“If I were anywhere else in America, I might not be here”: Three Days Grace guitarist opens up after he suffered a heart attack mid-show – and kept going

In 2013, Three Days Grace guitarist Barry Stock was playing a festival on the north side of Detroit when, halfway through the show, he had a heart attack that nearly left him for dead.

“While we were playing Good Life, I felt what I thought was really brutal heartburn, which I don't usually get,” he recounts in a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar about the traumatic affair.

“The song finishes, I go off, because Neil [Sanderson, drummer] did about a seven-minute solo at the time. After the solo, I go back out, and I'm totally in denial. I'm not even thinking heart, right? I thought, I'm too young for this shit, right?”

He continues, "So, my brain wasn't even there, and I just kept playing, and I was really not doing good, man. I kept looking at the setlist and going, ‘Okay, six more songs, all right, five more songs.’ I'm just counting down, plowing through.”

As soon as the show was finished, Stock was doing his best to hold out, but eventually, his bandmates talked him into taking whatever was happening seriously.

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“They said, ‘You really have got to go to the hospital, man, it sounds like you're having a freaking heart attack,’” he divulges. “So I did, and luckily for me, the Beaumont, which is a heart specialist hospital, was two minutes from where we were. The chances of that are crazy. If I were anywhere else in America, I might not be here.”

As for what he can recall from that unexpected hospital visit, Stock says, “They brought me in, did the EKG, took off my shirt and did all the things, and then as soon as that guy walked out, two seconds later, the curtains open and there's doctors and I'm flying down the hallway.

“So I was just kinda like, ‘I guess I'm having a heart attack,’ and they're like, ‘Yeah, you're definitely having a heart attack, but we got you,’ and it was cool.

“Some of the doctors were fans, and they took care of me. So yeah, that was an interesting time for me.”

Stock shares that after this life-threatening incident, he quit smoking and drinking, and started to live a healthier lifestyle – despite how challenging that is when you're constantly on the road.

Three Days Grace are gearing up for the release of their new album, Alienation, on August 22, which will be followed by a co-headline North American tour with Breaking Benjamin.