Footage of David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen sharing a stage for the first time in more than a decade has surfaced online, offering a rare glimpse of the former Van Halen bandmates together in public.
The appearance took place July 30 at a TEDx event in Fargo, North Dakota, where Roth and Van Halen joined artist Robert Vargas for a conversation titled “Beyond Boundaries: How Human Experience Informs Art and Music.” It wasn’t a Van Halen reunion performance, but the two musicians did reflect on their long and often complicated history together.
“It’s a gas to be here,” Roth declared in the opening moments of the conversation. “This is also a step towards world peace.”
The event marked Roth and Van Halen’s first public appearance together since Van Halen’s final concert at the Hollywood Bowl on October 4, 2015. Although the pair have remained in contact over the years, their relationship has had its share of ups and downs.
Van Halen, in particular, has been candid about the disagreements that derailed plans for a Van Halen tribute tour following the death of his brother, electric-guitar hero Eddie Van Halen, in 2020. He previously told Rolling Stone that the breaking point came when he asked Roth to acknowledge Eddie during the proposed shows.
“The thing that broke the camel’s back, and I can be honest about this now,” Van Halen said, “was I said, ‘Dave, at some point, we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgment 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 fuckin’ popped a fuse. … The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.”
More recently, however, Van Halen has spoken warmly about Roth’s contributions to the band, praising his talent and the music they created together.
“We did our best work with Dave,” he said.
“To me, Dave was a poet,” Van Halen continued. “It was the confluence of the complete opposite ends of the spectrum that made it happen. And it was brilliant soup — until it wasn’t.”
The Fargo conversation didn’t attempt to resolve the pair’s differences, but both men acknowledged their long history of clashing — sometimes literally.
“Alex and I are famous for that,” Roth said. “Oh my God, there should be a star in front of three different clubs in Hollywood where we practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu over the set list.”
The drummer has also had his share of disagreements with Sammy Hagar, who replaced Roth in the Van Halen lineup. In 2024, he disparaged Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, which featured former Van Halen bass guitarist Michael Anthony alongside Hagar, guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Jason Bonham, saying the lineup wasn’t “doing the band justice.” Most recently, Alex slammed Hagar, calling him “a complete idiot” for comments he made about Eddie Van Halen in his autobiography Red.
Hagar later criticized Alex’s 2024 autobiography, Brothers, in which the drummer largely ignored Hagar’s years in Van Halen, calling the omission “blasphemy.” The singer took another shot at Alex last March, comparing their relationship to the famously fractured partnership between Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Roger Waters.
“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan,” Hagar told Classic Rock. “I see David Gilmour say, ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again,’ and I know what he means. I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”
