A talented multi-instrumentalist. Unfair comparisons to his famous father.
A recent engagement. Eddie Van Halen's musically gifted son is a lot like his iconic dad ​​— but
he’s more different than you might think. This is the untold truth of Wolf Van Halen.
In March 2021, Valerie Bertinelli shared a heartfelt tribute on
Instagram in celebration of son Wolf Van Halen's 30th birthday.
While accompanying a collage of photos from Wolf's childhood, Bertinelli wrote in the caption,
"I know your father agrees that the happiest day of our lives was the day you were born."
As a profile in The Washington Post pointed out,
Van Halen was surrounded by music from an early age; he was just 10, in fact,
when he received a drum kit as a birthday gift. Bertinelli recalled to the outlet,
"In the beginning, when Ed and I were still together and Wolfie
showed an aptitude for music, Ed would beam."
Van Halen was named after one of the most famous composers in music history,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In an interview with ET, he honored his later father
by comparing him to his own musical namesake. Van Halen said of his dad:
"I think he's the Mozart of our generation."
Van Halen went on to add:
"I think the way we look back at people like Mozart and Beethoven,
from how far we are removed from them, you put that amount of time ahead of us,
and I think people will still be looking back at him."
When Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020 at age 65,
nobody was hit harder by the loss than his only son. Interviewed by Carson Daly for Today,
Wolf Van Halen admitted that his father was his best friend, and losing him was difficult:
"It doesn't seem like the pain is ever really gonna go away. You just
kinda figure out how to carry it a bit better."
What nobody knew until after the fact, he told People,
was that he'd placed his own musical ambitions on ice so he could take care of his cancer-stricken
dad during his final years. Despite delaying the release of his debut solo album,
Van Halen said he had no regrets about setting aside his own musical career. He told the outlet:
"That stuff can wait. I put everything on hold
with my album to spend every waking second with my dad."
While music was something that he and his father shared intimately,
it also came to be what helped carry him through his mourning process. Van Halen told People:
"Music is a really therapeutic thing."
He went on to add:
"And being able to focus on that and just paying tribute to my dad and
our relationship was a really helpful thing for me to grieve in that way."
Wolf Van Halen and father Eddie Van Halen shared a unique bond,
transcending the father-son relationship by being fellow musicians and bandmates. While
the elder Van Halen no doubt passed down all manner of fatherly advice to his son,
he also had plenty of musical advice to offer as well. Speaking with Guitar World,
Wolf Van Halen revealed one key piece of wisdom he absorbed:
"I think Dad would rather have people not try and sound like him but sound like themselves."
Wolf also dispelled the assumption that his father taught him how to play guitar.
As he explained, he began his musical career as a drummer before picking up
the guitar at age 12 with the goal of learning how to play the instrumental
"316" for a school talent show. After his father showed him the basics, things just snowballed.
In an in interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Wolf said this about the experience:
"So, I just learned that song, and from there I took a shine to guitar
and tried to learn everything I could."
Wolf went on to add that his dad gave him "little lessons here and
there," but ultimately allowed his son the freedom to find his own way.
"I'm just the luckiest father on the planet."
When Wolf Van Halen finally unveiled his long-in-the-works debut album, Mammoth WVH,
it was a no-brainer that its release would attract the attention of Van Halen fans.
Years before his death, in fact, Eddie Van Halen teased the sound of the album
his son ultimately spent years working on. Van Halen told Guitar World back in 2015:
"It's like AC/DC meets Van Halen meets aggressive pop. [...] It's so powerful that I'm jealous."
As a way to honor his dad's sharper-eared fans,
Wolf included some Easter eggs within the album. One of these can be heard
in the end of the album track "Don't Back Down," which mimics a sonic guitar trick
his dad featured on Van Halen's "So This Is Love?" Wolf explained to Australian Guitar:
"Yeah, except Dad does the little kink with the pick on the strings, and I do a little phaser pick
slide. That's definitely the vibe I was going for. I'm surprised at how quickly people caught that."
Another Easter egg is the back of the album cover, with Wolf recalling,
"People were like, 'Oh my god it's arranged like the ﬁrst Van Halen album!'
