Wolf Van Halen Explains Why It’s ‘Very Hard’ For Rock Bands Today, Names One Important Thing He Learned From Dave Grohl

Wolfgang Van Halen reflected on some of the lessons learned from his brush with rock ‘n’ roll’s greats, and explained why being a band in the current day isn’t as easy as it was in the ’80s.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the wide-eyed, young Wolfgang made his first steps as a professional musician in his famous father & uncle’s legendary band. Mammoth WVH, currently riding the waves of the sophomore album “Mammoth II”, saw Wolfgang establish an artistic identity outside of Van Halen (although last year’s Talyor Hawkins tribute shows, staged by the Foo Fighters, proved he could play Eddie’s licks like nobody’s business), and even got him to open for the industry’s heavy hitters such as Metallica.

Wherever his career may take him next, just don’t expect Wolf to play the Van Halen card — “If I have to figure out how to have a life without my father in it, I think people can figure out how to live without Van Halen, because it can’t happen. Dad’s not here, Van Halen doesn’t exist anymore as far as I’m concerned”, Wolf tells The Messenger in a new interview.

“It’s important to love what you do”

His career so far — both with Van Halen and as Mammoth WVH mastermind — taught him a lot about the music business, and he singles out the Foos’ Dave Grohl as a particularly inspiring figure. On the other hand, his experience with the Van Halen camp (supposedly both as a member and as someone involved in the failed attempt to stage the rumored Van Halen all star tribute project) showed him how *not* to do some things:

“It’s important to love what you do. Especially hanging with Grohl, he just loves music, he has such a respect towards music in general and to everybody who partakes in it. It’s just fun to see that untainted love, where other bullshit doesn’t get in the way.”

“The stuff I did learn from being in Van Halen was the stuff that I didn’t want to carry over into Mammoth — why can’t we just play music and have fun doing it and that’s it? Why do we need to be walking on eggshells around certain people in order to get anything done? Shouldn’t this just be easy and fun? Because music is so great. And I think that’s what I’ve done with Mammoth, this wonderful core of people that can weather the storm together and make music and support each other and have a great time doing it.”

“It’s very hard to break a rock band in 2023”

And while Wolf’s career differed in some aspects to that of most of his peers, he is no stranger to the plights of young bands. Asked about the greatest challenges young musicians are facing today, he said:

“It’s very hard to break a rock band in 2023. It’s not like the ’80s, where there were so many different rock bands. It’s very much a different musical climate — the thing is pop and rap, and that’s just what happens. But you do notice that when you form somewhat of an audience, there’s a dedicated group of people who hate what’s popular and love rock, so they love it even harder.”

“And maybe it’s starting to change — Lorde’s last album was guitar-based, Miley’s doing rock stuff, Olivia Rodrigo has a band that plays with her, and Demi Lovato is going metal, So if anything, it’s slowly starting to come back because it’s being made cool by all the pop stars.”