In one of the more bizarre but dramatic rescues in Israeli history, a man standing atop a residential building in Tel Aviv last week who threatened to jump said that the only person who could talk him down was the famed musician Yehuda Poliker.

Police were called to a residential building in Tel Aviv to talk to a man who had threatened to jump off. When they arrived and tried to convince him to come down safely, he told them that the only person who could convince him was Poliker, the Israeli singer known as the lead vocalist for the 1980s band Benzene, according to Israeli media reports.

Police at first dismissed the request as unserious, but after their attempts to get the man off the roof failed, they agreed to wake the singer and ask for his help. They woke Poliker later that night, and, despite his surprise at the unexpected and strange request, he agreed to give it a shot, understanding the gravity of the situation.

After Poliker spoke to the man by phone for several minutes, he came down safely.

“They asked him for help,” a source close to Poliker told Ynet. “Yehuda spoke to the man on the phone, and saved his life.”

Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 quoted a police official who was present at the incident. “I’ve been serving in the police for a long time, but I’ve never experienced such a strange incident in all my years,” he said. “This is a bizarre event, but we took it seriously. Everything happened quickly due to the urgency of the matter. The neighbors were terrified and it was obvious that this was a serious threat. We realized that this was a matter of life and death and we thank Yehuda Poliker for responding to our requests in the dramatic moments.”