Van Halen’s Fathers & Sons Night/Reunion

I never particularly cared for Van Halen, but you’ve got to like this story. During a recent Van Halen reunion concert, Eddie Van Halen’s 16-year-old son, Wolfgang, played the bass and sung back-up vocals. According to the San Jose Mercury News article below, “For this, he received several kisses on the cheek from his dad.”

Even better, actress Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie’s ex-wife and Wolfgang’s mom, was in attendance. The story is below.

Van Halen family reunion
By Shay Quillen
Mercury News, 12/18/2007

This time, they left the Jack Daniel’s whiskey and the Cabo Wabo tequila on the shelf.

Van Halen’s show Sunday night at HP Pavilion – its first in the Bay Area with singer David Lee Roth in more than 20 years – revealed a fun but thoroughly professional hard-rock band whose ethos has evolved from “lock up your daughters” to “bring along your sons.”

Over two hours and 10 minutes with nary a power ballad in sight, a newly sober Eddie Van Halen expertly spun out his epochal guitar riffs while brother Alex pounded out rhythms and Eddie’s 16-year-old son, Wolfgang, the band’s newest member, competently reproduced the bass and vocal parts of exiled founder Michael Anthony. For this, he received several kisses on the cheek from his dad. (In keeping with the familial theme, Wolfgang’s mom, actress Valerie Bertinelli, was spotted in the crowd.)

Meanwhile, Roth was positively aglow at his chance to be part of this family reunion, and to be back in front of an enthusiastic crowd made up mostly of folks old enough to have seen the band in its 1978-85 heyday, many with sons in tow.

Now free of the long blond mane that let him assume the role of ’70s sex god, the clean-cut 53-year-old front man was revealed as a showbiz pro, a born performer who would have been slinging one-liners and doing song-and-dance in the Catskills if he’d been born 25 years earlier.

To read the full article, click here. Thanks to Paul, a reader, for sending it to me.

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