As Judas Priest fans know, Richie Faulkner's aorta ruptured while the band was performing at the Louder Than Life festival in 2021. The guitarist underwent 10-hour emergency heart surgery, which saved his life. Miraculously, he was back onstage and touring with the band the following year and is featured on their 2024 album Invincible Shield.

What Judas Priest fans didn't know was that a month after enduring that surgery, Faulkner suffered a stroke that left him with permanent brain damage. The 45-year-old opened up about the medical event, and how it's affected his ability to play guitar, in a new video interview with Premier Guitar (transcribed by Blabbermouth).

“We went back out on the road in 2022 and have kind of been on the road since. But there’s a bit of collateral damage," Faulkner explained. "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 here [in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee], 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.”

"I haven’t felt comfortable up until this point — and I’ll tell you why — explaining what happened," he continued. "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. ‘F**k 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 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. And at the time, it stopped happening. I had another incident about a year after. I had another open-heart [surgery] — there was a leak, so they went in, opened it up again; I had another small one."

Somehow Faulkner was still able to get back on the road, and at the time thought he was fine, until he realized he wasn't. "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," he recalled. "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.”

Faulkner went on to explain why he was worried to talk about it—he was concerned what fans might think since it affected his ability to play guitar both live and in the studio. “There’s stuff that I used to play — I used to think something and it would come out,” he admitted. “And now I’m up there struggling to play 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.”

Ultimately, he thought it would be important to share his story and help anyone in a similar position.. “I have to get it out so people might know what it is,” Faulkner declared. “I don’t have to hide it anymore. It’s not an excuse to take my foot off the gas — that’s just not in my being — but just so people know.”

Judas Priest will be touring Europe and the UK mid-April through July. Watch Faulkner's full interview below.

Native Noise