Former AC/DC Drummer Phil Rudd Recovering From Heart Attack
Former AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd revealed that he recently underwent an emergency procedure after suffering a heart attack, but that he’s already recuperated and ready to return to his kit. ”Yeah, I had a fucking heart attack, but I am good now, got a stent inside,” Rudd told the New Zealand Herald.
“I was just at home walking around and I started [to] feel, well, just funny,” Rudd continued. “You know how you can feel funny? I had a strange pain in my chest. So my housekeeper took me to the hospital, when they hooked me up and did all these tests, turned out I had a big heart attack … my artery was all blocked up, and they said I had to stay in and have an operation.”
Rudd ended up undergoing a procedure where a stent was inserted through his arm. “Weird because they shave your man parts, but they put it in your arm,” Rudd said. “All I have is a tiny scar in my wrist. And my hair has grown back too so I am all good, I am healthy and got so much color in my cheeks.”
With Rudd recovered from his heart procedure – and with his post-prison release conditions now expired after being sentenced in 2015 to drug possession and threatening-to-kill charges – the drummer now plans on touring this fall, with a trip to the U.K. scheduled for October. Among his stops, Rudd said, is a visit to Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts to give a drumming master class to students.
Even with Rudd’s legal problems behind him, the drummer isn’t overly optimistic about rejoining AC/DC; in fact, he doesn’t consider the Axl Rose-fronted band currently trekking across the U.S. to even be AC/DC. “If Angus [Young] wanted me to play then that is up to him … but I don’t really want to play with Axl Rose,” Rudd said. “I don’t really rate him.”
Rudd is the latest AC/DC member, current or former, to suffer serious health woes in recent years. Longtime singer Brian Johnson was forced to abruptly leave the group after dealing with hearing woes that threatened “total deafness,” while guitarist Malcolm Young departed in 2014 after being diagnosed with dementia.
Rudd may also be coming to grips that there soon may not be an AC/DC to return to: In July, bassist Cliff Williams admitted, “It’s been what I’ve known for the past 40 years, but after this tour I’m backing off of touring and recording. Losing Malcolm, the thing with Phil and now with Brian, it’s a changed animal. I feel in my gut it’s the right thing.”