Bono's bad back derails 'biggest ever' world tour

For fans of Irish rock band U2, Tuesday was most definitely not a beautiful day.

In a statement, the band said it will delay the North American leg of its 360 degree tour till 2011 and miss the upcoming Glastonbury Festival in England, for which the band was penciled in as head-liners.

The reason? Not band politics or drug abuse or mental exhaustion -- none of the usual afflictions of touring stars.

Lead singer Bono had emergency back surgery, to prevent possible paralysis!

It turns out that, while rehearsing for the upcoming tour, last week Bono suffered a "severe compression of the sciatic nerve" and "a serious" ligament tear and a "herniated disc".

Bono had the emergency surgery last Friday, in Munich, Germany. He's already been released and is expected to make a full recovery, so long as he closely follows his doctors' orders, which consist of months of rehabilitation work and no touring.

Sure, it's not the most glamourous of rock-star injuries. But it's what happens when rockers get old. And Bono, now 50 years young, certainly is no spring chicken.

The bed-ridden Bono released a statement about missing Glastonbury, saying, "I'm heartbroken. We really wanted to be there to do something really special -- we even wrote a song especially for the festival."

It's a catastrophic debacle for what had been billed as 'the biggest rock tour in history', thanks to its globe hopping and a massive budget. The tour had been projected to gross over Rs 3,500 crore (about $750 million), The Guardian reports.

The band has promised to reschedule all 16 cancelled dates of its North American tour, which was supposed to take place this June and July.

U2 is legendary for its lengthy world concert tours, and owns a whopping four of the twenty largest grossing tours of all-time -- 2001's Elevation Tour, 1997's Pop-Mart Tour, 2009-2011's 360 degree Tour and 2005-2006's Vertigo Tour.