LONDON — Musician David Bowie underwent emergency heart surgery after a concert in Germany and is recovering in New York, hoping to be back at work next month, his spokesman said Friday.
The spokesman, Julian Stockton, said doctors examining Bowie because he had suffered a pinched nerve in his shoulder discovered "an acutely blocked artery" in his heart and performed an emergency angioplasty procedure to clear it.
The blockage was discovered after Bowie, 57, played a show in the town of Scheessel on June 25. He canceled the next day's concert — and subsequently, the rest of his European tour — citing the shoulder problem.
"I'm so p'd off because the last 10 months of this tour have been so ... fantastic," Stockton quoted Bowie as saying. "Can't wait to be fully recovered and get back to work again. I tell you what, though, I won't be writing a song about this one."
Stockton did not specify the date of the surgery but said it had occurred after the June 25 show and that the rock legend was able to leave the clinic in Hamburg, Germany early this week.
The spokesman said Bowie was "is now convalescing with his family and hopes to start work next month."
Bowie cut short his concert in Prague on June 23 because of pain in his shoulder, taking a 10-minute time-out about halfway through, but then singing only two more songs.
He canceled the rest of his European tour a few days later because of what an announcement on his Web site called "continuing pain and extreme discomfort from a trapped/pinched nerve"
The British Bowie, who was born David Jones, gained major stardom with his groundbreaking 1972 album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust," following it up with albums including "Young Americans" a few years later and "Let's Dance" in 1983, another huge seller. His latest album "Reality" was the centerpiece of the just-canceled tour.
He is married to the supermodel Iman.
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i hope he gets better soon
makes me wonder if they used a stent on him or just angio
Poor guy. He's getting kicked around by his innards all over the place. First the eye, then the nerve, and now his heart.
Isn't angioplasty the thing Dick Cheney had?