MAMMOTH WVH frontman Wolfgang Van Halen, recently spoke about the year that’s coming to a close and admits that his surname can be both “a blessing and a curse.”
Speaking with with Classic Rock’s Polly Glass, Wolf addressed the “mixed blessing” that comes with his iconic surname, in terms of having to prove himself as an artist in his own right.
“It’s definitely a blessing and a curse,” he says. “I’m very blessed to have the opportunities that I’m able to just because of my last name, but I really don’t think that the last name keeps those doors open for you. If you don’t have the goods to back it up, you’re not going to be there for long. So I guess if I disappear in the next year, I didn’t have it! [laughs]”
The year 2021 has been an exceptional one for Wolfgang Van Halen’s MAMMOTH WVH, with the self-titled album hitting number 12 on the Billboard 200 album chart in America upon its release in June, and last month receiving a Grammy nom for debut single “Distance” in the Best Rock Song category. The act also supported GUNS N’ ROSES on their massive US leg of their 2020 Tour.
Looking back upon the making of the Mammoth WVH album, which he began recording in 2015 and completed in 2018, but set aside in order to spend more time with his father Eddie as he battled cancer, Wolfgang describes the experience as “a therapeutic thing.”
“I had been going through a lot of stuff in my personal life at the time,” he tells Classic Rock. “It was a really fun, cathartic way to express myself. I had been in Van Halen and Tremonti, which were projects outside of my involvement in terms of the creative input, so having this thing that felt like my own, where I could just unabashedly be myself, was a very special thing to me.”
“My father had every opportunity to listen to it and he loved it,” Wolfgang adds. “He couldn’t have been happier with it.”
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