U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jnr has revealed he struggles with numbers due to a debilitating health condition. The 63 year old musician was recently diagnosed with dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects a person’s ability to count, add, or use maths skills.
This condition has not only impacted his ability to handle numbers but also to count bars in music, sometimes leaving him looking ‘pained’ on stage during performances with the band, which includes Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton. Opening up about his condition, Larry likened his struggles to play music to ‘climbing Everest’, but he still manages to overcome it on stage.
Larry shared: “I’ve always known that there’s something not particularly right with the way that I deal with numbers. I’m numerically challenged. And I realised recently that I have dyscalculia, which is a sub-version of dyslexia. So I can’t count [and] I can’t add..”
He told the Times: “When people watch me play sometimes, they say, ‘you look pained’. I am pained because I’m trying to count the bars. I had to find ways of doing this – and counting bars is like climbing Everest.”
After being diagnosed with dyscalculia, a condition affecting only 6 percent of Brits, Larry has channelled his creativity into producing music for a new film titled ‘Left Behind’.
The movie, set to premiere in early 2025, tells the story of five mothers fighting to start New York City’s first state school for dyslexic children—a cause close to Larry’s heart as his own son struggles with dyslexia, reports the Mirror.
Larry shared his personal connection to the project, saying: “Making the music through the eyes of my dyslexic son felt personal and visceral.”
Despite his diagnosis, Larry is not hitting the brakes; U2 is penning fresh tracks and eyeing a tour in 2026.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor, the UK’s Dyscalculia Network ambassador and chart-topping singer, opened up about her family’s experience with the condition. With two of her sons diagnosed during their primary school years, the ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ star often fields questions about how she recognised they needed extra help with maths.
In a heartfelt social media video, Sophie revealed: “The question I get asked the most is, how did I know that my children – a couple of my children – needed a little bit more support with their maths. And in fact that there might be something a little bit more fundamental going on.
“When one of them got to about seven or eight, which is the age that I’ve realised that children seem to, their normal coping strategies for getting by in a lesson, where if there is something they are finding a bit of a challenge, that’s when it starts to falter a little bit. And maybe the traditional way of teaching isn’t working for them.”
Sophie added: “It was like every time we were doing the same topics, it was like starting from scratch. We then got the dyscalculia diagnosis. But it’s not just as simple as getting them some extra support, it’s a specific way of learning and teaching that can really benefit someone if that’s what’s going on.
“So if that’s happening to you or someone in your life, someone you care about then reach out to the Dyscalculia Network because they really do have all the support that you need to help make maths not such a scary thing anymore.”
