Wolfgang Van Halen has responded to the bizarre 2024 YouTube rants from Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, dismissing the attacks by stating: “I’ve always been a punching bag.”
In a new interview on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Wolfgang addressed the one-sided feud, which saw Roth post audio clips of “unfounded lies” about him. Roth repeatedly referred to Wolfgang as a “f**kin’ kid” who complained on tour.
“I’ve always been a punching bag. So, it’s just whatever… I’m a 34-year-old married man with a third [Mammoth] album. I’m not a kid,” Wolfgang stated in the new interview.
Wolfgang, who joined Van Halen on bass at age 15, emphasized that he was not the instigator of the conflict. “I didn’t put a two-hour-long YouTube rant of completely unfounded lies about said person out of nowhere,” he said. “So I don’t know what I did, but that’s certainly where I sit.”
Roth‘s original tirade from January 2024 included wild accusations about Wolfgang‘s behavior on Van Halen‘s final tour. “This f**kin’ kid, he’s complaining the entire tour like I’m not paying enough attention to him on stage,” Roth claimed. Roth also alleged that Wolfgang had his female guests “ejected” from the band’s shows in New York and at the Hollywood Bowl.
Speaking on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast in August, Wolfgang theorized that Roth‘s animosity is a result of his father, Eddie Van Halen, no longer being around.
“I think the big thing, one of the bigger things is that my dad isn’t around,” Wolfgang explained. “So I think he just went for what’s still there to kind of point at.”
He also expressed his frustration with the constant infighting that plagues legacy rock bands, a dynamic he actively avoids with his own band, Mammoth.
“I don’t know what it is with ’80s bands. There’s always f**king something,” Wolfgang said. “I’ve kind of used it as my own… just, like, I don’t want this to happen. So it’s, like, for my band, it’s, like, why can’t we just have a good time and just be happy and make music? Like, is it that f**king difficult?”
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