Radio host Matt Pinfield awakens from coma after suffering stroke

Radio and television personality Matt Pinfield is sharing a health update after surviving a stroke and coma earlier this year.

“Guys, I’m alive,” Pinfield told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m recovering and am going to come back swinging. I was unresponsive for two months. Friends were thinking they were coming to see me for the last time. The doctors never expected me to speak or to walk again.”

The SoCal Sound host and former MTV VJ suffered a stroke in January, but told the outlet that he has been released from the ICU and is currently recovering in a rehabilitation center in Los Angeles. He added that his eldest daughter Jessica took over temporary guardianship of medical and financial decisions and “saved my life [and] protected me” while he was unresponsive.

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Pinfield said he was “close” to not making it through his health crisis. He suffered pneumonia and was put on a ventilator, but ultimately was released from the ICU in February. He hopes to be out of the hospital by the “end of the month” to continue his recovery in outpatient care.

According to Pinfield, when he awoke from the coma, he shocked his loved ones by immediately talking about music and quoting song lyrics. “My friends said I went on talking about ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and how they couldn’t keep up with what I was saying,” he said. “They were, like, ‘Yeah, he’s still got that brain.'”

“I’m definitely going to take some time to recover,” Pinfield said. “Then I’ll do my radio shows again and get back to work doing what I love, which is to entertain people playing music.”

Pinfield broke out as a MTV VJ, as well as host of alt music program 120 Minutes in the late ’90s and early 2010’s. He also hosted many MTV specials, became Vice President of A&R and Artist Development at Columbia Records, and hosted multiple SiriusXM shows. The Killers’ song “All These Things That I’ve Done” from their 2004 album Hot Fuss is about Pinfield, which inspired the title of his 2016 memoir, All These Things That I’ve Done: My Insane, Improbable Rock Life.

When he was hospitalized following the stroke, Pinfield’s radio station KCSN shared in a Facebook post on Jan. 7 that he would be taking a “temporary leave of absence for personal reasons.” It continued, “We fully support Matt and hope to have his energetic rock n’ roll knowledge back on the air soon.”

The parent company of his other station, L.A.’s 95.5 KLOS, issued its own statement published on the Radio and Music Pros website: “Everyone at KLOS & Meruelo Media, along with Matt’s family (daughters Jessica and Maya, brother Glen, sister Colleen, mother Nancy), his girlfriend Kara, and the entire rock and roll universe support Matt in taking some time off to rest and heal. Matt is a family member, and we look forward to having him back on the KLOS airwaves as soon as possible. We know his fans across the country and all the artists feel the same way.”