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After being forced to cancel the second of two weekend shows in Berlin because he lost his voice, U2’s Bono told fans Sunday he expects to have his singing chops back soon, and the band will continue its European tour.
“I’ve seen a great doctor and with his care I’ll be back to full voice for the rest of the tour,” Bono said in a statement posted on the band’s website. “So happy and relieved that anything serious has been ruled out. My relief is tempered by the knowledge that the Berlin audience were so inconvenienced.”
The band would return to Berlin, which was the kick-off city for the tour, on Nov. 13, the statement said.
In an earlier statement, band members apologized to fans, saying, “Bono was in great form and great voice prior to the show and we were all looking forward to the second night in Berlin, but after a few songs, he suffered a complete loss of voice.”
A fan’s video of Friday’s performance included a snippet of Bono complaining that the Mercedes-Benz Arena felt like “one giant cigar,” and smoke was visible under the stage lights. The arena prohibits smoking in “publicly accessible areas” but has designated smoking areas, according to the venue’s website.
The band’s performance was ultimately cut short Friday.
“I’ve lost my (singing) voice,” the 58-year-old says on the fan video. “I don’t know what to do. ‘Cause I was singing like a bird about 10 minutes ago.”
The band began a rendition of “Beautiful Day,” but Bono’s vocals clearly seemed strained. The arena later tweeted, “Unfortunately, the @U2 show can’t go on.”
Band members said in the statement that they were unsure of the diagnosis.
“We don’t know what has happened and we’re taking medical advice,” they said.
In 2014, Bono revealed that his omnipresent sunglasses were the result of a 20-year battle with glaucoma.
The “Experience + Innocence” European tour started Friday and was scheduled to culminate with four nights in Dublin in November.
Bono previewed the tour by vowing to fly the blue European Union flag on stage. He described the move in an opinion piece for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a statement against “identity politics, grievance, violence.”