| 8/25/12 | Sacramento, CA | Power Balance Pavilion | 05/09/2012 | 05/14/2012 | Coming Soon |
| 8/30/12 | Reno, NV | Reno Events Center | 05/09/2012 | 05/14/2012 | Coming Soon |
| 9/17/12 | Wichita, KS | INTRUST Bank Arena | 05/09/2012 | 05/18/2012 | Coming Soon |
Browsing Category Van Halen News
3 more new dates added
Wolfgang Van Halen Is the Youngest Biggest Rock Star Alive
And it’s not just the DNA. A conversation with twenty-one-year-old Wolfie — bass player, band leader, son of some other guy who apparently plays guitar (and chimes in from time to time).
By David Curcurito
(Part of the reporting for “Eddie Van Halen Alive,” from the May 2012 issue of Esquire, on sale now)
 |
Peter Yang
ESQUIRE: Did you actually have to decide at one moment that I’m going to be in this band? Or did you just feel like you were — I mean, there had to be a point where you’re like, Holy shit, they’re really planning this thing around me.
WOLFGANG VAN HALEN: I guess it really didn’t hit me until, like, the first night of the tour, in 2007. It just felt so normal, because we had already been rehearsing for two years. It just kind of fell into place, you know? I didn’t really have anything that I felt like I needed to do other than music. It’s the only thing I had, I think.
ESQ: So you joined when you were fifteen?
WVH: We started rehearsing when I was almost sixteen, like four months before I was sixteen. But then we rehearsed for, like, a year and a half, two years — it takes a really long time to get shit done — but by the end, we were all practiced up. It’s just so crazy. We’re playing while rehearsing. We started rehearsing and recording ourselves for the record right before I turned eighteen. So for about two and a half years, we’ve pretty much been rehearsing every single day — excluding Sundays, maybe, just the three of us, and it’s funny, it doesn’t feel like work at all. It just feels like something that we do.
EDDIE VAN HALEN: Not even close to work — we just kind of meet each other every day. “See you in the studio tomorrow!” “Okay!” “You wanna play?” “Yeah, okay, let’s play.”
WVH: We call each other at 10:30, like, “Hey, see you at 12.”
EVH: Sometimes we go, “You wanna play or not?”
WVH: Dad always goes, “Do we have to?” And I say, “Yes.”
EVH: No, but half the time it was because I was so tired of setting up mics and engineering.
ESQ: You don’t have some guy that does that for you?
EVH: No, because I know what I want. The shit I record sounds way better than the record.
WVH: The early demos of just the three of us sound fantastic. We had severe cases of demo-itis.
EVH: I’m the only one who knows how this band is supposed to sound. Drum-wise, it starts with the drums. If Al’s drum sound isn’t there, you know, forget it. I’m the only one who can get it.
WVH: The band has never sounded this good.
ESQ: So you enjoy playing sound checks? Are you really working kinks out, or do you just enjoy playing?
WVH: It’s kind of just a ritual, almost. We’ve been doing this new thing to mix it up — every single show we’ve played has been different — I want to keep it interesting. Since we’re on the second tour, I think we’ve earned the ability to play older songs, like “Hear About It Later.” Last night I was so happy we played that.
ESQ: Have you written an entire song for Van Halen?
WVH: Not yet. Just little parts. It’s a collaboration. Like, we go, “Hey, I came up with this idea,” kind of just all play. We jam it and kind of play around: “Hey, that works.” “No, no, no, this works.” “No, how about that?”
ESQ: A lot of people who are famous for something, their kids turn out to be assholes.
WV: Yeah. You kind of inherit the lifestyle without any of the skill that got them to where they were.
ESQ: Seems like you’re the new face of Van Halen. I saw this real kind of leadership quality in what you were doing, not only onstage, but when you’re backstage, you’re the guy saying, “We’re going to play this,” “Let’s rehearse this,” “Can we learn how to play this?”
WVH: I mean, I kind of come up with the set lists. When we’ve got a song that we haven’t done, it’s like, we should probably run through this before the show and figure out like the count of it. Because dad, for some reason, counts in odds. He’ll land on three instead of four.
