WOLFGANG VAN HALEN Talks About Making Of 'A Different Kind Of Truth'

July 30, 2012

VAN HALEN fan site Van Halen News Desk has posted an excerpt from Guitar World's exclusive in-depth interview with VAN HALEN bassist Wolfgang Van Halen, which appears in the magazine's August 2012 issue.

Asked about the writing nad recording process for VAN HALEN's latest album, "A Different Kind Of Truth", Wolfgang said, "We took about three months off after the last show we played on the last tour, then we all got together and started jamming again. Just to warm up we played 'Drop Dead Legs', 'Outta Love Again' and 'Unchained' at the first rehearsal we did, and we recorded it. It almost felt brand new. That got us all thinking that maybe we should record something new, especially since we have been playing all of the old songs for so long. I knew that VAN HALEN had this incredible catalog of music they've recorded and written that nobody has ever heard. Some people have heard a few of the unreleased demos, but there's so much more that they haven't. When you walk into the studio there are endless shelves of recordings. I grabbed a bunch of random tapes and picked out a few songs that I had known and liked. We started changing them around and writing new parts for them. We recorded the first demo of 'She's The Woman' in August 2009, and it felt really awesome. It felt like classic VAN HALEN that was written today. It had the right next of old and new. Then everything started falling together and we went to work on more songs."

Regarding VAN HALEN's decision to combine songs from the the band's beginning, the later period with Roth like "Ripley"/"Blood And Fire" and entirely new material, Wolfgang said, "I wanted to remind my dad of the mindset he was in when he wrote songs like 'Running With The Devil' and 'Dance The Night Away'. I thought that recording those old songs would make it easier for dad, Dave [Lee Roth, vocals] and Al [Alex Van Halen, drums] to put their minds where they were back then and get back to writing how they would have then. At first when the album came out we had a bunch of haters who were mad that we recorded new versions of songs that they already heard, but they don't understand that is what almost every single musician does. They write music, and some of it gets used and some of it doesn't. Only the diehard fans have bootlegs of those demos. And there is a lot of new material on the album as well. It's like all areas of VAN HALEN slammed into one record. The old songs don't sound the same as the old versions. The songs sound like where we are now."

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