It’s Roth to the rescue in New York

Rocker David Lee Roth, the former Van Halen frontman, is taking up a new trade. Instead of screaming “Jump,” he’ll be yelling “Clear!”

Roth, 50, has been riding for several weeks with a New York ambulance crew in training to become a paramedic, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

The singer, who spent a decade with Van Halen before embarking on a solo career, except for a collaboration with the band for two new songs on a greatest hits album, has been riding along with crews in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn several nights a week. Several weeks ago, Roth saved the life of a heart attack victim in the Bronx by using a defibrillator.

Roth takes his work so seriously that he did not want publicity that might “diminish what I am trying to do here.” He has said he did not want the neighborhoods he was working in named so that he would not draw attention to himself or co-workers.