U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. has condition that makes counting bars ‘like climbing Everest’

Drummer Larry Mullen Jr., a founding member of Irish rock band U2, has revealed that he has a learning difficulty that makes counting musical bars feel like climbing Mount Everest.

Drummer Larry Mullen Jr., a founding member of Irish rock band U2, has revealed that he has a learning difficulty that makes counting musical bars feel like climbing Mount Everest. “I’ve always known that there’s something not particularly right with the way that I deal with numbers. I’m numerically challenged,” the Grammy Award-winning musician told Britain’s Times Radio in an interview to be released later Friday. Its sister outlet, the Times newspaper, published excerpts from the interview on Thursday. “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 said. According to the British Dyslexia Association website, around 6% of the United Kingdom’s population have dyscalculia, which is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers,. A similar percentage of students have the condition in the US, according to the Learning Disabilities Association of America website. “When people watch me play sometimes, they say, ‘You look pained.’ I am pained because I’m trying to count the bars,” Mullen said. “I had to find ways of doing this – and counting bars is like climbing Everest,” he continued.