When Richie Faulkner, guitarist for Judas Priest, collapsed on stage at Louder Than Life in 2021, the world learned just how close the band came to losing him. He suffered a life-threatening aortic aneurysm and complete aortic dissection mid-performance, surviving thanks to a grueling 10-hour emergency surgery.
What wasn’t known—until now—is that Faulkner’s medical battle didn’t end there. In a candid and deeply personal interview with Premier Guitar, he revealed he also suffered a stroke just a month later, a detail he kept private for years.
“We went back out on the road in 2022 and have kind of been on the road since,” he shared (As transcribed by Metal Injection). “But there’s a bit of collateral damage. Well, not a lot of people know — some nearest and dearest, they know about it. So about a month after the incident, I went back in, and we were walking the dog in the neighborhood back [home], and I had the dog. [My girlfriend] Mariah had [our daughter] Daisy. And I felt it come, I felt it, and it came over me, and I knew it was coming, and it came over me, and my face went. I couldn’t talk. And Mariah was there. She took the dog, she had the baby, and she was holding me up. The neighbors were running out.”
Originally diagnosed as a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), a kind of “mini stroke,” doctors later confirmed it had actually been a full stroke.
“I haven’t felt comfortable up until this point — and I’ll tell you why — explaining what happened,” Faulkner said. “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… They put me on some medication.
“Turned out later on, it was an actual stroke. So Mariah thinks I had one in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I don’t remember. I don’t recall anything… 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… 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.’”
In the months that followed, Faulkner faced not just a slow recovery but another open-heart surgery due to a leak. He also began to notice subtle changes in his playing — changes that couldn’t be explained away.
“There was something in my right hand — I thought it was my rings; I wore these stupid rings for some reason… 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.”
He continued, “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.”
That realization came with an emotional cost. “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.”
For years, Faulkner kept the news private, afraid it might change how fans and peers viewed him. “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.”
That fear followed him on tour and into the studio. Judas Priest’s new album Invincible Shield became a moment of reckoning.
“When we play with Priest, we go out… I mean, you go out and you think, ‘How is it gonna be tonight?’… 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.”
Recording the guitars for Invincible Shield brought those concerns to the surface. “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.”
Eventually, Faulkner felt ready to talk publicly, in part to support others who may be quietly struggling.
“There’s two reasons for me wanting to… Well, I’m more comfortable about coming out about it — and now ‘coming out’ is the wrong word — but opening up about it. I know there’s a lot of people out there that play, they sing, whatever they do, and they feel like they’re not good enough or that we don’t have these issues as well, and it affects your mental health. And I want them to know that they’re not alone.”
And there was another, more personal motivation: “The other reason was to release it, to get it out, to tell people… I’m thinking they’re gonna know, they’re gonna say I’m not playing “Painkiller” right… I just thought if I kind of free that up, if I make that accessible, then the truth is the truth. You can’t argue the truth.”
Despite everything, Faulkner is still playing. Still pushing forward. But not without moments of doubt.
“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.”
