Eddie Van Halen's son looks like Peppermint Patty. There's no getting around it. I wish things could be different. As do, presumably, fans of Van Halen. This week, the long-beleaguered pop-metal behemoth disembalms original singer David Lee Roth for what is surely the Chinese Democracy of reunion tours, a long-threatened and oft-aborted rehash of those early-'80s glory years, before jovial, tequila-hawking asshat Sammy Hagar took over and turned the band into wusstastic chart-toppers. The Rothian diehards are (cautiously) elated. But the thorn on this particular rose lies in the absence of beloved bassist Michael Anthony, the bearlike dude with the Mickey Mouse watch collection and (lasciviously) angelic harmonies, kicked to the curb for I'm sure just totally rational reasons and replaced by . . . Eddie Van Halen's son. His name is Wolfgang. He is 16 years old. And in fascinating rehearsal pics released last week, choogling merrily behind the pleasantly emaciated Roth and his own terrifyingly emaciated father, Wolfgang looks well-fed, looks content, looks beatific, looks like Peppermint Patty.

...

Not that they'd discuss this with Ian personally. The biographer's requests for access to all three musicians (Michael, Eddie, and Eddie's drummer brother Alex) and all three singers (Roth, Hagar, Cherone) were either suspiciously regarded or ignored entirely. "I didn't want to spend seven years waiting for the stars to align," Ian says. "That's when I dug out the pre-existing 10,000 Van Halen interviews in the world. Pretty much I've got a tiny Van Halen library\ufffd spindles of DVDs, just hours and hours and hours of entertainment. And I culled it from that, and treated it as if I was writing a book about Thomas Jefferson, based on historical evidence."

I didn't like Roth or Hagar, though I prefer the Roth led version of the band because that is what I grew up with, but still, it's just Rock-N-Roll.

From [link|http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0739,harvilla,77888,22.html|Van Halen Reunion]