Eddie Van Halen was diagnosed with brain tumour and stage four lung cancer, says son Wolfgang

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Eddie Van Halen‘s son Wolfgang has detailed his father’s battles with illness in the years leading up to his death last month.

In a new interview on The Howard Stern Show, Van Halen revealed that towards the end of 2017, his father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

“The doctors were like, ‘You have six weeks’,” he told Stern, adding that his father went to Germany to receive treatment.

“Whatever the fuck they do over there, it’s amazing, because I got three more years with him.”

Wolfgang goes on to say that things took a turn for the worse in early 2019, when his father got in a motorcycle accident. He was later diagnosed with a brain tumour, and received gamma knife radiosurgery to treat the illness.

“But as time went on, shit kept stacking up and stacking up. It just never let up.”

Wolfgang explained that his father’s worsening condition came amid plans for a Van Halen “classic line-up” reunion tour, which the band’s manager Irving Azoff discussed last month.

“That’s important, to let people know, that yeah, that was real, and we were so excited about it,” Van Halen told Stern. “It just didn’t pan out.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wolfgang premiered his new song ‘Distance’, a tribute to his father, and discussed the close musical bond he and Van Halen shared.

“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.”

• READ MORE: Eddie Van Halen, 1955 – 2020: a fire-fingered colossus who turned guitar solos into a firework display

Eddie Van Halen died early last month aged 65, following a long battle with throat cancer, prompting an outpouring of tributes from around the rock world.

Earlier this month, Slash, Metallica‘s Kirk Hammett and Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello honoured Van Halen at this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

“Eddie Van Halen was the Mozart of our generation,” Morello said during the moving tribute. “He had the kind of talent that maybe comes around once a century.”

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