It'’s a different world after heart attack for From The Jam's Russ Hastings

Things are good, with The Butterfly Effect, an album with his long-time From The Jam collaborator Bruce Foxton, coming on October 28. But it’s still feeling a new world for Russ.

“I do feel so much better now,” says Russ. “I had the heart attack in May and in the last week or two I have just felt so much better than I have done in the past few months.

“It just came out of the blue. I was feeling the stress. We were on the way up to a show in Milton Keynes in the most horrendous traffic. I sit in traffic for a living and put in a few gigs here and there! But it was so stressful and we were stuck. It should have taken two and a half hours and it took six and a quarter and then I was on stage and I didn't feel fantastic. I had a bit of a chest pain and ignored it and went and did another show and I felt a bit more stress and a bit more chest painy. I drove home and went to bed and then woke up and my wife said ‘I think you should go to the hospital.’”

It was confirmed Russ had had a heart attack: “And I had a couple of stents put in in Worthing. I just didn't have me down for that kind of thing. I'm fit and I go running but I had caned it 25 years before that and it's also hereditary really. There was some abuse when I was younger, drinks etc and the cardiologist was very clear about that. He said ‘Russ, nothing in the last ten years contributed to this. It all happened in your late teens and early 20s – and then a nice big bag of stress and then bang!”

Russ happily admits the whole experience has changed him: “It has made me so much more emotional. I'm never far away from my emotions in what I see and what I hear and I just think I'm so much more in touch with reality. It was a wake-up call. I don't want to run out of time and not having done all the things I want to do but I'm lucky. I've done most of the things I want to do in life and I've enjoyed everything and I don't regret it but you just realise that nothing is more important than sitting down with your family around the table.

"We were sitting at the dinner table and I looked around and I thought ‘This is the most important thing in my life really. This is what is important to me.’

“I'm 25 years sober. I don't mind talking about it. And that was a wake-up call for me 25 years ago but then something as serious as this comes along and just makes you think. It’s when you see the look in the doctor's eyes and in the nurse’s eyes and you know that something serious going on. It's like seeing the look in the eyes of air stewards and stewardesses.

"If they're smiling, then you know everything is fine. If they're not then, you get worried!”

Russ's first gig back was eight weeks later: “And it was quite scary to be honest. I wear an iPhone watch which has got my heart rate on it and throughout the gig I was constantly looking at it. But now I do trust in life. It has taken me a long time. It's taken me a lot longer than I thought. And I think I blagged my way through the first few months. If my wife went out and I was sitting at home, I'd be saying ‘Where are you going? I might have a heart attack! ’ But now that I'm fine. I know that I'm fixed, that I've got my cholesterol right down and that I’m now on top of the medication.”