News Roundup 2011: August

After U2's 360 Tour wrapped in Canada at the end of July the numbers were crunched and the world had a new biggest ever tour. The band absolutely crushed Rolling Stones' record for the largest tour after it was revealed that they had raked in a staggering $736,137,344 (a little over £448m) during their 360 tour. The figure dwarf's the Stones' previous record of $558m. U2 had played to 7.26m fans over 110 concerts in 30 countries in a little over two years.

And if that kind of cash wasn't enough to make your eyes water, then U2's Bono also had a pretty big windfall in August when his investment firm Elevation Partners found that their $210m investment in Facebook, made in 2009 when the site was still relatively small, was now worth an extraordinary $975m.

Maybe those figures were too much for Meat Loaf after he collapsed at two different concerts within a week. The first, in Pittsburgh, saw him suffer an asthma attack onstage and the second, in New Jersey, was due to what appeared to be exhaustion. Meat denied that there was anything wrong and later told Piers Morgan "I go out on the stage as if it’s the last thing I’ll ever do. And that’s what I’ve always said - if I'm going out, I'm going out on stage."

Former Deep Purple keyboard player Jon Lord was sadly diagnosed with cancer in August. He posted to his website "I would like all my friends, followers, fans and fellow travelers to know that I am fighting cancer and will therefore be taking a break from performing while getting the treatment and cure. I shall of course be continuing to write music – in my world it just has to be part of the therapy – and I fully expect to be back in good shape next year." By all accounts Jon has progressed well with his treatment during the past few months, and we're hoping that he's now on the road to recovery.

Former Warrant singer Jani Lane tragically passed away aged 47 due to alcohol poisoning. Lane was reportedly found dead in a motel room in California on 12 August carrying no ID except for a note which read "I am Jani Lane"which had been written by one of his friends. It was a tragic end for a supremely talented but clearly very troubled artist.

Lou Gramm revealed that he's not a fan of bands going out on the road without their original singer, saving particular scorn for his former band Foreigner. "As I understand it, the singer was actually trained to deliver pretty much exactly everything as I did it, note for note," he told Spinner. "If I were in the audience and learned that while I was there, I'd get up and leave. I think when the band name remains the exact same, but something as important as the lead vocal is different, it's misleading. It's like false advertising."

And finally, a classic piece of misdirection from Tony Iommi. Speaking (he thought) off-the-record to a Birmingham Mail journalist, Tony revealed that the original members of Black Sabbath had been rehearsing together. The world rejoiced, but then Tony issued a statement which said "Thanks to the Internet it's now gone round the world as some sort of 'official' statement on my part; absolute nonsense. I hope he's enjoyed his moment of glory, he won't have another at my expense. To my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better." Perhaps it was the tone of the statement, but everyone read this as an official denial that Sabbath were reforming. When you read it again, however, there's not a single denial that what he had said originally wasn't true...