The 31 Van Halen concert dates that were postponed in May have now been officially cancelled. Various reports suggested that the band was burned out from performing 48 shows over several months of touring.
The band will play Japan in November, and rumors persist of an Australia tour late this year and another US tour next year.
From Pollstar:
When dozens of summer dates were removed from Van Halen’s website in May without an explanation, it wasn’t clear whether the dates would eventually be rescheduled. Now the dates are officially listed as canceled.
All dates after the rock band’s June 26 concert in New Orleans were called off, a total of more than 30 gigs. Although Van Halen hasn’t posted an announcement on its website, if you check out the band’s list of dates on Ticketmaster.com, you’ll find that shows including Uncasville, Conn.; Baltimore; Rochester, N.Y.; Detroit; Toledo, Ohio; Memphis, Tenn.; Sacramento, Calif.; Reno, Nev.; and Milwaukee are now marked in red as canceled. As of post time, not all shows on Ticketmaster are listed as canceled.
Refunds are available at the point of purchase. Tickets purchased online or by phone will be automatically credited to your credit card.
In May, days after the dates were first pulled, David Lee Roth posted a video explaining that despite rumors, the “band is getting along famously.”
Diamond Dave didn’t say whether fans should hold onto their tickets and wait for new dates to be announced. Instead, this is what he had to say about why the tour had been cut short:
“As usual, we bit off way more than we could chew when it came to scheduling. The band is winning but our schedule has been sidelined for unnecessary roughness. If we continue past July 4 and all the way into Australia and Japan then we’re asking for the robot zombie tour.”
USA Today published an interview with Eddie Van Halen and his son Wolfgang earlier in June in which the elder Van Halen used the same idiom as his bandmate.
“We bit off more than we could chew. This record took a lot out of us. And we went on tour earlier than we wanted to so we could play Madison Square Garden (in March, before a renovation), and that threw the schedule out of whack.”
He added that Van Halen planned to play Japan in November “and in the New Year, we’ll possibly do something special, but I can’t talk about it.”
–Sarah Marie Pittman