Why great art requires risk | with Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Robert Vargas

0:00Robert Vargas: You gotta go get your heart broken, then you gotta get it broken in a foreign language, and then you have to run away and join the foreign legion. Now you got a song.

0:13David Lee Roth: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. According to David Lee Roth, that's the recipe for a great song. And as the frontman of the legendary rock band Van Halen, he would know. In this conversation, he and drummer Alex Van Halen, who co-founded the band with his late brother Eddie, sit down with world-renowned muralist Robert Vargas, the artist behind a mural honoring Eddie in Los Angeles. Together, they dig into a question every artist eventually faces. Where does great work actually come from?

0:49Alex Van Halen: I think that the most important thing in art is that you do your homework and you learn the basics and then you break all the rules. That's right.

0:57David Lee Roth: The three trade stories about how they make their work, stepping outside their comfort zones, soaking up other cultures, and keeping their audiences close enough to feel like a community. Robert, who has been painting murals since he was 10, explains his own surprisingly fearless approach.

1:14Alex Van Halen: I don't use any grids. I don't use any projections, any stencils. I literally will eyeball something, whether it's this big or 20 stories big.

1:22David Lee Roth: David also reveals the musical trick hidden in nearly every Van Halen harmony, one that makes a song sound happy and sad at the same time. You might never hear a Van Halen song the same way again. It's coming up right after a short break.

1:41David Lee Roth: This episode is brought to you by Walmart Business. The best leaders might tell you the work that moves an organization forward doesn't happen in spreadsheets or supply chain emails. It happens when you have the space to think big. That's the idea behind Walmart Business. It's built to take the friction out of running an organization, so your team isn't losing hours to procurement logistics when they could just be focused on the problems that actually matter. With an ever-expanding business assortment, everyday low prices, and fast, reliable shipping, Walmart Business keeps your operations running smoothly.

2:15David Lee Roth: Shop online, in-store, or through the Walmart Business app. however works best for you. Simpler operations, smarter spending. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart business account at business.walmart.com. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I used to think great work was about being in the right headspace. Then I found a TikTok video that made me think about my physical space. An interior designer explores how things like ceiling height and room size might influence how we think. Now I wonder how much of our environment shapes our work without us noticing. Now I'm looking at my workspace, asking what kind of thinking I'm making room for.

2:57David Lee Roth: On TikTok, one idea can change how you see something you thought you knew. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or the Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2 % daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more.

3:37David Lee Roth: Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. AppleCard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at AppleCard.com.

3:58David Lee Roth: And now, our TED conversation of the day.

4:01Robert Vargas: David Lee Roth at your service. Alex Van Halen. Wow, it's a gas to be here. This is also a step towards world peace. A leap. This is momentous, a mighty time. Congratulations on an amazing work here, Rob.

4:16Alex Van Halen: Thank you. It's great to be here. We want to talk about art, creative process, and our approach.

4:22Robert Vargas: Well, what is the approach? Who wants to go first? Because we're diametrically opposed, and who even knows what that really means? That's what makes it work.

4:30Alex Van Halen: That's what makes it work. Go ahead. Okay. I think that the most important thing in art is that you do your homework, and you learn the basics, and then you break all the rules. That's right. That's how it works for us. What qualifies as homework? Immerse yourself into and listen and watch everything you possibly you can get your hands on your eyeballs on and Experience as much as possible.

4:52Robert Vargas: You got to go get your heart broken Then you got to get it broken in a foreign language, and then you have to run away and join the foreign legion Now you got a song. That's right. Now you got a painting, right? I think a bigger painting the bigger the heart break I think wait a minute. That's some Zen.

5:09Alex Van Halen: Yeah, wow. Can I quote you on that? You should have been in the band.

5:13Robert Vargas: I think what one of our theory and orchestration professors told Quincy Jones and Leonard Bernstein, a couple of big posters that were on my wall as a kid, is that your music, your graphic arts all expanded, your photography, your theater and stagecraft will never be anything more than you are as a human being. and I translated that as I want to go everywhere in this National Geographic magazine. I want to get to know at least three people in each place and I want to have whatever they're eating on page 26.

5:50Alex Van Halen: That's right. I mean, it informs the process, all of these human experiences. I just came back from a world art tour, five countries just this month alone. Which countries? I was in Paris, London, Greece, Berlin, Tokyo, and painting in all of these places. And coming in without having a preconceived idea and letting the experience kind of inform the process, eating the foods, having the conversations. And once I really wrap myself around why I'm doing it, then how I'm going to do it comes How long have you been doing this, Rob? My whole life. I don't remember when I wasn't paying.

6:28Robert Vargas: When did you start moving beyond hood scrawl into something way more complicated?

6:35Alex Van Halen: Well, I mean, my first mural, I was 10. And then the next big mural I did, I was 15, and Gene Autry came to my unveiling at the Western Heritage Museum down in L.A.

6:47Robert Vargas: I still have the wristwatch my mom gave me of Gene Autry when I was five years old. Wow. I looked at it this morning. I have like five different little good luck things. I have a chess piece from Pop. I have mom's glasses you follow. It's like seeing a shrine at your favorite Thai restaurant. It means somebody specific usually.

