Judas Priest’s Richie Faulkner Reveals He Had a Stroke That’s Caused Permanent Brain Damage

At just 45 years old, Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner is practically a kid compared to the rest of his bandmates. As a younger, more spry shredder on stage, you’d think his health was in a better place than maybe someone like 73-year-old Rob Halford. But famously, he nearly died on stage when an artery fucking burst in his chest mid-song.

Yet during a recent interview with PremierGuitar (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), that may not have been the worst of it, as he’s now revealed he had a stroke while walking the dog with his girlfriend Mariah after the open-heart surgery that saved his life that’s caused permanent brain damage.

“So long story short, we went into the hospital — this was a month after the surgery — we went back in, and it was the last thing I wanted to do. ‘Fuck hospitals.’ They saved my life, but I’ve had enough of them for a month, So I’m back in there. And they basically said, what I think it was, was a TIA, which means transient ischaemic attack, which is a TIA. It’s a small stroke. So they’re sure it’s that. They put me on some medication.

“Turned out later on, it was an actual stroke. So [my girlfriend] Mariah thinks I had one in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I don’t remember. I don’t recall anything. I remember small ones happening after the event. I was in the bathroom — it kind of went fuzzy and I sort of fell over. I think they were the TIAs, the mini ones. And the hospital said is when you have those, the danger is that there’s a big one coming or a normal stroke coming. So that seems to be what happened — when we were out walking the dog, that’s what happened. And it was obvious — Mariah said, ‘Your face went, you couldn’t talk.’ It was like a weight was pulling me down. I was gonna fall over if she wasn’t holding me up. So, that’s what happened.”

That’s some terrifying shit for sure. Remember, this was the same guy that while he was mid-song at Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky back in 2021, he suffered an aortic aneurysm and dissection. In layman’s terms, that means a large artery in his heart had literally ballooned and ruptured. He was rushed to the hospital, where the expected four- or five-hour open-heart surgery became an 11-hour process when doctors realized the severity of the situation. I mean, the dude needed four blood transfusions before it was all said and done.

Then it came out about a year later that he said he needed a second open-heart surgery to repair “a hole in one of the connections between the synthetic graft and my own aorta that was causing a leak.” Fucking crazy, man.

Later on in the interview, he explained how after those incidents, he went back out on the road with Judas Priest but began noticing that things were just off with his motor skills, which are kind of important to a guitarist for one of the most influential metal bands of all time.

“There was something in my right hand — I thought it was my rings; I wore these stupid rings for some reason. And I thought it was that. So I took the rings off. I thought it was impeding something. I was changing my picks. There was something different. I could get through it, but there was something different about my right hand. And again, I could get through it. I was brushing my teeth one morning and I thought, ‘Something’s wrong with the right hand. Something’s different.’ And the right foot, the right leg. So we went back in.

“We’d done some tests. They found some damage on the left side of the brain, which affects the right side. 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.”

As to why we’re only learning about this now, Faulkner said he was uncomfortable sharing his story because there’s so much riding on his ability to play guitar.

“A few people near to me, they know, in the industry. There’s a lot of fear from my side about being found out. I feel like I’ve got a lot of trust from the fanbase, from the guitar companies, the string companies. They back you. They put their bets on you, and I don’t want anyone to know, because as soon as they know, they’re gonna lose faith, they’re gonna bail out. I’m not gonna be appealing to them anymore or I’m gonna let the fans down. And when we play with Priest, we go out… I mean, you go out and you think, ‘How is it gonna be tonight?’ And it’s not so much the solo stuff because the solo stuff you can kind of adapt. It’s the rhythm — the coordinated rhythm patterns and stuff like that. It’s gotta be locked in. And I felt that in a band like Priest, it’s gotta be world-class stuff and I don’t feel world class.

“I went out there every night. I feel like a fraud because people don’t know — maybe. But one day they’re gonna find out. Someone’s gonna find out, someone’s gonna say he’s not playing that the same. [Priest’s latest album, 2024’s] ‘Invincible Shield’, we came to record the guitars [at my home studio] and I couldn’t play what was on the demos from a year before. And we went out with [my side project] Elegant Weapons in 2023 playing with the band. It’s, like, ‘I can’t do that. What’s going on?’ And the more I practiced, the worse it got. When you practice, you hopefully get better. It was getting worse.”

There’s a lot more detail in the rest of the interview, so be sure to read the rest over at PremierGuitar.