During an appearance on Rolling Stone Music Now , Wolfgang Van Halen spoke about his musical journey, recalling how he started it all playing drums. Wolfgang is currently promoting his debut album, Mammoth WVH .
The interviewer initially asked about the musician's history with the drums and the steps he took to master the instrument. "To a certain extent, it's just that 10,000-hour road, the thing I did for the longest time. I listened a lot to Van Halen 's Best Of, Vol. 1 , and Blink-182 's Enema of the State , and tried to emulate that," he said.
He stated that he played “All The Small Things” and tried to nail it exactly like Travis Barker . “I never learned to read music,” he explained. “I noticed a huge improvement in my skills as a musician, as a drummer, when I started listening to Tool because I really started trying to imitate everything Danny Carey was doing.”
Furthermore, Wolfgang stated that he never had formal lessons with any instrument and wished he had been required to take piano lessons as a child. When asked about his parents, he stated that his father also couldn't read music and only memorized it for piano recitals.
Regarding having perfect pitch, he said he believes he doesn't. "The only thing I do, like when I'm tuning a guitar, is that I might hum 'Back in Black' or 'Highway to Hell' in my head. Like, 'Okay, this is A, it's half a step below A in 'Highway to Hell'.'".
According to Wolfgang, he learned to play guitar because of the song "316," which had been written in his honor. Eddie Van Halen taught him how to play it and, after that, taught him how to play power chords .
“I played guitar and other things, I learned to play 'Chop Suey!' by System of a Down with guitar tabs, and things like that, and you just start putting riffs together and start figuring it out,” he stated.