Mammoth Artistfacts

March 16, 1991
Mammoth is the name Wolfgang Van Halen, son of the legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen, uses for touring and recording. It's his solo project, but when they play live it becomes a full band.
Wolfgang uses producers, but he does all the songwriting, plays all the instruments and handles all the vocals himself. He's an introvert, so being the focal point is out of his comfort zone.

"When it comes to playing in the studio - laying down drum tracks, guitar, all of it - that's probably the most comfortable thing for me," he said on the Songfacts Podcast. "Being a frontman is still a very tough thing. It's not really my personality type. I'm a really shy, reserved sort of person. I think a lot of people might take it as me being rude because of how quiet I can be in social situations, when really I'm just paralyzed with social anxiety."
He used the name Mammoth WVH for their first two albums, then shortened it to just Mammoth in 2025 after he got that trademark approved. The name has special significance: Mammoth was the original name for Van Halen, which they changed because another band was using it.
Wolfgang was 30 when the first Mammoth album was released in 2021, but he had already spent nearly half his life as a professional musician. He was just 16 when he became Van Halen's bass player in 2007, the year they reunited with David Lee Roth. He was with the band until Eddie's death in 2020, which marked the end of Van Halen.
His first single, "Distance," was written between 2013 and 2015 but wasn't released until November 16, 2020, six weeks after Eddie's death. The music video, which shows home footage of the pair, made a lot of grown men cry. Regarding the song's meaning, Wolfgang explained to Songfacts: "My father had struggled with his health a lot throughout the years, and it was a song that came out during one of the darker times, where it was my brain playing a scenario of what it would be like if I didn't have him in my life, and being able to focus on the idea that while we may not be together at some point, we're never really that far apart."
He's named after the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His parents called him Wolfie; his mom, the actress Valerie Bertinelli, uses the Instagram handle @wolfiesmom.
What are Wolfgang's favorite Van Halen songs? His choice from the David Lee Roth era is "Unchained," which he told Songfacts is "pretty f--kin' awesome." From the Hagar era it's "Dreams," which he says is "one of the best things my father ever wrote."

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