Trade ad for The Hollies's single "I'm Alive" (from left to right: Eric Haydock, Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, Tony Hicks and Bobby Elliott).
The Hollies have confirmed that guitarist Tony Hicks and drummer Bobby Elliott, the band’s two longest-serving members, are stepping away from live performance, bringing the group’s touring career to a close after more than six decades on the road.
In a statement issued this evening, the group said Hicks had made the decision “due to health reasons,” and that Elliott had chosen to retire alongside him “out of respect for Tony and everything they have shared throughout their remarkable journey together.”
“After more than six decades, The Hollies’ touring career will come to a close with immense gratitude to the fans who have supported them around the world,” the statement continued, signed simply “The Hollies.”
Hicks joined the band in February 1963, replacing original guitarist Vic Steele ahead of their audition for EMI’s Parlophone label, with Elliott following him into the lineup that August in place of Don Rathbone. The pair had already played together in the Nelson group the Dolphins, and their arrival settled the classic lineup alongside Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. Through Nash’s 1968 departure, Clarke’s retirement from touring in 1999, and every other change in personnel since, Hicks and Elliott remained the constants, carrying the band’s live show through hits including “Bus Stop,” “Carrie-Anne,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)” and “The Air That I Breathe.”
The Hollies were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. Alongside the likes of the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Searchers, they were one of a small number of British Invasion-era bands to keep touring virtually every year since the 1960s, a run broken only by the pandemic-enforced pause in 2020.
What today’s announcement means for the band’s recorded output, or for the rest of the touring lineup, which in recent years has featured Ray Stiles, Ian Parker, Peter Howarth and Steve Lauri alongside Hicks and Elliott, has not yet been addressed. What is confirmed is that a touring career stretching back to the Cavern Club era of early 1963, when Hicks and Elliott first joined the group, has now come to an end.
