Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner is in a stable condition after undergoing emergency heart surgery in the US.
Faulkner, 41, was admitted to hospital on September 27 with “major medical heart condition issues” according to a statement from the band, who immediately cancelled the remaining 25 dates of their US tour. In a social media post on September 28, Faulkner’s partner Mariah Lynch has revealed that the guitarist has since undergone “major emergency heart surgery” and is now “stable & resting”.
"Thank you to everyone for all your messages,” Lynch writes. “I will try to get back to you as soon as I can. Richie underwent major emergency heart surgery. He is stable & resting. If you know him, you know how tough & strong he is. So tough that he finished the show & kept the hair flips coming. There’s no one like him. We’d be lost without him."
Judas Priest are looking to reschedule the affected tour dates when Faulkner fully recovers from the medical scare. "In the meantime, we are all sending love to our falcon to wish him a speedy recovery,” the band said in a statement.
Last month Faulkner gave Guitar World an update on the new Judas Priest album, and promised that the metal gods’ new material “sounds fantastic.”
“The future for Priest is looking quite bright at the moment,” Faulkner stated.
“We’ve got a bunch of songs that are pretty ready to go and they sound fantastic. We just want to put them down properly and release them to the world. So, I can’t give you a date, but as soon as we can, we’ll get in there and start work on that.”