7:09Alex Van Halen: Everybody needs something that they perceive to be good luck. Somehow it raises your vibration to where you normally wouldn't be. And it's in those moments that these sparks of creativity go beyond what's already in you.

7:21Robert Vargas: Some people have a rosary for that.

7:23Alex Van Halen: What do you use? You know, I actually ground myself with the wall, with the surface. I have a way of kind of touching that space and really kind of centering myself where I'm at. Because I don't use any grids. I don't use any projections, any stencils. I literally will eyeball something, whether it's this big or 20 stories big. And you do that silently or do you do it with music? A little bit of both. But, you know, I like to listen to the soundtrack of the city. I like to keep people kind of within arm's reach instead of at arm's length, you know.

7:56Robert Vargas: I tried to exemplify that. We played Panama recently, and Alex and I are always arguing about tonal versus atonal music. Consequently, something you can hum or something that is more sounds layered on. I tried to take an atonal approach to the lyrics so that you would feel like what you're describing. It's the sounds of the city and the sounds of what's going in on your head when you're moving forward at velocity There's no actual story there

8:29Alex Van Halen: When I'm painting, you know, I Whether I'm painting here or somewhere else with different languages It's it's a creative process that's bringing people together bringing this community together So when you hear when you see what I'm doing there Invested in seeing it through even if we don't speak the same language someone may not speak English, but they know every lyric that he's singing.

8:51Robert Vargas: Hold on, hold on. You're talking about the process and you have folks witnessing and being part of the process?

8:57Alex Van Halen: Witnessing, absolutely.

8:59Robert Vargas: I've always liked rehearsal way better than the show. No matter what, the show goes wrong, the elephant is late, the light falls.

9:07Alex Van Halen: That's just it. The foot pedal electrocutes the elephant. You rehearse for the things that go wrong, not the things that go right. If it goes right, what the hell do you to rehearse it for that's right that's right it's all about the process i just make my process

9:22Robert Vargas: accessible and are you hoping that folks feel viscerally physically the way you feel when you're painting that they feel that same feeling or are you prepared to accept that you painted a buick

9:36Alex Van Halen: and i see a refrigerator i love that i love that i think that it's about it but that takes a while to get used to yeah there's an alchemy there yeah there's an alchemy there now the real trick in music is to do that without saying anything that's the beauty of the the power of the vibrational things that are involved in making music you know and when ed played that's what it did for me we never talked about how or what we're going to do he's played we never showed behind the kitchen

10:06Robert Vargas: these are the first times al and i are discussing hell's kitchen in the back because the restaurant out front is like let's hum the Bugs Bunny when things are calm.

10:21Robert Vargas: And in backstage, mom screams, dad yells. That was family and now showbiz as well. And Alex and I are famous for that. Oh my God, there should be a star in front of three different clubs in Hollywood where we practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu over the set list.

10:41Alex Van Halen: But that was exactly what made it happen. There was no one predominant style of creativity that took over. And we were all very cognizant of that and we were willing to share. There was stuff that Ed and I did that Dave later on added to and embellished. And it became better than it was before. A good example, the way it was explained to me was you can have an atom bomb. By splitting the atom, you get X amount of energy. But if you take and do fusion, fusion creates a hydrogen bomb, which is more powerful. And the universe, according to Taoism, behaves in that fashion. And if you stick to those rules, you're guaranteed you're going to do something really good.

11:25Robert Vargas: I'm called Diamond Dave because I was part of the busing program and went to all black and Spanish-speaking schools. They went to Ridgemont High and Pasadena High School, which were all a bunch of pale faces.

11:41Robert Vargas: I listen still today to only, tell them if this isn't true, only exclusively.

11:47Alex Van Halen: Absolutely.

11:49Robert Vargas: Unless it's, yo. If you mix it together consciously, you're kind of trying. I think you got to go live somewhere and become part of it. My community, I'm ultra high spectrum. I never got married, never had kids. So my community is the gal behind the deli counter in Kyoto and the two waiters at the place I go to get Thai food in New York City. Ray, how are you? Where's the deli in Kyoto? And we have conversation and we inquire, how's the wife? They ask me, how's your dog? My dog is very well known. I took my dog when I lived in Japan and he was great. much more popular than I was. Oh, yeah. I would go walking at 5 in the morning with Russell.

12:43Robert Vargas: He's a cattle dog with a raccoon tail. A sweetheart diplomat. And we'd go walking, and I would see, for example, a couple of older gals who'd clearly been through the war. They're in their late 80s. They're not liking me. I look scary no matter where I walk, much less in Japan. But that dog, first thing they asked me, Japanese, you know, come here this guy, is that a wolf? And I said, no I am. Oh yeah. And they asked the name and five weeks later they're asking, where's Russell? Lussel? How's Russell? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

13:19Alex Van Halen: So does Russell like Japanese music? That's the question. Japanese music is structured on a pentatonic scale. Think about that. Ah, I saw this guy.

