Journey drummer Deen Castronovo is leaving the band’s farewell tour, with Journey saying in a statement reported by Page Six that the 62-year-old is stepping away to focus on “personal health matters.”
That phrasing is careful and spare, which is often what public statements become when a health issue is real but private. It establishes one thing clearly: Castronovo will not continue on this stretch of the tour. It does not say what the condition is, how serious it is, or how long he expects to be away.
The decision follows two onstage interruptions in a little over a month. Castronovo was hospitalized after what Page Six described as a medical emergency during a performance in Tulsa on Oct. 8, where he left the stage after the second song. He returned when the tour resumed in San Antonio, but fans on Setlist.fm reported that he had to leave again during the Boston show. Drum tech Steve Toomey filled in there, and several songs were cut from the set.
Journey said Steve Murphy will join the lineup for the remainder of the Final Frontier tour. The replacement solves the practical problem for the band, but it also underlines the physical bargain live touring keeps asking of older performers: the show moves, even when a body objects.
Castronovo’s place in Journey has not been incidental. He first joined in 1998, left in 2015, and returned in 2021, contributing both drums and vocals. His wider career has included Bad English, Hardline and performances with artists including Ozzy Osbourne and Steve Vai. For fans, that history matters because this is not a session player quietly rotated out. It is a longtime member stepping aside in public view while a heavily branded final tour is still underway.
There is a temptation, whenever a performer exits after visible medical trouble, to turn a sparse statement into a diagnosis. The evidence here does not allow that. What is established is narrower and enough on its own: Castronovo had an onstage medical emergency in October, left another concert partway through in Boston, and is now off the tour for health reasons the band has chosen not to detail.
Journey’s own farewell language has already grown less definitive. Guitarist Neal Schon posted on Facebook on Nov. 2 that what began as “The Final Frontier” now felt more like “The Long Goodbye.” Castronovo, however, is not being asked to stretch that goodbye across more dates. For him, at least, the road has stopped.
Dua Mifsud 
Ryan C 
Marcus Azzopardi 