The Untold Truth Of Wolf Van Halen

The only son of legendary rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen and sitcom star Valerie Bertinelli, Wolf Van Halen was born in 1991. Despite his parents' celebrity, the youngster didn't grow up surrounded by the trappings of fame. In fact, Van Halen told UCR, it wasn't until he was around six or seven years old that he discovered his dad was a world-famous rock star. As he recalled, at the time his dad's band was in the midst of remastering CDS for the first six Van Halen albums. "I found a box of all of them, and I saw my name on it and a picture of my dad," he recalled. "I said, 'Dad, what's this?' and he said, 'Oh, yeah, uh ... this is what I do.' And he kind of introduced me to everything."

As he grew older, Wolf demonstrated musical aptitude, first on drums and then on other instruments; during the latter part of the 2000s, he joined his father's band as bass player, a role he filled for more than a decade. Following his father's death in 2020, he struck out on his own to record and release "Mammoth WVH," the self-titled debut album for the band he'd formed.

Despite being the public eye for most of his life, there's much fans might not know about this talented singer, songwriter and musician. To learn more, keep on reading to discover the untold truth of Wolf Van Halen.

When Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020 at age 65, nobody was hit harder by the loss than his only son. Interviewed by Carson Daly for Today, Wolf Van Halen admitted that his father was his best friend, and losing him was difficult. "It doesn't seem like the pain is ever really gonna go away," he said. "You just kinda figure out how to carry it a bit better."

What nobody knew until after the fact, he told People, was that he'd placed his own musical ambitions on ice so he could take care of his cancer-stricken dad during his final years. Despite delaying the release of his debut solo album, Van Halen said he had no regrets about setting aside his own musical career. "That stuff can wait," he told People. "I put everything on hold with my album to spend every waking second with my dad."

While music was something that he and his father shared intimately, it also came to be what helped carry him through his mourning process. "Music is a really therapeutic thing," Wolf explained. "And being able to focus on that and just paying tribute to my dad and our relationship was a really helpful thing for me to grieve in that way."

Wolf Van Halen officially joined the family business at age 16 when became Van Halen's bass player, noted The Washington Post. As UCR recalled, the band officially announced in 2007 that the teenager, then 15, would be replacing the band's original bass player, Michael Anthony.

As the bassist told Guitar World in a joint 2012 interview with his dad, joining Van Halen was never his goal, and only came at the behest of his father. "I didn't ask to join," he insisted, while his dad confirmed, "I asked him." 

In a different Guitar World interview from that same year, Wolf admitted he was initially intimidated to play with one of the all-time great rock bands, but added, "it quickly fell into place and felt right." His father put it into perspective when he told Guitar World (via MusicRadar) that his son "breathes new life into what we're doing. He brings youthfulness to something that's inherently youthful. He's only been playing bass for three months, but it's spooky. He's locked tight and puts an incredible spin on our s***. The kid is kicking my a**!"

Wolf Van Halen and father Eddie Van Halen shared a unique bond, transcending the father-son relationship by being fellow musicians and bandmates. While the elder Van Halen no doubt passed down all manner of fatherly advice to his son, he also had plenty of musical advice to offer as well. 

Speaking with Guitar World, Wolf Van Halen revealed one key piece of wisdom he absorbed. "I think Dad would rather have people not try and sound like him but sound like themselves," he said. Wolf also dispelled the assumption that his father taught him how to play guitar. As he explained, he began his musical career as a drummer before picking up the guitar at age 12 with the goal of learning how to play the instrumental "316" for a school talent show. After his father showed him the basics, things just snowballed.

"So, I just learned that song, and from there I took a shine to guitar and tried to learn everything I could," Wolf told UCR, noting that his father gave him "little lessons here and there," but ultimately allowed him the freedom to find his own way. "People always comment 'Well, he had a good teacher!'" Wolf told Guitar World. "But Dad wasn't a very good teacher."

