, they wouldn't--they wouldn't have let me be there if they didn't believe I could do it, contrary to what many other people may believe. I know there's still a large dedicated base of people that believe I didn't even play anything on that first tour and it was just being piped in, which I guess is a really big compliment when you think about it.
But, yeah, it's--I think it's as simple as that. They wouldn't have been comfortable having me there had they not been confident that I could do it.
MR. EDGERS: What is the--your first instrument, I think, is drums, and, you know, the thing that's really interesting about this record, which I think the great Vernon Reid, the guitarist and founder of Living Colour, tweeted the other day--and what a great player. He said, you know, what I love about this record is Wolfgang plays all the instruments, but you sound like a band, because I've heard a lot of records. Paul McCartney played the drums on his record, and those all sound like--you go, "Oh, he's a pretty good drummer for Paul McCartney," but you do sound like a band. What is the reason you didn't bring in all these celebrities or even like just the guys who are in your band now and record them? Why did you do it all on your own?
MR. VAN HALEN: I think it was more of a personal challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it, you know, after seeing how Dave Grohl did it with the first Foo Fighters album. Since I could play everything, I wanted to kind of set that goal. It had always been a dream of mine to try and do something like that, and through the process, I found that it was very, very fun, and I had a really good time doing it, so I'm definitely going to keep doing it that way.
MR. EDGERS: The sound that you have, I'm going to let you--if someone says to you, "What is Wolfie's sound?" what is that sound?
MR. VAN HALEN: I just call it rock. It's a rock band. I think in this day and age, everyone really tries their darnedest to--you pull from what you know. I hear so many times where people are like, "Oh, the album is great. It reminds me of this," or "It reminds me of this," and half the time, I'm like I don't even know what that is, you know. I think just people pull from their familiar pool.
But overall, you know, I think the album just--it sounds like itself. There may be certain influences and stuff, but overall, I think I've managed to create something that stands on its own.
MR. EDGERS: I think what is great is that it's like a piece of art. If you're staring and looking at it, you read into it what you want to, and I know over and over again, I said--you know, I was listening to the song, "Don't Back Down." I said, "Oh, you must love T. Rex. I love the beat. It's totally like glam rock," and you're like, "Meh, it's all right. Jimmy Eat World is more my thing."
But the beauty of this, I think, one thing we can say is it doesn't sound like a Van Halen record, you know. I'm sure you've heard that, and you've thought about that. Am I right about this?
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there may be things unknowingly like maybe in some things that I do that may sound Van Halen-y, you know, but yeah. I really just straight up just tried to be myself on this, and I didn't want to try and, you know, be the guy to go like, "Hey, if you want to get your Van Halen fix, come here." You know, if anything, I wanted to do the exact opposite, and I think it's funny to see now that the album has been out for a couple days, I've noticed in some reviews where it's like, you know, the good, you know, "It's a cool album," and then like the bad, "It's not a Van Halen album." And it's like that's like biting into an apple and going like, "Well, it's good, but it's not an orange," and it's like, "Well, you shouldn't have gone there if you wanted the orange," you know. So, it's a funny demerit on something that kind of doesn't really fit in the orbit of it.
MR. EDGERS: Someone wrote me an angry letter after our story, and they said, "Hey, you know his name isn't just--Van Halen isn't just the famous one. Also, there is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart." I was like, "Yeah, I know who he is." I said, "You could have read the headline either way. It was supposed to be"--he's like, "Well, you should have mentioned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."
Do you ever think about putting out--people use pen names. I mean, authors, women who couldn't get published in the 19th century would put out books with male names on it. Was there ever a moment in your head, you said, "You know what? I'm going to put this out completely--use a different name" or not connected of Van Halen, that sort of thing?
MR. VAN HALEN: Well, I think I'm halfway doing that, you know. I'm not calling this band my name. It's a--you know, sure, it's all me, but it's a band. I'm positioning it as a band. I guess I'm kind of wishy-washily doing that to a certain extent, you know.
