Bruce Springsteen made a triumphant return to performing last week in Phoenix, taking the stage with the E Street Band to resume their world tour after a six-month hiatus due to the singer's battle with a peptic ulcer. But in an interview with E Street Radio host Jim Rotolo (via Deadline) the 74-year-old rock icon said there was a point recently when he feared he would never perform live again.
“I just started singing, you know, you can rehearse a song, but your voice isn't the same in rehearsal. You don't have that adrenaline rush that really pushes it to a better place, and when I had the stomach problem, one of the big problems was that I couldn't sing,” said Springsteen, who interrupted his scheduled E Street set for 2023. -World tour 2024 in September due to the severe effects of gastritis. 29 shows were postponed as a result of the medical issue.
“You sing with your diaphragm. My diaphragm hurt so bad that when I went to try to sing, it was killing me, you know?” she said. “Well, I literally couldn't sing at all, you know, and that went on for two or three months, along with a lot of other painful problems.” At one point, Springsteen said he wasn't sure if he would be able to return to his signature high-energy performance style at all.
“I was, during it, before people were like, 'Oh, no. It's going to go away, and you're going to be okay,' you know, you're thinking like, 'Hey, I'm going to sing again?' and you know, that's one of the things that I like to do the best, the most, and right now I can't do it,” Springsteen said. “You know, I can't do it, and it took a while for the doctors to say, 'Oh, no. You'll be fine.' At first, no one was saying that, which made me nervous, you know, and at the end of the day, I found some great doctors and they straightened me out, and I can't do anything but thank them all.”
Thanks to his medical team, Springsteen returned, and during the March 19 show in Phoenix — originally scheduled for Nov. 30 — he performed 29 songs without even mentioning the medical issue until the last song of the set. “I had a belly mom,” she told the crowd near the end of her two-hour-and-45-minute set.
Springsteen's tour kicks off Monday (March 25) with a date at San Diego's Pachenga Arena.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/bruce-springsteen-fear-never-sing-again-peptic-ulcer-disease-1235640365/