Simone Felice, leader of acclaimed New Yorkers The Duke and The King, has revealed he was close to death on the eve of the release of their second album due to a rare heart problem caused by a birth defect that resulted in him ‘living off twelve per cent of his blood flow’.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Felice spoke of his condition which came to a head just before the release of ‘Long Live The Duke and The King‘. “I had been losing energy, getting pains in my heart, trouble breathing,” he said.
“I had no insurance, but I have a cousin who’s a nurse and she spirited me into the cardiology unit. I just thought they were just going to say ‘you need to eat more peas’ or something. They were listening to my heart and the doctor’s face went white. It was really bizarre. I was taken to a room where there were five doctors looking at a gigantic screen with a live picture of my heart, a sonogram, and one of them said ‘there is no medical explanation why you are still alive.’”
He added: “The problem was brought on by a birth defect, which had been gradually worsening, that’s what they told me. I’ll never forget the moment they drugged me up and I was in the stretcher and I had to say goodbye to my mom and my dad and my lady, and they wheeled me away, and I watched the people who have been with me my whole life, the people who love me the most, and knew I might never see them again.”
After undergoing successful heart surgery, Felice also described how he can now ‘hear his mechanical heart ticking’. “I’m like the crocodile who swallowed the clock,” he joked. “When I’m by myself, and everything’s quiet, I can hear it ticking. My mechanical heart.”
‘Long Live The Duke and The King‘ was recently released through Loose Records and was entirely self-produced by the band at their own hometown studio.