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: “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.”