Legendary rocker David Lee Roth, the famed front man for the '80s megaband Van Halen, is apparently reinventing himself as an emergency medical technician.

The other night at the Four Seasons restaurant, the 48-year-old millionaire musician revealed to dinner companions that he has been living in a modest apartment on the lower East Side and showing up most days for EMT training.


"I used to be a surgical orderly in South Central L.A.," he told me yesterday. "I started that when I got out of junior college in the early '70s, and that led to a variety of things in the outdoor medical fire force and training with the Green Berets. ... My father was a surgeon and uncles and my cousins were also in the medical community, so I come by it natural."


Roth, who said he has relocated to New York from his estate in Pasadena, Calif., specifically to train as an EMT, said he hopes to obtain his certification in November and work as a volunteer one weekend per month.


"I want to be working in the outer boroughs. This city promises great color and insight in each and every neighborhood," Roth said. "On the upper East Side, it's gonna be heart attacks and stomach aches. But in other neighborhoods, it's all trauma."


Presumably Roth won't be singing "Jump!" to a distraught person on a ledge.


He said he started his EMT training last Friday under the auspices of New York safety consultant Linda Reissman. "She's got a résumé as long as your femur," Roth said. "That's a medical joke."


Speaking of jokes, fellow diner Lawrence Robins asked Roth at the table: "What would happen if you ended up having to work a rock concert and deal with somebody who had overdosed? Can you imagine the reaction when they saw you putting the oxygen mask on them?"


Roth, according to Robins, replied, "You know, it's funny, we've actually discussed what would happen if I rescued a Van Halen fan."


Yesterday Roth - who has been very low key about his new pursuit - demurred, "You're getting way off on a tangent, my friend. My dream would be to save a Scandinavian hikerette."

har har