After playing together for nearly five decades, these are some of the greatest hardships the members of U2 have faced throughout their careers.
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00:00After playing together for nearly five decades,
00:03these are some of the greatest hardships the members of U2 have faced throughout
00:06their careers. According to Song Facts, Iris Hewson,
00:10Bono's mother, died of a brain aneurysm during her father's funeral in 1974.
00:15The singer was just 14 years old at the time.
00:17Bono recalled his emotions following his mother's passing to Rolling Stone,
00:21saying, Rage always follows grief and I had a lot of it and I still have.
00:25But I channeled it into music and I still do.
00:28I have very few memories of my mother
00:30and I put a few of them in a song called Iris.
00:33Aside from Iris, Bono wrote two other songs
00:35in the early 1980s about his mother's death, I Will Follow and Tomorrow.
00:40The band's 2014 album, Songs of Innocence,
00:42was released on the anniversary of his mother's passing,
00:45though Bono said the timing was coincidental.
00:48In August 2001, Bono's father, Bobby, also passed away.
00:51He was 75 years old and had been diagnosed with cancer.
00:55According to ABC News,
00:56the singer traveled in between tour dates to be by his father's side in his final days.
01:01During his first show after his father's
01:03passing, Bono honored his father and thanked him for encouraging him creatively.
01:07U2 was born when in 1976, 15-year-old Larry Mullen Jr.
01:11posted a notice on his school bulletin board looking for musicians in the hope
01:15of starting a band. At the age of eight, Larry had taken up
01:18the piano before switching to the drums a few years later.
01:21This move proved to be the right one
01:23technically, as he spent the next year being taught by Joe Bonney,
01:26one of the best drummers in the country.
01:28However, this top tier education would not
01:30last, as Bonney tragically passed away a year later.
01:33While Bonney's daughter, Monica, would continue teaching the aspiring rock star,
01:37this was not the only loss of life young Mullen would deal with in his teens.
01:41In 1973, his younger sister, Mary, also passed away.
01:45Then in 1978, not long after he formed the band that would become U2,
01:49Larry's mother, Maureen, died in a car accident.
01:51The loss of his mother was particularly
01:53hard for Mullen, but his bandmate Bono was able to draw
01:56from losing his own mother to support him.
01:58He came into my house and just said,
02:00look, I understand what's going on because it happened to me.
02:04And maybe I can help you.
02:07As his bandmates aged out of their challenging youths,
02:09bassist Adam Clayton had his own demons to confront.
02:12In a 2019 interview in The Tommy Tiernan Show, Clayton discussed how early fame
02:17and success overwhelmed him in his personal life, saying,
02:20By the time the Joshua Tree hit, we could buy a house.
02:23Anyone I've met who's experienced success
02:25and fame in that way in those years, it takes them a long time to recover from it.
02:29In 1984, Clayton was arrested for dangerous and drunk driving.
02:33Five years later, he was arrested for possession of 19 grams of marijuana.
02:37According to Hot Press, this charge in particular threatened his
02:40ability to get visas and the group's ability to tour.
02:43He pleaded guilty, paid a fine and ultimately
02:45avoided any visa issues, but continued to struggle with substance abuse.
02:49In 1993, Clayton missed a concert in
02:52Australia after spending a night partying and was replaced for the show.
02:55After this discrepancy, he successfully committed to a sober
02:58lifestyle with the support of his bandmates.
03:01According to Billboard, Clayton received an award at the Music Cares Addiction
03:05Recovery Awards in 2017 for his work in helping others with the recovery process.
03:10Following the lackluster response to their
03:121988 film and soundtrack, Rattle and Hum, U2 entered the 90s with a few
03:17of its members set on changing their sound.
03:19According to VH1 Legends, The Edge had become interested in experimental
03:23electronic music, while Bono was interested in dance rhythms.
03:27At the same time, Clayton and Mullins had their own creative desires and were
03:30reluctant to take things in the direction their bandmates wanted to.
03:34We had to forge a new sound for the band,
03:38but none of us really knew how to do that.
03:42As told by Ultimate Classic Rock, the group worked with producer Brian Eno,
03:46recording in the same Berlin studio that Eno tracked him with David Bowie years before.
