Jello Biafra, the legendary former frontman of the punk rock group the Dead Kennedys has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke.
According to Biafra’s record label, Alternative Tentacles, the 67-year-old musician experienced a hemorrhagic stroke caused by high blood pressure March 7.
“I hopped out of my bed because I needed to pee, and my left leg just collapsed under me and I fell to the floor,” Biafra wrote in a statement posted to the label’s Instagram account on Wednesday.
“I couldn’t even break the fall with my left arm because it wasn’t working either. I tried to hop back up again, and I couldn’t. I realized I had ‘fallen and I can’t get up!’
“It was this point I thought, ‘Oh s—, I’m having a stroke!’” he continued. “I still have a lot of great stuff in me, but right now I gotta lotta of rehabbing to do.”
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Biafra is hospitalized but stable, according to the statement.
Fans flocked to the comment section with words of encouragement.
“Get Better Jello! Dig into the rehab with gusto so you can get back to the good music/ good fight quickly friend,” one fan wrote.
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“Get well soon …We need you now more than ever,” another wrote.
Biafra left the Dead Kennedys in 1986 when the band split up. When they reunited in the early 2000s, Biafra did not return. Biafra later had legal disputes with former bandmates over royalties.
Biafra is best known for the politically charged songs he wrote with his former group, including “Kill the Poor” and “Holiday in Cambodia,” and his legal battle with the Parents Music Resource Center, founded by Al Gore’s estranged wife Tipper, in the 1980s. Their protracted fight eventually led to the Dead Kennedys dissolution.