ESQ: He’ll go “1,3,5,7″ instead of “1,2,3,4″?
WVH: Yeah, I have to look at him sometimes and go —
EVH: You making fun of me?
WVH: He still, to this day, does not know the lyrics to “Beautiful Girls.” You know how we go, “top of the world, beautiful girls”? He has it written down on his pedal board. On the last tour I used to have to go [mouths lyrics]. You were at sound check yesterday when we were practicing “Full Bug” and he was like, “I don’t know when to stop!” So I had to go over there and was just like, “Now!”
ESQ: This music was written well before you were even born. And you enjoy it?
WV: Oh, yeah, I love it.
ESQ: The whole sound sounds much meaner. I mean, it is just thunderous. To hear all those old Van Halen songs with your bass, it’s like, bass-plus. It’s like turbocharged Van Halen.
EVH: The bass sounded a lot meaner at home when we recorded it ourselves.
ESQ: Well shit, man. How the heck are we going to hear that stuff?
EVH: Eh, we’ll leak it out. The demos of the demos.
ESQ: Are you writing music on the road?
WVH: Not much. I mean, we have a lot of ideas that we wrote that never made it to the record that were so awesome I wish they had made it. But we kind of held it off to another record, possibly.
ESQ: Because there’s just so much material?
WVH: Yeah, there’s so much. And there’s so much material that dad wrote such a long time ago that has never seen the light of day, either.
ESQ: But when your father is retired, okay —
WVH: That’s going to be a while.
ESQ: I know, but when his arms fall off… okay, when his arms fall off and his ears fall off, you’re going to carry on this band.
WVH: Yeah, it kind of falls on my shoulders. I thought it would be really fun if dad and I just sat down and started jamming and see if we came up with something together, instead of him writing something and me putting my spin on it.
EVH: In previous incarnations of the band, I wrote a lot of melodies, too. I just thought of something, Wolf, you’re younger than I was when we made our first record.
WVH: Really?
EVH: Yeah.
WVH: How old were you, 22?
EVH: 21.
ESQ: Your father says you’re a good guy — is he keeping an eye on you? Who’s keeping an eye on you on tour at this point? You’re 21 years old. You’re good on your own?
WVH: Yeah, for the most part.
EVH: Hey, hey, hey, I check up on you.
ESQ: But not like last time.
WVH: No. Last time my mom had so many spies staring at me, you know. I mean, it was just everybody on the crew.
EVH: Inspecting rooms and everything.
WVH: This time around I was like, “Okay, I know what went on last time. You guys don’t have to do that anymore.”
EVH: Yeah, but I still go, “Text me when you get there, text me when you stop.”
ESQ: I would imagine that you know when you’re leaving tomorrow, you know what time the bus is leaving tomorrow. I don’t know if your dad does.
EVH: I can take it. I can take it from him. I can take it from you.
PLUS: Read the Full Esquire Interview with Eddie Van Halen >>
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/musi…#ixzz1uCYIIzaZ
THE EVH 5150III 100 WATT GIVEAWAY
Here’s your chance to win an EVH 5150III 100-watt amp head autographed by Eddie Van Halen. It’s three massive-sounding channels of pure EVH tone and power—in ivory, with four-button footswitch included—and personalized by the man himself. Sign up now to be the lucky winner
SIGN UP FOR A CHANCE TO WIN
Van Halen to Release “She’s The Woman”On 7-Inch Vinyl
Starting May 4, Van Halen will be offering a 7″ vinyl edition of “She’s the Woman” free to fans who purchase their new album, A Different Kind of Truth, from participating records stores. You can find your nearest participating store here.
Released back in February, A Different Kind of Truth marks the band’s first full-length studio album with singer David Lee Roth since 1984. The album sold over 187,000 copies in its first week on sale, good enough to debut at No. 2 on the Billboard charts.
The band are currently on the road in support of the album, and recently added 18 dates to their tour itinerary.