I didn't think people would notice that the second they saw it. They're kind of
winks and nods. There's nothing bigger behind it."
While Wolf Van Halen's self-titled debut album is credited to the band Mammoth WVH, the band
that he's bringing on the road for his freshman tour is not the band that recorded the album.
That band, in fact, is comprised of Van Halen and nobody else, given that he played every
single instrument on the album. Van Halen is in good company; both Paul McCartney and Dave
Grohl likewise took the one-man-band approach for the former Beatle's debut solo album, McCartney,
and the first Foo Fighters album, respectively. As Van Halen told NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday,
"I just thought it'd be a fun thing to do. You know,
I could play everything. I always admired how Dave Grohl did the first Foo Fighters album,
where he recorded everything himself. So I guess I wanted to have a go at it."
The name of the album and his band, Van Halen revealed,
has a special connection to his late father. Wolf told NPR:
"When my dad had a band before Van Halen, it was called Mammoth.
So I always told myself that when I grew up, I'd name my own album and my own band."
Being the offspring of one of the greatest rock guitarists in history
does not come without some baggage. This is particularly true when, like Wolf Van Halen,
one decides to pursue a career in music. However, Van Halen has no illusions about
how he expects to be viewed by the general public — at least initially. He addressed the inevitable
comparisons to his late father in an Instagram post, in which he answered a fan's question about
whether he viewed the niche his dad had carved out to be a blessing or a curse. Wolf admitted,
"It's really equally both."
On the one hand, interest was guaranteed to be generated by virtue of his parentage,
which he admitted was great. However, he also pointed to the flip side of that,
when fans of his father listen to his music and complain that it's not
"'Van Halen-y' enough for them." Wolf then reiterated,
"I'm not trying to be my father, I'm trying to be me."
Wolfgang Van Halen's debut album, Mammoth WVH, earned him his first Grammy nod, with the track
"Distance" nominated for best rock song. He attended the ceremony accompanied by mom Valerie
Bertinelli and girlfriend Andraia Allsop. So who is Allsop, whom Van Halen began dating in 2015?
A graduate of the University of Utah, the U.S. Sun reports that Allsop is a software engineer
and has no connection to the music business other than her boyfriend. Back in 2018, Van Halen shared
some photos of himself and his girlfriend on Instagram, in celebration of their three-year
anniversary. While Van Halen has a close relationship with Bertinelli, apparently Allsop
is also quite friendly with her beau's mother, who receives regular visits from the couple.
As Wolf Van Halen wrote on Instagram,
he'd become "fully prepared for a wave of hate" upon the release of his album,
Mammoth WVH. Speaking with Guitar World, Van Halen admitted that no matter what he did,
there would always be someone accusing him of riding on the coattails of his late father.
Wolf said this about dealing with haters:
"It's an up and down thing. Sometimes it's too much,
and sometimes you're ready to take it on the chin."
He did, however, admit to taking a certain pleasure
in responding to certain online jabs, noting,
"Every now and then and some a--hole lobs you a really big softball that
you could just [...] knock out of the park, and it's really fun."
In an interview with 100.3 The X, he explained why he's chosen to "pick [his] battles."
When he does confront a hater, he explained,
"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."
At the time of Eddie Van Halen's death, the legendary guitarist was reportedly
worth a whopping $100 million. Meanwhile, Rock Celebrities theorized that the late rocker's
estate was divided among his brother, Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen, wife Janie Liszewski,
and his only child, Wolf Van Halen. The latter, noted Celebrity Net Worth, apparently received
about 10 percent of that fortune, with his net worth estimated to be $10 million.
Growing up as the scion of a multimillionaire rock star and successful TV actor, money has
never been something about which Wolf has had to worry about. As a result, one thing that his dad's
fans will never have to fear is the spectacle of his son auctioning off his famed guitars for cash.
In December 2020, Wolf took to Twitter to comment on a story in Blabbermouth
about three of the late musician's guitars sold at auction for a combined $422,000.
According to Wolf, those were not guitars his dad played regularly,
and he, quote, "had nothing to do with this." In fact, he insisted,
"I don't EVER plan on selling any of my father's iconic guitars. The
only place they'd possibly belong in is a museum."
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