Morrissey 'too tired' to perform, and 12 other excuses for cancelled concerts

Morrissey has cancelled a concert in Spain because he didn't get enough sleep.

"Any form of sleep or rest throughout the night was impossible due to festival noise / loud techno singing / megaphone announcements," explained a post on the Morrissey Central website. "This experience has left Morrissey in a catatonic state."

Updating fans in a personal message, the former Smiths frontman said: "It will take me one year to recover. And that is an understatement."

About 1,500 fans had been due to attend the show at Valencia's Palau de Les Artes Reina Sofia.

The Associated Press reports that the disturbance outside Morrissey's hotel room may have been caused by celebrations taking place around Valencia's Las Fallas festival, which welcomes in the spring.

The singer is currently touring his new album Make-Up Is A Lie, and while the European tour has mostly proceeded without a hitch, he cancelled five of eight planned US dates at the start of the year, saying he had caught flu.

"I apologise deeply but it is -44 degrees outside, and EVERYONE is hacking themselves to death, and I am, regrettably, human," he wrote at the time. "I am doing my small and pathetic best."

Scrapping a show because he's sleepy is a new excuse, but it's not the strangest in rock history. Here are some memorable examples.

1) Neil Young's ham sandwich

Harvest Moon singer Neil Young had to scrap an entire European tour in 1997 after he sliced off the top of his finger while making a ham sandwich.

"I'd have eaten the thing in one piece if I'd known that cutting it in half would jeopardize the tour," he said in a statement. "It's macaroni and cheese from now on."

Young was urged to stay away from guitars while the finger healed. He missed 16 dates, including an appearance at the Glastonbury festival.

2) Lionel Richie kissing Alex Jones

Soul legend Lionel Richie was appearing on The One Show in 2012, when he picked up norovirus from presenter Alex Jones.

"I'm not ill very often but I remember the norovirus was rife at the time and I started to feel very dodgy," she later told The Sun.

"I had a day off but then I probably went back into work a day too early so I was still infectious.

"After Lionel and I had just finished our chat on the show, I went to give him a kiss on the cheek and he went in for the lips. He caught the norovirus off me and had to cancel two of his tour dates.

"I did feel a bit guilty but, essentially, don't be so forward Lionel! If he'd gone for the cheek, he would have been fine."

3) Mötley Crüe and snow on the roof

In January 1988, Mötley Crüe were due to hit the UK for a series of arena dates off the back of their rabble-rousing hit Girls Girls Girls - only for the shows to be called off due to inclement weather.

In a blog post, the band's former press officer Stuart Bailie recalled telling the papers that a "pile up of snow on the venues makes it too hazardous" to play, because "a roof might collapse".

Sounds like nonsense? Of course it was.

"I'm lying, of course," he wrote. "I have been briefed by the offices in New York and London to put out this fabrication. The truth is that Nikki Sixx, bass player with the Crüe... had died of an overdose on December 23."

Although Sixx was clinically dead for two minutes, paramedics brought him round with two adrenaline shots to the heart.

"Lucky old Nikki escaped from the hospital wearing just his leather pants and eventually got to write a bad song about the experience called Kickstart My Heart," Bailie said.

In 1995, US indie heroes Weezer had to cancel a number of shows while frontman Rivers Cuomo had one of his legs lengthened.

The singer was born with his left leg 44mm shorter than the right one, and had to undergo a gruelling operation to correct the imbalance, which involved breaking the limb and adding a brace that stretched it in tiny increments over 13 months.

The surgery actually changed the trajectory of Weezer's career. Prior to the operation, Cuomo was planning to record a rock opera called Songs From The Black Hole.

But the "pain of the procedure" made that project "feel too whimsical", he told Rolling Stone magazine. "So I scrapped the whole idea and went to a more serious and dark place."

The result was Pinkerton, a gnarly, bruised album that tapped into Cuomo's loneliness, boredom and anger. It's regularly ranked as Weezer's best album.

5) Keith Richards falls out of a tree

The Rolling Stones postponed the start of their 2006 European tour after guitarist Keith Richards fell out of a coconut tree in Fiji.

Richards and fellow guitarist Ronnie Wood were apparently trying to scramble towards the coconuts when he lost his grip and tumbled 15 feet to the ground, hitting his head.