Edward Van Halen Is Alive – New Interview from Esquire Mag
He started playing, and millions of teenage boys started banging their heads against the wall. Thirty-five hard years later, he’s got a new album, a new tour, and his kid Wolfgang is in the band. What would you give to play Eddie’s guitar backstage at the Garden?
By David Curcurito
Published in the May 2012 issue
I’m shaking this man’s hand and it feels like my Uncle Charlie’s, who swung a hammer all his life. Fingers of iron and forearms of steel, like Popeye. If Charlie pointed one of those rebar fingers at you, he meant some serious goddamned business. Same thing with this guy. Dude’s knuckles look like knots in an old oak tree and his fingers are ripped. A workingman’s hand, engineered for manual labor, not for something so fine as music. And that voice, cured with smoke and drenched in Scotch. It’s that voice you hear at the end of your favorite Irish bar in Hell’s Kitchen, always three drinks in, no matter the time, day or night. I’m not a drunk anymore, but since they cut out my tongue, I sound drunk. The cancer got a portion of his tongue and attacked his throat, too. But to hell with all that, this guy is still alive, and we’re backstage at Madison Square Garden in his dressing room about an hour before the show.
Eddie Van Halen takes a deep drag on his electronic cigarette. Sit down on that couch, over there. He rifles through a stack of guitar cases, all guitars of his own making. He wants to show me a special one. The room is comfortable, with a couple of couches facing each other, a nice Oriental rug on the floor, a healthy food spread, a tub of drinks on ice. No alcohol, absolutely no alcohol allowed backstage, he is done with alcohol. It’s like, God gave me one big bottle and I drank it all. I’m done.
Me, I’m dying for a beer. Some people are religious pilgrims, running all over to see a miracle. But this is as close to holy as I’m ever going to feel, Eddie Van Halen’s dressing room at the Garden, and I think he’s about to bless me with his guitar, and I need a beer. I had the Eddie Van Halen hair when I was a kid, and I watched his every move, and I even had a guitar — how hard can it be? It took me an unseemly amount of time to realize that I wasn’t him and wasn’t ever going to be him, but something deep inside still wants to think there’s a chance that I was wrong. My face hurts from smiling, and I can’t stop saying, “This is great, this is great, this is great.” I’m sitting across from his wife of three years, Janie, who’s a good-looking woman, great body. Before she was leader of Camp Van Halen, she was a ground pounder … a stuntwoman. She would do bar fights, get hit by cars, fall out windows, rappel down buildings. Her voice is straightforward and commanding. She’s clearly on guard and she should be — she saved his life and she’s not going to let anyone screw it up, least of all Eddie himself. A tiny orange Pomeranian named Kody is jumping up and down on my leg while Ed — Janie calls him Ed — looks for that guitar. The motherfking guitar. The guitar that changed the world, the guitar that sits in the Smithsonian Institution with Einstein’s pipe and Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, the guitar he wasn’t even supposed to play. When his family hopped on a boat from the Netherlands to Pasadena in March 1962, they didn’t have much at all — fifty bucks, a couple of bags … and a piano. Who brings a piano on a boat? We actually played music on the boat on the way over here, you know? I’m serious! It wasn’t like, “So what do you want to do in life?” Dad said, “We’ve got to make a living.” So if it weren’t for music, we wouldn’t have survived. But in America, you play guitar, because in America you’ve got your Van Cliburns and your Van Halens, and the Van Cliburns don’t get to be rock stars.
His father was a professional musician once he got to L. A., which meant he worked as a janitor. As Ed looks through the stack of cases, he’s looking for the guitar that changed his family’s life when they had to dumpster-dive for scrap metal for a few extra bucks. Ed was a natural, but he was impossibly shy and he’d get so nervous when he had to face even the smallest audience that you’d see his whole body jangling, and so when he was twelve, his dad gave him a shot of vodka and a Pall Mall to ease his nerves, and started him on a lifetime of playing drunk. There are whole tours that Ed barely remembers. Hey, he had to make a living. There was no thought given. It wasn’t like, “What are your dreams?” I never dreamt of being a musician for my livelihood. I certainly never would have wanted to be in the business that I’m in, meaning the fame and the glory, the glitter, the rock star, the famous part.
