In a new interview with Jorge Botas of Portugal’s Metal Global, former IRON MAIDEN singer Blaze Bayley once again opened up about his health — two and a half years after undergoing a quadruple bypass surgery following a heart attack in March 2023. The 62-year-old singer — who fronted MAIDEN more than two and a half decades ago — said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Yeah. I’m so lucky, really. With heart disease, it’s one of those things, it creeps up on you. You just feel a bit out of breath here, and things are a bit more of a struggle there, and you don’t really start thinking too much about it, but it adds up over time and suddenly you’re having a heart attack. It’s, like, how did this happen?”
Reflecting on his heart attack, Blaze said: “The main thing, at the hospital, I’d just got in. They put you in this amazing room where they can X-ray you and look at all these things while other people are in the room and everything, and look at all. And they’re looking at it and go, ‘No, it’s not stents. It’s gonna need surgery. No, we can’t do anything for you here. Put you out on the ward. You wait for the surgeon.’
“I had a quadruple bypass, and I’ve made a good recovery,” he continued. “I had a little hiccup in my recovery because when I got well enough to exercise and it was safe to exercise, I had a knee injury, and that put me back about five months, really. But, yeah, apart from that, I’ve got my strength back now, and I’ve made a good recovery. They discovered that I did have an abnormal heart in that the left side was smaller and somehow it wasn’t working the best. And so the right side had been taking up the strain. And they said, with the new plumbing, I might feel an advantage. And I do — compared to what I was before, I’ve got a lot more energy.
“The worst part about it for me is the diet — trying to keep the weight off,” Bayley admitted. “I managed to lose a lot of weight with changing my habits and no exercise at all. I managed to lose 30 pounds with no exercise, just by eating sensible and the way that I should have been eating. Bad habits creep back, so I’m having to try again with that. But that’s about it. I stopped drinking a while ago, and it was difficult in the beginning, but gradually it’s less and less of a challenge over the years, and it was all right. And the diet, to try and stay healthy, it’s much tougher to give up chocolate, sugar, biscuits, donuts, sausage rolls, pies — it’s much tougher to give up that than to give up booze. I wasn’t a raging alcoholic, but with my mental health, I’m, like, ‘I’ve gotta stop drinking because I’ve drank enough. I’m old enough now. I don’t really need another drink.’ But then to stop eating pies and all these things — and I start feeling, ‘Oh, I feel great now. My knees feel better. Everything feels better now. I’ve lost all this weight.’ And then bit by bit, ‘Oh, I’ll just have that little treat.’ And then, ‘My God. I look just like I’m gonna have a heart attack. No!’
“That’s the worst thing — it’s the diet, man. It’s tough. And the food industry and Big Pharma [large, multinational pharmaceutical companies] are absolutely complicit in making us fat and giving us heart disease and strokes. Absolutely. They can sue me. Because it’s absolutely true.
“The healthiest time in the U.K. was in World War II when people had to have rations, so there wasn’t much food,” Blaze added. “[People] were [at their] healthiest — less heart attack, strokes, less illness, less obesity, less everything. And then when we had — and this is the worst thing — they say, ‘Oh, the best thing since sliced bread,’ is an expression. Sliced bread is the worst thing. Bread made in a factory is one of the absolute worst things for our health, and they told us, ‘Oh, it’s the best thing?’ No, it’s the worst thing. Bread should be made by bakers early in the morning, not in a factory. Anyway, that’s me. I had a heart attack and I feel it’s partly their fault. I didn’t know white bread was poisonous.”
Bayley fronted IRON MAIDEN from 1994 until 1999. The two MAIDEN albums he appeared on, “The X Factor” and “Virtual XI”, sold considerably less than the band’s prior releases and were their lowest-charting titles in the group’s home country since 1981’s “Killers”.
Since leaving IRON MAIDEN in 1999, Bayley has released a number of albums, including several under the moniker BLAZE and more than a handful under his own name. He also appeared on 2012’s “Wolfsbane Saves The World”, the first album of new material by WOLFSBANE since the group’s self-titled 1994 effort, and a follow-up LP, 2022’s “Genius”.
Blaze‘s latest studio album, “Circle Of Stone”, came out in February 2024.
