It looks like the Today Show was June 19, 2007.

Your timeline seems accurate to me.

He needed rehab probably as far back as the beginning to middle of the Have A Nice Day tour. His performances were really weak then. He was also pretty bloated towards the end of the Bounce tour...

That I remember. It was the LH came out, and my dad passed out on line and I took him to the hospital, good times lol

Yes I agree with that.

They also did the taping of Unplugged on June 7, 2007 with Richie. Which I believe was the final straw and t.he need for detox

Well yes, I guess that would be memorable, huh?! He was okay, right?

Yeah, though I guess in retrospect it could be be seen as the start of his current problems.

Similar indeed, thanks for the words man. I still hope that the sun will shine in Munich, on the audience and Richie as well. Time will tell. No matter what I'll still be there though.

with only seven weeks to go till the Manchester gig, and Im pretty certain Richie will be missing for the european leg, what do you chaps reckon they could/should do to even make an attempt at making up for richie not being there ? I know they will never even get close to making up for the fact that he is missing......but do you think they will do something....

There are posts here about when Richie was in rehab before , use search engine...

I dont recall the band being more vocal at all as it was one show.... We got JBJ just making a statement... until Richie was well and with them on tour then they talked about his time in rehab in interviews...

Dawn

What makes you think that?