U2 Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Wasn’t Sure He’d Ever Perform Again After Neck Surgery, And Still Isn’t: ‘If I Can Play For An Hour, That’s Enough’
Categoria: Musica
The band's timekeeper told Rolling Stone that post-surgery he's been "playing differently."
Por Billboard | 29/09/2026
For the past half century, U2 has experimented with sounds, looks, approaches and personas. But the one immutable fact about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legends is that they are a unit, an unbreakable quartet who share songwriting credit and a burning desire to stay together through thick and thin. Related Here's How 50 Cent Playfully Responded to Cardi B Not Feeling '21 Questions' During a Club Appearance U2 to Mark 50 Years As a Band With New Album ‘Carnaval De Luz,’ Featuring Dolly Parton’s Final Vocals Billy Ray Cyrus Shares One of His 'Most Prized Possessions,' a Beautiful Handwritten Dolly Parton Letter: 'I Too Think You Are Special!' But in a new Rolling Stone digital cover story, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. reveals that his yearslong struggle with neck pain led to him considering stepping down from the crucial spot he’d held in the band since he pinned a message to a noticeboard at Dublin’s Mount Temple High School that read “drummer seeks musicians” half a century ago this week. Mullen Jr., 64, tells the magazine that he was so laid low by a neck injury on the 2019 leg of the band’s Joshua Tree anniversary tour that doctors suggested he might consider retiring due to the chronic congenital fusion in a facet joint in his neck that was irritated by his drumming. “If you don’t do my job, you wouldn’t really notice,” Mullen Jr. said of the pain caused by the injury, “and I got away with it for years.” But, by the end of the tour, Mullen Jr. was in such agony — despite nightly treatments after each gig — that he knew he had to take serious action to address the pain. “There’s a certain amount of humiliation when you get injured and you can’t get over it, and I felt humiliated,” he said in the first interview he’s done about finding his way back to the band after several years on the bench. The group hired a fill-in drummer, Dutch musician Bram van den Berg, for their residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere in 2023 and 2024. Mullen attended his first U2 show as an audience member in March 2024 at a point where it was unclear if he’d be able to return to his day job. As you might imagine, he had mixed feelings about all of it. “The band were doing what the band needed to do. Those drum parts are mine, those parts that I played when I was a kid, a lot of them not really knowing what I was doing,” he said of watching van den Berg fill-in. “And I was hearing those parts played very well by Bram, and I was grateful for that. It’s an odd thing to say, but I was. ‘Cause I had no sense of having been left behind. All those feelings were my own — they were personal feelings of humiliation. But they weren’t to do with the band. They were directed at myself.” Mullen Jr. said by the time he came off the road after the 2019 tour he was “really in a bad way,” and exhausted after decades of touring, but confident he would “bo