Wolfgang Van Halen’s Mammoth WVH is that success. That brings a lot of pressure to be successful. Finally Wolfgang’s mom is widely considered America’s Sweetheart. Next Wolf’s father is arguably the best known and most revered guitarist in heavy rock history.

Do you want to talk about pressure? First, Wolf’s name is a tribute to the legendary classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It had to go it had to change.On March 16, 1991, actress Valerie Bertinelli and guitar superstar Eddie Van Halen brought their son, Wolfgang Van Halen, into the world. It became too commercialized, and then it got unplugged and became nothing but power ballads and acoustic songs, and it wasn’t metal anymore. “But I don’t blame it on the music hair metal did it to itself. “When it first came out, I was, again, doing metal radio, and I was playing Alice In Chains, Nirvana and Soundgarden on my show, and I was like, ‘This is great heavy new stuff.’ So then it became defined as grunge, and then it was the hair metal killer, and that was awful. It just became defined by some writers they pigeonholed it and called it a new sound.” And if anything, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, they were metal bands.

I know this, a fact: if you mentioned grunge to Soundgarden or Pearl Jam, they got physically violent with you. Usually as a form of a putdown.Īnd the artists that they called grunge, called punk, called heavy metal - they hated it. And this is the thing about titles - even heavy metal, punk, hair metal, those are not titles chosen by the artists they’re titles chosen by the writers. When they first came out, it wasn’t even called grunge. And you’ve got a multiplatinum act, yay! … Then, all of a sudden, it’s ‘unplugged,’ and we’re not even electric anymore, we’re singing folk songs - well, now you deserve to be knocked off your pedestal.”Įarlier Ultimate Guitar spoke to Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider about how the rise of grunge in the early 1990s forced most hard rock bands off the radio and MTV, with album and tour sales plummeting.ĭee was asked to share his opinion about the grunge bands such as Nirvana and others, saying: “It got to the point where you get the right producer and the right songwriter … you get the right costume designer, and … do the video. … But certainly, it was a looks driven-thing.” Whitesnake, you know, the band in that first video, ‘Still of the Night,’ was assembled - physically assembled - for being pretty. “It had gotten so watered down and so corporate and so predictable.”īands were being assembled for their look. 21), Dee Snider touched upon the hair metal topic. In a new interview with Consequence on Tuesday (Sept.

Van halen album sales rankings