The Stunning Transformation Of Valerie Bertinelli's Son Wolfgang Van Halen

Wolfgang Van Halen was born in 1991, the only child of Van Halen guitar whiz Eddie Van Halen and "One Day at a Time" star Valerie Bertinelli. Growing up in the shadow of one of rock's greatest guitarists, he came to become a successful musician in his own right, carving out his own niche within the modern rock landscape as frontman and leader of the band Mammoth. 

He's always credited his father, who tragically died in 2020, with placing him on a musical path. "He's the reason why I do what I do," he said in an interview with Audacy Check In. "I wouldn't exist if it wasn't for him. I think just doing what I do is enough of a reference and tribute."

As this talented young musician continues to follow his unique musical muse, his creativity and talent are as evident as his future is bright. To find out more about how he got to where he is, relive his journey by reading on to experience the stunning transformation of Valerie Bertinelli's son Wolfgang Van Halen.

Given that his father was one of rock's all-time-greatest guitar virtuosos, and he grew up in an environment full of constant music and access to an array of musical instruments, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Wolfgang Van Halen began demonstrating musical aptitude at a young age. "Sneaking in a quick jam sesh on Uncle Al's kit with my drumming Uggs and drumsticks that are almost the same size as me," he wrote in the caption accompanying an adorable photo he posted on Instagram, of himself as a toddler sitting at Alex Van Halen's drum kit.

As he grew older, he eventually gravitated toward drums; his dad, Eddie Van Halen, was happy to teach him the basics, and then let him figure out the rest by himself. He was just 8 or so, he told The Washington Post, when his dad placed a stack of magazines on a table and instructed him to bang on them as it they were a snare drum. "If you can do this in time," he recalled his father telling him, "this is what playing drums is."

Soon, he grew serious and graduated from stacked periodicals to a legit drum set. "I started playing drums when I was nine-ish. It was the only thing my dad actually sat down to teach me," Van Halen explained in an interview with Music Radar. "So once he saw that I could do it, he was like, 'Yes!'"

It's a testament to the parenting of Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli that Wolfgang Van Halen's early years were insular enough that he was unaware of their respective fame. "My mom did a really good job at grounding me in my childhood," he told People of his younger years. "It felt completely normal. It wasn't lavish or insane."

Interviewed by Guitar World, Van Halen was asked if he was aware as a kid that his dad was a rock god. "Not really," he responded. "I didn't notice until I started picking up CDs and saw his picture on them." In fact, the first time he could recall noticing that people acted differently around his parents was when the family flew back from a trip and were besieged by photographers when they landed at LAX. "I just remember a bunch of flashing lights because paparazzi were following us," he said. "That's the only memory I have that was unusual."

Speaking with Ultimate Classic Rock, Van Halen recalled learning the truth at age 6 or 7, when Van Halen was remastering the band's early albums. "I found a box of all of them, and I saw my name on it and a picture of my dad," he said. "I said, 'Dad, what's this?' and he said, 'Oh, yeah, uh ... this is what I do.' And he kind of introduced me to everything."

Wolfgang Van Halen had been focused on playing the drums from a young age. By the time he hit puberty, he began developing an interest in guitar. Given his father's stature in the pantheon of rock guitarists, he had a rare opportunity to learn the instrument from one of the all-time greats. However, that's not actually how it happened. "My dad wasn't the best teacher," he told Louder Sound. "I would ask him to play something, but he would just proceed to be Eddie Van Halen. He would look at me and say: 'Do that.' To which I would laugh and reply sarcastically: 'Sure thing, no problem.'"

As a result, he mostly taught himself how to play, declaring that because his father was self-taught, he wanted to develop his own guitar technique in a similar fashion. "It was important that I develop my own skills and my own sound," he told Spin. "That's helped me or else you'd be listening to some s***ty Van Halen cover band."

There was one notable exception, however, when he set his sights on learning how to play "316" — the Van Halen instrumental that his father wrote for him — for a very special occasion, and his dad helped him to learn it. "I played it at a talent show in 6th grade, and so he taught me that fully ..." he told Louder Sound.

By 2006, Wolfgang Van Halen's musical skills had progressed significantly — to the point that his father brought him into Van Halen as the band's new bass player, replacing original bassist Michael Anthony. 