03:50The move did little to end tensions, which were leading to a possible breakup.
03:54However, they struck gold in the nick of time.
03:57During one session, The Edge played an impromptu guitar riff
04:00that caught the ear of his bandmates.
04:02Bono wrote lyrics to the riff, which became the hit single, One,
04:05a song about the band's disunity and the desire for unification.
04:09Eventually, the band returned to Ireland,
04:11patched together their friendship and finished work on their 1991 album,
04:14Octung Baby.
04:16The record became one of their most celebrated works.
04:19From Tase Rory Gallagher to Phil Lennett of Thin Lizzy,
04:22Ireland is not short on popular musicians,
04:24and U2 stands among the best known Irish acts in the world.
04:28For this reason, you might imagine that their home city of Dublin would embrace
04:31the band as much as Liverpool celebrates The Beatles or Atlanta embraces Outkast.
04:36However, as Mel Magazine pointed out,
04:38U2 are not exactly beloved in their native Ireland.
04:41The Guardian points out that part of the
04:43band's unpopularity might be that they are now too popular.
04:46Though Dublin has publicly honored Gallagher and Lennett,
04:49so being too famous can't be the only factor in play.
04:52The Guardian has also cited Bono's
04:54public persona as a big reason why U2 isn't bigger back home.
04:58While the singer married his childhood
04:59sweetheart and still lives in Dublin, that doesn't stop people in the city
05:02from creating graffiti insulting him.
05:04According to Two Oceans Vibe, Bono's tendency to avoid paying taxes
05:08is a particular strike against him in the eyes of his compatriots.
05:12Politician Brid Smith told the outlet Bono is seen as part of that cohort
05:16of very wealthy people who avoid paying tax in this country,
05:19but enjoy the fruits of being of this country.
05:22According to Wired, the production of the Broadway musical
05:25Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark kicked off in 2005, not long after the release
05:29of the successful Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies.
05:32With respected theater director Julie
05:33Taymor at the helm of production and Bono and The Edge working on the music,
05:37the ingredients for success were there, but not for long.
05:41An early sign of failure came in the form
05:43of tragedy, when producer Tony Adams died of a stroke early into production.
05:47Despite this shocking incident, playwright Glenn Berger recalled that no one involved
05:51with the play was deterred by the loss at the time.
05:54Unfortunately, this would not be the end of their problems.
05:56According to the BBC, the financial collapse of 2007 scared away investors
06:01from putting their money into production, and making the play itself work would
06:04require some serious engineering. While a human swinging on webs from
06:08building to building may be easy to pull off in comics, cartoons and movies,
06:12these factors are not particularly suited to theater performance.
06:15Several actors and stunt people suffered serious injuries in rehearsals,
06:19leading to the play gaining an unfavorable early reputation.
06:22The Wall Street Journal reported that the $75 million production did not come
06:26close to breaking even by the time its Broadway run ended.
06:29U2's frontman seems to live a pretty clean-cut life.
06:33However, he has suffered from several injuries.
06:35According to U2.com,
06:37In 2010, Bono suffered a compression of the sciatic nerve,
06:40a tear in a ligament, and a herniated disc.
06:43The severity of these injuries required surgery and an eight-week rehabilitation program.
06:48Four years later, a bike accident left the singer with a facial fracture,
06:51three fractures of his left shoulder blade,
06:53and a fracture to his left humerus that broke through the skin.
06:56Billboard reports that he required a five-hour surgery to recover from the accident.
07:00Luckily, the singer can joke about it now.
07:02There's nothing, nothing cool about coming off a push bike.
07:07According to VH1 Legends, Bono first began wearing sunglasses
07:11during performances while in the band's 1992 tour, supporting the release of Octoon Baby.
07:16The sunglasses were originally a part of his stage persona, The Fly,
07:19a parody of flamboyant rock stars like Lou Reed and Jim Morrison.
07:23Three decades after the tour ended and The Fly had flown away,
07:27Bono still sports sunglasses on and off the stage.
