Country Star ‘Dropped Dead’ Twice and Lived to Talk About It
By Movieguide® Contributor
Last year was a difficult time for country star Phil Vassar, who clinically died twice after a heart attack and stroke.
“I dropped dead. I was dead for 30 minutes a couple of times. No heartbeat. No heartbeat at all,” Vassar revealed.
The singer’s heart attack struck when he was on a Christmas tour with Deana Carter, but he doesn’t remember the last concert.
“I don’t remember any of it, but I know I wasn’t feeling well. And I just had genetic heart disease,” Vassar shared.
“I wasn’t a drinker and a partier or any of that. I worked out every day…I kept feeling bad, so I kept really concentrating on my health and trying to — I never ate anything fried or anything like that. Never did. It just caught up with me, you know, the genes,” he continued.
The person he was with when the heart attack happened called 911, and she performed CPR until the medics arrived. When they got there, they shocked him 11 times which left him with some cracked ribs.
“They did a heck of a job getting me back,” Vassar recalled.
Only three days later, Vassar experienced a stroke while in the hospital.
“They iced me down, and they said I was going, ‘Why was it so cold?’ Cause you’re on ice,” he said. “So, it was a weird thing, but I dropped dead.”
Vassar said he “croaked” through 100 shows in 2023, but he’s happy and grateful to be back on the road. He has shows lined up until mid-November.
“Thank goodness for medicine. I probably would not have lived,” the multiplatinum singer-songwriter said. “You think you’re doing everything right, and then it all goes wrong…It’s just weird that way.”
In May, Movieguide® reported on country star Colt Ford, who also suffered a heart attack and has no memory of what happened:
After a performance in Phoenix, Arizona, in April, country singer Colt Ford suffered a heart attack.
Ford says he has no memory of what happened after the show but knows his body underwent a “traumatic, crazy experience.”
“I didn’t even remember coming out here to do a show in Phoenix, and apparently we played this great, sold-out show, and it was incredible,” Ford said in a phone interview on the “Big D & Bubba” show. “I walked back to the bus, texted my fiancée, ‘Hi baby,’ and fell over dead.”