MR. EDGERS: And Mammoth is a great tribute to your--I mean, Van Halen started out as Mammoth somewhere along the way, right, in the early '70s? That's sort of the tribute to that.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah, but many different--many different band names, my dad used. Genesis was one, and then they found out about that other band that's actually called Genesis, and then they called themselves Mammoth. And then Dave, David Lee Roth, was the one who was like, you know, "You know, your last name is pretty cool. How about we do that?" So, growing up, I always loved that name "Mammoth," and it just always stuck with me that when I grew up, I wanted to call my own band that, you know. I think it touches on the history, but I'm able to take it into my own direction.
MR. EDGERS: The other thing musically that I love is--I try to mention Steve Miller every time I can because I just love Steve Miller because he was a genius guitarist, and you hear him playing at Monterey next to Hendrix, but then he cracked the code of what he wanted to do in the '70s. And he held back, and he wasn't about showing off his chops or doing endless solos, whatever. He figured out how to do pop music, and that's something that I find you do. And it sometimes gets you attacked.
There was this great tweet that I quoted. Unfortunately, this guy, FoodieAcademy, on Twitter is gone, disappeared, but--
MR. VAN HALEN: Aw, what happened?
MR. EDGERS: But you do this song, "Distance." First of all, tell us--I'm going to get to this question, but tell us about "Distance" because that was the first we heard of you, and that came out in November. And you played that on Jimmy Kimmel and had a beautiful video. Tell us about that song.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. "Distance" a song that I dedicated to my father. I had written it some years ago because my dad's health struggles had been up and down throughout the years, and it was just kind of a song I wrote to get those feelings out. And yeah, it wasn't the first song I planned on releasing, but considering after losing my father, it felt like--you know, he wrote a song for me when I was born, and so it just felt like a very nice, you know, paying the respects to my father in the best way I know how, with music. And the proceeds went to his favorite charity, Mr. Holland's Opus, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. Even if it wasn't the right first song for people to hear, it meant more for me to release that song first than to, say, release a different song from the album first.
MR. EDGERS: Well, it's a beautiful--it's a beautiful song, and the video is hard to watch without feeling something. I'll just say that. It's just beautifully done with home video of you and your mom and dad from over the years.
But this guy, so--and I'll preface this by saying that I know. I mean, you can listen to Mammoth, you know, WVH. If you listen to the first song, "Mr. Ed," it's like he--it's like Wolfie is tapping and playing all these blazing things. It's like to say, "Hey, you know what? I can do this now. Let's move on."
But on "Distance," you have a very specific solo. It is sort of one note--it's two notes, but it's one, and this guy writes, "Wolf, don't know your music well." I always like it when things start like that. "What I've heard was a guitar solo."
MR. VAN HALEN: I'm not too familiar with this, but I'm going to--I'm going to show you my full opinion on it, regardless.
MR. EDGERS: Oh, throw it out there on the internet because everyone will see it. So, "Wolf, don't know your music well, but what I've heard was a guitar solo that was one note, boring and uninspired, and a tribute to your legendary dad? I know he taught you better than that."
Now, you, you by the way, said, "The solo for 'Distance' is all emotion, and at the emotional height of the song, it's why Pop loved it." And then you said, "So go f- yourself." We had to go to our editors and get that approved.
But first of all, why not just let FoodieAcademy go? Tell me about your--because this is a practice of yours, and it's one we all revel in, but many people say, "Let the trollers die. You're so much better than that."
MR. VAN HALEN: Oh, but it's so much more therapeutic to kill them yourself, isn't it, instead of let them die on their own? It's fun to put them down.
MR. EDGERS: You like doing that, right?
MR. VAN HALEN: Half the time, either one of two things will happen. They'll either double down and be even worse, or they'll immediately apologize because they get a fraction of what they just dealt to you and they don't know how to deal with it. There's been plenty of times where I've gotten something on Instagram or something, and I'll pin it at the top of the comment section. And then, you know, like moths to a flame, other commenters just do to them what they did to me, and they can't handle it. And it's like you can't dish it out if you can't take it, man, so I just throw it right back at them. I don't know. It's a fun way I found to deal with it, with humor, and it's almost like a puzzle. And so many people are always like, "Oh, if you ignore it, it will go away," and that's not true in the slightest.
