One evening three months ago, Paul Klein was riding his Vespa through the streets of Los Angeles. As the LANY singer passed through an intersection, a car taking a left smashed into him, hurling Klein across the car’s windshield. When he woke up in an ambulance 20 minutes later, Klein found he had serious injuries. “I pretty much broke my face. I broke my shin bone, tore my calf, and my shoulder was hanging on by one ligament,” he says. “I’m thankful that I’m not missing any fingers or any limbs, and that I’m not paralyzed.”
Somehow, just two months later, Klein and LANY got back on the road again, playing festivals across Europe. It was a remarkably quick turnaround for the singer, who has never opened up at length publicly about the near-death experience. Speaking with Rolling Stone now, he describes the incident as a painful but humbling experience that forced him to slow down (to the extent a touring musician ever would) and reignite a sense of purpose in his life. “The first emotion I felt when I woke up was thinking that God loves me,” Klein says. “I know that sounds kind of wild, but when I was moving my fingers and my toes, that was the overwhelming feeling; I felt very loved and very thankful to still be here.”
LANY released their fifth album, A Beautiful Blur, last September. Days before the band kicked off their 20-date tour across Asia and Australia, Rolling Stone sat down with Klein at his poolside table in his home off the Hollywood Hills, where he’s spent the past several months in recovery. He spoke about beating death, bouncing back quickly, and finding God again.
How are you feeling these days?
I’m feeling great. I got cleared for physical therapy around 10 days ago. I’ve been on the StairMaster a lot trying to warm up the knee. My shoulder might take longer than my knee, but other than that, I’m blessed to even be here.
You haven’t said much about the accident other than what was in your Instagram post in June. What actually happened that day?
I go to a gym a couple miles down the road. I did a little workout and was coming home. It was a Thursday evening, June 6, like 8:45 p.m. I was just coming through the intersection of La Brea and Santa Monica, going north on La Brea. I think the light turned yellow right as I was starting to go through, and the car at the light tried to quickly take a left across the intersection and didn’t see me. I remember squeezing my brakes.
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I was like, “OK, this is gonna happen. Nothing is slowing down the way we need to.” At the last second I let go. My dad rides a motorcycle; I always heard that people get pretty hurt when they brace for impact. I woke up on a stretcher being put into an ambulance, and I try to rack my brain around what happened. I was unconscious for maybe 20 minutes. I don’t know who called the cops. I don’t know who checked on me. I just know that I woke up in the ambulance and got rushed to the hospital.
What were the specific injuries?
I pretty much broke my face. I broke my shin bone, tore my calf, and my shoulder was hanging on by one ligament. I’m thankful that I’m not missing any fingers or any limbs, and that I’m not paralyzed.
I don’t have any memory loss other than that moment. It’s just a bizarre feeling. I have helmets, but I wasn’t wearing one. I got really close to death, but nothing about my physical ability is going to be altered forever.
Have you ever felt that close to death before?
No, and it’s one of those things that you go through and you refuse to be the same person on the other side of it. This felt like a flip of a coin kind of thing, and I lived.
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I’m not gonna get hit by a car and be the same guy. I’m just so thankful that I lived through that. I do hope that there’s a few things that died inside of me that night on the street — things I didn’t like about myself, or bitterness, unforgiveness, negativity.
How do you think you’ve changed?
Obviously I have a very new perspective on life now. It sounds weird to say, but I’ve had the best summer of my entire life, and it’s been mainly spent on a lawn chair right there, reading and slowing down. If I hadn’t been hit by a car, I wouldn’t have had the summer that I had to slow down and process things. I feel like I’m more aware of my surroundings, and maybe not like racing my way through every single moment.
What’s still sticking with you about this near-death experience three months later?
Well, I’m probably never getting on a bike again, right? I have a lot to be alive for, to stay alive for. I can’t do pushups, which really sucks, because my shoulder hurts so bad. I know it sounds silly, but I can’t do even 10 pounds. I might need to have surgery eventually. I’m not trying to go my whole life and not be able to pull or push with my left arm.
