Wolfgang Van Halen has lots of new material for another Mammoth album

In a recent interview with Skratch ‘N Sniff, Grammy Award-nominated songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Wolfgang Van Halen discussed “The End,” the third album from his Mammoth project (formerly Mammoth WVH), released last October through BMG, as per Blabbermouth. The album comprises ten tracks and was recorded at the renowned 5150 studio with Wolfgang’s producer and collaborator Michael “Elvis” Baskette. Concerning his approach to songwriting, Wolfgang shared insights into his creative process.

I feel like when you’re working on a song, it’s not so much you’re working on it as it is showing itself to you. ‘Cause I think that sometimes your favorite idea can end up being your least favorite song on the record because it just happens that way. I think it’s just like a piece of marble and you’re chipping away at it rather than building something. The idea shows itself to you through the process rather than you creating it. At least that’s what it feels like, even though that might be a little poetically up my ass in a way of saying that.

The interviewer observed that certain musical concepts developed during the songwriting process for “The End” remained incomplete and might be incorporated into future Mammoth albums. Wolfgang agreed with this assessment. He suggested that these ideas could potentially appear on the next album or one released in subsequent years.

Well, yeah, and I think the thing that’s always really good is that every time we [Van Halen, Baskette, engineer Jef Moll and assistant engineer Josh Saldate] get together, we end up writing 10 more songs for the record. But about every record, there’s about two to five ideas that kind of fall off the wayside because we just didn’t have enough time. The ideas were great, but we they never showed themselves in time, I guess. And that happens every record. So at this point we have this mini vault of ideas that are inspiring but not finished. And so eventually you might hear it again and hear it in a different light and it’s, like, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s missing,’ and then you put it together and it ends up on a record. So I think right now if I didn’t come up with any new ideas, we’d have enough for a fourth record, but by the time I know we get to that recording time, be it in two years or whenever we do, I’ll have written 10 to 15 more ideas. So you’re kind of always on this creative overflow, which is a nice thing to have, where you can just have enough ideas where you can throw something at the wall and see if it sticks.

When inquired about his preferred working style, Wolfgang explained his tendencies. He clarified whether he functions more effectively under a fixed deadline or if he tends to persist beyond the set limit.

It’s tough. I think having Elvis there is really that… He’s shockingly good at writing out the schedule. At the top of our three months we have working for the record, he’ll have a daily schedule of everything we’ll do. And we’re almost following exactly or beating it to a certain extent. So we’re able to, like, ‘Ah, we only have these few days left. We should probably take this song and shelve it for later.’ And he’s really good at planning. So, if he wasn’t there, I’d probably get in my head and lose track. But when you’re with a label, you have to make sure you have a record by the time you’re done recording.

I remember we were in the studio at, like, three in the morning before everybody had to go home the next day. And that was the solo for ‘Better Off’ on [‘The End’] record. We hadn’t had it yet, and I didn’t know what to do, I just couldn’t think of anything. So we were just sitting in the studio for, like, an hour and a half at three in the morning and just throwing stuff at the wall and it finally hit. So, yeah, it was down to the wire with certain songs, but it’s just funny how that happens. It’s just like any sort of creative effort, I guess.