David Lee Roth: Help! I have a stalker

A picture of David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth (Image credit: Getty)

Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has asked tech-savvy fans to help him catch a “particularly obsessed” stalker.

Roth says the stalker is calling him in the early hours of the morning and is successfully hiding their identity.

In a post on his blog, Roth says: “Help! I have a stalker. A very real one. 75 stalker phone calls in the last four months. Somebody knows a little bit about tech. They even know how to remove the number out of my phone when they want to.

“None of the phone numbers show up on my phone bill. Whoever is doing this knows that it’s a felony and he’s hiding. It may be a woman but i’ll characterise it for the sake of the article as a ‘he’.

“I haven’t pursued it beyond all the normal channels. What can I do? But I certainly invite anyone who speaks tech to weigh in here because it’s pretty rare that just one person does this much obsessive conduct and nobody else knows about it.

“Whoever is doing this works somewhere, they eat lunch somewhere, they sleep somewhere and probably with someone. You better be careful. I’m a stranger and look what they did to me.

“You’re family, you’re familiar. He’ll turn on you with the exact same teeth and the exact same rationalisations they may have used to come after me.”

Roth also goes on to talk about past experiences with stalkers, including the time someone tried to kidnap his father “at gunpoint.”

He adds: “As it was explained to me by the professionals, these calls are designed to make you terrified, nervous, afraid, upset and ruin your day which is exactly what happened to me during my first stalker experience in 1977.

“I went through the phases of anger, fear, denial, etc. Van Halen was instantly successful. We sold 10 million records in weeks. With that success comes trolls and more.”

Roth recently responded to speculation about Van Halen’s future by saying he expected them to record and perform again – although he couldn’t say when that might happen.

Last month, former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar apologised to the band for various comments he has made about them over the years.

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Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.