Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers revealed that he secretly suffered a series of strokes that left him unable to speak for three years, nearly ending his music career.
The “Feel Like Makin’ Love” singer, 73, revealed his recent health woes in an interview on “CBS Mornings,” saying he was close to death after his second stroke in 2019.
“I couldn’t do anything to be honest… I couldn’t speak,” he said while seated alongside his wife of 16 years, Cynthia Kereluk Rodgers, 61.
“That was a very strange thing. You know, I’d prepare something in my mind and I’d say it, but that isn’t what came out. And I’d go, ‘What the heck did I just say?’”
Rodgers revealed that he suffered 11 minor strokes and two major strokes.
Calling the ordeal “terrifying,” his former beauty queen wife said all she could do was pray for the best.
“All I wanted to be able to do was walk and talk with him again,” she said. “That’s all I asked for.”
The “All Right Now” hitmaker’s first stroke happened in 2016.
Just three years later, he received an endarterectomy where doctors had to make an incision in his neck, close to where his vocal cords are located.
“They cut the neck, and [the doctor] said that he was very careful because he knew I was a singer and that when you cut the neck, it’s very close to the vocal cords,” he explained.
“They told me, they’re very clear, you may not come out of this alive. And I said, ‘Oh, well, that’s a plus, isn’t it?'” he joked.
Rodgers was left without a voice for three years, and months later suffered a second stroke in Oct. 2019 that nearly claimed his life.
“So, we’re like fingers crossed, you know. And when I woke up — I opened my eyes, I thought, ‘Oh! I’m still here.'”
Luckily, Rodgers eventually gained back his voice and has been using it the best way he knows how: singing.
The rocker released his solo album, “Midnight Rose,” earlier this month, and said it’s “a miracle” he was able to do so.
“Each thing was a step forward,” he shared. “Each thing that I did was an achievement… ‘Oh, I can do this. I can sing.'”
In addition to his success with Bad Company, Rodgers also gained fans after playing with Queen in the 2000s, replacing the iconic Freddie Mercury as the band’s singer, who died in 1991.
