Bret Michaels looks back on his ‘Masked Singer’ run and his terrifying 2010 health scare

Bret Michaels explains how a recent performance as the banana on ‘The Masked Singer’ echoed a traumatic event from 2010, specifically his brain hemorrhage that happened that year. Michaels looks back on that year and all the health scares that came with the hemorrhage and how he’s feeling 10 years later.

Video Transcript

- (CHANTING) Take it off, take it off.

BRET MICHAELS: Yeah.

NICK CANNON: Bret Michaels, rock and roll super star.

LINDSEY PARKER: Well, I have some questions that ask you about "The Masked Singer."

BRET MICHAELS: [INAUDIBLE]

LINDSEY PARKER: Let me get the questions out of my bag here.

BRET MICHAELS: All right. Oh, here we go.

LINDSEY PARKER: --my notes. I really actually like using this for emphasis. I'm going to do th-- I'm just going to use this in interviews for now on, like, so you don't say.

I knew from the beginning, Bret, that you were the banana. You were great on the show. Congratulations for getting as far as you did, but least suspenseful "Masked Singer" reveal in the history of the show.

I thought it was great that the minute Sharon Osbourne, obviously manager of Ozzy Osborne, well versed in heavy metal and rock-- I'm sure you guys have crossed paths a million times. The minute you got on stage, she was like, that's Bret Michaels.

BRET MICHAELS: But the minute I was standing in the tunnel-- they don't tell you the judges. I looked out, I saw Sharon, and I said the gig's up.

I tried to not even walk out like me. I sat down at the piano and-- are you ready for this? I was playing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" on the piano. I wanted to do a really interesting version of it, on the piano, singing a song.

At the exact same time 10 years earlier in 2010, I had my brain hemorrhage. They were operating on my brain while I was singing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that night at that exact moment on the West Coast [INAUDIBLE].

LINDSEY PARKER: Wow.

BRET MICHAELS: Even coming up to it-- I don't ever celebrate the brain hemorrhage. I celebrate surviving the brain hemorrhage.

LINDSEY PARKER: Yeah.

BRET MICHAELS: And I never even thought about it. And all of a sudden as it was airing, it hit me. And Dr. Z and his wife and all of us were like-- everyone says like, you realize 10 years ago why you're doing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." I never knew that it would line up like that.

LINDSEY PARKER: So let's go back to 2010 and, you know, where you were at.

BRET MICHAELS: The brain hemorrhage was a series of events. It started with San Antonio. I was at the amphitheater, and we were down there with the solo band.

And I had an emergency appendectomy. That brought me home. And while I was back a couple weeks, I started recovering. I was supposed go to New York to shoot "People's" Most-- it was 50 Most Intriguing.

And not even a day later, on April 22 in 2010, I had the brain hemorrhage. It was-- you can't describe it in a billion years. And it's called a thunderclap.

So you can't explain it. It just-- it's the weirdest sound. If anyone's ever broken a bone and you hear a sound inside your body-- when you hear that sound, it was instant. The pain is like an elephant standing on your skull.

I could barely speak. I knew I'd had some form of a stroke, because my face was, you know, drooping. And I knew it was bad, and I got rushed straight down to the emergency room. And they knew instantly.

They did the MRI. And then I went from that over to Barrows, and I don't remember for three days. And I came back around to a nurse-- they're massaging your legs so you don't get a blood clot.

When I realized very few people survive the subarachnoid hemorrhage, and then to be able to walk and talk and, for the most part, everything working and doing great, then the next thing was the TIA, which was that stroke that came from it. Then came the PFO, so they operated on my heart.

All this insanity happened in the course of a couple months. It was insane. And none of it was really a factor of the diabetes, which was a whole other level.

But I tell you this. You know I'm always grateful. I try to stay positive. But that-- there were some moments, man. You really-- I was getting beat up.

And you start to-- I never lost hope. But I was pretty beat up.

LINDSEY PARKER: So you've said that most people don't come back from that. Why are you one of the lucky ones?

BRET MICHAELS: The only answer I can give you is that's probably not normal. But I'm also abnormally energetic, and each person is different.

In other words, the amount of the bleed-- I got to the brain bleed quickly. Had I been on tour and I was in the middle of a long stretch of highway and it would have been hours till I got there, I probably wouldn't have survived. And if I got there and they were able to recover, the amount of pressure in the brain and bleed is what will determine how quick you recover.

I knew instantly I was in trouble. And a lot of people-- it's so painful you want to lay down. Like, you want to just-- like a concussion, you want to go to sleep.

And I knew I was-- I'd never felt nothing like that, and I knew I was in trouble.

LINDSEY PARKER: I know that the things you just mentioned weren't related to the diabetes, but I've always never been clear. Where they related to what happened to you at the Tony Awards? Were they related to the head injury at all?

BRET MICHAELS: That was a tough one, but we don't know. So I have this hole in my heart, and what's happening is, our body stops stuff from flowing from this side through to that side. And it stops any blood clots.

Because I had the hole in the heart, it shot the blood clot from the appendectomy through. And they think that played a big part in the base stem my brain exploding.

LINDSEY PARKER: But people were kind of like, making fun of the fact that you've been injured at the Tony Awards.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: His number gave headbanging a whole new meaning.

LINDSEY PARKER: I'm just wondering how you felt about that at the time when, actually, it could have been very serious.

BRET MICHAELS: The truth is, it was to really be funny to actually watch. Like watching me turn around-- and all of a sudden, the wall, it literally TKO'ed me.

And I had to literally be dragged back. I wake up, and I'm looking around for a moment, because it took me out. And I'm waking up to the cast of whatever it was.

So I'm seeing like, these, witch monkey creatures. And I literally thought it was over. I thought, this is it. I'm dead. And that's what I woke up looking at.

LINDSEY PARKER: It was a bit Spinal Tap from the outside looking in, you know. Stage malfunction, I guess. And actually had probably prepared you for "The Masked Singer," because there you were, surrounded by a bunch of people in animal costumes in a completely people experience. So it was like foreshadowing what was to come.