Two years ago, Blaze told The Metal Voice about his heart attack: “There’s so many lucky things about a terrible incident in my life. I’m at home on Saturday. On the Friday, I’ve just signed off on what I think is probably the final mastered mix of a new album. That’s on a Friday. Here I am on a Saturday. On the Monday, I’m scheduled to go on tour in Europe to continue with ‘The Man Who Would Not Die’ tour. And there I am, and I’ve got chest pains, and I think, ‘Oh, is this indigestion?’ I’m having a heart attack. I live two minutes from the ambulance station. I’m on the phone, and apparently the paramedics, they were going on their break towards the ambulance station and they said, ‘Oh, we heard that call. It’s on our way. We’ll take that call.’ Two minutes, they’re in my house. I’ve got wires on my chest. ‘You’re having a heart attack.’ I live in the city, but I’m between four hospitals. In 15 minutes I’m having treatment, and they’re injecting me with dye to see what the problems are and everything. So that’s it. I’m safe. I’m in hospital 15 minutes later.”
Blaze continued: “They said, the paramedics, if that had been 10 minutes [later], there’s no way you’d make it. So I was 10 minutes from death. I had a heart attack, not heart failure. They got to me in time. But if I’d have been somewhere else, if I’d have been in Eurotunnel, if I’d have been in a hotel room alone, or on the autobahn in Germany — anywhere, man… It’s just terrifying, really, to think about where I could be. And when they said, ‘Oh, you should be able to make it back,’ I said, ‘I’ve gotta get back to work. I can’t leave it like this.’ I’ve done an album called ‘War Within Me’, and I haven’t toured the whole thing. I’m thinking of my fans and everything. I thought, ‘I can’t leave it like this. I’ve still got more music to make. I’ve got things to say, and I don’t wanna feel like I’m letting my fans down either.’ So I was so focused.”
Bayley added: “It took a while — like a few weeks — before they could put me in for the surgery. It was a quadruple bypass. Basically, they cut you in half. They cut me in half, they do a load of plumbing and then they put you back together. And the guy said, ‘We wired you back together with surgical steel wire.’ He said, ‘We’ve doubled wired.’ I said, ‘So even more metal?’ Yeah, even more metal. So I’ve got more metal in me than a normal heart patient.”
Asked what symptoms he experienced prior to suffering his heart attack, Blaze said: “It’s different for everyone. And this is why it’s so confusing. That’s why I didn’t know I was having a heart attack. My heart attack was a pain that starts — it’s like someone sitting on your chest or being kicked by a horse in your chest in slow motion, and it goes from the front to the back and you’re sweating and all of this. That’s how it happened for me. That’s common. The other thing that happens is, for some people — and I didn’t have any of this — you start going numb, you start going tingly down your left arm and it spreads across you. That’s another thing. And for other people, there are other symptoms. So you just don’t know.”
Regarding what steps other men can take toward reducing their chances of having a heart attack, Blaze said: “You’ve gotta try and head it off early by getting tested for your cholesterol, your triglycerides, and all of this. And just exercise is vital, and we just don’t realize that. It’s vital. I think chronic laziness is one of the things. You get out the van, you get on the stage, I’m active for a couple of hours, breathing all of that, hadn’t been away for a while, hadn’t done anything for a while. COVID, two years of not going out there all the time. And I think that a big combination of things, and some bad habits, that led up to something that was almost fatal, really.”
In July 2023, Blaze shared details of the massive outpouring of well-wishes he received after his heart attack, including messages from his former MAIDEN bandmates.
“The thing I feel most lucky about is the incredible support I’ve had from my fans,” he told BLABBERMOUTH.NET. “All over the world. My WOLFSBANE, Blaze Bayley, the MAIDEN fans. Everybody bought a t-shirt for a tour that was postponed. They still bought it to support me. I’m just incredibly lucky. And the letters people wrote to me. Hundreds of cards from all over the place. It’s very humbling.”
Blaze continued: “I’ve always put my whole life into music. It is my life. When people get in touch with you and say, ‘I wish you well because your music has gotten me through tough times,’ ‘Your music meant this to me,’ ‘I first saw you way back when and it’s been the soundtrack to my life,’ it’s incredible. I got a massive card from the MAIDEN fan club. The [MAIDEN] guys all sent me a message. I’m always in touch with Steve Harris [MAIDEN bassist] anyway, but everyone sent messages of support.”
A heart bypass surgery, or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, is used to improve blood flow to the heart. A surgeon uses blood vessels taken from another area of the body to bypass the damaged arteries.
The term quadruple bypass refers to the number of coronary arteries bypassed in the procedure. In other words, a quadruple bypass means four coronary arteries are bypassed.