The drama between David Lee Roth and the Van Halen family has unfortunately lived on past the death of Eddie Van Halen. Earlier this year, Roth unleashed an expletive-filled rant about Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s son who also played bass in the band for several years.
Now, EW reports that Wolfgang has responded to Roth’s rant in a new radio interview. “I guess I’m honored [Roth] even thinks about me as much as he seems to,” Van Halen said on Atlanta’s The Morning X. “I guess you have to take what he says with a grain of salt, considering he also said that he wrote ‘Eruption’ and came up with [Eddie Van Halen’s custom guitar] the Frankenstein Strat.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
One of the hosts marveled at Wolfgang’s comments, to which he replied that Roth “said he wrote all the solos that Dad wrote.” Roth had a notoriously rocky relationship with Eddie and Alex Van Halen, the brothers who started the band for which he previously served as frontman.
“I guess that’s all I can say,” Wolfgang continued. “I seem to have been born into this Van Halen drama that has come way before me. And I guess now that my dad isn’t here to be a target, I guess he went to the next best thing. It’s… I don’t know.”
In January, Roth shared an audio clip of him talking about his time on the road with Wolfgang in the late 2000s and sharing some stories about how they really didn’t get along. “This f—in’ kid,” Roth said, “he’s complaining the entire tour like I’m not paying enough attention to him on stage.”
Roth later added, “He’s complaining to everybody around me – the business manager, the security guy, the clothing lady – ‘Dave’s not paying enough attention to me.’” He also went on to tell a story about Wolfgang allegedly having some of his guests thrown out of a pair of Van Halen concerts. Wolfgang has neither confirmed nor denied the veracity of Roth’s claims.
