Tobias Forge once experienced a horrifying panic attack onstage which changed the way he performed with Ghost: “This was very close to the Bataclan shooting”
Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has revealed that a severe onstage panic attack during a 2015 show in Leeds forced him to rethink his entire approach to live performance, and to the elaborate masks that define his Papa Emeritus persona.
In a recent chat with Metal Hammer, Forge recalls how the Leeds Beckett University gig ten years ago marked a major turning point. Midway through the show, he says, the feeling of being completely enclosed in his full-face mask triggered a sudden wave of claustrophobia – one that made him realise just how much the costume had begun to affect him mentally.
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“Throughout my years in masks, I’ve developed a not comfortable claustrophobia,” Forge explains. “It’s the idea of having something over your throat, being completely engulfed, completely enclosed.”
The panic attack struck mid-performance, during the band’s song Con Clavi Con Dio. It was, Forge recalls, something he had never experienced before, and it forced him to walk offstage and strip off his costume.
“It had never really happened to me before, but I was walking into the venue, and this is, this is very close to the [November 2015 Paris] Bataclan shooting,” he says. “We went into the venue, and it was raining outside, big surprise, absolutely pissing down. I was told there was only one entrance into the venue; you had to walk in on the right side of the stage, past the stage, and then into a backstage area.”
“So, essentially, you couldn’t get out. You were locked in. That was what I was told. And I didn’t think of it until during the show, when all of a sudden I was like, ‘I need to know where the door is…I can’t get to the door. Stop! Stop! Get the mask off!’ I had to get everything off. Restart the whole thing.”
As it turned out, there was another exit – one Forge simply hadn’t been shown before the gig.
“We had to have a guard come and show me – lo and behold, there was another door,” the musician recounts. “There was absolutely a way out. And then it became a thing [for future shows]: I need to know where the door out is. I need to know how I get out. As long as I know how to get out, we’re good.”
Since that night, Forge says he’s done “hundreds of shows” without any further incidents: “I haven’t had any problems with it. I know it works. I know how to deal with it. It’s definitely in the back of your head, that that can happen, but it’s just a panic attack. It’s nothing dangerous.”
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