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Page 1
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"When a bucket turns into a toilet, Dryden turns into Butt-Head ...
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Page 2
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"I heard somebody say, 'I think he's dead' " ...
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Page 3
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Ambulances arrive and almost make things worse ...
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Initial News Report
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Alien Ant Farm Injured In Bus Accident
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Photo Galleries
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Alien Ant Farm's Bus Accident Photos
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Alien Ant Farm's "These Days" Video Shoot
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As he laid in the hallway near the steps, the feeling started to come back in his limbs, but Mitchell was still terrified.
"The pain was so strong, I was scared. I just didn't want them to touch me," he said. "I knew it was just a mess with 10 people trying to crawl over me 'cause I'm in the space that they're trying to get out of. It was just not fun."
Ambulance workers arrived, but few of them spoke English. They lifted Mitchell up and strapped him onto a board. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was misdiagnosed, before he was eventually sent to London for surgery.
"The doctor said I could have been paralyzed by the way I was treated [in Spain]," said Mitchell, still in disbelief. "[The way they] pulled [me] up and whatnot, because my bone was resting on the spinal cord, which isn't good. And as a result I have nerve damage from my chest up, [which] just feels like a bad sunburn all the time."
In London doctors put a halo brace on the singer that left two small circular scars on his forehead.
"It's almost a medieval contraption," he explained. "It's tight around your body, and some bars come up like a halo around your head. They screw these pins in really tight, and eventually [the pins] start to bury themselves in your skull. The idea is that you absolutely can not move your neck. The break was in such a vulnerable position that any movement could have caused paralysis."
The long road to recovery, which also included yoga, resulted in many sleepless nights thanks to the brace. "I think the word 'insomnia,' people use it loosely," he said. "I had no idea what it was until now."
As soon as he was able, Mitchell got over to the Czech Republic to pay a visit to Zajic. A martial artist and bodybuilder, Zajic's physical strength had helped him to survive. He eventually came out of his coma and sent an e-mail to Cosgrove signed, "The Terminator."
"[His] face is completely restructured with titanium," Mitchell said. "You can barely tell what he went through. He's a practicing Buddhist. I think his psyche alone probably took him through that. It was just amazing to see him."
Alien Ant Farm gradually reconvened to resume working on material for their next album. Coming onboard as producers, Stone Temple Pilots' Dean and Robert DeLeo offered fresh ideas and some career guidance.
A new song called "Spain in the Neck" addresses the crash, but it won't be on the record. "It will be on B-sides," Mitchell said. "I'm sure it'll be online fairly soon. So it'll be out there."
The Ant Farm guys also toyed around with the idea of putting the voicemail recording of the accident at the end of truANT but ultimately decided against it. "It was such a positive thing to finish the album, and to end it without an exclamation point felt like an oxymoron," Mitchell said. "To have a positive, good record, and then, like, 'Here — check out the wreck!' "
A year on, as they talk about truANT, Alien Ant Farm clearly have retained their passion for the craft and of course their sense of humor. And when they reflect on Zajic's injuries and the death of their driver, they seem to be counting their blessings.
"It's hard to complain, because I see people in wheelchairs or someone parked in a handicapped spot and think, 'OK, [my] problems are pretty good ones to have," Mitchell said, pointing to his stiff neck. "The fact that I can feel these sensations [at all] is not bad."
Nevertheless, there are lingering post-traumatic fears.
"The day after it happened we stayed at a hotel room, and I had two beds in the room," Zamora recalled. "The bed that I was sleeping next to had the white sheets over the pillows, and I all I could envision was the body lying covered on the side of the road."
"[For a while], every time I would lie in the dark and close my eyes, I was waiting for an explosion," added Corso. "I'm scared of car accidents all the time — when I'm driving, someone else is driving, even being on the freakin' Hertz bus going to rent a car. And if I see something graphic on TV, a bad crash, it pushes on me.
"But it definitely gives you a sense that, you know, things could be worse," he said. "You should definitely just live. Just live."
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Photo: MTV News
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