Fans of Ryan Adams should know better than to flash their cameras in his face. Since 2011, he's been outspoken about having Meniere's Disease, an inner ear condition that, when triggered, really screws Adams up.
During an interview with Stereogum, the singer talked about what happens when he has an attack. "If somebody flashes lights in front of my eyes, LED or otherwise, while I'm onstage and starts a pattern of lights in front of me for long enough, I'm going to have a Ménière's attack, I'm going to have an episode," Adams said. "My knees are going to get weak and I'm going to get really freaked out until I'm going to want to throw up or pass out."
Still, during a Wednesday night show at Philadelphia's Tower Theater, one fan in the front row insisted on taking several flash photos of Adams, who promptly lost it in the middle of "Oh My Sweet Carolina."
"Hi, my name is Ryan and I have Ménière's Disease," he said sarcastically after stopping the performance. "If you flash me with your camera, it feels like you took a lightsaber and you sliced my brain in half."
Check out the video below:
Adams first spoke with US Magazine about the condition three years ago after taking a lengthy break from the recording and the road.
"I was really suffering from an inner ear disease called Meniere's disease and all the stuff that goes along with it, which is a lot of vertigo, balance issues, and problems with depth perception," he told US. "When I was on stage, with one shift in the lighting, I couldn't quite see where to put my foot, and it made it really, really difficult for me to just do what I needed to do with my band. Also, I started experiencing tinnitus, which started in 2005, maybe even before. I actually was missing tours and shows, like little tours, from these intense ear infections and basically they started to graduate into this thing where somewhere around 2006, 2007, I was diagnosed. But the tinnitus was an overwhelming noise that never stopped in my left ear, 24 hours a day."
There is no cure for Meniere's, but Adams said he has found a way to "get on top of it." He released an eponymous album earlier this fall, and had not reported any health issues on his current tour prior to Wednesday.