I think most people who say that aren't in the position or haven't experienced that sort of stuff. So, I found my fun way of dealing with it, and I'm going to keep doing it.
MR. EDGERS: I don't know if you noticed this, but I got attacked on your thread the other day. Did you see that?
MR. VAN HALEN: I did not. What happened?
MR. EDGERS: Someone wrote, "Every single article about Wolf Van Halen is about him making statements about his dad," and then you said--
MR. VAN HALEN: Because I get asked questions about my dad.
MR. EDGERS: Yeah. You said, "It's almost like people keep asking me questions and then I keep answering them." So, I wrote, I responded to you. I said, "What really pisses me off is when he talks about mom," and I thought that was good. And so, the next one is--the next comment on that was "Why? He is Valerie's son as much as he is Eddie's. Don't understand the hate." I was like hmm. Now I'm--
MR. VAN HALEN: "And you don't understand the sarcasm."
MR. EDGERS: Your uncle stepped in and stopped it, which was very unfortunate because I wanted to see how far it would go.
Tell me something. You tour with Van Halen when you're a kid, and this summer, you're going to be playing with your band. You're going to be opening for Guns N' Roses.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. Crazy.
MR. EDGERS: There's, I assume, a certain kind of protection of being on stage with your dad and your uncle and playing songs that everybody knows. Is there a part of you that's a little bit nervous, or what are you thinking about opening in Fenway Park for Guns N' Roses?
MR. VAN HALEN: All of me is nervous, not a part of me. It's a ridiculous amount of just little things just in my head. Like, we'll be driving around, and I'll be like in my head going like, "Wow! What if I forget lyrics or something?" just like little things like that, and it's just more things to worry about.
So, yeah, I'm very excited to rehearse for the next four and a half weeks with the guys so I can just nail it into my bones and get ready for it because I need the practice.
MR. EDGERS: And let's make it very clear. I mean, we said this in the article, but your dad had a very good answer for this. When you're on stage and we see so many bands where it's like The Allman Betts Band or, you know, whatever--and we're not insulting any of those folks because there's something great about celebrating great music and art and perpetuating it, and you're doing it in your own way. But if someone goes there and they're expecting you to play "Eruption" or "Jump" or "Jamie's Cryin'" or why can't this--you are not going to be playing any Van Halen covers, and explain the reason for that and sort of your dad's take on that, because you did talk about this.
MR. VAN HALEN: Well, yeah. Just I'm not my dad, you know, so I'm not going to--I want to be myself, and I know the next thing the bitter people will say is like, "Well, you know, Van Halen did covers." And it's like that's great, but I'm not going to. I've got enough original material for a live show. The album is just about an hour. So, anything from a half hour to a 45-minute or an hour-long set, I've got the material, and I've got extra songs to play too if we need to go over or something. You never know.
So, I just--when I go see a band, I want to see their material. I don't want to see them do a cover. Maybe I'm different. I don't know, but that's what I plan on doing with my band.
MR. EDGERS: Yeah. I think I want to hear them play their songs, and then if I like the band, which I like yours, I want to hear the songs they haven't released yet. And you have what? How many songs do you have that you--if they said to you, "You got to go back and put out another album in six weeks like The Beatles did in 1964," how ready are you? How much do you have in the can there?
MR. VAN HALEN: I think I've got six or seven songs that are just about ready to go. They do need a little bit of work, and I want to work on them, but the ideas are there. And then I've got a handful of other early ideas. So, if you put me in the studio for a couple weeks, I could get that second album for you really quick.
MR. EDGERS: Boy. You just aren't impressed by this, though, right? No? Nothing?
MR. VAN HALEN: What do you mean?
MR. EDGERS: Just I mean we can't do what you can do. We can't go and play all the instruments and sound like a band and sound good and have something that you put in the car when you drive around and go, "Damn, that sounds awesome." We can't do that. You understand?
