Steven Van Zandt will miss several concert dates with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band after having to undergo emergency surgery for appendicitis.
“Got a sharp pain in my stomach, thought it was food poisoning, turned out to be appendicitis,” the Sopranos alum, 74, wrote via Instagram on Monday, June 23.
Van Zandt seemingly got sick after the band’s Saturday, June 21, show in San Sebastián, Spain, and received treatment there. The group is scheduled to play again in the city on Tuesday, June 24.
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“Got lucky with an exceptional hospital in San Sebastian,” Van Zandt wrote on Monday. “Operation was a complete success and I’m hoping to get back on stage for at least one of the shows in Milan. Thank you all for all the good vibes. See you soon.”
Following the E Street Band’s second date in Spain, the group is set to head to Germany for a Friday, June 27, concert before stopping in Milan, Italy, on Monday, June 30, and Thursday, July 3.
Van Zandt has been a guitarist in Springsteen’s band off and on since 1975. His most recent tenure began in 1999.
“You just don’t have that many friends for 60 years. I think the fact that it survived some ups and downs, it says something about our nature,” Van Zandt told People last year. “The nature of the importance of friendship in general, which is what attracted me to being in a band rather than a solo show business person.”
He went on to note that he doesn’t take his friendship with Springsteen, 75, “for granted” after all these years. “Fifty years later, how are we still playing to 300,000 people in one country in one week?” he told the outlet. “I think we’re communicating that friendship, which is real with me and him. When they see us on the same microphone, that isn’t an act. Nobody’s that good an actor to keep this act up for 50 years.”
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Springsteen experienced a health scare of his own in 2023, postponing a series of tour dates after he was diagnosed with peptic ulcer disease. Last year, he revealed that the illness meant he couldn’t sing for several months.
“You sing with your diaphragm. You know, my diaphragm was hurting so badly that when I went to make the effort to sing, it was killing me, so I literally couldn’t sing at all, you know?” he said during a March 2024 interview on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio. “And that lasted for two, three months, along with just a myriad of other painful problems.”
He added, “It took a while for the doctors to say, ‘Oh, no, you’re gonna be OK.’ At first, nobody was quite saying that, which made me nervous, you know?”
Springsteen has since recovered and returned to touring in March 2024.
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