Wolfgang Van Halen told us that fans shouldn't bank on seeing any Eddie Van Halen tribute projects emerging from the vast tape archive he left behind. Wolfgang, who is now in charge of his late-father's unreleased work housed at his 5150 California studio, explained that the process to get everything adequately cataloged is his first priority — not getting new product out ASAP: “That's not gonna happen for a long time — even without the intention of release, I want to — at the every least — archive it properly and digitize it so everything is safe for years to come. Because it's going to be an incredibly difficult process — and a very long process to properly. . . just get the material off the old tapes, that I wanna do it right.”
Wolfgang said that treating his father's music with dignity and respect is really what he cares about when it comes to dealing with his unreleased and unfinished work: “When a very important musician passes, you usually see compilations of unreleased music that, y'know, maybe they should've stayed unreleased. And it just kinda seems like a cash grab to take hold of the moment — and I've always just disagreed with that. And so, if we're ever going to do anything like that with the vault, I wanna make sure we do it right, and do something that dad would be okay with.”
