BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Wolfgang Van Halen is no stranger to the spotlight or rubbing elbows with rock royalty.<\/p>\n
He joined the family business at 15 when he became the new bassist for Van Halen. Wolfgang’s own band, Mammoth WVH, has toured with such hard rock heavyweights as Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Alter Bridge.<\/p>\n
But the son of guitar legend Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli admits even he still gets butterflies in his stomach around certain musicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I met Les Claypool, I was\u00a0a nervous wreck.\u00a0When I met (Tool front man) Maynard (James Keenan) when we were doing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing, I was a nervous wreck. It just has to be people that really mean the world to me\u00a0in terms of their artistic output and how I look up to them as a musician,” Van Halen tells 69 News. “At this point,\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0hung out\u00a0with Slash so much\u00a0that\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0like,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0friends, so\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not a (nervous) thing.”<\/p>\n
Mammoth WVH is set to return to the Wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem on March 14. Their last visit to the Lehigh Valley was in 2024, when the band opened for Creed and 3 Doors Down at the PPL Center in Allentown.<\/p>\n
“If\u00a0you are at all interested or enjoy our\u00a0new record,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0definitely\u00a0going\u00a0to be playing some new stuff\u00a0and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0just\u00a0gonna\u00a0be 90-plus minutes of dudes up there playing rock music,” Van Halen says.\u00a0\u201cIf I\u2019m going to pat myself on the back, I would say it\u2019s nice\u00a0that\u00a0we have a flexible enough catalog\u00a0to open for all these bands that we can cater our sets; make it a heavier one or a lighter, which is pretty cool.”<\/p>\n
Mammoth WVH is hitting the road this summer in support of their third album, 2025’s “The End.” The recording process marked a beginning for the 34-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.<\/p>\n
Van Halen says making the album gave him confidence in himself as his own artist rather than worrying about what others were going to say or do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the pressure of being a newer act and like, \u2018oh can\u00a0he\u00a0do it?\u2019,\u00a0trying to\u00a0prove\u00a0myself, that anxiety\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0as\u00a0prevalent\u00a0as it was for the first two records. I think this time around, I\u00a0kind of let\u00a0go of expectations and what people were going to think of me and just enjoyed the process. I didn’t care if somebody was going to compare it to my dad or to Van Halen or that I should be doing this or I should be doing that; I just followed what sounded good\u00a0and what was fun to make,” he says. “I just did what felt right and what felt good at the\u00a0time\u00a0and\u00a0I think it\u00a0made for a healthier, stronger record.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he did with Mammoth WVH’s first two albums, Van Halen wrote all of the songs on “The End” and recorded all of the instruments for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it forces me to grow as an artist,” he says. “If I want to sing something a certain way, I\u00a0gotta\u00a0figure out how to do that;\u00a0if I want to play something a certain way, I need to figure it out and I think I\u2019m richer for the experience on the other side of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Van Halen says he still enjoys attacking the songwriting from every angle. “I don’t know if I’m ready to give that up yet,” he says. “Maybe by Mammoth 9, if I don’t feel like playing drums, maybe it’ll change, but right now I’m still really enjoying it.”<\/p>\n
Taking such creative ownership has been both challenging and rewarding for him. “I think\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0so special about it,” Van Halen says. “Starting with nothing\u00a0and then ending with something you\u2019re incredibly proud of and something you\u2019re happy to listen to\u00a0and just\u00a0brings you joy and fulfillment is kind of all I need really;\u00a0it\u2019s just a very fun thing.”<\/p>\n
Mammoth WVH performs 7 p.m. March 14 at Wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem. Tickets start at $53.50.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Wolfgang Van Halen is no stranger to the spotlight or rubbing elbows with rock royalty.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,1391,1681,433,805,434],"class_list":["post-125104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem-area","tag-entertainment","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehighvalley","tag-northampton-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}