McCartney gets back to health, leaves Japan

By: 10 years ago

Paul McCartney AP FILE PHOTO

TOKYO — Music legend Paul McCartney is over an illness that forced the cancellation of his Asian tour and has left Japan, the concert organizer said Tuesday.

McCartney “has recovered well enough to travel on an airplane,” said an official from Kyodo Tokyo, the organizer of the Japanese leg of the “Out There” global tour.

“According to the information that we have, he left Japan yesterday” for an undisclosed destination, he said.

The former Beatle arrived in Japan on May 15 and was due to play four sold-out dates in Tokyo and Osaka.

But the 71-year-old pop veteran cancelled all his gigs as well as the South Korean leg of the tour, saying he had been taken sick with an undisclosed virus.

The called-off concerts included one at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall that would have marked his first return to the venue since appearing there with The Beatles in 1966.

The cancellations generated an outpouring of good wishes from fans of the Liverpool-born musician — one of two living members of The Beatles.

A combined 170,000 people had been due to see his shows in Japan, according to local media, some paying as much as 100,000 yen ($1,000) for a ticket.

A statement from New York-based public relations company Nasty Little Man said last week that McCartney had “received successful medical treatment at a hospital in Tokyo.”

“He will make a complete recovery and has been ordered to take a few days rest” before leaving the country, the agency said at the time.

Japanese tabloid paper Nikkan Gendai, citing an unnamed person close to the musician, said Tuesday that McCartney had a laparoscopy — surgery using a thin tube inserted into his belly.

A viral disease had been “suspected for nausea, vomiting and stomachache but his case was diagnosed as an intestinal obstruction,” the source told the paper.

The operation to resolve the obstruction was successful, the report said.

The Kyodo Tokyo official could not confirm the report.