Joe Perry panicked fans last month when he walked off stage and collapsed during a Hollywood Vampires show in Coney Island, NY. Radio.com reports that Perry was later diagnosed with exhaustion and dehydration, likely a result of a demanding tour schedule that involves playing 5 nights per week for 2 hours at a time.
Bandmate Alice Cooper has opened up about the health scare. “It scared the hell out of me,” he told Rolling Stone.
The lyrics to (“Raise the Dead’), the first song we played that night, go, “Cardiac, heart attack… they never feared the reaper,” and I look around the stage and he’s gone. He was lying behind an amp on his back, and I went, ‘Oh, my God.’ We didn’t know what happened until after the show… We were doing 25 to 30 songs with no break. You’re in fourth gear, and there’s no 24-hour resting period. I think it just caught up with him. He finally got up there onstage, dehydrated. And I think he was exhausted. He told me the night before he hadn’t eaten in two days.
When pressed on Perry’s eating habits Cooper responded, “I said, ‘Man, you’ve got to know when to sleep. You’ve got to know when to eat on a tour.’ I think it just finally got to him. It was not a heart attack; it was pure exhaustion. They checked his heart and said his heart was actually very strong.”
Perry’s old bandmate Steven Tyler expressed serious concern, citing Perry’s zealous work ethic. After the collapse, Tyler went on the record with Billboard stating “I know my brother… He’s always asking me to do three, four [Aerosmith] shows in a row, and I can’t. I’ll blow my voice out. I know how to maintain my career, my health and Joe’s passionate. I don’t think he knows how to. I think he’s out there and someone’s overbooking him.”
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