Deftones riff-master Stephen Carpenter is shedding more light on his recent health struggles. The 55-year-old musician unknowingly battled Type 2 diabetes for years before finally receiving a proper diagnosis around 2024. After reaching a breaking point with the then-undiagnosed condition, his bandmates strongly encouraged him to seek professional medical help.
During a sit-down with Zane Lowe last summer, Carpenter admitted that he had never even had a primary care doctor before this wake-up call forced him to change his ways. Now, in a new interview with Premier Guitar, he has detailed exactly how the severe physical toll of the disease impacted him during the writing and recording of the latest Deftones album, private music.
“I had no clue what I was going through. I’d just been so out of it for the past four or five years—all the things that go with poor diet and poor exercise, that’s what I experienced,” he said.
Carpenter continued: “During the whole writing process, I was just tired, but I was not connecting how I felt to what I was doing. When we went in to start tracking the music, thankfully we got all of our scratch tracks done, because shortly after that, something had got me all messed up. Like, every day, I was just shy of crying from pain that was in my right arm. I couldn’t even move it.”
“I did what I could to just take care of myself—at least as best as I understood what I was going through. And thankfully, when it was time to actually track my guitar parts, my body was feeling better, and I was able to physically do what I had to do.”
Despite experiencing excruciating pain and profound exhaustion, Carpenter did not suspect that a serious underlying medical condition was to blame. Instead, he simply chalked up his deteriorating health to the natural aging process.
“I just thought it was old-man life s**t.”
He admitted to trying to manage the situation on his own before realizing that medical intervention was absolutely necessary.
“I was self-medicating, hoping I was doing the right thing, and always hoping things would get better so I wouldn’t have to do any of that. But unfortunately, you can only kick a can so far down the road before you run out of road.”
Today, armed with a proper diagnosis and the right lifestyle adjustments, Carpenter is in a much better place. Looking back on the grueling album cycle, he expressed deep gratitude for his health team and the unwavering support of his Deftones brothers.
“I’m very glad I got help. Type 2 diabetes was affecting me on a number of levels for a long time, and I’m grateful to have that information now and be able to deal with it. I’m also really grateful to everyone else in the band—their positive energy really carried me through that period of time, and really carried us through the making of the album.”
Always looking for a heavy riff, the guitarist also managed to find a hilarious silver lining during his medical journey, discovering some unexpected sonic inspiration while getting checked out at the hospital.
“I’ve had two MRIs in the last year, and each time, I found myself thinking, ‘Man, how can I bring a recorder in here and record it?’ The sounds those machines make are so wild. The techs were like, ‘You can listen to music while we’re doing it.’ And I’m like, ‘No—I want to listen to the machine!’”
