Rolling Stones Postpone Tour, Citing Mick Jagger’s Health Problems - New York Times

The Rolling Stones said on Saturday that Mick Jagger required medical treatment for an unspecified health problem and that the band would postpone its spring tour in the United States and Canada.

Jagger’s doctors advised him not to go on the remaining 17 shows of the tour but expected him to make a “complete recovery,” according to a statement from the band. Jagger, 75, apologized to fans.

“I really hate letting you down like this,” he said in a tweet. “I’m devastated for having to postpone the tour but I will be working very hard to be back on stage as soon as I can.”

The band, which got its start more than five decades ago, performed the first two legs of its “No Filter” tour in Europe during fall 2017 and spring 2018. The final leg of the tour was scheduled to take the band through American cities including Miami, Houston, Denver and Chicago, as well as a venue north of Toronto. The Stones were scheduled to play at New Orleans Jazz Festival in May.

The statement from the band suggested that the shows would be rescheduled and recommended that fans hold on to their tickets.

Jagger is not the first 1960s-era music icon to show signs of slowing down in old age.

In February, the rock guitarist Peter Frampton announced that he had a degenerative muscle disease that could slow his fingers and his ability to move around; he said he would be staging a farewell tour. And last year, two major figures in the ’60s folk revival, Paul Simon and Joan Baez, played farewell concerts.

John Covach, a professor of music at the University of Rochester who has taught a course on the band, said that because the Stones remain a rock institution, they had been able to tour as much as they wanted in recent years and still pack stadiums and arenas. But these demanding and exhausting international tours can take a toll.

“Who can tour around the country when they’re 70 or 75 years old?” he said on Saturday.

He said that for avid fans of the Stones or other landmark ’60s bands, many of whom are baby boomers, news of farewell tours and rock stars dying of natural causes can remind them of their own mortality.

“It forces a lot of fans to come to terms with the fact that this music from their youth, the people who produced it, are passing from the scene,” he said.

Let's block ads! (Why?)