Queen’s guitarist, Brian May, revealed in a recent interview with The London Times that he nearly died from a “stomach explosion” earlier this year. The stomach explosion was reportedly caused due to complications after an earlier arterial surgery May had needed following a heart attack in the month of May.

In a series of unfortunate events that first began after May tore his gluteus maximus muscle, a muscle which is located in the buttocks, while gardening, doctors discovered during an MRI that May had a severely compressed sciatic nerve. May suffered a heart attack not long after learning about his compressed sciatic nerve. Finding that the heart attack was caused due to an arterial disease, three stents were placed in May’s arteries. Soon-after, May found himself having complications from the medicine he had been given, with one of them being a stomach explosion.

The Queen guitarist exclaimed how lucky he felt to be alive, and made reassurances that he is now doing better.

“I’m incredibly grateful that I now have a life to lead again,” May said in his interview with The London Times. “I was actually very near death… But I’m good. I’m here. I’m ready to rock.”

Bohemian Rhapsody, a biopic about Freddie Mercury and Queen, had been released in 2018. The biopic featured a cameo from singer Adam Lambert, who performs with Queen’s founding members, May and Roger Taylor, under the name Queen+. The band initially gained popularity throughout the 1970s, and their performance at 1885’s Live Aid concert has long been regarded as one of the best performances in rock history. Queen stopped touring in 1986, with Mercury dying due to complications from AIDS in 1991.