Originally Posted by Beaky

Before I get accused of reading too much into things, lets look at facts...

Richie is tweeting rather infrequently. One of the rumours I've heard in the last two days is that he needs some sort of procedure to correct something that makes it impossible for him to play guitar. This rumour has come from an ex-colleague and apparently it's doing the rounds.

I hear that a couple of days back and now a tweet about how Rockbridge guitars are killer... totally set off alarm bells in my head.

It's not impossible that Richie has heard this, seeing as it's something the press are discussing 'privately'. This tweet kind of cuts that rumour dead. It's like every time Jon speaks to the press about it, Richie creates his own 'press release' through Twitter. It seems a little like these guys are playing chess at the moment.

If this is the case and I am running out of any other ideas - I wish they'd just f*cking speak to each other and stop behaving like five year-olds.

The other fact that backs this up is, no one seems to know when he will be back, which lends itself to the possibility that this was all on a whim because he demanded to play some solo songs or he wanted a night off for this or that. I think this is definitely linked to Richie's solo album and the timing of What About Now & the tour.

OR... maybe the rumour I heard is true and Richie's just working out the geeetar muscles ready for IOW...