Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil further opened up about the stroke he suffered last Christmas (December 25, 2024). Notably, the singer also revealed that he suffered three strokes before the “big one.”

Neil said the following:

“It was Christmas night, and I went to sleep. I woke up and I couldn’t get out of bed. I’m, like, ‘What’s going on?’ And my left leg wouldn’t work, and my left arm wouldn’t work. So I had to get help out of bed. I couldn’t push myself up to get myself comfortable in bed. And I had to have help. And slowly but surely, the sensation came back in my legs. And I had to learn to walk again. I went from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane to — I can walk now, but for five months it was just off and on, not knowing what’s gonna happen. And the doctor said that I probably wouldn’t be on stage again. And I was, like, ‘No, man. I can’t do that.’ And so I just tried. I worked my butt off to get back in shape to go on stage. And I was really sad to have to cancel those shows, but I just wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t ready to be back on stage yet. It was really sad, but it’s really worth it now, ’cause I can get on stage and sing and all that good stuff.”

He continued when asked if he knew he had a stroke:

“Well, Rain [Vince’s then-girlfriend] has an aunt who’s a nurse, and she called her aunt, and she said, ‘This is what’s going on with Vince,’ and [her aunt] goes, ‘He’s had a stroke.’ And by then it was just too late to go to the hospital because you have to get [there] within, like, 12 hours or something. And I was just kind of, like, ‘Oh, it’s gonna go away. It’s gonna go away.’ … I thought, ‘Oh, well, it’ll come back in a little bit.’ But it didn’t. Yeah, that was the hard part. Then I went to the hospital. They said I had a stroke, and they go, ‘We can’t do anything for you now because you’ve already had it and you’ve gone past that time’ where they give you this drug — it makes it so you’re not numb on the side.”

He also explained the cause of the stroke:

“Well, they said that I had a blood clot in my leg that ran up through to my brain. And they showed me — I had a neurologist come out and they took x-rays and stuff, and you see I had scars in my brain. [And they said], ‘See that’s where you had a stroke.’”

Neil went on to say his father “died of a stroke”:

“I moved him to Nashville, right down the street from my house. And he was pretty bad. He couldn’t talk. It was really sad. And he had to have a helper help him, and had to have a motorized wheelchair and stuff. He fought through it, but the stroke just took him out.”

He also discussed his recovery:

“Lots of physical therapy. At first I went to a place for 10 days in Nashville, and they worked with me at the very beginning to get back the memory stuff that I have. And then I just hired a physical therapist to go to my house every day. And he was a physical therapist that does football players and stuff like that. So he had me running and doing the things on the ladder, the ladder on the floor, running those back and forth, doing massages, my hand, my arm. But he brought all of it back. He got me through all this.”

He also revealed he suffered three other strokes:

“Four strokes throughout the years. Two of ’em I didn’t even know I had. One of ’em was a mini stroke that happened and I just lost feeling in my hand. And that was it. And I got over that pretty quickly. But then this last one, it was a big one.”

He also explained how the doctors found out about the previous strokes:

“Because they could see it in your brain. It’s scarred right around the same spot. I had four scars in my brain, and the neurologist said those are all strokes.”

“I can’t remember any other time I felt weird or something. It must have happened and I got over it. I didn’t even know it.”

Neil also opened up about his live return:

“I had these concerts lined up, with the solo band too, which I canceled. And then I went back and tried to do three [solo] shows [in August]. And those were all right, but I should have canceled those too. But I wasn’t a hundred percent ready to go back out on stage. It was a little too early for me, and I just thought, ‘I’ve gotta get myself together more.’ And I’m 95 percent good right now. I’d like to get that other 5 percent… I really wanted to get ready for [Mötley Crüe’s Las Vegas residency]. There’s things that I can’t do on stage still. It’s hard to run back and forth on that stage. That stage is so huge. But I’m getting used to it.”

He also explained why Mötley Crüe chose not to disclose the exact reason behind the postponement of their residency:

“I just said, ‘Let’s just say it’s a medical thing happening and I had to cancel,’ let people figure out what they wanted. But then I decided that it was probably time to tell people what it was. And so I had an interview with John [Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal], and so I told him. And that went everywhere. It was crazy.”

[via Blabbermouth]