Lewis Capaldi: 'I was convulsing backstage - one big change saved me from brink'

Falling apart at Glastonbury two years ago was the best and the worst of days for Lewis Capaldi, who sees his triumphant comeback performance at this year’s festival as a “mental win.”

"I really wanted to come back and do Glastonbury as like a mental win – finish the thing that I couldn't finish before,” he says. Fans of the Someone You Loved singer rejoiced alongside the newly trim - two stone lighter - Lewis, who is thriving thanks to a new regime, with changed medication, daily fitness and successful talking therapy.

Philosophical about his intensely worrying 2023 Glastonbury performance, which saw him retreat from the public eye, he describes it as: "The best thing that's ever happened to me.”

The last time the singer played the Pyramid stage in 2023, it was his first live performance after cancelling a series of gigs. But clearly still struggling with his mental health and Tourette syndrome, Lewis's voice cracked and gave out in the middle of his performance of Someone You Loved.

In a touching moment that brought tears to the eyes of anyone watching the emotional scenes, the festival audience helped the visibly upset Lewis by singing the final part of the song for him, before he walked off stage.

“When it happened, and when it was happening, it was like the lowest moment of my life. I had this moment where I was on stage two or three songs in, like 'this is the last gig I'm going to play for a long time, I need to try and get through this show, but when I come off I'm done'.

"Everyone else around me was a bit like 'this is the worst thing ever', and I had this weird feeling a weight had been lifted - 'now this thing's happened and I have to get help'. I had been putting it off.”

But, rather than taking immediate steps, Lewis, who has Tourette syndrome, flew back to Scotland that night and went for a boozy last hurrah with pals. He says: "I flew back to Glasgow that night and went out and had pints. I woke up and went straight to the pub. I just had to do something normal and be around mates. So I went out and kicked the arse out of it properly."

After that, Lewis started making dramatic changes to his life. As well as reducing his booze intake and getting fit, he saw neurologists and swapped antidepressants for anti-psychotic meds that finally worked.

He has also revealed that he had a far worse episode than the Glastonbury debacle in the US a few weeks before. He explains: "A few weeks prior to that show we were playing in Chicago and I had a very similar episode - it was probably even worse. I couldn't come back and finish a song. I was backstage convulsing and having this crazy panic attack and mental episode. Way worse than what happened at Glastonbury.

"Because Glastonbury is such a big stage, it was the first time people outside my shows had seen it. At Glastonbury, when I came off stage it was weird, I had this (feeling) 'everything's alright now, I can actually go and get help and fix myself for the next two years'.

"In a weird way, it's probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. I wouldn't have stopped otherwise. I was really bad for not saying no to things. Feeling like 'Oh this is going to pass me by if I don't say yes. All this amazing stuff's coming at me now and I have to catch it all and get it all done, otherwise these moments are going to pass me by and it's never going to happen again'.

"So, Glastonbury 2023 was, for sure, really important - maybe the most important day in my life. Someone upstairs was like 'this has to happen now otherwise...'. I don't want to think of where I would be now if I'd continued. We were meant to go to Australia. It could have been really, really horrible. I dread to think what would have happened."

Lewis also admits that, while he’d had lots of therapy before his turning point performance, he has never really opened up properly before. "I think for a long time prior to that moment in 2023 I was like 'yeah, I have panic attacks and I get anxious'. I gave people enough that sometimes they think they're getting the whole story and actually I'm holding quite a lot back,” he says, talking about therapy. "So when that happened at Glastonbury it was this real thing of like the mask had been pulled off."

Speaking to Theo Von on the This Past Weekend podcast, Capaldi says his management found him a therapist who he connected with, adding: “I do therapy every week which has been really beneficial for me. That's really maybe the biggest thing that's switched everything around. I've been to amazing therapists, but I've never really had like a connection with any of them, or sort of felt it clicked.

"I was looking at the clock and being like 'Ok, what is the thing I can say to get me out of here the quickest'. I wanted them to think that I had a grasp of my mental health. This is what's great about my current therapist. He can sense when I'm being avoidant. He pulls me back in and is saying 'there's a reason you're being wishy washy here'.”

As well as taking medication for his Tourettes, he says: “We try to reduce stress as much as possible. Saying no to things - I'm realising how important that can be. It was almost like when I felt I was out of body, I would try and do this like twitch or something to sort of bring myself back in. When I was performing it was really prevalent. Any sort of extreme emotion would bring it on.”

While he says his new antipsychotic meds are working, he admits coming off antidepressants was very hard. He says: “Coming off it is really an intense experience. I was like really low."

At first reluctant to switch medication, he adds: "It was really scary when they offered it. Antipsychotic? I'm like 'I'm not psychotic'. It's changed my life. Anxiety levels are so low these days. I don't feel the stress."

Lewis has also realised how important his physical health is to his mental wellbeing. As well as cutting down on booze, he says: "I'm trying not to eat as much. I've lost two stones since the start of the year. I was 20 st at the start of the year. My brother's training me at the minute. He's like a qualified personal trainer. He's been coming down to London training me. I hate exercising."

Talking about his return to performing Lewis, who is touring the UK and Ireland in September, says of his Glastonbury comeback: "I was really taken aback by the love and support. It was really like an emotional time coming back and seeing so many people reaching out and being kind and sharing their stories with me. It was amazing, maybe like the best day of my life to be honest. It blew my mind."

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