Wolfgang Van Halen Opens Up About His Iconic Father: “Incredibly Cathartic”

Wolfgang Van Halen will be featured on an episode of Behind The Music season two, and he recently spoke about how “incredibly cathartic” the entire experience was. He took to social media to share the trailer for episode three of the docuseries, admitting that it has been “difficult” for him to talk about his father, the late Eddie Van Halen.

“I had the honour of being asked to tell my story on Behind The Music,” he wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “It was difficult, but also incredibly cathartic being able to reflect on my experiences, the incredible people I’m blessed to have in my life and most importantly, my bond with my father.”

He continued, adding, “I don’t normally talk so openly about things, so this was new for me.” He then thanked the show, producers, and Paramount+ for the opportunity to tell his story.

Wolfgang’s mother, actress Valerie Bertinelli, also posted about the episode on social media. “I was finally able to watch Wolfie’s ‘Behind The Music’. It was not easy,” she began in a post on Instagram. She admitted that she “stopped it many times,” citing that it was “just too brutal to watch for many reasons.”

I had the honor of being asked to tell my story on Behind The Music. It was difficult, but also incredibly cathartic being able to reflect on my experiences, the incredible people I’m blessed to have in my life and most importantly, my bond with my father. I don’t normally talk… pic.twitter.com/bRClierLkp

— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) May 2, 2024

[RELATED: New Episodes of ‘Behind the Music’ Will Feature Trace Adkins, Wolfgang Van Halen, and Bell Biv DeVoe]

Wolfgang Van Halen Previews Behind The Music Episode, Mother Valerie Bertinelli Shares Thoughts

Bertinelli continued in the video, “One, seeing Wolfie’s pain. Two, seeing what a better job I could have done as a parent. Even though he turned out magnificently, I made a lot of mistakes. And three, seeing what I had turned of Ed’s and my relationship into some sort of fantasy-soulmate recreation of history.”

She shared that she had fallen in love when she was 20, and had tried to make her marriage something it wasn’t. It declined into “drugs and alcohol and infidelity,” she said, and when Van Halen died in 2020, she attempted to put herself in the “grieving widow” role “for a man that I hadn’t lived with for 20 years.”

She added, “What we had together was this beautiful son that we both unconditionally loved. That’s what I got out of that marriage. It was Wolfie. The best thing that ever happened to me. Not a soulmate.”

Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images