Wolfgang Van Halen reacts to David Lee Roth's 'This F---ing Kid' tirade: I was 'born into this Van Halen drama'
"I guess now that my dad isn’t here to be a target, I guess he went to the next best thing," the musician said.
Wolfgang Van Halen isn’t exactly dazzled by Diamond Dave’s comments about his career.
The Mammoth WVH frontman, who is the son of the late Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli, addressed his former Van Halen bandmate David Lee Roth’s recent expletive-ridden rant about him — in which the singer dubbed him a “schlemiel,” or “fool” in Yiddish — during a radio interview with Atlanta’s The Morning X.
“I guess I’m honored [Roth] even thinks about me as much as he seems to,” Van Halen said. “I guess you have to take what he says with a grain of salt, considering he also said that he wrote 'Eruption' and came up with [Eddie Van Halen’s custom guitar] the Frankenstein Strat.”
When the hosts expressed amazement over Roth allegedly taking credit for one of the band’s most influential songs, Van Halen simply responded, “He said he wrote all the solos that dad wrote.”
“I guess that’s all I can say. I seem to have been born into this Van Halen drama that has come way before me,” he continued. “And I guess now that my dad isn’t here to be a target, I guess he went to the next best thing. It’s… I don’t know.”
In January, Roth slammed Van Halen seemingly out of nowhere in a bizarre audio clip posted onto his YouTube channel titled, “This F---ing Kid.” During his tirade, Roth suggested that Van Halen earned his spot in the band through nepotism and claimed that the 32-year-old musician tried to “teach me a lesson” by throwing out his special guests, including the group’s accountant, while on tour.
“[Van Halen] commandeers two muscle monkeys, locates the one dame that is my guest. She’s off in the wings of the Hollywood Bowl, they find her, make her do the walk of shame past all the other guests and out into the parking lot, and throw her out of the building,” Roth recalled. “Wolfie Van Halen’s gonna teach me a lesson by throwing out what he thinks is my girlfriend.”
He continued, “Guess what? Not only is this an accountant again, and not only is she carrying the paychecks for 82 of us on the road crew, but she’s carrying cash bonuses for everybody there.”
Listen to Van Halen address Roth’s comments in the video above.
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