Journey drummer Deen Castronovo rushed to hospital during concert in Tulsa

Journey drummer Deen Castronovo suffered a medical emergency on Thursday evening, October 8, during his band's concert at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After just two songs, he was helped off the stage and then taken to the hospital. The show was briefly halted, but it resumed later in the evening.

Keyboardist Jonathan Cain addressed the crowd while the rest of the band had left the stage. He said it was still unclear how the situation would develop and that the band was hoping for nothing more than a delay. Cain asked the audience to pray for Castronovo. The story originally comes from the local paper Tulsa World, whose sports reporter Eric Bailey was on site and shared a video of the speech.

A few minutes later, around ten to twenty minutes after the interruption according to several reports, guitarist Neal Schon returned to the stage. He announced that Castronovo had been taken to the hospital and that drum tech Steve Toomey would take his place behind the kit. According to The Independent, singer Arnel Pineda told the crowd that Castronovo would be fine and put the incident down to too much Gatorade. Later in the evening, Schon dedicated the show to Castronovo and said he thought he would be okay. No official update on the drummer's condition had been shared at the time of reporting.

Castronovo is 62 and played with Journey from 1998 to 2015, when he left the band. He returned in 2021. His 2015 exit followed years of alcohol and drug abuse and a conviction with probation, which he has since spoken about openly. He also played with Bad English and Hardline, and has worked with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Steve Vai, Paul Rodgers and GZR, the project of Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler. Last year he made headlines when a fire broke out beneath the stage during a show at NRG Stadium in Houston, right under his drum riser.

Journey is in the middle of its Final Frontier tour, a farewell tour that kicked off on February 28 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The current run of shows began on September 12 in Los Angeles and runs through November 28 in San Francisco. The next show is scheduled for October 10 at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas. Whether Castronovo will be back behind the kit there is not yet known.

For Dutch fans of the band, this is mainly news to follow, since the tour is limited to North America. It does show how fragile such an extensive farewell tour can be when a key member drops out, and how the band, with the help of a trusted drum tech, still managed to save the night.