Following the postponement of multiple concert dates due to an undisclosed medical condition, Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil has opened up about the illness that derailed him.
The 64-year-old vocalist revealed he suffered a stroke last Christmas, leaving him to relearn how to walk and being told he may never perform again.
“My whole left side went out,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview published Friday. “The doctors said they didn’t think I’d be able to go back onstage again. I go, ‘No, no, I’m gonna do it. Watch and see.’”
Last month, the heavy metal great kept his word and returned to the stage for the first time in almost a year during a solo show in Boston.
“They said I wouldn’t be back onstage again,” he told the audience at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. “I said, ‘F— that, man.’ And I’m back and I’m with you guys tonight. And I’m really proud to be here, man.”
Detailing his health battle further, Neil described to the Review-Journal how he had to be carried to the bathroom in the immediate aftermath of his stroke, but eventually progressed to using a wheelchair, then a walker and then a cane.
“Now I don’t need anything,” he said. “But it’s like a full-time job getting back to where you feel good again.”
The “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” star continued: “It takes a while to get your brain to start moving your legs, for them to do what your brain wants to do. You try to walk but it doesn’t come out right.”
Neil said he got back into shape with the help of a local Nashville football coach who led him through workouts, in addition to “doing a lot of running.”
Now almost fully recovered, Neil said the journey has “been tough,” but that he’s finally about “90, 95% to where I was before.”
Mötley Crüe’s rescheduled Las Vegas residency kicked off on Friday at the Dolby Live amphitheater at the Park MGM. They’re set to play through Oct. 11.