First he played with his father, with his brother, Alex, on drums. And later, when the brothers were doing gigs at Gazzarri’s on the strip and their father would be playing a bar mitzvah or a wedding in Oxnard, the three of them would meet up after. Two, three in the morning in the back of Ed’s van, just drinking and disturbing the neighbors. My mom’s just going fucking crazy.”Get your ass in here!” She’d lock us out and we’d have to break a window to get in. She hated the fact that we were into music. She wore the pants in the family. I hate to say it, but I don’t think my dad would have drank as much as he did if it wasn’t for her. She had a heart of gold, and don’t take this the wrong way, but Hitler on a bad day, whoa.
It’s funny, his dear old mom, God rest her soul, would do the air-guitar thing and tell her son, “Oh, you’ll never get anywhere going boom, boom, boom, jing, jing, jing. When are you going to get a real job?” “You watch, Mom. We’ll go somewhere one of these days.” We get signed to Warner Brothers and she goes, “Now how long will that last?” And then he changed rock ‘n’ roll forever.
Actually, he and his guitar knocked it right on its ass around 1978, when punk was cutting itself with razors and disco was … mother of God, check out this Top Ten from Billboard, 1978: 1. “Shadow Dancing,” Andy Gibb; 2. “Night Fever,” Bee Gees; 3. “You Light Up My Life,” Debby Boone; 4. “Stayin’ Alive,” Bee Gees; 5. “Kiss You All Over,” Exile; 6. “How Deep Is Your Love,” Bee Gees; 7. “Baby Come Back,” Player; 8. “(Love Is) Thicker Than Water,” Andy Gibb; 9. “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” A Taste of Honey; 10. “Three Times a Lady,” Commodores. And when the world heard “Eruption,” Ed’s one-minute, forty-two-second assault, with its dive bombs and furious precision picking, teenage boys everywhere started pounding their heads against a wall. That guitar.
Ed finds the case he’s been looking for, and without thinking, I stand up and walk over to where it rests and kneel before it. Not in a religious way — like I said, I’m not religious. I just want to get a good look. Ed walks over and kneels down next to me. He pops the three latches one by one, pop, pop, pop, then he opens it. This is the guitar that contains the latest of several patents that Ed holds — things that he saw in his head that he needed to play the way he wanted to play but didn’t yet exist. He’s probably the greatest guitar engineer since Les Paul, makes his own line now called Wolfgang — named after his son and some other guy — and this guitar is the culmination of all of his thinking. Les and I used to always talk about the reasons that we built things. One day I’m hangin’ with him, and we both flip out a pick and we both have sandpaper Krazy Glued to them. We had the same problem, you can’t hold on to ‘em. Everything that we do is not for the sake of creating something but because nobody else makes it. It’s like “I need this in order to do that.” Okay, there. It works.
The instrument’s body is beautiful like a woman’s hips, with two devil horns at the top where his hands hit the upper register of the fret board. It is amber and tobacco-brown-red, and it glows like something sacred when the light hits it. Its neck is unfinished bird’s-eye maple, stained with the sweat and oil from Ed’s hands. When that stain sets in from playing it a whole bunch, there’s nothing like it. It’s just smooth and perfect. He’s saying this and I’m thinking they should put a tap in him and sell that shit. Eddie Van Halen’s Essential Oils! Makes you play better instantly! After all his years of partying, it’s probably 100 proof. Like everything else he does, it would sell, too.