MR. VAN HALEN: Well, I don't know. Give me some time. Give me some time, man. You know, maybe I lucked out with this first one, and the second one will just be god-awful. We'll just have to find out.
MR. EDGERS: Hey, there's a viewer question. Can I ask you a viewer question?
MR. VAN HALEN: Sure.
MR. EDGERS: Comes in from a Jason Urban from Texas. There we go. Any formative albums you took as inspiration on "Mammoth WVH"?
MR. VAN HALEN: I mean, I guess just in concept, the very first Foo Fighters album. I don't think maybe material-wise, but I think just how he did it himself was one of the bigger inspirations for the project. But in terms of like tonal or inspirational from like certain songs, I think it's a song-by-song basis, not really an overall, because I recorded so many songs that I don't think there's any particular influence that influenced the album in terms of its sound.
MR. EDGERS: Obviously, we both appreciate Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl, and, you know, he made that first record, which is excellent. And then he formed a band, and he then no longer did that thing where he plays all the instruments, but you intend to, and tell me why that is because I assume there is something that you get from playing with people creatively.
MR. VAN HALEN: I think overall, I just really like to play the drums, and I don't get to do that live, at least in this. I guess it's a selfish thing. Like, at the very least, I want to play--I want to play drums, but since I play guitar too, why not? And it's like, oh, I play the bass too. So, it's just--I don't know. It's a fun easy thing for me to do. It's just a good time. It doesn't feel like work, you know. I want to enjoy myself, so I want to have fun playing all the instruments.
MR. EDGERS: I wanted to ask you about your dad. Obviously, this has been a very difficult year for you, and is there any connection between this album coming out, going out on the road, having people talk about how much they love it, and this mourning process and trying to get through it in some way? I don't know how you do, but have you been finding that it's been helpful to be doing this stuff?
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. Just work in general is a great distraction and having the distractions surround something that's creatively my own and something I can fully stand behind that I'm proud of that I knew my dad loved and was proud of makes the process a bit more comforting, I guess, and especially to see how people are reacting, that people are very happy with it, and that makes me happy because it's all me. Like, this is 100 percent--like, I laid it all out there with this album, so to have it be received so well is really an honor.
I mean, I say "received so well," but, I mean, that's just the stuff I'm being tagged on, on social media. Maybe outside of my little social media bubble, it's being panned. I don't know, but the people going out of their way to hit me up on social seemed to really enjoy it, and that's really nice. That's a great bonus to this whole process, because I didn't do this album for anyone. I did it for me, and so to see it resonate with people and to have other people enjoy something that I enjoyed making, it's a nice process.
MR. EDGERS: Well, you made it for us really, I decided. It's a great record. I've got it over here, and I suggest--I don't know. Like, some of the record geeks don't like colored vinyl, but this is pretty, pretty cool, right?
MR. VAN HALEN: It's cool.
MR. EDGERS: A little orange.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yeah. I love the orange.
MR. EDGERS: And look, we're really glad that you made this record, and I think everybody is looking forward to seeing you and your band play live. You're not going to play all the instruments at the same time live, right?
MR. VAN HALEN: No, I'm not. I'm going to stick to the guitar and sing.
MR. EDGERS: Because that would be exhausting.
MR. VAN HALEN: Yes.
MR. EDGERS: We're just so grateful that you came here to see us today, and we're going to be listening to it on all the different formats, 78, 8-track, tape, LP.
But, look, Wolfgang, all the best of luck to you, and I hope we'll--next time we'll talk, it will be album two. I mean, you know, maybe before that, but I hope we'll have you back on here for album two.
MR. VAN HALEN: Hey, man, just give me a call here.
MR. EDGERS: All right. Very good.
Folks, so tomorrow on Washington Post Live at 10:00 a.m., my colleague Frances Stead Sellers is going to talk with legendary environmentalist Sylvia Earle.
We're so glad you came and listened to us today, and get this album. Listen to it. It's a good album for the car.
And I'm Geoff Edgers from The Washington Post, and Happy Monday.
[End recorded session]