Pick a Day

Music History Events: Health Issues

March 6, 2020 The South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, becomes the first major American festival cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other tours and festivals around the world are called off soon after in efforts to limit the outbreak.More

March 7, 2014 After completing treatment for an eating disorder, Ke$ha drops the $ from her stage name and changes her Twitter handle from @Ke$haSuxx to @KeshaRose ("Rose" is her middle name).More

February 28, 2012 Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump makes a blog post titled "We Liked You Better Fat: Confessions of a Pariah" where he writes about hitting a low point with a failed solo album and taunts from audience members. The post prompts FOB bass player Pete Wentz to contact Stump, and they get the band back together, staging a triumphant comeback with their 2013 album Save Rock and Roll and the hit "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)."More

July 3, 2011 Unable to walk since a botched operation two years earlier, Little Richard is wheeled in with a piano to perform at the "A Capitol Fourth" concert at the National Mall in Washington, DC. It's his first performance since the operation.

June 22, 2011 Glen Campbell's wife, Kim Woollen, announces that the singer has Alzheimer's disease.More

October 31, 2010 Demi Lovato deletes her Twitter account and enters rehab after suffering a nervous breakdown on the Jonas Brothers tour. Stress from the tour and other commitments, including promoting her movie Camp Rock 2, led to an eating disorder and a dependency on drugs and alcohol - she had also broken up with her tourmate Joe Jonas, who had taken up a new girlfriend, Ashley Greene. Lovato leaves the facility in January 2011.

April 22, 2010 Poison lead singer Bret Michaels suffers a brain hemorrhage that nearly kills him. After almost two weeks in intensive care, he makes a full recovery. Throughout the ordeal, he leaves his headband on, explaining, "If I'm going out, I want to go out rocking."

July 31, 2009 With Adam Yauch (MCA) diagnosed with cancer, Beastie Boys cancel their appearance at the All Points West festival at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. In tribute, Jay-Z opens his set with a cover of "No Sleep Till Brooklyn."

October 14, 2003 Ozzy Osbourne seeks treatment for Parkinson's Disease-like tremors and postpones a fall European tour. The veteran rock artist says in a statement, "I have been in Boston for the last three weeks, having medical tests for a tremor which has become markedly worse over the last two years."

June 17, 1997 When Ozzy's voice gives out before the Ozzfest date in Columbus, Ohio, he doesn't appear but the show goes on without him. Fans, who aren't told until later that he won't be there, don't take the news well and trash the venue.More

March 16, 1995 Eazy-E releases a statement announcing that he has AIDS, and also that he has fathered seven children with six different women. He dies 10 days later.

May 19, 1993 Depeche Mode begin their Devotional tour in Lille, France. They reach new levels of excess on the trek, culminating with lead singer Dave Gahan having a heart attack during a show.More

November 23, 1991 Queen frontman Freddie Mercury issues a statement confirming he has AIDS and calling for help in fighting the disease. "I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me," he writes. "However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease." Mercury dies the next day.

August 13, 1990 While warming up for an outdoor concert at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Curtis Mayfield is paralyzed when a lighting tower falls from the stage and onto his back. He remains a quadriplegic for the next nine years until his death in 1999.

July 29, 1990 Elton John can't find a facility in Los Angeles that will treat both his bulimia and drug and alcohol addictions, so he checks into the Parkside Lutheran Hospital in Chicago for rehab. He stays for six weeks, then takes a year off from touring and recording.

December 31, 1984 Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses an arm when he crashes his Corvette. He continues with the band, using computer aids and relying more on his feet.More

January 20, 1982 While performing at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa, Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a bat.More

June 27, 1980 Three songs into Led Zeppelin's concert in Nuremberg, drummer John Bonham collapses while beating out the rhythm to "Black Dog" and is rushed to the hospital, abruptly ending the show. Robert Plant jokes that he ate too many bananas before the show, but alcohol is the likely culprit. In September, Bonham dies after a night of drinking.

August 11, 1976 Keith Moon trashes a hotel room - no surprise there. But this time The Who drummer is hospitalized after beating up his room at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.More

November 2, 1974 George Harrison begins his Dark Horse tour with Ravi Shankar in Vancouver, BC. It's the first solo tour for any Beatle, and a drag on Harrison, who doesn't travel well. It's the last time he tours until 1991, when he joins Eric Clapton on some dates in Japan.

August 6, 1973 A devastating car accident drops Stevie Wonder down to two senses, as he temporarily loses smell and taste after the vehicle he's riding in runs into the back of a logging truck, and a log hits him in the face. He is in a coma for four days, but makes a strong recovery and returns to the studio in a few weeks.

January 29, 1961 Five days after arriving in New York from Minnesota, Bob Dylan meets his ailing folk hero, Woody Guthrie, tracking him down in East Orange, New Jersey. Dylan pays tribute with "Song To Woody," which appears on his first album the following year.More

December 8, 2022 Celine Dion reveals that she suffers from a rare neurological disease called Stiff Person Syndrome that can cause debilitating spasms. She's forced to cancel the rest of her tour.

October 1, 2011 Meat Loaf performs at the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne between Collingwood and Geelong. Suffering from a hemorrhaging vocal cord, he struggles through the 12-minute set and is blasted in the press. The singer responds by calling AFL organizers "the cheapest people I've ever seen in my life."More

October 26, 2010 Results of Ozzy Osbourne's genome sequencing are revealed. The study shows that Ozzy has a very high predisposition for alcohol and cocaine addiction, and that he was partly descended from Neanderthals.

May 23, 2008 Shirley Bassey suffers from abdominal pains in Monaco, necessitating emergency surgery and forcing her to cancel her upcoming appearance at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert.

April 13, 2008 Cult '60s Detroit Soul hero Nathaniel Mayer collapses from the brain hemorrhage that will, within the year, take his life.

January 31, 2008 Britney Spears' family helps orchestrate an intervention that lands her in the psychiatric ward of UCLA's hospital. She's taken by ambulance, which gets a police escort and draws a frenzy of media attention. The next day, her father is named as her conservator, as a court rules that Britney cannot care for herself. She is released a few days later and starts getting her life back together. Later in February, her saga is detailed in Rolling Stone; she appears on the cover with the headline, "Britney Spears: Inside An American Tragedy."

January 22, 2008 British tabloid The Sun posts video they claim is of Amy Winehouse smoking crack. The 24-year-old singer has been in and out of rehab, and is clearly in ill health. The video was apparently taken by a guest at her home.

August 24, 2007 During a routine medical exam in Gainesville, Florida, Bo Diddley complains of dizziness and nausea and is admitted to a local hospital, where he is diagnosed as having had a heart attack. The rock legend had suffered a stroke only a few months earlier.