As U2 announces a sizable North American tour for 2015, guitarist The Edge is confirming that Bono, who recently injured himself in a bicycle accident and has been out of commission since, is going to be just fine by then—even though he may have to miss some appearances in the process, including KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas later this month.
The rocker called in to CBS Radio station KROQ’s Kevin & Bean Show this morning (Dec. 3) to discuss the incident, as well as the tour.
“He managed to come out of it with what you could only describe as injuries from a car crash, literally, multiple fractures of bones in his elbow and in his back,” The Edge said. “But he’s doing OK.”
Don’t worry—though his injuries, which included multiple fractures (chiefly a facial fracture affecting the orbit of his eye and a humerus bone fracture in his left arm that tore through the skin), may have been severe, at least he was wearing a helmet.
“We’re kind of lucky he was wearing a helmet so he didn’t actually break Central Park,” the guitarist said. “But he’s made of of tough stuff and he’s bouncing back. He’s so upset about the fact that, unfortunately we’re about to announce, we’re not going to be able to do the Acoustic Christmas because he’s been told by his doctors that he’s got to stay put. He’s back in Dublin right now and basically he can’t move for the next couple of months.”
He’s referring to KROQ’s annual Almost Acoustic Christmas show, at which U2 was scheduled to headline.
“It was a Sunday, a lot of people in the park and he just wasn’t paying enough attention,” he continued, referencing the accident. “He was going fast down a bit of a hill and somebody came out onto the cycle way, he swerved to avoid them and just went straight over the bars.”
So how, Kevin asked, did no one snap a photo? Simple: “You know, when Bono goes cycling he likes to dress up as a Hasidic Jew.
“The poor guy. Basically his left elbow was shattered so a lot of the work was reconstructing the joints and putting in wires and plates. He actually showed us an X-Ray a couple of days later and it looked like a miniature of the Eiffel Tower was in his elbow and then the same had to happen with a fracture of his pinky, the joint there was totally messed up, so that needed a bone graft. And the most vulnerable was actually his upper back, the scapula because they couldn’t put any plates in there or they decided not to do surgery. So he has got to be very still and not move around ’til that’s really healed.
“He’s doing physio to keep the joints active twice a day,” he added.
As part of Bono’s absence, the band performed as U2 Minus 1 Monday night in Times Square, with Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay’s Chris Martin holding the reins as frontmen.
“It was an amazing experience but it did feel a little bit like we were cheating on Bono I have to admit,” he said. He added that it had never happened before, and that “it’s not an experience I would want to repeat again.”
Listen to the full interview at
KROQ.
