‘I almost died,’ Daniel Lanois

Daniel Lanois

More details are now beginning to emerge about Daniel Lanois’ June motorcycle accident in Los Angeles.

According to a CP story, Lanois was traveling at 35 miles an hour when a car suddenly swerved in front of him. He avoided hitting the car but landed against a phone box.

“Hey man, I’m lucky to be alive,” Lanois told The Canadian Press on Tuesday in a telephone interview from California, where he’s recuperating.”

“It could have been spinal. Luckily, I was wearing a full-face helmet. It could have been a head injury. It could have been anything. I almost died.”

“I realized I was going to hit him, so I swerved to miss him. I missed him, but then I hit a static box on the sidewalk. It was like a little telephone box, and I smashed into that.”

“That’s it. I blacked out. When I came to, I was looking at the sky, and just people trying to help me. And somebody called 911, and that was it. They hauled me away.”  

“It was just an unfortunate accident. Old-school accident. Nothing crazy high-speed or anything. Just 35 miles an hour.”

Daniel Lanois spent three weeks in the hospital. Since then he has been under day and night care at his home. He is not walking although there isn’t any spinal injury thankfully. He can walk but is being confined to bed to aid his recovery.

Shine by Daniel Lanois

Lanois appears to be in good spirits with his natural easy going humor intact. “I’m using the Ray Charles technique which is (to) act more blind when the girls come ’round.”

“The real problem is lots of bleeding around the lung. It has to be drained and monitored. A broken bone is not so bad, but internal bleeding is not so good.”

“The main concern is my lung capacity. Because I think it’s currently restricted by bruising around the lung, and there might be some dried blood laying in the bottom of the cavity there. So my lung is kind of bumping up against this big scab and scar tissue. So that’s the concern, really.”

“And I’m going to know better after I do a scan in a couple weeks.”

“I think the bones are going to be okay. I might look a little crooked, because the collarbone didn’t mend straight, and neither did the ribs, so it’s all a little cockeyed.”

“But as long as I’m wearing my costume, you might not notice.”

While Lanois has been riding motorcycles since he was 16 it was his first accident. Several comments from fans encouraged him to give up the dangerous hobby. “Well, I’m not going to ride this season.”

Lanois has been encouraged and heartened by the fans who sent get well messages.  “It’s been kind of overwhelming and very sweet to receive so much attention.”

His touring plans for this year are canceled but he is working on a solo album with Neil Young. He is also expected to assist in the Toronto production of  a Neil Young live performance in Toronto this fall.

“I’ve worked with Neil over the years in small doses . . . but we had never done something together from scratch. So let me put it this way: There’s an automatic communication system that exists between two Canadian dogs. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’re very dedicated, and I think I finally met my match.”

All quotations from CP via the Toronto Star