Wolfgang Van Halen’s Mammoth have just released their third album, The End, and, understandably, fans have been poring over its guitar solos – owing to Wolfgang’s guitar hero lineage descending from the late, great Eddie Van Halen.
Across his records – and with a little advice from his old man about how to make solos memorable – Wolfgang has proven to be a very safe pair of hands when it comes to sizzling leads. And one of the best takes from the new record takes its cues from Nirvana’s smash hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit.
“I tend to compose my solos,” he tells MusicRadar when asked about his lead cut on Same Old Song. “I like writing them almost as if they’re these little songs or movements in themselves.”
The solo has its roots in Take a Bow, which is from his second album. It’s laced with tapping licks in a virtuosic tribute to his late father, whose passing inspired the multi-instrumentalist to kickstart the project in the first place. It was even tracked using the Frankenstein Strat.
“Take A Bow is another good example of that, where the solo section just ebbs and flows and crescendos,” Wolfgang agrees. “I’ll write solos like that by looping the chord progression, spending hours trying to figure out what works best.”
However, penning the solo for the grunge-driven Happy was a little more straightforward.
“I wear a lot of my influences on my sleeve. There’s a magical dissonance to the stuff Jerry Cantrell tends to write,” he says of the Alice In Chains influence behind the song’s barre chord foundation. But it’s Kurt Cobain that he channels for the solo.
“We basically said, ‘Shall we do the Smells Like Teen Spirit thing?’” he confesses. “I loved my vocal line, so I decided to follow it on guitar with some crazy-ass effect just like the Nirvana song.
“It’s fun to have shreddiness, but at the end of the day, the melody has to come first,” he admits. “Even my dad would say the best solos are the ones you can hum and sing.”
The solo on the 1991 banger isn’t the most technical, but it’s undeniably memorable – and the song’s influence and cultural significance is underscored by the fact that the Lake Placid Blue Fender Mustang Cobain played in its music video sold for $4.5 million, making it the second most expensive guitar ever auctioned.
“Of course, there are moments for fun and tapping,” Wolfgang extends, “but if you can play something that people can sing and it sticks in their heads, that’s what it’s all about.”
His dad’s Frankenstein features again on The End, cropping up for the slapping riff of its title track. But despite its mythical status, it’s a guitar that has its limitations, he’s revealed.
And for all his dad’s soloing advice, it turns out that Eddie Van Halen was a terrible guitar teacher – and he once reached out to Paul Gilbert to show Wolfgang the ropes instead.
