Bono’s Back Butchers North American Tour Leg

U2 has announced that Bono, who underwent emergency spine surgery last week, has been released from the hospital in Germany where he was being treated.

In a statement posted on the official U2 site yesterday, U2 said the 50-year-old singer, whose real name is Paul Hewson, will spend at least eight weeks recuperating from the surgery which was the result of a compressed sciatic nerve.

That means the North American leg of its 360-Degree tour is postponed until 2011.

U2 was set to start the tour in Salt Lake City on June 3, with other shows in Philadelphia, Montreal, Denver, Toronto and New York.

The band has also been forced to withdraw from Britain’s Glastonbury festival due to Bono’s surgery.

–

Note doubt there will be some seriously disappointed punters out there – U2’s live shows are phenomenon and the Glastonbury gig was looking like being a huge triumph for both the Festival itself and U2 –  “I’m heartbroken. We really wanted to be there to do something really special – we even wrote a song especially for the Festival,” Bono said.

The Edge made promising noises about the rest of the tour:

“We’re 95% confident that Bono will be back in time for our European leg. The doctors are saying minimum of eight weeks. Now, I know Bono, and we’re gonna have to chain him down to stop him from getting back out there. But we will endeavour to make sure that he doesn’t go back too soon, which would be the danger.  So, yeah, I’d say mid-August we’ll be back.”

No word on when or if ‘Songs of Ascent’ will be released. There might be a chance of material being released in a non traditional format. The Edge also has said:

“”We’re very excited about our next project. Our question now is, What’s the quickest way we can get this stuff out? It’s so about this moment. We almost don’t want to wait until we put a new CD together, but we’ll see.”