JUDAS PRIEST guitarist Richie Faulkner hit up his Instagram Live on Sunday (December 5) to livestream himself messing around on the guitar. You can watch video of the session below.
Faulkner’s Instagram Live video was streamed ten weeks after he suffered an acute cardiac aortic dissection onstage the Louder Than Life festival. He was rushed to Rudd Heart and Lung Center at UofL Health – Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky where the hospital’s cardiothoracic surgery team, led by Dr. Siddharth Pahwa and also including Drs. Brian Ganzel and Mark Slaughter, operated on the JUDAS PRIEST guitarist for 10 hours with an aortic valve and ascending aorta replacement with hemiarch replacement.
Faulkner’s medical episode happened while he was performing JUDAS PRIEST’s closing song, “Painkiller”, of their set on the final day of Louder Than Life on September 26. Faulkner later said in a statement: “As I watch footage from the Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing ‘Painkiller’ as my aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity.”
After Louder Than Life, JUDAS PRIEST postponed the remainder of their U.S. tour dates on their 50th-anniversary tour, dubbed “50 Heavy Metal Years”. The shows have since been rescheduled for March and April 2022.