While Wolf Van Halen's self-titled debut album is credited to the band Mammoth WVH, the band that he's bringing on the road for his freshman tour is not the band that recorded the album. That band, in fact, is comprised of Van Halen and nobody else, given that he played every single instrument on the album (the music video for single "Don't Back Down" makes light of this, with CGI placing Van Halen in the studio simultaneously playing drums, bass, and both lead and rhythm guitar, while also producing in the booth).

Van Halen is in good company; both Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl likewise took the one-man-band approach for the former Beatles debut solo album, "McCartney," and the first Foo Fighters album, respectively. As Van Halen told NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday," "I just thought it'd be a fun thing to do. You know, I could play everything. I always admired how Dave Grohl did the first Foo Fighters album, where he recorded everything himself. So I guess I wanted to have a go at it."

The name of the album and his band, Van Halen revealed, has a special connection to his late father. "When my dad had a band before Van Halen, it was called Mammoth," he explained. "So I always told myself that when I grew up, I'd name my own album and my own band."

With the release of "Mammoth WVH" and the band heading out on the road, Wolf Van Halen made the leap from Van Halen's second bass player — with many of the songs he performed before he was born — to fronting his own band, singing songs he wrote himself.  

Interviewed by Blabbermouth, Van Halen revealed the low-key approach he was taking for his new role as rock frontman. "I'm very much myself, to a certain degree," he said, noting that some people "would expect, from a cynical distance, if they know nothing about it, they probably assume me to be like David Lee Roth-esque and be, like, 'wow' in between every vocal." That approach, he said, seemed to be working for him, explaining that "right now I'm just myself and I talk to the audience, I tell stories in between songs about what you're about to hear ... Maybe it's boring, but I'm just being unabashedly myself, and I think being honest is a nice thing to be doing."

Touring with Guns 'N' Roses, he told The Aquarian, also helped to improve his skills fronting his band. "It's the 10,000-hour rule: The more you put towards your craft, the better you get," he said, referencing the premise of author Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." "You get more time in the seat, you get better, and you create the energy," he added.

Wolfgang Van Halen's debut album, "Mammoth WVH," earned him his first Grammy nod, with the track "Distance" nominated for best rock song (he didn't win). He attended the ceremony accompanied by mom Valerie Bertinelli and girlfriend Andraia Allsop. So who is Allsop, whom Van Halen began dating in 2015? A graduate of the University of Utah, reported The U.S. Sun, Allsop is reportedly a software engineer, and has no connection to the music business other than her boyfriend. Back in 2018, Van Halen shared some photos of himself and his girlfriend on Instagram, in celebration of their three-year anniversary. 

While Van Halen has a close relationship with Bertinelli, apparently Allsop is also quite friendly with her beau's mother, who receives regular visits from the couple. "My girlfriend and I pretty much go over to my mom's house every day to see her and play with her cats that we love," Van Halen told People. 

According to Van Halen, his relationship with his mom is both loving and steeped in sarcasm. "I think a lot of people don't understand how sarcastic our relationship is," he explained. "One time, she burnt onion rings. And it's like, she has a cooking show, so I just made fun of her for it ... Sarcasm is a language, and that's how we communicate!"

As Wolf Van Halen wrote on Instagram, he'd become "fully prepared for a wave of hate" upon the release of his album, "Mammoth WVH." Speaking with Guitar World, Van Halen admitted that no matter what he did, there would always be someone accusing him of riding on the coattails of his late father. "It's an up and down thing," he said of dealing with haters. "Sometimes it's too much, and sometimes you're ready to take it on the chin and tell them to f** off." He did, however, admit to taking a certain pleasure in responding to certain online jabs, noting that "every now and then and some a**hole lobs you a really big softball that you could just f***in' knock out of the park, and it's really fun."

In an interview with "100.3 The X", via Blabbermouth, he explained why he's chosen to "pick [his] battles." When he does confront a hater, he explained, "half the time, either one of two things will happen. They'll either double down and be even worse, or they'll immediately apologize because they get a fraction of what they just dealt to you and they don't know how to deal with it."

He's chosen to use humor in these online altercations, treating it "almost like a puzzle" to be solved. "So, I found my fun way of dealing with it, and I'm going to keep doing it," he added.