The pair have not shared a stage since Van Halen’s final concert at the Hollywood Bowl
After more than a decade, Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth are set to share a stage together later this week. The last time the pair appeared together was Van Halen‘s final concert on October 4, 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The news comes after Alex recently shared some high praise for Roth during an interview with KazaGastão.
“To me, Dave was a poet. 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.”
When his brother Eddie Van Halen passed away in 2020, Alex said, “That’s the important part – remember the good times. All the fights and disagreements that we had went by the wayside when Ed passed. Dave was the first person I called. He’s the only person I called, because it goes beyond words. It goes beyond the fact that we made music together and traveled together. We were kindred spirits.”
Now, the two Van Halen legends will take the stage together at the TEDxFargo event at Sturgis this Thursday, July 30 in Fargo, North Dakota. Alex had previously been announced as a speaker at the event, while Roth was set to perform a solo concert at the legendary motorcycle rally.
Since Eddie Van Halen’s untimely passing in 2020, fans have been yearning for a full-fledged Van Halen reunion of the group’s surviving members. Alex has stayed largely out of the spotlight, while singer Sammy Hagar and founding bassist Michael Anthony have continued to tour, busting out VH hits on their recent Best of All Worlds Tour. Hagar even went so far as to publicly invite Alex and Dave to joined them for at least one show.
Back in 2023, Hagar extended the invite to Alex and Dave.
During an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, Hagar declared that special guest appearances by musicians of note in every city the tour stops at could occur, and he also publicly invited his former Van Halen bandmate, founding drummer Alex Van Halen, and original singer David Lee Roth, to join him on stage during his tour next year.
“We’re gonna invite every musician in every town,” Hagar stated. “First of all, whenever you play, if there’s a guitar player in town, no matter what city it is, they come out to see Joe [Satriani], just like they used to do for Eddie [Van Halen]. So, if we’ve got other guitar players, we’ll get them involved. If Alex Van Halen wants to jump up, if David Lee Roth wants to come out and join us, come on, motherfucker. You are welcome! This is about Van Halen.”
During an appearance the following day on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk, Hagar echoed his sentiment, saying, “From the bottom of my heart, he [David Lee Roth] would be so welcome.”
To the surprise of many, Roth responded in a statement provided exclusively to Van Halen News Desk.
“I’m ready to go,” Roth stated. “Let’s do this.”
Despite the back-and-forth, nothing ever materialized.
Could this reunion of Alex and Dave finally be the catalyst for a complete Van Halen celebration to honor the late, great EVH?
In December of 2023, Michael Anthony attended Mammoth’s performance in Las Vegas. After the show at The House of Blues, Anthony caught up with Wolfgang Van Halen backstage. The two shared a candid moment, that was revealed on X (formerly Twitter), by Wolfgang himself.
“Ran into an old friend at the Mammoth WVH show in Vegas tonight,” Wolfgang said. “Love ya, Mikey [Michael Anthony].”
Ahead of the release of his memoir Brothers back in 2024, Alex Van Halen has revealed a previously unreleased Van Halen track. It is the final song that Alex and his late brother, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, wrote together. Titled “Unfinished,” the instrumental effort clocks in at just over six minutes and can be streamed HERE.
Back in January, Alex confirmed that he was working on a new project – previously unfinished Van Halen material from the band’s 5150 vault. He broke the news to Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain on Modern Drummer’s Metal Sticks Podcast. Alex stated that he is working with Toto’s Steve Lukather on the project, plus “a couple of other people.”
“I’m getting ready to do this record with [Steve] Lukather and a couple of other people,” Alex said. “It should be exciting.”
Recently, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Alex Van Halen was working on finishing some previously unfinished Van Halen material from the vault along with help from Steve Lukather.
“Ed [Eddie Van Halen] and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together,” Alex told Guitar World in a March 2025 interview. “There is no one else who can do this process with me as well as he can.”
However, Lukather was seemingly caught off guard by Alex’s comments, and is quoted in the very same guitar world article saying: “Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”
While Lukather didn’t deny helping to sift through material, in the VH vault, he took to Instagram on March 15, 2025 to make one thing abundantly clear.
“For the record: ever since Alex Van Halen dropped some [news] we were working together I think there is a huge misunderstanding. I will NOT EVER play a guitar note on a VH song ever! Al asked me to help him go through a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now that’s all I got. The fact that anyone would think for even a second that I would play anything on this is ridiculous. I have too much love and respect for that and … I play nothing like Ed.. [acting] more as a co-producer or something. I am honored Al would ask me though. Let’s see…”
Apparently, there’s a ton of material to go through.
Speaking on a recent episode of Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho Podcast, Alex Van Halen told the Fozzy frontman there’s about “three or four records” worth of material that was left unfinished by the band.
“I’ve talked about loosely, and I am rather superstitious, but I can say a couple things that I’ve mentioned before,” Alex said.” “We’re gonna go through the ‘vault’ and go through some of the musical ideas that were there. There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember, when in the thick of it, sometimes the really great stuff kind of passes you by. And it’s not until you revisit it going, ‘Whoa, I forgot about that. That kicks ass.’ But that takes time. And you wanna do it right. I wanna do it right.”