U2 Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Isn’t Sure He Can Handle Full Shows After Neck Surgery - VICE

U2’s longevity as a band has often been attributed to the fact that they’ve had the same lineup since 1972. While other rock bands seem to have a revolving door of members, U2 has remained a strong unit for more than 50 years. However, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. revealed in a September 2026 Rolling Stone cover story that he was almost forced to retire before he or his bandmates were ready.

During the band’s 2019 Joshua Tree anniversary tour, Mullen suffered from debilitating neck pain. The pain was worsened by his drumming, to the point where doctors suggested retirement. After decades of drumming, the chronic congenital fusion of a facet joint in his neck had caught up with him.

“If you don’t do my job, you wouldn’t really notice,” said Mullen, “and I got away with it for years.”

By 2019, however, the pain was unbearable. Mullen was managing it with treatments after each show, but that quickly became unsustainable. When the tour finally ended, Mullen knew things had gotten serious, and he had to do something immediately.

“There’s a certain amount of humiliation when you get injured, and you can’t get over it, and I felt humiliated,” Larry Mullen Jr. told Rolling Stone. The founding U2 drummer was forced to take a step back from the band to address his neck pain, ultimately using the COVID-19 pandemic to put a pause on drumming.

At first, Mullen committed to picking up the sticks again for U2’s 2023-2024 Las Vegas Sphere residency. But his physiotherapist warned him that he “wouldn’t make it through rehearsals”. He was forced to back out of the commitment, and U2 hired drummer Bram van den Berg to fill in. Mullen attended a show in March 2024, his first time being in the audience at a U2 concert instead of on stage.

“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,” Mullen said. “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.”

Even though Mullen was grappling with the possibility of never returning to the stage with U2, he admitted that he didn’t feel as if his band had replaced him. “I had no sense of having been left behind,” he said. “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.”

During the Sphere residency, Mullen was focused on fixing his neck. But the surgery was risky, and his doctors warned him he could end up paralyzed.

“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?’” said Mullen.

Meanwhile, U2 bassist Adam Clayton said Mullen’s absence threw the band’s entire future into jeopardy.

“We didn’t know if Larry was gonna come back,” Clayton told Rolling Stone. “Could we keep going? Would we wanna keep going? That’s still an open question.”

Eventually, Mullen found a neurosurgeon who was willing to weigh the risks. He went through with the surgery, and after only a few months of recovery, was able to get behind the drums again. However, his technique had changed, and he no longer drummed the same way.

“Everything was different. My body didn’t work the same way as it used to,” Mullen revealed. He didn’t start from the beginning again, though. Instead, he taught himself the “most efficient” way to play the drums that worked alongside his limitations.

“All you need is a neck injury to bring you back to that place,” he said. “Because now you don’t have all those things you learned, all those little flicky-dee-dos, all the little skills. You now can’t rely on those.”

Still, Mullen said that he’s come to accept the fact that he probably won’t be able to play a full concert anymore. U2 is allegedly rehearsing for a rumored stadium tour after their latest album, Carnaval De Luz, drops on November 13, 2026.

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