A day after his 50th birthday in May, U2 frontman Bono was out cycling in New York when he felt something go wrong. He didn’t know it yet, but a disc in his back had burst through a ligament and broken into pieces. He spent the next few days getting around with a cane before an MRI landed him in a German hospital for emergency spinal surgery.
At the time of Bono’s injury, U2 were preparing to embark on the third leg of their 360° tour with a string of European and North American dates to run from June through September 2010, with tentative plans to tour South America sometime afterward. The 360° tour — so named for its gigantic circular stage which is surrounded on all sides by the audience — features a massive four-legged supporting rig nicknamed “The Claw” that holds the speaker system and cylindrical video screen. It hovers above the performance area like something out of War of the Worlds and has the potential to increase a venue’s capacity by 15-20%.
The 360° tour played to sell-out crowds on its first two legs in Europe and North America in the summer and fall of 2009 respectively, and the band were in training for their third run of dates when just like that, everything came to a screeching halt. The full extent of Bono’s injuries included sciatica, a ligament tear, a herniated disc, and partial paralysis in both legs. The singer underwent emergency surgery in May at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians-University Hospital where he was given better than even odds of coming out intact. He then required eight weeks of post-operative physical rehabilitation, which necessitated the cancellation of their headlining appearance at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in June, along with the postponement of the entire North American leg until 2011. Paul McGuinness, the band’s manager, said that, "Our biggest and I believe best tour has been interrupted and we're all devastated. For a performer who lives to be on stage, this is more than a blow. [Bono] feels robbed of the chance to do what he does best and feels like he has badly let down the band and their audience."
The surgery went smoothly, and Bono spent weeks recovering in bed where he had plenty of time to reflect. He realized, perhaps for the first time, that he is not as indestructible as he'd like to believe and that he might need to be a little more restrained in the future. Though as soon as he was well enough, Bono and fellow U2 bandmates guitarist The Edge (guitar), bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen worked on and recorded new material with Bono singing while lying down on a table.
It’s this kind of passion for what they do that has made U2 such a resilient bunch over the span of their three-decade-plus career. Formed in secondary school in 1976 when they were barely of legal driving age, and possessing limited musical proficiency, the band battled their way to the top of the heap, album by album, changing direction with each record as they experimented with various musical traditions (blues, folk, gospel, alternative rock, European dance music, industrial) and lyrical themes that ranged from the adolescent frustrations of Boy (1980), to the spiritual themes of October (1981), to dismantling the mythology of America on the critically acclaimed The Joshua Tree (1987), to the more conventional sound of their current work. While some albums have been better received than others, U2’s need to take chances and their willingness to fail are the cornerstones of a career that has earned them a total of 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band in the 53-year history of that American music institution.
But it’s on the concert stage where U2 really shine. The band ranks second in total concert grosses for the past decade after The Rolling Stones. Bono’s showmanship and love of live performance hinted at the group’s potential early on when they were still very much unpolished and carried them as they built an audience that numbers in the millions today. The first two legs of the 360° tour alone have put them in front of some 3 million fans.
U2’s triumphant return to the stage took place in early August in Turin, Italy, where the band resumed their 360° tour, playing to a crowd of 45,000. Bono made the Turin show after having been out of rehabilitation a mere two weeks and was justifiably concerned about whether or not he could pull if off. But he hit the stage that night like a prizefighter, jumping and throwing punches in the air. “Once I got started,” he says, “I knew it was going to be all right.” Says Mullen, “There was something about his stance. There was an energy, where he had to draw on something deep.” After his ten-week ordeal, Bono says that something deep was sheer gratitude.
The 360° tour has been completely revamped with a set-list mix that includes hits and rarely-played songs from U2’s catalog as well as still-unfinished numbers. Bono and The Edge have scored the Spider-Man musical, which is set to open on Broadway in December, and the band are also working on a new album which is expected to be released in time for their return to North America next year. “This could be our heyday,” says Bono. “Maybe we just needed a little pause.”
U2’s 360° tour plays Europe, Australia, and New Zealand through December 2010, while the rescheduled US dates begin in May 2011. For more information on the tour, check out the band’s website at www.U2.com.
