Jello Biafra, the original singer of Dead Kennedys and longtime punk figure, has been hospitalized after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke due to high blood pressure on Saturday, March 7. The musician, 67, broke the news over Instagram via his record label Alternative Tentacles.
Recounting the moment of his stroke, Biafra wrote: “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. 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 shit, I’m having a stroke!’ I still have a lot of great stuff in me, but right now I gotta lotta of rehabbing to do.”
Biafra is currently stable in the hospital, and Alternative Tentacles promised to share updates
Although his long and illustrious career begins with Dead Kennedys, in which he served as a co-founder and lead singer from their origin in 1978 through to their breakup in 1986, Biafra’s run extends far beyond that. As well as the San Francisco punk group, he played electropunk music in the Witch Trials, teamed up with members of Ministry to start the band Lard, and collaborated with acts like D.O.A. and Nomeansno. His most recent album was Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine’s Tea Party Revenge Porn in 2020.
When Dead Kennedys reformed in 2001, Biafra turned down offers to rejoin the band, and he remains absent from their ongoing performances. Back in 1998, the band accused Biafra of withholding royalties in a lawsuit that forced him to pay his ex-bandmates outstanding payments and punitive damages. Biafra was also forced to turn over the rights to most of Dead Kennedys’ back catalogue, thus allowing the remaining members to reissue their past albums, including their debut, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, in 2022. That year, Dead Kennedys’ longtime drummer D.H. Peligro died.
Read about Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” at No. 151 in The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s.
