Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner revealed this week that he recently underwent open heart surgery for a second time.
“Just before we toured Europe, scans showed a hole in one of the connections between the synthetic graft and my own aorta that was causing a leak. The blood from the leak was forming an 8cm sack that was surrounding my heart,” the musician shared in an Instagram post.
“The doctors were okay for me to tour Europe, but as soon as I got back I had to go under again for another open-heart surgery. So 3 days after we played Belgium, they went in, removed the sack and fixed the leak.”
Faulkner said it has been six weeks since the procedure and he is “feeling well and strong” and anxious to start a new leg of the band’s tour.
Last October, Faulkner revealed that while performing “Painkiller” at the Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky, his aorta ruptured “and started to spill blood into my chest cavity.
Faulkner was rushed to a hospital and underwent more than 10 hours of emergency open heart surgery.
The 42-year-old said watching footage from the show he can “see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling” at the moment. “Truth is, knowing what I know now, I see a dying man.”
In this week’s Instagram post, Faulkner reflected on the experience.
“It’s crazy how one minute you’re listening to the crowd singing war pigs – everything normal, everything seemingly fine – the next it turns out that it was almost the last time I ever heard it,” he wrote.
“Unbeknownst to me there was stuff going on under the surface that was about to literally explode.”
Faulkner told fans he is “not completely out of the woods yet” but said doctors believe he has had “enough time for me to recover and get back out on the road.”
Judas Priest is scheduled to kick off the next leg of its 50 Heavy Metal Years tour on Oct. 13.