Everybody’s got things that make their lives worth living. We all start out with insane enthusiasms that are tempered by age or suppressed for appearances. I mean, you can’t be an asshole, you know? You have to grow up. Some famous guy said that all of us are born originals, but most of us die copies. But what if you’re the guy everybody copies? What if somehow you get to be the original? Whatever you think of his music, that has been Ed Van Halen’s lot in life. Over all his years, millions of young men would watch his every move. Led by me. I’d memorize him, trying to catch any kind of clue. Because in the beginning, Ed didn’t have the shiny new guitar in the perfect red velvet case. He couldn’t afford it, so he built his own. You couldn’t buy what he had because it didn’t exist. There was a certain mystery behind his creation. The guitar, the one that hangs in the Smithsonian, that’s an exact replica of the one he built. Nicknamed by fans, it’s called Frankenstein and it’s a mess of a guitar. A variety of pieces and parts slapped together over the years. A paint job so nuts, black and white and red crisscrossing, there’s no way anyone would dare copy it. What’s that, a quarter he put under the tailpiece? Have you heard the front pickup doesn’t even work, it’s just there for no reason! When I was a kid, I heard he boiled his strings; by God, I boiled my strings, too. Why did I boil my strings? Only the wound ones. Right. No, I was boiling them all. Only the wound ones, because dirt gets in the windings. It saves, you know, it saves a lot of money. He’s probably the only one who could get a halfway decent sound out of that piece-of-shit guitar. Where’s the original? I ask, and he and Janie look at each other then back at me like I’m asking Janie to show me her underwear. We can’t tell you where the original is. It’s somewhere safe. Ed’s old Marshall amp? Same thing. His sound was called the brown sound and it was mythical. People were always trying to figure it out. And everybody suspected that he was using some kind of magic.
It’s all in the fingers, man. He tells a story about when the band first hit. Van Halen was opening for Ted Nugent back in 1978 at the Capital Centre. Ted was cool enough to give the band a sound check. He’s standing off to the side and he’s listening to me, and he comes up and says,”Hey, you little shit! Where’s your little magic black box?” I’m going, Who the fuck is that? And it was Ted. Hey Ted, it’s nice to meet you, thanks for the sound check. And he’s going, “Let me play your guitar!” I go, “Okay, here you go.” He starts playing my guitar and it sounds like Ted. He yells,”You just removed your little black box, didn’t you? Where is it? What did you do?” I go, “I didn’t do anything!” So I play, and it sounds like me. He says, “Here, play my guitar!” I play his big old guitar and it sounds just like me. He’s going, “You little shit!” What I’m trying to say is I am the best at doing me. Nobody else can do me better than me.
You know, Eric Clapton is Eric Clapton. Nobody does Clapton better than him. Nobody does Hendrix better than Hendrix. We’re not trying to be anything other than who we are.
We’re still on our knees, and Ed picks up his guitar, thumbs around in his pocket for one of his custom picks, and starts playing. His hands move up and down the neck of the guitar with ease. He’s just dicking around, beautifully playing nothing in particular, and I just can’t take my eyes off the guitar. He demonstrates the new piece of equipment he made for this model, a gadget that allows you to switch the tuning with the flip of a metal bar. He calls it Drop to Hell, D2H for short. It’s shiny, clean, and housed within a cavity carved out of the guitar’s tail — it looks like something you might see used in surgery. At this point, I just can’t help myself and unconsciously extend both hands in Ed’s direction. “Can I try?”