While naming his son as a full-fledged member of Van Halen at age 15 may have seemed like an act of nepotism, Eddie Van Halen insisted that wasn't how it went down. Interviewed by Guitar World, the elder Van Halen recalled he and his son jamming when drummer Alex Van Halen listened with headphones. Having no idea it was his nephew supplying those killer bass lines, he was blown away when he found out. When his dad ultimately asked him to join, Wolfgang accepted — but under one condition. "I said, 'Sure. I just don't want to do a bass solo.'" While the decision initially generated skepticism, Wolfgang proved the doubters wrong during the band's 2007-'08 reunion tour with original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth.

However, some old-school Van Halen fans felt he was a nepo baby interloper. The more vociferous called for the band to bring Anthony back into the fold and had nothing but negativity to hurl at the band's new addition. "It was tough," Wolfgang told Louder Sound of the hateful reaction he encountered from that faction of the Van Halen fanbase. "It was something I didn't know how to handle. That did a lot of damage to me."

By 2013, Wolfgang Van Halen had become a Van Halen veteran, having performed numerous shows with the band his dad founded before he was born. That year, he announced that he was joining another band, hard rockers Tremonti. Speaking with Billboard, Van Halen insisted that he was taking his role with Tremonti as seriously as he was his other gig. "Van Halen is definitely the priority, but whenever Van Halen isn't doing anything, I treat this as another band I'm legitimately in," he said.

Interviewed by Rock Street Journal, Van Halen explained that his involvement with Tremonti came about organically, as he'd been a friend of Creed frontman Mark Tremonti for several years. As he recalled, he happened to be in New Jersey, where Tremonti was based, at the same time they were in dire need of a bass player on the eve of going on the road. "So I went over one night at midnight and learned the entire set, and the next day we were on tour!" he recalled.

In 2001, Eddie Van Halen confirmed that he was undergoing treatment for cancer on his tongue. He subsequently revealed that he'd beaten the disease, and had been declared cancer-free in 2002. Sadly, his cancer returned, and in 2020 he succumbed to the disease. He was just 65.

Wolfgang Van Halen had been close to his father, and the elder Van Halen's death hit him particularly hard. "It's really tough. Some days are better than others," he admitted during an interview with Carson Daly for "Today." As he explained, grieving his father's death had become something of a work in progress for him. "It doesn't seem like the pain is ever really gonna go away," he explained. "You just kinda figure out how to carry it a bit better." While the world lost a rock icon, Wolfgang Van Halen lost so much more. "He was still my dad — and he was incredibly loving — and he was my best friend in many ways," he said. 

As Van Halen told People, his father continued to influence him from beyond the grave, compelling him to push past his grief and fully engage in living. "What really helps me keep going is my dad, because if I just gave up and stopped and crawled in a hole, which I feel like doing every day, I know he'd be really pissed off at me," he said. "He's the only thing that keeps me going."

When he wasn't on the road with Van Halen or Tremonti, Wolfgang Van Halen was spending time in the recording studio, working on the tracks that would come together for his 2021 debut album, "Mammoth WVH." As NPR pointed out, the album represented years of work, with Van Halen playing every instrument and painstakingly recording his parts. "It's 100% all me, playing everything, writing everything. So it's a lot more pressure, but it's also much more creatively freeing," he told the outlet, while also joking that the downside of that is that if it didn't work out, there'd be no one to blame but himself. 

When he first began work on the album, he hadn't even realized that was what it would ultimately become. Modeling his efforts on the first Foo Fighters album — in which frontman Dave Grohl similarly played all the instruments — he was far from confident that he'd be able to pull it off. "And I wasn't sure if I could do it," he admitted.

A year after the album's release, Van Halen took to X (formerly Twitter) to reveal how monumental that album had been for him. "It was the culmination of years of work, trial and error, loss, self-doubt, and anxiety," he wrote. "It began a new chapter in my life that I'm not sure I was even ready for, but I jumped in anyway."

With the release of his first album, Wolfgang Van Halen knew the next step was to go on the road and play his music to live audiences. This led him to assemble a band, which he named Mammoth. The name, Van Halen told NPR, was taken from the moniker of a three-piece group that his dad led prior to forming Van Halen. "So I always loved that name whenever he would tell me that story," he said. "So I always told myself that when I grew up, I'd name my own album and my own band."

Recording an album is one thing — playing bass with Van Halen on tour is another entirely. While it was a given that he'd be front and center, being the lead singer of his own rock band was uncharted territory for Van Halen, something that he addressed during an appearance on the "Walking The Floor With Chris Shiflett" podcast.

