‘We Thought It Was Over’: Glass Animals’ Joe Seaward ‘Nearly Died’ After Being Struck by Truck

Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward is lucky to be alive. Back in 2018, the musician “nearly died,” says bandmate Dave Bayley, after he was struck by a truck while biking in Dublin, Ireland. Now, Bayley, the frontman for Glass Animals, has opened up about the tragic events, saying, “We thought it was over.”

“He lived in Dublin for a long time. He very nearly died. We thought it was over – that the band was over,” said Bayley in a new interview with The Irish Times. “There was an absolutely genius surgeon in Dublin who saved his life. The whole nursing and physio team there literally resurrected him. It was incredible to watch and I’m so grateful to them. They came to the show the last time we were in Dublin. In one box was Joe’s family and the doctors and the nurses who took care of him.”

The Irish Times noted that Glass Animals’ mega-hit song “Heat Waves” was one that Bayley wrote during the uncertain time following Seaward’s July 2018 accident, which left him with a collapsed skull that caused damage to the area of the brain responsible for speech.

“I got the news from his dad,” Bayley recalled. “I’d just landed in London and got a call. I could tell as soon as I heard the tone. He was like, ‘Joe’s been hit.’ He was playing it down. I think he was playing it down to himself. I got the red-eye flight in the morning, got there, met his family. Then it dawned on me how severe it was.”

Bayley “spent weeks” hanging around Beaumont Hospital sleeping in waiting rooms and eating nothing but vending machine food. This solitude, he says, is where “Heat Waves” began to form. “Weirdly that is where the third album [began]… your brain goes to weird places,” the singer confessed. “Your adrenaline level is 100 out of 100. You’re not sleeping a wink because you’re worried. You’re sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a waiting room – expecting bad news.”

“In those situations, to comfort yourself, you go back in time and relive all these memories,” he added. “Those memories ended up being the foundation of that third record – a very strange time. I’m so happy it went the way it did [that Seaward survived – not that he was hurt in the first place]. Literally unbelievable – it’s a miracle.”