13:31Robert Vargas: Well to my ear it sounds like country. When you start to play da da da da da da da da da da da da da. I hate to move to that scale, but a lot of Japanese classic music sounds like country because it moves on that minor key. It's, you know, he's not kidding around. He says it funny, but he means it money. If you strum a guitar to a lot of what we consider 1960s and 70s Japanese music, it fits beautifully. I saw an all Japanese country band while I was there and I saw a Japanese Michael Jackson who was actually as good as the original and this is where happy trails came from mmm on the record that we put on the record the first whatever second record

14:19Alex Van Halen: because music doesn't really know boundaries it's only how people perceive it they create boundaries and if you put it in the right light or the right context it can go anywhere That's all I can add to the picture. But that's what makes it fun. And it's complex and yet it's simple. Because the bottom line is you either like it or you don't.

14:41Robert Vargas: Yeah, but maybe we like different kinds of music for different reasons.

14:45Alex Van Halen: Yeah, sure. But at the end of the day, we're talking about trying to be creative in a certain genre. You don't have to be so nitpicky and elaborate in what you do and don't like. Because at the end of the day, it's going to become more confusing. The simpler it is, the better it is. You do it for yourself.

15:02Robert Vargas: But on the other hand...

15:04Alex Van Halen: See, there we go. See? This is what made the band.

15:07Robert Vargas: I grew up in my first house in Altadena. This is when we had one car and it was a Volkswagen. Pop was just starting his practice. And right next door to us lived a very famous jazz saxophone player named Joe Henderson. And Joe played in that modal style that sounded happy and sad at the same time. We use that in all of our harmonies. I'll demonstrate. The McCartney note sounds happy.

15:42Robert Vargas: Sounds happy. The Lennon note, which I prefer, sounds a little melancholy.

15:52Robert Vargas: You go into minor mode. There we go. And it's in every Van Halen stack of harmony that we use. So no matter what mood you're in, we've been for you. That's right. Remember, what we do is magic, and all magicians are actors pretending to be magicians.

16:10Alex Van Halen: I think about mark making and mark making as being language itself. you know so pulling from these experiences to make and articulate these

16:21Robert Vargas: these emotions okay are you doing action where you're physically moving to see that oh yeah it comes from here yeah yeah you're breathing absolutely

16:32Alex Van Halen: she and and when I was a kid I took sumi classes and just even the way you hold the brush almost like wielding a sword so when I'm painting I'm putting my whole body into the mark to create that. So it comes from a different place. You know, at the end of the day, there should be no defined, clear differences in what style you like or don't like. I know that's kind of an oxymoron, but the fact is that every music style is almost all the same. Meaning that if it brings forth an emotion, that's the best you can hope for. A lot of people add another dimension to it. They say it can enlighten them and make them higher spiritually, which I do believe.

17:18Alex Van Halen: But if you can just hit the notes and get people to listen to it and forget what they're doing, you're halfway there.

17:25Robert Vargas: I think what we do in terms of audience response is somewhere between a Pentecostal, maybe a Baptist revival and a really exciting football game.

17:36Alex Van Halen: What advice would you give a young creative.

17:40Robert Vargas: Life is short, smoke them if you got them. Al? Learn that kind of sense of humor.

17:46Alex Van Halen: You have to learn everything and then unlearn it. If that makes sense to you. Yeah, deconstruct. You can become free of all the chains and the restrictions by, but you have to learn it first. You can't just pretend that you learned it because then it doesn't add up to anything.

17:59Robert Vargas: Quicker Al, we're landing like a helicopter.

18:01Alex Van Halen: I would say, be true to your work and your work will be true to you. It's something that you need to do, something that you feel. Go out there, paint and do it. And the way to do that is laugh to win. That's right. That's right.

18:14Robert Vargas: Sequel. Sequel.

18:21David Lee Roth: That was Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth and Robert Vargas at TEDx Fargo in North Dakota, U.S. in 2026. If you are curious about TED's curation, please visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced and edited by our team. Aspen Fitzgerald Dorsey, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Shu Han Hu, Debbie Rolfe, Emma Taubner, Connor Titsworth, Tansika Sungmar Nivang, and Hannah Yu. Additional support from Isabella Aslarona, Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Christopher Faze Bogan, Cinnamon Horn, Lainey Lott, Matthew Polis, and Yadi Vasquez.

19:07David Lee Roth: Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

19:25Alex Van Halen: This episode is sponsored by Ashby. Every talk you hear on this show started as an idea, and every idea that actually gets built needs a team. Today's sponsor, Ashby, is the software that supports hiring for those ambitious teams. Ashby is the all-in-one recruiting platform used by the teams at Lovable, Notion, Plaid, and Clay. If you wish that AI could help you move faster through scheduling and scorecards, that you could find that silver medalist candidate from 18 months ago in a few seconds. or that you had better visibility into the state of your candidate pipeline, Ashby is for you. See why over 80 % of Forbes' top AI companies choose Ashby to hire the best talent.

20:05Alex Van Halen: And visit www.ashbyhq.com.

20:12Alex Van Halen: With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. member FDIC. Hi there, it's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds.

20:54Alex Van Halen: It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it.

21:11David Lee Roth: Start to finish. Cases closed. Requests handled. No extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.