Brian Boydon music
They have conducted medical tests on Bono, wiring him up seconds before he is due to step out on stage in front of 80,000 people. The results showed that the amount of adrenaline flowing through his system at that precise moment would be enough to kill a person stone dead.
Incredible though it may seem, Bono lives on because his body has built up a tolerance to such colossal, potentially lethal adrenaline levels.
The Bono study hints at the daily hazards faced by rock stars. Last week the guitarist with Kiss, Paul Stanley, had to be carted off to hospital just before he took to the stage for a show in California. "My heart spontaneously jumped to 190-plus beats per minute, where it stayed for over an hour," he says on his website.
Doctors at the scene had to stop and restart his heart to get some sort of normal rhythm going. In a gesture of solidarity with their seriously ill bandmate, the other three members of Kiss played the gig without him.
Stanley is 55. His age undoubtedly contributed to the reason why, just before going on stage, his heart went into overdrive. This, one fears, will not be an isolated incident. More and more chronologically enhanced musicians are now putting their bodies through an ordeal that, medically speaking, is best left to a younger and more robust generation.
How big is the problem? Consider this: some of the biggest-grossing tours over the last few years feature such names as The Rolling Stones (in their 60s), Bruce Springsteen (who will be 60 in two years), Pink Floyd (in their 60s) and Paul McCartney (in his 60s). All of these people are a good bit older than Paul Stanley. Add in the reformation brigade - bands from the 1970s and 1980s who are desperate to top up their pension plan - and you're looking at a medical time bomb.
The acts themselves would most probably laugh you out of it (or get their people to do it for them) if you dared suggest that their continued touring isn't altogether healthy. The fans couldn't care less - all these acts sell out their world tours within minutes.
However, there is one section of the population which cares very much about all of this: the rock tour insurers. Some of these tours turn over hundreds of millions of dollars within a few months, and somebody has to underwrite the whole enterprise.
The rock world is not exempt from the normal rules of the insurance industry. As it stands, all acts have to go through an extensive medical before contracts are signed.
When Britney Spears crocked her knee in a video shoot and had to cancel a tour, the insurance people wouldn't pay out the $9.3 million she claimed was due to her. Spears, the insurance people alleged, hadn't disclosed to them that she was carrying a knee injury from a number of years previously. It has been reported on certain websites, although these could be wild allegations, that Spears now has difficulty getting insurance for her live work.
All of this could quite possibly be the reason the three other members of Kiss played on in California last week. Usually with a four-piece band, if one member cannot play for any reason, the gig is cancelled and refunds are given. By playing the show as three-piece - the first time Kiss have ever done so in their long history - it looks like the band were looking after their no-claims bonus.
