Eddie Van Halen’s Son Reveals His Father Was Given Just 6 Weeks to Live in 2017
Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang opened up about his father’s cancer battle in a new interview with Howard Stern.
Wolfgang said his father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2017 and was only given a few weeks to live by his doctors.
Eddie underwent a cancer treatment in Germany, which extended his life three more years until the legendary guitarist’s death on October 6, 2020. He was 65.
Eddie Van Halen passed away in early October after a long battle with various cancers, but his loved ones are continuing to honor the iconic guitarist’s life. In a new interview with Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen opened up about his father’s battle, and how he’s been coping.
Initially, Eddie was diagnosed with tongue cancer before it eventually moved to his esophagus. In a 2015 interview Billboard, he theorized it was due to the metal picks he held in his mouth, but the guitarist also smoked heavily when he was younger. At the time, he said his lungs were “clear,” but eventually he was diagnosed with lung cancer, too.
“Ultimately, 2017 was kind of the start of it all,” Wolfgang told Stern. “At the end of 2017, he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and the doctors were like, ‘You have six weeks.’”
But Eddie traveled to Germany to undergo treatment, which extended the guitarist’s life. “Whatever the f—k they do over there, it’s amazing because I got three more years with him,” Wolfgang said. “It was real and we were so excited about it, all of us.”
“Things started getting really bad at the beginning of 2019; he got in a motorcycle accident and he had a brain tumor,” he continued. “We took care of it, he got this crazy procedure—a Gamma Knife radiation treatment—and he was OK. But as time went on, sh*t kept stacking up and stacking up. It just never let up.”
Since Eddie’s death in October, Wolfgang says he’s been doing “awful” and that the loss is “always gonna hurt.”
“Some days are better than others,” he told Stern. “The pain is still there always, but you just kind of figure out how to carry it a little better as time goes on.”
Wolfgang even put his solo music career on hold to be by his father’s side when he started to get really sick. “I was rehearsing at the end of 2018 but things happen and it’s like, ‘Do I want to go out on tour for an 18-month cycle or do I want to be with my dad?’ and I think I made the right choice,” he said. “People have no f—king idea what anyone is going through at any time.”
Wolfgang also released a new song called “Distance,” which is a tribute to his father. They always bonded over music, which he sees as a blessing and a curse. “We had such a close connection and now, for the rest of my life, there’s no way I’ll never be able to think about him no matter what I do, which is good, but also hurts a lot,” he said.
Wolfgang denied rumors that he would be replacing his father as a guitarist in Van Halen, but he did share that Eddie had prerecorded some new music before his death. Their family plans to release it eventually, at the right time. “There will be a time that we go through it, it’s just not right now,” he said. “Mark my words—there will be a time when we go through it.”
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