Wolfgang Van Halen revealed that he used his dad Eddie Van Halen's legendary signature “Frankenstein” guitar during the sessions for his upcoming Mammoth WVH debut set.
When asked by Guitar World if he used any of his father's gear on the new album, he said, “Yeah, a handful of it. I played the original Frankenstein on the solo on 'Mammoth' and on 'Feel.' You feel the history. It’s kind of terrifying holding it, just because arguably it is the most famous guitar in musical history. It’s definitely quite the thing to hold it.”
He recalled his dad taking the axe out of storage not too long ago: “When we were pulling it out of its safe, Dad picked it up and he was just noodling with it for a second. He’s like 'Yeah, feels about the same' and he tossed it onto the couch. Everyone just gasped when he did that. To Dad, it’s just a little piece of junk that he built himself, but to us it’s the most famous thing in the world.”
We recently caught up with Wolfgang and asked him how his musicality developed while sharing a home with arguably the greatest musician of the 20th century: “My father never really, sort of, pushed me in any sort of direction. He taught me how to play a simple AC/DC-style beat on the drums and then the second he saw I could do it, he bought me a drum kit for my 10th birthday. But from there, I just taught myself. On guitar, he taught me, maybe, like, a power chord. Just how to do power chords, and then again, I took it from there. It was never really, a forced thing. It was just, kind of, what I did”
