Wolfgang Van Halen pulled off a great performance of his dad’s iconic guitar parts at the Taylor Hawkins tribute event in 2022 and it wowed commentators. Guitar World wrote at the time, “the guitarist recreated the tapping intro of “Hot For Teacher” and natural harmonic-laden riffs of “Panama” with remarkable precision. Mammoth sees the young musician regularly do something Eddie very rarely did, which is singing lead vocals.
Wolfgang Van Halen talks about Michael Anthony
As Wolfgang told Song Cake, stepping into Michael Anthony’s shoes in Van Halen provided the perfect training for that.
He said, “I can hold a note… I’ve always been able to hum and sing stuff I hear, but I don’t know. I think the time I spent in Van Halen was integral to my voice, and the way I was able to work it by singing all of Mike’s crazy high parts… I’m very much overly self-aware, anxious; I don’t have much faith in myself to begin with. So, to have somebody who believes in you when you can’t is certainly a helpful thing when it comes to something creative like this.”
According to Anthony, he never had any issues with Wolfgang, with whom he has “always been friends.” Explaining why he wouldn’t begrudge anyone for losing his position in Van Halen to Wolf, he added:
“Eddie, he wanted to play with his son. The way I kind of feel is that Wolfgang probably wasn’t excited, really, about being in Van Halen. That’s why in his band, he doesn’t play any Van Halen, ’cause he wants to carve out his own niche. But just to be able to get up and play with his father, I can totally understand that. But no, I love Wolfie, man. I hadn’t seen him in, like, 20 years. I went to the show, it was great. We had a great time, great hangout.”
