David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen to Reunite for TED Talk

So what will they be talking about? Nobody’s saying, but it’s safe to assume they ain’t talkin’ ’bout love and they ain’t talkin’ ’bout Sammy Hagar since Alex Van Halen ended the narrative of his Brothers memoir before Hagar joined and wouldn’t even say the singer’s name during a 2024 Rolling Stone interview. “The heart and the soul and the creativity and the magic was Dave, Ed, Mike [Anthony], and me,” he said at the time. Also, the famously motormouthed Roth will have plenty of other subjects to discuss. Odds are especially good that Roth will link the TED Talk to a Ted Templeman joke and that Roth will do most of the talking. He’ll probably talk about another Ted, Teddy Swims, too.

Roth recently spoke with Rolling Stone when he made a surprise appearance to sing “Jump” with Teddy Swims at Coachella. In the interview, he reflected on Van Halen’s oeuvre. “Our stuff is like West Side Story,” he said. “You can play it on a ukulele. You can play it in an orchestra. You can play it alone on a harmonica. And each variegated rendition reveals a different kind of an emotional content to it.” On Thursday, Alex Van Halen will have the chance to agree or disagree.