Britney Closes Onyx Hotel

Spears says knee surgery will keep her sidelined for four months, cancels all tour U.S. dates

By Joal Ryan Jun 15, 2004 10:05 PMTags

Britney Spears is out of the hotel business.

The summer Stateside leg of Spears' Onyx Hotel tour was canceled Tuesday, nearly a week after the pop tart underwent arthroscopic knee surgery.

Spears' camp blamed the blown-out knee on the blown-out dates.

"Ms. Spears will be immobile for six weeks, with her knee in a hard brace," a statement said. "This will be followed by a minimum of eight to 12 weeks of rehabilitation."

The Onyx Hotel tour opened for business in North America in March. It was to resume June 22 in Hartford, Connecticut, concluding Aug. 15 in Bakersfield, California.

Dates for Europe and Asia were also planned. It is unclear if the overseas shows will go on.

Spears' reps said the singer hopes to revisit the U.S. cities she'll miss during her "hard brace" period at some time "in the future."

Spears is the second ex-Mouseketeer to go on the disabled list for the summer concert season. In April, Christina Aguilera nixed her 28-city North American sojourn, citing strained vocal cords.

While rumors were that Aguilera begged off the tour because of poor ticket sales, Spears, at least, was doing solid business with Onyx Hotel.

The first portion of her tour averaged a $728,000 gross in 18 cities, said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of the concert trade magazine, Pollstar.

Citing the limited number of shows aimed at the teen market this beach season, Bongiovanni said he would have expected Spears to do decent business.

In what's shaping up to be an overall soft summer for live acts, Bongiovanni said he understood Spears taking it easy.

"She is a very high-energy show, and you can start to recover from something like a knee injury, but if you don't rest it you can very easily reinjure it," Bongiovanni said.

The irony is, that while fellow teen pop acts such as 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys have all but disappeared, "Britney has proved she's still got legs," Bongiovanni said.

Spears' legs began giving her trouble Mar. 18 when a knee went out on her during a show in Moline, Illinois.

On June 8, Spears was prancing under a subway line in New York City with Snoop Dogg, shooting a video for her upcoming single, "Outrageous," when she went down again.

Doctors found floating cartilage in one of the knees, and ordered up arthroscopic surgery. The procedure was performed June 9.

It was unclear if Spears' immobility would force her to turn down Madonna's reputed offer to join her kissing buddy on stage for the Material Mother's six-date stand at New York's Madison Square Garden, starting Wednesday.