Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has revealed that he suffered a stroke as he recuperated from the aortic aneurysm he experienced onstage at the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2021.
Faulkner, who underwent a 10-hour life-saving operation after being rushed to the hospital after the show, says he suffered the stroke while out walking his dog a month after the Louisville incident.
Initially, doctors thought Faulkner had suffered a transient ischaemic attack – the same kind of mini-stroke suffered by Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain in January 2023, and by Deep Purple sticksman Ian Paice in June 2016 – but it was later diagnosed as an actual stroke, and it's left part of his brain permanently damaged.
"They found some damage on the left side of the brain, which affects the right side, " Faulker tells Premier Guitar (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). Now, fortunately, I don't play guitar with my foot, so that's fine. I can get away with that. But my hand, obviously, that's our engine room. And everything started clicking into place in regards to what I was feeling on stage. There was something that was wrong. Something was impeding, something wasn't right.
"So, as I said, we'd done some more tests. They found the damage. They said that the fact that it hasn't gone away means that it's not a TIA; it's a stroke. TIA damage can go away. Stroke – that's it. It is damaged. You've got damage in your brain. Now I thought I had brain damage before, but this is real. It's a small thing on the left side.
Faulkner goes on to describe how the stroke has affected his playing, and that what once came naturally has become a nightly battle.
"I still play, we're still writing records, we're still playing as hard as we can – it doesn't affect that – but there's just little things I have to do," he says. "But I go out every night thinking… Sometimes I come off stage and I call home and I say, 'I can't fucking do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.'
"There's stuff that I used to play – I used to think something and it would come out. And now I'm up there struggling to play like a rhythm pattern. 'I can't do it. I can't. I'm gonna quit. I can't do it.' And then you have a good one. So who wants that? But that's the way it is. That's the truth. So that's what I struggle with. That's the collateral damage."
Faulkner also singles out a live performance where that "collateral damage" visibly impacted his playing.
"We did an Elegant Weapons gig in Paris in '23. We did [Judas Priest's] Painkiller," he says. "I was awful. It's on YouTube. If anyone wants to go and have a laugh, go and check that out. Fuck, it's bad. Everyone else was great, but the guy [who is actually] in the band – fucking, 'Ah, I don't know what…' Well, there you go. But yeah, so maybe just gives a bit of understanding into what it is. But even if not, I've got it out there.
"It's out there. I don't have to hide behind it anymore. And again, hopefully, maybe it helps someone else that might be struggling with their struggle to think, 'This is okay' and 'I'm not alone. How do I turn this into a positive for myself?' So, that's it, really."