Richards suffered a blood clot in the brain and required brain surgery. His neurosurgeon later joined the band on their A Bigger Bang world tour.

But he tried to play down the incident, saying the tree was no bigger than a shrub.

"If you saw the tree, you'd realise the joke."

6) Liam Gallagher goes house hunting

Oasis star Liam Gallagher failed to show up for the band's 1996 tour of America, four days after pulling out of an MTV Unplugged gig citing a sore throat.

But, speaking to the New York Times in 2011, external, Noel said there were more domestic reasons for his US no-show.

"As I'm getting on the plane he's getting off because his wife called, saying: 'We need to buy a house,'" he fumed.

"What they were doing for the previous three months is anybody's guess. Probably picking gnats out of each other's hair like monkeys."

7) Justin Bieber's towel tantrum

In 2015, Justin Bieber cut short a televised concert in Oslo after just one song, over a concern for his health and safety.

As the show began, the singer noticed a puddle at the edge of the stage that could have caused a slip hazard, so he grabbed a towel to mop it up.

Unfortunately, fans couldn't contain their excitement and tried to grab the towel, and Bieber himself.

He asked them to stop. They refused. He walked off stage. "I'm done, I'm not doing the show," he said, as he exited the venue.

Bieber later apologised in an Instagram post, saying: "I don't always handle things the right way but I'm human and I'm working on getting better at responding not reacting."

8) Drake's 'inexplicable' ferry mishap

Drake played two shows at Manchester's Co-Op Live Arena last July, but a third was postponed at the last minute due to "unforeseen ferry schedule and travel logistics".

At first, it was unclear which ferry the statement was referring to, as Drake was already in the city. He even posted videos of himself walking through Picadilly train station.

Perhaps, somebody posited, he took a day trip to Liverpool and got stranded on the wrong side of the Mersey?

In the end, it turned out to be a more mundane scheduling snafu. Drake was due to play in Amsterdam two days after the final Manchester show, but his team had miscalculated the time it would take to ship the stage across the North Sea.

9) Cold Chisel's feline finagle

Hard-living Aussie rock band Cold Chisel once had to postpone a show in Melbourne after guitarist Ian Moss was attacked by his family cat.

Moss received a bite to his middle finger that became "severely infected and badly swollen, rendering him unable to play guitar".

So bad was the injury, in fact, that Moss was kept in hospital on an intravenous drip.

But he made light of the situation, issuing a statement that read: "Sorry to be a pussy - look forward to making amends next week."

10) Kings of Leon attacked by pigeons

It's not just angry cats who jeopardise rock shows. In 2010, Kings of Leon were forced to cut short a performance in St Louis, Missouri, after a flock of pigeons nestling above the stage took a dislike to their act.

The band quit three songs into their set, with drummer Nathan Followill explaining to fans that a bird defecated directly into bassist Jared Followill's mouth.

"Too unsanitary to continue," he wrote on Twitter. "Don't take it out on Jared, it's the venue's fault. You may enjoy being [defecated] on but we don't."

11) Iggy Azaelea got bored of her own music

Is honesty always the best policy? Rapper Iggy Azalea called off her 2015 US arena tour, claiming she was fed up of "singing the same songs".

"I've had a different creative change of heart," she said. "I want to start totally anew, and if I stayed on my tour, that would mean I wouldn't even be able to start working on that until after Christmas."

While it's commendable for an artist to put music ahead of profit, it took Azalea another four years for release new music. Maybe the tour wouldn't have been such a roadblock to her creativity, after all?

12) Air Canada refuses to fly a cello

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who became a household name after performing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, had to cancel a 2024 concert in Canada after the country's largest airline refused to transport his £2m cello.

The musician had pre-booked a seat for the instrument but, after a series of delays and cancelled flights on the day he was due to travel, the musician was told the instrument couldn't fly with him.

"After nine anxious hours at the airport, we realised our journey wasn't going to be possible," said the cellist in a joint statement with his sister, the pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason.

"We can only dream of a time when all airlines have a standardised, global and carefully considered approach to the carriage of precious instruments that are booked to travel in the cabin," they added.