To celebrate the 40th anniversary of his father’s iconic instrumental solo, Eruption, Wolfgang Van Halen, has posted a video, of himself, playing the piece. Listen to it below.
Eruption appeared on Van Halen’s self-titled debut album the following year and was released on the B-side of Runnin’ With the Devil – although Eddie himself had always doubted it was worth recording. He said in the book Van Halen Rising by Greg Renoff (as quoted by Van Halen News Desk), “Our producer, Ted Templeman, heard me practicing it for an upcoming gig and asked, ‘What the hell is that?’ I said, ‘It’s a thing I do live. It’s my guitar solo.’ His immediate reaction was, ‘Roll tape.’ I just didn’t think it was something we’d put on a record. Everyone else agreed that we should throw it on.”
Wolfgang Van Halen – who joined Van Halen in 2006 at the age of 15 – recently released a 10-second clip of a track from his upcoming debut solo album (see below), which he’s been recording as a one-man project. His father confirmed the album was underway in 2015 and described it as “AC/DC meets Van Halen meets aggressive pop” and added, “The riffs are catchy. It’s a little of everything and sounds like a freight train coming at you. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. It’s so powerful that I’m jealous.”
Wolfgang William Van Halen was born March 16th, 1991 and is the only child of guitarist Edward Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli. He is named in honor of the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
additional source: ultimateclassicrock.com
6 Responses
What’s it like to grow up with a guitar god?
Right on, Wolfie! Great way to pay homage to your dad. You nailed the tapping part, which was probably the greatest technique your dad made famous and was known for. And you got the guitar tone real close, too!
Wolfie is a talented musician…kid will be playing drums, keyboards, guitars, bass, and singing on his upcoming album. I wish him well on his music career, although, I do wish Michael Anthony was with VH rather than Wolfie (But I know its not Wolfie’s fault that MA’s not in the band).
The first VH album is one of the greatest rock debut albums of all time, and still one of my favorite albums. For me, it was the first “guitar shredder” album I ever heard. But, Eddie’s playing never overplayed the songs. Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love was one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar.
“got the guitar tone real close”?!?!?! He’s playing his dad’s guitar through his dad’s amp/effects set-up – he got his dad’s EXACT tone!
Totally agree, Rattlehead! It’s obvious that Wolfie is a talented musician, and I wish him all the luck in the world with his career. He has some big shoes to fill, since Eddie is a legend. But is sounds like he has the chops to do well.
I also wish that Michael Anthony was back with VanHalen, but I doubt that will ever happen. I seems like there is something going on between the VanHalen brothers and Michael that we are not privy to, so I can’t see it working out. Too bad, because Michael’s playing and his supporting vocals were a big part of the VanHalen sound.
The first VanHalen record was such an eye opener to me! I was just getting in to hard rock/ metal music at the time, and was a proud KISS Army member! But VanHalen’s sound was something totally different than what I was used to. “Eruption” was so amazing, as well as my other favorite song on that record “Atomic Punk”!
Respectfully disagree, RTunes. The tone is not exact. Just because he’s playing the same equipment doesn’t mean it will result in the same tone. It sounds, to me, that Wolfie has the distortion a little dialed back compared to his dad.
Van Halen was the first band where I had to admit that they were as good as Kiss. In Monk’s book he talks about them cutting Michael Anthony out of the partnership during 1984…this bad blood goes waaayy back….there’s a scene where Alex (who the author notes didn’t write neither, so why is he saying anything?) instigates this campaign that Michael “doesn’t do anything” but gets equal share. Then Eddie joins in, and then Roth…this is around a dinner table somewhere…gets up with his plate of food, walks around the table, stands over Mike, and then just drops his plate of food on top of Mike’s….who just sat there and took it…Michael ended up finishing the tour knowing that he was not getting any cut from the 1984 record….they put this new policy in place to account for the record they had just done with the existing contract. They forced Mike to sign away his cut of 1984 and all future records. Monk says that he had to go along with what the band wanted, but if Mike had said something to him about it, he would have told Mike not to sign it…..