WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

Rock Icon, 64, Reveals Career-Threatening Injury

The legendary musician says his ability to perform live is uncertain because of the rare condition.

Larry Mullen Jr. is opening up about the rare medical condition that has left his future in music uncertain.

The Irish drummer founded U2 at just 14 with Adam Clayton, Bono (real name Paul David Hewson), and The Edge (David Howell Evans). He now admits that five decades of drumming has taken a toll on his health, intensifying the congenital fusion he has long struggled with.

“If you don’t do my job, you wouldn’t really notice,” Mullen, 64, told Rolling Stone in a Sept. 24 interview. “And I got away with it for years.”

A congenital fusion is a condition in which two or more bones are abnormally joined, limiting mobility. Mullen’s is in a facet joint, the point at which two spinal bones connect.

Mullen said he’s been aware of the problem for years, but his pain intensified during the 2019 leg of U2’s Joshua Tree tour.

“By the time I came off the road, I was really in a bad way,” the 22-time Grammy winner said, adding that he’d always thought he’d “bounce back.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, his soreness prevented him from playing at all.

“I realized that I was physically damaged beyond repair… I shut down, everybody had, and my body just went, ‘You’ve had enough,’” Mullen said.

A few years later, however, when the band’s Sphere residency came up in 2022, Mullen willingly signed up for it—a commitment his doctors told him to undo.

“You won’t make it through rehearsals,” the rock icon’s physiotherapist told him.

When the band went on to do the residency without him, Mullen said he completely understood, and that’s when he got serious about pursuing surgery.

But the surgery was risky, and there was no guarantee it would be successful. Many doctors, Mullen said, wouldn’t even talk about the option with him because of the slim chance that it could even leave him paralyzed.

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FINAL ENCORE

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“Most people were, ‘You know what? You’ve done incredibly well. Just retire. Sail off into the sunset. Why would you do this to yourself?’” he said, adding that even his family was against it.

He continued, “But my desire to play again overwrote that…. It’s only when you are faced with the possibility that you may not be able to do the thing that you love, that you’ve done for most of your life… It’s funny what your brain will do, and your body. It goes into a different mode.”

The drummer eventually found a young, Dublin-based neurosurgeon who agreed to operate on him, and a few months after the successful surgery, he started playing again, albeit differently.

“My body didn’t work the same way as it used to,” Mullen said.

Now, he’s uncertain about how long he can play each night on tour, but he plans to give it his best shot, he said.

“Even if I can’t play for two and a half hours, if I can play for an hour, that’s enough,” he says. “I’ve had it so good that I’ll accept that.”

The band, including Mullen, is prepping for a global stadium tour with the release of Carnaval De Luz, their first album with new material in nine years, set to drop November 13.

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GOODBYE, FAREWELL

Rock Legend, 81, Shares Health Update After Axing Concerts

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Natalie DemareeReporter, The Looker

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