07:30Despite the fact they are no longer part of a character,
07:33in an interview on The Graham Norton Show in 2014,
07:36Bono admitted he has suffered from glaucoma for over 20 years.
07:39He explained that he initially doubted
07:41there was anything wrong with his eyes, as his vision was perfect.
07:44However, after speaking to an eye doctor,
07:46he realized that he was exhibiting symptoms of the disorder without realizing it.
07:49According to Early Vision Source,
07:51individuals who suffer from glaucoma are sensitive to light and glares.
07:55In strong sunlight, glares from different surfaces could also harm their eyes,
07:58causing irritation, redness and even a loss of vision.
08:02Seeing that for the past four decades,
08:03Bono has performed stadium shows with extremely bright lights.
08:07It's probably for the best that he keeps the shades on.
08:10In 2017, Bono mentioned to The Irish Times
08:13that he'd had a near-death experience the year before.
08:15However, it wasn't until the release of his 2022 memoir, Surrender,
08:19that Bono was ready to discuss these profoundly traumatic events.
08:22He wrote,
08:23In one of the chambers of my heart where most people have three doors,
08:26I have two, two swinging doors,
08:28which at Christmas 2016 were coming off their hinges.
08:32Doctors diagnosed him with blistering on his aorta,
08:34the chief artery which delivers oxygenated blood throughout the body.
08:38The condition needed immediate treatment.
08:40While undergoing an emergency eight-hour
08:42heart procedure at the Mount Sinai Health System Hospital in New York City,
08:45Bono recalled looking down on his own body while a surgeon operated.
08:49Following the successful completion of the surgery,
08:51the medical team told the singer's family that Bono had been walking around
08:55with 130 percent lung capacity.
08:57Not only was this a disaster waiting to happen,
08:59but it required them to use extra strong wire to sew him up after the operation.
09:04In 1989, U2 guitarist The Edge and his
09:07wife welcomed their third daughter, Blue Angel Evans.
09:10In July 2022, The Edge's family grew
09:12when Blue Angel Evans gave birth to a son named Shanon O'Shaughnessy Evans.
09:17Unfortunately, the pregnancy, delivery and early life of the baby proved
09:20difficult, medically fraught and ultimately tragic.
09:23According to Blue Evans' Instagram page,
09:25the child was born two weeks prematurely, at which point doctors discovered a knot
09:29in the umbilical cord. Unable to properly develop in his mother's womb without
09:33that lifeline, Shanon was diagnosed with brain damage so pronounced that he was
09:37unable to live on his own without constant medical attention and machinery.
09:41Eight days after his early arrival,
09:42the family opted to remove the child from the equipment to allow for a natural death.
09:47Sadly, Shanon O'Shaughnessy Evans died nine days after his birth.
09:51From its inception in 1976, U2 has maintained the same chord lineup
09:56of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.
09:59That endurance and consistency makes U2 an exception to the rule for rock bands
10:04who often face significant lineup changes as the decades go on.
10:07This fact will make it all the more sad
10:09and strange when the group takes the stage for a series of Las Vegas concerts
10:13without Mullen on drums.
10:15Where are we?
10:18Well, we're not in Dublin.
10:19In 2023, Mullen is scheduled for some important surgical procedures.
10:23Speaking with Jeff Edgers at The Washington Post, Mullen explained that playing
10:27drums for so long has taken a physical toll.
10:29He said, I have lots of bits falling off elbows, knees and neck.
10:34So during Covid, when we weren't playing,
10:36I got a chance to have a look at some of these things.
10:38There's some damage along the way.
10:40Because of his pressing medical needs and post-surgical recuperation time,
10:43Mullen won't be able to play the Las Vegas dates,
10:46leaving U2 to perform with a hired replacement.
10:49This will make for the most significant
10:50and longest lasting lineup change in the band's history.
10:53Naturally, his bandmates are less than thrilled about carrying on without him.
10:57As The Edge told The Telegraph,
10:59no one is more disappointed than us that Larry won't be joining us in Vegas.
11:03It'll be strange to turn around and not see him behind us after all these years.
11:07If you or someone you know is struggling
11:09with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
11:12Administration's 24-7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
11:16That's 1-800-662-4357.