Al Di Meola recalls how he felt when he had a heart attack on stage, “I wasn’t super shocked. I was more disappointed”
Having a heart attack might rank number one on the list of worst things to happen to a musician on stage, but Al Di Meola’s reaction to it will have you thinking otherwise.
The jazz-fusion guitarist was performing at Bucharest’s Arenele Romane last September when he was rushed to the hospital mid show. Di Meola later revealed that he was being treated for segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and that he will be taking “some time off from performing and touring”.
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Looking back on his brush with death, Di Meola tells Guitar Player that the whole thing happened “right in the middle of the song”.
“Some photographer from the Associated Press [Dragos Cristescu] who just happened to be at the show as a fan caught me right at that moment, just as I was slumping over my acoustic guitar and grabbing my chest. That’s when, like, two or three seconds later, I had to remove myself from the stage because I knew something very serious was happening.”
“When they told me in the ambulance I was having a heart attack, I wasn’t super shocked,” says the musician, who recalls being “more disappointed” than anything: “I remember thinking, This might be it for me.”
And despite his rather blasé reaction at first, the thought of leaving his wife and young daughter soon made him “emotional”, says Di Meola. “Cause I really enjoy my new family so much, my beautiful wife, Stephanie, and my wonderful little girl, Ava that I just didn’t want to leave.”
“You know, I said to myself, ‘This can’t be happening. I want to see my daughter graduate.’ So I was waffling between the emotion of that and then the harsh reality of, ‘Well, I guess this is it. I guess this is what it’s like to be going out.’”
Di Meola eventually managed to walk offstage – “but not very well” – before he eventually collapsed behind the curtain.
“I was laying there. And then the intensity of the pressure on my chest was beyond anything you could stand. You know, I was moaning like a hurt animal,” he explains. “So we get to the hospital [Bagdasar-Arseni Emergency Hospital in Bucharest] and they put nitroglycerin under my tongue, which alleviates the pain immediately. Then we went to the operating room immediately. Everything was happening real fast. And I just did what they said. I said, ‘Look, doc, do whatever you have to do. Just save me.’”
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