Eddie Van Halen’s son says playing the guitar was a “religious experience” for his father
Speaking during a new interview, Wolf Van Halen has opened up about his late father Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing, saying it was a “religious experience” for the musician.
When speaking about his father’s custom-built Frankenstein guitar, Wolf said: “You can feel the history sort of emanating out of the Frankenstein. Picking up that guitar is almost a religious experience, even if you’re not a religious person. You just kinda hold it and feel the history right there in your hands”.
Eddie Van Halen passed away back in 2020 after a battle with cancer. In the years since his father’s passing, Wolf has also made an album of music under the name ‘Mammoth WVH’, a reference to Van Halen’s original moniker Mammoth. The album features Wolf playing some of Eddie’s signature guitars.
The Frankenstein guitar was created by Eddie when Van Halen was starting out in California, taking parts from different guitars and painted with an eye-catching red and black colour palette. In addition to his Frankenstein guitar, Eddie later began a guitar manufacturing company making both amplifiers and guitars that suited his style.
However, Wolf mentioned Eddie being careless with his trademark instrument, saying: “It’s funny, when I started recording with it back in 2015, we pulled it out and Dad picked it up, played it for a second and then sorta just tossed it on the couch. Everybody in the room gasped! Because to us, it’s quite literally the most famous guitar in the existence of music, where to him it was this little piece of junk he put together”.
In the years since Eddie’s passing, the guitar community has come forward to pay their respects. Last year, the Red Hot Chili Peppers paid tribute to Eddie Van Halen on the song ‘Eddie’, which was about their rise in California.
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