Rod Stewart is retiring from touring after more than sixty years on stage and will close it out with one final run he calls The Final Encore.
The 81-year-old rock star told fans the road chapter is finished. In a message shared with supporters, he said the coming dates will be his last. The Sun reported the announcement along with the first block of UK, Ireland, and European shows.
“My dear friends, The time has come to say farewell to life on the road. After more than six decades, The Final Encore will most definitely be my last,” Stewart said.
"I’ve been singing the music I love since I was 19 years old, and I’ve had the privilege of taking it around the world to all of you. It has given me a life beyond anything I could ever have imagined, and I hope I’ve given you some fond memories in return."
He thanked fans for the career they made possible and invited them to the shows so he could repay them the only way he knows how, with the music and “one h*** of a show.”
Ill health already forced him to cancel gigs in the United States earlier this year. In August he had a stent fitted in his heart. His team said the operation was a success and that he was recovering well at home.
Days before that surgery, his daughter Ruby and her fiancé Jake Kalick welcomed a son, Otis. The birth made Stewart a grandfather for the sixth time.
He has sold more than 250 million records worldwide. He is a two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, once as a solo artist and once with The Faces. He has eight children with five women and is married to model Penny Lancaster.
The farewell tour begins next April at Dublin’s 3Arena. UK and Ireland dates follow in Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and London’s O2, with 1980s hitmaker Howard Jones as support on those shows.
European stops then run through Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Sweden’s Dalhalla, Norway, Budapest, Munich, Croatia’s Pula Arena, Prague, Kraków, and Hannover into late July. Support for the continental leg has not been named yet.
Fan club tickets moved first. Remaining seats were set for a general public sale on Friday, 2 October, with more details at rodstewart.com.
A man who worked the stage since his teens, sold records by the hundreds of millions, and still shows up after a heart procedure is closing the tour book on his own terms, the old-fashioned way, with a last hard run and a thank-you to the people who bought the tickets.
