American tour snuffed out: Emotional Morrissey hints at withdrawal from music business after 'lack of funding' forces yet another cancellation

Morrissey has cancelled his American tour due to a 'lack of funding (Rex Features)

Morrissey has already cancelled the majority of his tour dates this year due to ill health. But now the former The Smiths frontman has had to axe what remained of his South American tour due to a “lack of funding” - and has hinted that he is set to abandon the music business in favour of the “art of doing nothing”.

In an emotional post on the fan site True To You, Morrissey said 2013 had been a year of “too many disappointments”. The 53-year-old singer suffered a serious bout of food poisoning recently, resulting in the postponement of 14 concert dates this month.

In March he cancelled 22 US tour dates due to a series of “medical mishaps” which included a bleeding ulcer, the throat condition Barrett’s oesophagus and double pneumonia.

The “The Boy With The Thorn in His Side” singer described the latest set of cancellations as “agonising” and asked fans to pardon him.

He writes:” I am informed today that the projected tour of South America is snuffed out, thus euthanized - due, I'm reliably advised, to lack of funding. It's quite easy to sell tickets, yet impossible to transport band and crew from F to G.”

Morrissey described it as “the last of many final straws” and hinted that he may wish to withdraw from touring. He said “the future is suddenly absent, and my apologies are now so frequent as to be somewhat ridiculous”.

He describes: “The collapse of [my] South America [tour] brings the curtain down with a colossal thud, and the major problems remain as insoluble now as they were in 2009.”

“The obvious conclusion stares back at me from the mirror, and the wheels are finally off the covered wagon. Cancellations and illness have sucked the life out of all of us, and the only sensible solution seems to be the art of doing nothing.”

Speaking to a Mexican radio station in March Morrissey explained his earlier American tour cancellation, saying it was "because of medical reasons, because I have had so much medical attention, it had soaked up all the insurance."

He had been fighting ill health for a number of weeks after being diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer and a condition called Barrett's oesophagus, which can in some rare cases, lead to cancer. His depleted defences were then battered by pneumonia.

The singer said: “They tried to patch me together over the following five weeks, but it didn't quite work and I was on lots of IV drips for almost five weeks and each time it seemed like I was back to robust health I would go into decline.”

Morrissey disclosed that he had been advised to retire from live performance but was determined to return to the stage because “it’s ingrained within me and I know it’s the best of life when you tour and you make music and sing.”