Queen’s Brian May ‘Grateful’ to Recover After Suffering Heart Attack

By Rebecca Rubin

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Queen guitarist Brian May revealed he’s recovering after suffering a heart attack that he called a “near-death experience.”

In a video posted to Instagram on Sunday night, May shared details about a series of health scares that began last month after he injured his gluteus maximus in a gardening incident. However, May said he was still in agonizing pain a week later and went to the doctor’s office for another MRI.

There, medical practitioners discovered he had a “quite severely” compressed sciatic nerve. “That’s why I had this feeling that someone was putting a screwdriver in my back,” May said, adding “I had been putting icepacks in the wrong place.”

“And … why did those discs in my spine get so squished?,” he contemplated in the caption of his video post. “Well I think 50 years of running around with a guitar strap over my left shoulder holding a heavy guitar might have something to do with it ! But it probably WAS all worth it !”

But when he recovered from that ailment — what May described as a “terrible pain that destroys your mind” — another health problem arose.

“In the middle of the whole saga of the painful backside, I had a small heart attack,” he recalled. “It was about 40 minutes of pain in the chest, and tightness and that feeling in the arms and sweating.”

His doctor drove him to the hospital, where he had an angiogram and was diagnosed with three congested arteries. Instead of having open-heart surgery, he opted to have three stents put in.

“When I came around, it was like nothing had happened,” May said. “It’s an incredible operation done by the right skillful person, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.”

May said in the video that he considers himself a “healthy guy” and was shocked by his condition. He encouraged everyone over the age of 60 to have an angiogram whether or not they have heart issues.

“I’m very grateful that I now have a life to lead again,” May said. “I was very near death because of this, but the pain I had was from something completely different. But I’m good and I’m here and I’m ready to rock. There’s no need to panic. Just send me congratulations.”