While walking in his neighborhood one night last June, Chicago-based Madina Lake bassist Matthew Leone tried to assist a woman who was being assaulted by her husband. During the altercation, the man crushed Leone's skull. At the hospital, the rocker flatlined three times, underwent two surgeries and had one-third of his skull removed.
Because he didn't have health insurance, Leone racked up over $200,000 in hospital bills. Leone's idol
Billy Corgan played a benefit show in July 2010 at Chicago's Metro and raised money for the bills that are luckily almost paid off. Less than a year after the crime, Leone returned to the stage on April 23 and played his first show with the band since last May.
"The way I used to perform was just totally reckless - climb up stuff and fall down - and now since I'm completely inhibited in what I can do physically, I'm going to have to adjust to a whole new performance", Leone tells Spinner. "That's fine. I'm sure people will understand."
Support from fans, his identical twin brother Nathan (who's also the lead singer in the band) and Leone's fiancйe helped immeasurably with his recovery. "I feel like a whole person in a sense that I have a new reality", says Leone. "I've read a lot about people who go through stuff like this - there aren't many. There's no handbook on it. From what I've read, a lot of people fall into this trap where they try to go back to their old life, so being tipped off to that kind of early, I've made peace with the fact that there's no old life now - it's a new one."
That new life includes recently releasing Madina Lake's "The Dresden Codex" EP, finishing their third full-length "World War III" and traveling to Sedona to record a song with Corgan that'll appear on the new record. "It can't be overstated what incredible human being that guy is", gushes Leone.
Circling back to the fateful night, Leone doesn't regret what he did. "I didn't have time to deliberate", he says. "There was no question whether or not I was going to do it. If you see something like that, there's no way you're going to let it slide. I guess some people did watch from their windows."
Since the incident, the assailant - who Leone refers to as "a wolf in sheep's clothes" - still lives a few houses down from the musician and is being charged with attempted murder. The woman he "saved" never thanked Leone for his heroism, but hopefully justice will prevail at the July trial. "I have a feeling, maybe an educated guess, that she's one of those who doesn't stop long enough to see what her value system is", says Leone. "Unfortunately, I think this country kind of suffers from that a lot."
In the meantime, Leone wants to put the incident behind him. The band has some festival dates lined up this summer and plans to release its independently made album in late summer. "Everything is pretty chaotic with money, with finding a place to live, the obvious things", Leone says. "Now those are all reassembling themselves and I hope within a couple of weeks to have that in order and then get past this incident, bury it, put it away, get the court case over with and move on with life and my bandmates and get on tour and travel again and live that part of life again."
Thanks for the report to Spinner.com.