"I'm very much myself, to a certain degree," he said when asked to describe his style as a frontman. According to Van Halen, he wasn't trying to go over the top, a la David Lee Roth, but was simply being who he was. "I don't know," he used. "Maybe it's boring, but I'm just being unabashedly myself, and I think being honest is a nice thing to be doing."

Wolfgang Van Halen's debut album garnered him his first-ever Grammy nomination, earning a nod in the best rock song category for the single "Distance." And while he didn't take home a Grammy, he was nominated alongside a group of artists that include Weezer, Kings of Leon, Paul McCartney, and Foo Fighters, the latter winning for their single "Waiting on a War."

Van Halen commemorated the moment on Instagram, sharing a photo of himself with his mother, Valerie Bertinelli, and girlfriend, Andraia Allsop. "We came, we saw, but we did NOT conquer and that's ok!" he wrote in the caption. "Such an honor to be nominated for the first song I ever released on my own, in a category with artists I've looked up to my entire life. I don't know if that'll ever fully set in," he added pointing out that his dad, Eddie Van Halen, hadn't won a Grammy the first time he was nominated, leading him to feel he was following in his old man's footsteps. 

He opened up about his feelings even more in an interview with Noise11.com, transcribed by Blabbermouth. "I just think, taking away from that, to be treated as an equal in a category about songwriting, I think that was enough of a win for me, to take that home and to be Grammy-nominated alongside people I've looked up to my whole life — from Weezer to Foo Fighters to The Beatles," he observed. "An absolutely ridiculous honor."

When Wolfgang Van Halen stepped out at the 2022 Grammy Awards alongside girlfriend, Andraia Allsop, they'd been an item for some time. As The Sun reported, Van Halen and Allsop, a photographer, began communicating online and went on their first date on October 15, 2015.  

Eight years to the day, the couple tied the knot in a ceremony held at their Los Angeles home. As People reported, they were joined by about 90 guests. "Our goal was just to bring all of our closest family and friends together ... we wanted to create this wedding as a celebration not only just for us to get married, but a celebration for the people we love," she said. Van Halen honored his late father by having "316" — the instrumental Van Halen number that the guitarist wrote for his son — playing while they walked down the aisle. "It'll be a nice way to include my dad," Van Halen observed.

Bertinelli was simply thrilled that her son had found "the one" with which he could share his life. "They really 'get' one another," she said. "Their humor is very similar, they like similar things, they know how to give each other space and they're just so comfortable together."

With his own album, a successful concert tour (opening for Guns 'N Roses, no less), and a Grammy nomination under his belt, Wolfgang Van Halen's profile was on the rise when he was tapped to play on the soundtrack of 2023's biggest movie: "Barbie." In fact, he contributed guitar to Ryan Gosling's signature musical number in the film, "I'm Just Ken," performing alongside Guns 'N Roses axeman Slash. 

Van Halen and Slash reunited to back up Gosling when he performed the song at the 2024 Oscars, placing Van Halen in front of what was easily his biggest audience yet. "It was very crazy but an exciting thing to be a part of. That is not my normal place to hang around in or operate from, so I felt a little like a fish out of water," he admitted during an interview with The Morning Call.

Looking back on the experience, he had a sense that "Barbie" was going to resonate with audiences, but had no idea it was going to become one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. "To have a small part in something like that was a really cool thing," he reflected. "I loved playing on it and being a part of the movie."

Shortly after the release of "Barbie," in August 2023 Wolfgang Van Halen released his second album, "Mammoth II." Like his debut, he was a one-man band on the project, playing all the instruments on each song. During the course of recording those albums, he made a conscious decision to simultaneously distance himself from his famous father while also honoring him — a formidable balancing act, to be sure. 

However, he's also been adamant about following his dad's advice to forge his own path and not try to imitate anyone else. "I'm gonna be myself whether or not anybody has a problem with it," he explained in an interview with Guitar.com.

And while he realized that comparisons to Eddie Van Halen were inevitable, he was also heartened to see they were lessening as appreciation for his abilities as an artist in his own right continued to grow. "Luckily, and thankfully, it's starting to happen," he said. "I see people being a fan of the music first and then only then realizing, 'Oh s***, I had no idea you [were Eddie Van Halen's son]. That's a really huge compliment because I feel like that can only take you so far, and being a fan of my father doesn't necessarily mean you're a fan of the music that I make. It's really flattering to see people view me as my own person."