Wolfgang Van Halen, who is Eddie Van Halen‘s son and leader of the band Mammoth WVH, said in an interview with The Messenger that Van Halen is over and the tribute to his father didn’t happened because of the ego of the remaining band members.
The legendary guitarist passed away back in 2020 at the age of 65 after years battling cancer. Since then rumours of a tribute to him are circulating but the reports are that the members of the band didn’t reached an agreement.
Wolfgang Van Halen says that Van Halen is over
“It’s out of love and how many people my father’s writing and playing touched around the world. But life isn’t written to have a happy ending — some things just suck. And 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. The music and the legacy are there, and I’ll be here to push that forth, through things like dad’s guitar and amp company, and help in every single way.”
“The unfortunate thing in comparison to what Dave Grohl was able to pull off with the Taylor Hawkins tribute, is that the Foo Fighters have a very friendly thing going on. There wasn’t a lot of animosity between members to get it done and Van Halen is quite the opposite.”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s just ’80s bands — there’s something about ’80s bands where it was the cool thing to be dicks. But some things just don’t work out and it seems like this is one of them,” Wolfgang Van Halen said.
Wolfgang was part of the tribute show organized by Foo Fighters to honor the late drummer Taylor Hawkins that died in 2022 at the age of 50. During the show he performed Van Halen tracks in the shows of London and Los Angeles.