In a new interview with Canada’s The Metal Voice, former IRON MAIDEN frontman Paul Di’Anno, who has been performing in a wheelchair as a result of serious health problems for most of the past decade, discussed the progress of his treatment, nearly two years after he underwent major knee surgery in Croatia. He said in part: “The fault for the slow progress is mine, because we keep breaking off, going to tour. And sometimes we’ve got to do that, because the fucking bills are astronomical, for medical care and that. It’s actually cheaper doing it the treatment privately over here in Croatia, because you won’t get nothing done in England. So anyway, so you’ve gotta do what you can, but we’ve taken these couple of months off to get me going, I think for my sanity’s sake as well, because I’ve been suicidal over this over the last few years. It’s just too much. I’m not one of those people who should be sitting around all fucking day.”

After interviewer Jimmy Kay suggested that going on tour is “probably better” for Paul‘s health than sitting at home, Di’Anno clarified: “It’s bad for my health. It’s not good for me, because I’m not getting the physio done or the lymphatic drainage I need. Or you can sometimes, but not all the time. It’s very difficult. And, obviously, transferring from A to B, to airplanes and onto buses and that. But playing live does you a lot of good mentally.”

Elaborating on his state of mind while trying to get to the point in his recovery where he can walk on his own again, Paul said: “Yeah, I spend a lot of time in isolation, especially where I live, ’cause I live out in the countryside and I don’t get many people come to visit. And I’ve been really ill the last couple of months with infection after infection after infection, ’cause I caught pneumonia last year in Mexico. I was over there doing physio after I finished a tour.”

Di’Anno went on to say that his 2015 battle with sepsis resulted in long-term alterations in his immune function, creating a cycle where his weakened immune system struggles to ward off new threats, leading to a greater risk of recurrent infections. “Somebody sneezes on me, I’ll probably go down with [a severe illness],” he said. “But that’s what you get from a sepsis. It just weakens your system.”