Judas Priest singer Rob Halford is unsurprisingly “still shook up” after seeing his band’s guitarist Richie Faulkner rushed to hospital. 

Faulkner suffered a horrifying “aortic aneurysm” onstage at Louder Than Life at the end of Judas Priest’s set at the festival. He was then taken to hospital for what turned into life-saving emergency heart surgery.

The band of course immediately postponed the remaining dates on their U.S. tour but Halford has “good news” to share regarding the health of his bandmate.

In an interview with Heavy Consequence, Halford had a positive update on Faulkner. “The good news is he’s healing, and his therapy will be picking up the guitar and getting back into these new songs for Priest and getting ready for the next batch of road work,” he said.

“I’ve had a couple of conversations with him, and he sounds great. I’m waiting to hear that he’s picked up the guitar – he’s probably picked up the guitar already and his doctors are saying, ‘Put that guitar down!'”

Halford said that he’s been unable to bring himself to watch the footage from the concert that shows Faulkner’s health scare. “I can’t look at that yet,” the singer insisted.

“I’m still shook up, emotionally. Eventually I’ll try to watch the footage, but (Faulkner) says in his own words when he looked at that footage he sees a dying man, which is basically what it was.”

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Halford also revealed his amazement at Faulkner’s demeanour during the event. “And it’s just incredible that he got through that song and he came to the dressing room and he got changed.

Even after the paramedics told him he needs to go to the hospital and get a proper look at the stuff, he was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be back. I’m going home for a couple days after this show, I’ll see you guys in Denver’, and walked out the door and then probably less than an hour later he was having over 10 hours of heart surgery. It’s just unbelievable.”

For more on this topic, follow the Metal Observer.

Check out ‘Painkiller’ (Live at Louder Than Life) by Judas Priest:

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