Bono: `David Bowie taught me how to sing beyond my man voice`

The Dubliner thanked Bowie for showing him how to sing beyond his 'man' voice, and add a feminine quality to his vocals.

The With Or Without You singer told Rolling Stone magazine: 'U2 owe him a lot. He introduced us to Berlin and Hansa Studios, to collaborating with Brian Eno.

'It's the high singing, beyond your 'man' voice into the feminine. And there's the staging, the attempt to be innovative.

'Bowie wasn't afraid to use scale, to dramatise things. His set list was not just a jukebox he could run through. It was drama.'

He went on to compare the Labyrinth actor to a British version of Elvis.

He added: 'It's not exaggerating to say, what Elvis meant to America, David Bowie meant to the UK and Ireland. It was that radical a shift in consciousness.

'The first time I saw him was singing Starman on television. It was like a creature falling from the sky. Americans put a man on the moon. We had our own British guy from space - with an Irish mother.'