As for mentally or emotionally, look, man, the last few years, I’ve wondered if God still fucks with me, honestly. There was a time where I felt his hands on my shoulders, and then there’s been a season of my life where I thought he may have forgotten or he doesn’t care.
But when I woke up, it felt like God was telling me, “I love you so much, and don’t question it ever again.” I feel like I was caught in midair and laid down. A couple days after the accident, I had this bruise across my thighs, a straight purple line. I was like, “Oh, those are handlebars.” I got the police report six weeks later, and the driver confirmed that I hit her windshield before hitting the ground.
All that to say, part of me feels like for the rest of my life I’m gonna have this to lean on in a weird way. I’m here for a reason, for purpose. God still loves me.
Have you talked to the driver?
I know who she is. I haven’t spoken to her personally. She had the bare-minimum policy with Geico.
Are you going to pursue any legal action?
No.
I saw some artists and industry executives send their well wishes after the announcement. Was there anyone else in music who was particularly helpful?
John Mayer was one of the first people to text me. He’s been like a big brother to me ever since we went on tour with him. He was one of my heroes growing up. He reached out to me. He’s been in L.A. for many years, and offered if I needed any doctors, recommendations, or any referrals.
Did you take him up on that?
We had my manager reach out to other people, too. I don’t ever want John Mayer to be inconvenienced by me [chuckles].
Why did you go back to touring so quickly?
There’s this guy Steve. He’s worked with us for years, and he’s my best friend. He and Rupert, our manager, came the next day and sat by the bed. We hung out, we cried. There was a part of me that was so delusional. We were supposed to leave for a tour in a week. And I was like, “There’s a chance we can do it.” It’s hilarious to think about it now, but Steve and I definitely thought we were still potentially going on tour in a week. And then we realized that we were out of our minds. But we’re playing the biggest shows of our lives. I tried to take care of myself as much as possible and obey the doctor’s orders to a certain degree so that I could get back as soon as possible.
How do you even make that work?
I’ve only played four, and they were festival sets in Europe. I would go out there with the crutch and then lay it down when I needed to, pick it back up when I needed to. Festival sets are a little bit shorter than a headline show. I let people who weren’t familiar know that I’m on a crutch, I got hit by a car a couple months ago, but I’m doing my best, and that’s why I’m hobbling around up here. People are receptive.
You said you’re now doing physical therapy. I can’t imagine a doctor was telling you at the time that it was fine to be getting on international flights and playing concerts.
He wasn’t super stoked. He said if you’ve got to do that, then go do that. He said anywhere I went, I had to be on the crutch to keep weight off the knee so that it wouldn’t displace. If it did, that would result in a surgery.
What was the recovery like this summer?
I spent a lot of time alone. I went to Kansas. There’s a songwriter named Nicolle Galyon who lives out there in a small town called Sterling. I knew I wanted to write songs and write my thoughts after the wreck, and she was the only person I wanted to do it with.
There’s a lot of different sessions that you can take in L.A., where a lot of people are trying to write the next “Espresso,” which is awesome, but that wasn’t emotionally where I was at. So instead of going down the street, I went to the middle of nowhere for a week to write songs, which was good for my soul.
I read a lot. I read The Alchemist and Grapes of Wrath. It’s been slowing down just a little bit, just to listen.
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It’s almost ironic to hear you say you slowed down when you still managed to go to a week-long writing session in Kansas and play shows on the other side of the world.
It’s hard for me to be objective about the speed LANY is constantly moving at. In my mind, this is our job. You go to work every single day. Why shouldn’t we? We play around 100 shows a year, put out five albums in 10 years. So it’s like, but in my mind, that is, like, this is what we do. We’re a band. We make music, then we go play the music, and we come home and we make more.
What are the doctor’s orders now that you’re about to go on full tour again?
He said I wasn’t allowed to run or jump. He told me around two weeks ago, he said not to do that for another month, which means … I’ll probably be running and jumping [laughs]. I’ll listen to my body if I think I’m pushing it too hard. But right now, I’m doing everything I can in the interim to get warmed up and ready to go.