After playing a pair of standards shows with pal Lady Gaga at New York’s Radio City Music Hall last week and then cancelling his planned 2021 solo tour dates earlier this week, Tony Bennett‘s son/manager Danny revealed that the pop icon has officially retired from the road.
Bennett was slated to play shows in New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Arizona, Oklahoma and Canada in the fall, but the 95 year-old singer whose family revealed earlier this year that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016 has decided to stay close to home.
“There won’t be any additional concerts,” Danny Bennett, who has been his dad’s manager for more than four decades told Variety. ”This was a hard decision for us to make, as he is a capable performer. This is, however, doctors’ orders. His continued health is the most important part of this, and when we heard the doctors — when Tony’s wife, Susan heard them — she said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Danny said his father will be doing “other things,” but just not those previously scheduled shows. To be clear, Bennett is not retiring from the road because of any vocal issues — by all accounts he was in fine form at the Radio City shows — but because Danny said the traveling is just too exhausting for the 18-time Grammy winner who has been entertaining audiences for more than 75 years.
“We don’t want him to fall on stage, for instance — something as simple as that,” Danny said of the decision to scotch the run of fall casino gigs, emphasizing that “we’re not worried about him being able to sing. We are worried, from a physical stand point… about human nature. Tony’s 95.”
The Radio City shows, “One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” are the precursor the pair’s upcoming second duets album, Love For Sale (Oct. 1 via Columbia/Interscope Records).
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