In a recent chat with Bass Player, Wolfgang Van Halen talked about why he didn’t imitate Michael Anthony’s playing.
“Not really. I don’t try to rewrite it, but I’ll play different runs,” the musician explained when asked whether he tries to follow Anthony’s bass lines exactly.
In late 2006, Eddie Van Halen told Guitar World that his son would replace Anthony as the band’s bassist. Wolfgang toured with Van Halen as the bassist for the first time in 2007. In August 2010, Van Halen announced they would record a new album with Wolfgang on bass.
Wolf played bass for Anthony during the 2007 reunion and knew that some fans were not happy with him taking the role. He previously said, “I was there to support my dad. But I was aware that I’d become the biggest enemy of every 40- to 50-year-old man out there in the world.”
He added, “It was a lot of pressure, but we had rehearsed constantly, to the point where those songs were in my bones. And luckily nobody was staring at me – they were staring at Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth on the stage together – so I got to lay back and do my part.”
Wolf said his relationship with Anthony was ‘very cordial’ at the time of the interview. He explained, “He’s a wonderful f*cking guy. We talk and it’s great.”
Van Halen had a reunion with Anthony in last December. The two musicians, who hadn’t seen each other in years, met at a Mammoth WVH concert in Las Vegas. “Oh, it was wonderful. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. So it was great to just give him a big hug and really talk,” Wolf later said in an interview.
The rocker shared, “We haven’t had much of an opportunity to do so. People try to make it seem like there’s some animosity, hatred or competition between us, but it’s never been that way.”
Wolf recorded his only studio album with Van Halen, ‘A Different Kind of Truth,’ in 2011. It was released on February 7, 2012.
