For the first time in more than a decade, David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen are appearing together — though the setting is about as far from a Van Halen stage as it gets. The two former bandmates will take part in a filmed conversation for TEDxFargo alongside artist Robert Vargas this Thursday, July 30.
No music is planned. The event is being billed simply as “Three icons. One stage. One conversation you won’t want to miss.”
One thing worth clearing up: despite the TEDxFargo banner, the three are not gathering in North Dakota. The talk is being recorded remotely — Vargas has described it as “remote live, with the three of us in the same room” — and TEDxFargo has confirmed the segment is virtual. The footage is due to be posted to YouTube and the TEDxFargo channels in the weeks that follow.
TEDxFargo, a locally organized event running under license from TED, takes place Wednesday and Thursday at the Brewhalla venue, with a lineup of more than 40 speakers across two days under this year’s theme, “CHARGE.”
Alex had been announced as a speaker weeks ago. Roth‘s involvement was only revealed on Monday, July 27, in an Instagram post from Vargas and TEDxFargo.
The last time Roth and Alex Van Halen appeared in public together was at Van Halen‘s final concert, on October 4, 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl — the end of the road for a band that never formally announced a breakup and was effectively closed by Eddie Van Halen‘s death in October 2020.
What makes the pairing striking is what happened between them after that. In his 2024 memoir promotion, Alex told Rolling Stone that he and Roth had rehearsed for a tribute tour in 2022, only for it to collapse over how to honor Eddie onstage. Alex said he wanted an overt acknowledgment of his late brother, modeled on how Queen honor Freddie Mercury, and that the request did not land well:
“The thing that broke the camel’s back, and I can be honest about this now, was I said, ‘Dave, at some point, we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgement of Ed in the gig. If you look at how Queen does it, they show old footage’. And the moment I said we gotta acknowledge Ed, Dave f**kin’ popped a fuse… The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.”
More recently, Alex has softened, praising Roth as a “poet” and a gifted performer — a thaw that makes their joint appearance this week all the more notable.
Roth‘s sudden availability is not unrelated to recent events. Earlier this month he canceled all but one of the remaining dates on his 2026 U.S. tour. No official reason was given, though there were reports of empty seats at several June and July shows and speculation that soft ticket sales played a part.
That cancellation drew a warm, unexpected response from Sammy Hagar, the singer who replaced Roth in Van Halen in 1985, who posted a video wishing him well and inviting him to join his own Las Vegas shows.
The third figure on the bill is no stranger to the Van Halen world. Vargas is a Los Angeles muralist best known in this context for the large Eddie Van Halen mural he painted at the Guitar Center in Hollywood in 2021, and he has since become a friend of Alex‘s.
Alex Van Halen, the band’s co-founder and original drummer, has kept a low profile since his brother’s death, surfacing mainly to promote his 2024 memoir Brothers, which he wrote as a tribute to Eddie while still grieving him.
He has not been idle, though. Alex is reported to be working with guitarist Steve Lukather on a final Van Halen album built from music Eddie recorded before he died — a project that, by current accounts, does not involve either Roth or Hagar.
