U2 front man Bono has said that he has had "a hail of blows over the years" following his recent health scare and a bicycle accident in New York, which led to surgery and left him out of action for several months.
Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, the 57-year-old he said: "You get warning signs, and then you realize that you are not a tank, as Ali says. Edge has this thing that he says about me, that I look upon my body as an inconvenience."
Asked about his throat cancer scare in 2008, Bono said. "No, it was a check for it. One of the specialists wanted to biopsy, which would have risked my vocal cords - and it turned out OK."
Bono also reflects on the cycling accident which saw him hospitalised with debilitating injuries from which thankfully he has since recovered.
"There is comic tragedy with a bike accident in Central Park - it is not exactly James Dean. But the thing that shook me was that I didn't remember it. That was the amnesia; I have no idea how it happened. That left me a little uneasy, but the other stuff has just finally nailed me. It was like, "Can you take a hint?"
Asked how his health issue affected the making of U2's chart-topping album, Songs of Experience, Bono replied: "Well, strangely enough, mortality was going to be a subject anyway just because it is a subject not often covered.
"And you can't write Songs of Experience without writing about that. And I've had a couple of these shocks to the system, let's call them, in my life. Like my bike accident or my back injury. So it was always going to be the subject. I just didn't want to be such an expert in it.
He talked about meeting his friend, the poet Brendan Kennelly. "And he said, "Bono, if you want to get to the place where the writing lives, imagine you're dead."
"There is no ego, there is no vanity, no worrying about who you will offend. That is great advice. I just didn't want to have to find out outside of a mental excursion. I didn't want to find out the hard way."
