Whitesnake Cancels Shows After Battling Multiple Illnesses
Whitesnake has been forced to cancel a handful of performances after members of the band were “hit hard” by various health problems.
“We have been rocking our way across the globe on the first part of our Farewell Tour giving all we’ve got to you, the fans,” explained a message posted by frontman David Coverdale to the band’s website. “The rigors of the road are the same for all of us and we have been trying to keep everyone healthy and safe. Unfortunately, we have been hit recently with a couple of situations that we have been dealing with the best we can.”
The message then noted that guitarist Reb Beach “went down temporarily and he missed a couple of shows while he mended,” while drummer Tommy Aldridge's undisclosed health issue forced the band to cancel its scheduled performance at the Rock Imperium Festival in Cartagena, Spain. “Tommy was bad enough at the time to have missed the first show ever in his career,” the message pointed out.
Coverdale then got to his health woes.
“Unfortunately I have now been hit hard as well,” the singer revealed. “I started feeling a bit under the weather two days ago and was just diagnosed with an infection of the sinus and trachea. The doctor recommends five days of no singing and bed rest.”
As a result of Coverdale’s infection and recovery, Whitesnake has canceled dates in Milan, Italy, and Vienna, Austria. At the time of writing, a performance scheduled for July 2 in Zagreb, Croatia, remained up in the air.
Whitesnake's farewell tour kicked off in May and is scheduled to end in Las Vegas in October. "Make no mistake, this is the farewell tour," Coverdale declared before the trek's launch. "I'm 70. It's a very physically challenging thing for me to do at the best of times. But it's very important for me to achieve completion and to express my appreciation and gratitude to all the people … who've supported me for five decades, 50 years. It blows my mind – it really does.”