Stones Postpone European Tour
The Rolling Stones will have to start it up a little later than they thought.
The band has announced the postponement of the first 15 dates of its European tour in order to give guitarist Keith Richards more time to recover from his recent head injury.
The Stones' A Bigger Bang trek was originally supposed to kick off this Saturday in Barcelona, Spain. After initially saying the jaunt would start in June, requiring only minor tweaks to the schedule, the Stones decided to push the entire first half back, according to the statement on their official Website.
As a result, the tour will likely get rolling sometime in mid-July at a venue and city to be announced.
The gigs due to be rescheduled include those in Madrid; Brussels; Paris; Bergen, Norway; Horsens, Denmark; Gothenburg, Sweden; St. Petersburg, Russia; Brno, Czech Republic; Warsaw, Poland; Vienna; Milan; Athens; and Zagreb, Croatia.
New dates for those cities will likely be revealed in the coming days. Nuremburg, Germany, the first city not to have its Stones outing disturbed by the postponement, is now shaping up to be the likely site of the tour launch on July 10. Should that date hold, the new itinerary won't affect the Stones' highly anticipated reunion with Guns N' Roses, who are set to open Nuremburg and the July 12 stop in Leipzig.
No word how the date changes will affect other supporting acts such as the Kaiser Chiefs, who were set to open for the ageless wonders in Zagreb. The Stones' schedule includes playing outdoor venues in Zurich, Nice, London and Glasgow, the latter two with opening bands Kasabian and The Charlatans.
Precipitating the postponement was a little bang Richards suffered following a highly publicized spill he took on Apr. 27 while vacationing at Fiji's posh Wakaya Club. The exact cause of the accident is unknown, but various news reports have Richards either falling on his head while trying to pluck a coconut from a palm tree or from falling off a Jet Ski.
Richards was flown to a New Zealand hospital where, according to his publicist, he underwent minor surgery to relieve pressure on his brain after suffering a "mild concussion," did not suffer any brain damage and was on the road to recovery.
The rep, Fran Curtis, also dismissed an account published by the New Zealand Herald that the accident-prone wild man's condition was more serious than previously thought and that he received a craniotomy for a subdural hematoma, a blood clot that forms on the outer membranes of the brain--and a major operation that requires drilling through and removing a portion of the skull.
The story sparked rumors that Richards' family was holding a bedside vigil for the hard-living rocker, a claim vehemently denied by the band's camp.
In a new statement released Monday, the Stones said Richards had flown back from New Zealand to his Westport, Connecticut home in the U.S. to continue recuperating and "is feeling great, happy to be home and looking forward to getting back on the road with the Rolling Stones next month."






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