"I was just shy of crying from pain that was in my right arm. I couldn’t even move it": Stephen Carpenter sheds light on the health struggles that have impacted his playing

Stephen Carpenter of Deftones performs at Fabrique on April 21, 2017 in Milan, Italy.

Stephen Carpenter's inimitable guitar playing and unmistakable tone has helped define Deftones' repertoire over the past 35 years. However, there were points during the creation of the band’s latest studio album, Private Music, when Carpenter’s contributions were worryingly limited.

“I had no clue what I was going through,” he recalls of the time in an interview with Premier Guitar. “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."