Entertainment Music The Monkees' Mike Nesmith Reveals Quadruple Bypass Heart Surgery Following Tour Cancellation Weeks after canceling the final dates of his concert tour due to a health scare, the Monkees' Michael "Mike" Nesmith has revealed that he has undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery By Jordan Runtagh Jordan Runtagh Twitter Jordan Runtagh is an Executive Podcast Producer at iHeartRadio, where he hosts a slate of pop culture shows including Too Much Information, Inside the Studio, Off the Record and Rivals: Music's Greatest Feuds. Previously, he served as a Music Editor at PEOPLE and VH1.com. He's written about art and entertainment for more than a decade, regularly contributing to outlets like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, and appearing as a guest on radio and television. Over the course of his career, he's profiled the surviving Beatles, Brian Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Roger Waters, David Byrne, Pete Townshend, Debbie Harry, Quincy Jones, Brian May, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Taylor and many more. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, he lives in Brooklyn, where he can be found DJing '60s soul records. People Editorial Guidelines Published on July 26, 2018 05:45 PM Share Tweet Pin Email Trending Videos Weeks after canceling the final dates of a concert tour due to an unspecified health scare, the Monkees’ Michael “Mike” Nesmith has revealed that he has undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery. The precise details of Nesmith’s health woes have been scarce since he entered the hospital just before a scheduled gig with fellow Monkee Micky Dolenz in Glenside, Pennsylvania, but the 75-year-old opened up to Rolling Stone‘s Andy Greene about his road to recovery. “I was getting weaker and weaker and I couldn’t get my breath,” he says of the days leading up to the procedure. “When we got to Lake Tahoe and then the high altitude of Denver, I couldn’t get out of bed and I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t agonizing. It was just the business of wanting to take a big, deep breath and not being able to do it.” Michael Tullberg/Getty For some dates he got by with an oxygen tank and a mask located just off stage, but two brief trips to the emergency room in the same week gave him some indication of how serious the situation had become. Just before the concert in Pennsylvania, Nesmith knew he needed medical help. “I didn’t collapse to the ground or anything like that, but I couldn’t breathe,” he recalled. “So I sat down until I got my breath and then I realized the breath wasn’t gettable. That marked the end. People knew I couldn’t keep on like this. It was a road to hell.” The Monkees’ Michael Nesmith Suffers ‘Minor Health Issue’ Forcing the Iconic Band to Cancel Its Last 4 Tour Dates Fotos International/Getty Images Monkees Star Mike Nesmith Reveals All on Drugs, a Near-Crippling Illness, and Jack Nicholson ‘Bromance’ in New Memoir He immediately flew to his home in Carmel, California, to meet with his cardiologist. The operation was performed a short time later, followed by 10 days spent hospitalized. “I was using the words ‘heart attack’ for a while,” he explains of his ailment. “But I’m told now that I didn’t have one. It was congestive heart failure. It has taken me four weeks to climb out of it.” Now, a month later, he reckons he’s “back to 80 percent” and eyeing a brief tour with his own group, the First National Band, kicking off Sept. 7 in Texas. “I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “My thinking is clear and I know who I am and where I am. It all feels like a natural healing process.”