Rod Stewart has shared a health update amid his mammoth One Last Time tour, which will see him play more than 40 shows across Europe, North and South America, between now and the end of 2025.
The veteran rocker, 80, who’s slated to play the Legends Slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival this June, revealed he was placed on vocal rest following his performance at Milan’s Unipol Forum on Saturday night (10 May).
Stewart was seen alongside his wife Penny Lancaster, 54, following the concert in Italy wearing a sign around his neck that read: “Sorry. Cannot talk. Having vocal rest.”
Voice rest is a common prescription for singers to recover from fatigue, prevent vocal cord damage and allow them to perform at peak ability during live shows.
It comes after Stewart, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2001, cancelled three shows in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Lincoln, California, in January after being diagnosed with strep throat and testing positive for Covid over the space of a matter of days.
Stewart’s One Last Time tour, which runs alongside his summer festival appearances and 18-date Las Vegas residency, was scheduled to mark the end of the singer’s large-scale stadium career.
“This will be the end of large scale world tours for me, but I have no desire to retire,” Stewart said when his One Last Time dates were announced. “I love what I do, and I do what I love. I’m fit, have a full head of hair, and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds.”
“I’d like to move onto a Great American Songbook, Swing Fever tour the year after next – smaller venues and more intimacy. But then again, I may not…” he added of his future live performances, signing off the statement as “The Ambiguous Sir Rod Stewart”.
Stewart’s vocal rest comes days after he reportedly spent five hours at Ronnie Drew’s Irish Bar in Krakow, Poland, following Arsenal’s Champions League defeat to PSG.
Onlookers told The Sun, “Rod might be an octogenarian, but he can still party like he’s in his 20s. When he left, he had to be steered out by his minders and was stumbling a bit.
“The punters in the bar loved it and were cheering for him,” they added.
Stewart has sold more than 120 million records worldwide, with hits including “Maggie May” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He was knighted in 2016 for his services to music and charity.
