If you could pick four of your favorite musicians to join forces and be in a supergroup together, who would they be? We asked Wolfgang Van Halen the same question, and his picks came as a bit of a surprise.
First, a disclaimer — we told him he couldn’t pick anyone from Van Halen to be in the group, for potential bias reasons.
Mammoth WVH’s Mammoth II has been out for a few months now, and most people seem to agree that Van Halen, who once again played all of the instrumentation and sang all of the songs, did a great job at avoiding the dreaded “sophomore slump.” Inspired heavily by groups such as Meshuggah, the new set of songs has a flare to it that we haven’t heard from Van Halen previously, and it debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart.
“That was the mission statement, was like, no sophomore slump. [I] was like, ‘I need to be as proud or more proud, it needs to be better than — as good or better than the first,” Van Halen described to us of his attitude while making the second record. “That was the only thing in my mind. I didn’t let it cloud the vision in any way, I just always had that in the back of my head because I wasn’t gonna release something I wasn’t proud of.”
As a multi-instrumentalist who acts as a one-man band in the studio, we were curious what Van Halen’s ideal supergroup would look like — one that he could just be a fan of, not be involved with himself. So we asked him to name his favorite singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer to be in an imaginary supergroup together, and as previously stated, no Van Halen members were allowed to be chosen.
“Guitar, Aaron Marshall [Intervals]. He’s my favorite guitar player right now, I think he’s a phenomenal guitar player. He writes amazing music, he’s wonderful — he’s on guitar,” Van Halen said.
As for drummers, it was a toss-up between Tool’s Danny Carey and Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree. He went with the latter, though, because he chose Tool’s Justin Chancellor as his favorite bassist, and wanted to switch it up rather than having two musicians who already play in a band together.
“For a singer, I’ll pick Ian Kenny from Karnivool, one of my favorite bands from Australia. I think that would be a really cool, semi-shreddy, Tool-like band between the four of those guys. That’s a cool band. I hope that happens,” he concluded.
READ MORE: Wolfgang Van Halen’s 10 Favorite Albums When He Was a Teenager
See the full interview below.
Mammoth WVH are currently on tour, with their next show taking place tomorrow (Nov. 9) in Chicago, Illinois. See all of the dates on their website.
Wolfgang Van Halen Picks Four Musicians That Would Make the Perfect Supergroup
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Gallery Credit: by Chris Wheatley