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/music/eddie-van-halen-profile-0512#ixzz1sKuLk5pi
NEW DATES ADDED ***
| 7/7/12 | Uncasville, CT | Mohegan Sun Arena | 4/18/12 | 4/21/12 | On Sale 4/18/12 |
| 7/9/12 | Hampton, VA | Hampton Coliseum | 4/18/12 | 4/20/12 | On Sale 4/18/12 |
| 7/11/12 | Philadelphia, PA | Wells Fargo Center | 4/28/12 | 5/4/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 7/13/12 | East Rutherford, NJ | IZOD Center | 4/18/12 | 4/23/12 | On Sale 4/18/12 |
| 7/15/12 | Baltimore, MD | 1st Mariner Arena | 4/18/12 | 4/23/12 | On Sale 4/18/12 |
| 7/17/12 | Rochester NY | Blue Cross Arena | 4/18/12 | 4/21/12 | On Sale 4/18/12 |
| 7/19/12 | Detroit, MI | Joe Louis Arena | 4/28/12 | 5/5/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 7/21/12 | London, ONT | John Labatt Centre | TICKETS | 4/20/12 | On Sale TBD |
| 7/24/12 | Toledo, OH | Huntington Center | 4/28/12 | 5/5/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 7/26/12 | Grand Rapids, MI | Van Andel Arena | 4/28/12 | 5/5/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 7/28/12 | Cleveland, OH | Quicken Loans Arena | 4/28/12 | 5/4/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 7/31/12 | Fort Wayne, IN | Allen County Memorial Coliseum | 4/28/12 | 5/5/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
| 8/2/12 | Columbus, OH | Schottenstein Center | 4/23/12 | 4/30/12 | On Sale 4/23/12 |
| 8/4/12 | Knoxville, TN | Thompson-Boiling Arena | 4/23/12 | 4/28/12 | On Sale 4/23/12 |
| 8/6/12 | Memphis, TN | FedEX Forum | 4/23/12 | 4/28/12 | On Sale 4/23/12 |
| 8/8/12 | Birmingham, AL | BJCC Arena | 4/23/12 | 4/28/12 | On Sale 4/23/12 |
| 8/10/12 | Greenville, SC | BI-LO Center | 4/23/12 | 4/28/12 | On Sale 4/23/12 |
| 8/12/12 | Cincinnati, OH | US Bank Arena | 4/28/12 | 5/4/12 | On Sale 4/28/12 |
Van Halen Official, DEBUT NEW VIDEO “She’s the Woman”
Van Halen Official, DEBUT NEW VIDEO “She’s the Woman”
Listen to Van Halen Live from Louisville, KY 2-18-2012 on Van Halen Radio
Listen to Van Halen’s opener show from Louisville KY on Van Halen Radio… All Day Today!!
Set List:
1. You Really Got Me
2. Runnin’ With The Devil
3. She’s The Woman
4. Romeo Delight
5. Tattoo
6. Everybody Wants Some!!
7. Somebody Get Me A Doctor
8. China Town
9. Mean Street
10. (Oh!) Pretty Woman
11. Alex Drum Solo
12. Unchained
13. The Trouble With Never
14. I’ll Wait
15. Dance The Night Away
16. Hot For Teacher
17. Women In Love (First Time Since 1980!)
18. Outta Love Again
19. Beautiful Girls
20. Ice Cream Man
21. Panama
22. Eddie’s Solo
23. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
24. Jump
Van Halen – A Different Kind Of Truth Timelapse Enhanced
VAN HALEN’S ‘A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRUTH’ DEBUTS AT NUMBER TWO
He’s just a gigolo, and everywhere he goes, David Lee Roth ain’t got no chart-topping Van Halen records. Despite an impressive 187,000 copies sold, the band’s new album ‘A Different Kind of Truth‘ was kept from the top spot in its first week by Adele‘s unstoppable ’21,’ which enjoyed a huge Grammy-week bounce, moving nearly a quarter of a million units in its 50th week on the chart.
It’s a little bit of history repeating for “Diamond Dave,” whose last collection of new material with the band, ’1984,’ also topped out at No. 2 thanks to Michael Jackson‘s ‘Thriller.’ Analysts had predicted that the race between ‘Truth’ and ’21′ would be a little tighter, but between keeping ’21′ at No. 1 and sweeping the Grammys with six awards, this is most definitely Adele’s week.
Still, as Vintage Vinyl News points out, we shouldn’t shed any tears for Van Halen. Selling 187,000 copies of anything is no mean feat in the current industry climate; record sales are down 50 percent since the band moved 191,000 copies of their album ‘III’ back in 1998, and now they’re a — gulp — heritage act.
And speaking of heritage acts, this was also a pretty good week for Paul McCartney, whose new collection of pop standards, ‘Kisses on the Bottom,’ sold a healthy 75,000 copies — well below the 161,000 he moved in his first week with his last studio album, 2007′s ‘Memory Almost Full,’ but still good enough for a probable No. 5 bow.