28.9.09

U2: COMING FOR THE MUSIC OR THE MESSAGE?
Posted: Friday, September 25, 2009 5:26 PM

By John Baiata, NBC News’ Senior Editor
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Political activism from rock stars has a long lineage. You can trace it all the way back to George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" in 1972, the "No Nukes" concert in New York in 1979, "LIVE AID" and "We Are the World" in the 1980's, and many more. Today such activism is ubiquitous. Concert-goers are urged to support a wide range of causes, and artists' web sites act as grass-roots organizations for a multitude of high-minded projects.

But no band – and no band leader – embodies this ideal more today than U2 and Bono. The band supports the efforts of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the Chernobyl Children’s Project. Bono has used his fame to put considerable pressure on countries to reduce the burden of debt on developing countries and to draw attention to the fight against AIDS in Africa with his RED project.


Lead singer Bono of the rock band U2 performs with the band during their 360 world tour stop at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ on Thursday.


U2 was the first big band to play in Sarajevo after the Bosnian war, launched an effort to put thousands of musical instruments back in the hands of New Orleans artists after Katrina, and have been very vocal in their support of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.


Many of their songs over the years have drawn on socio-political events for inspiration – from the fighting in Northern Ireland to the civil war in El Salvador.

The band’s latest world tour, in support of their most recent album, "No Line on the Horizon," has drawn praise from critics. The tour’s latest stop, at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, sold out for its two nights. With 84,000 attendees per night, that’s more over 160,000 to rally to the cause(s) in just two nights. (According to U2's Web site, they broke every record for attendence in the stadium - breaking the record previously set by Pope John Paul II in 1995.) Do the math for the rest of the tour, and you begin to understand the extent of the band’s reach, and that of others with similar followings.


But what’s the real draw, the music or the message?

For Kevin Sheridan, 37, an advertising salesman from Malverne, N.Y. the two go hand in hand. "I tend to like those (musicians) with a message. Usually the music is better, because it comes from the heart." Sheridan drew the line when it comes to Hollywood, however. "These artists write their own music, which reflects their views, and you know going in where they stand. But I don’t want to be preached to by someone just because they’ve starred in a movie."

Blair Thill, 22, of Little Silver, New Jersey, said Bono’s activism was part of what attracted her to the band to begin with. His involvement in the fight to eliminate AIDS in Africa even inspired her to do a fundraising bake sale during high school in support of the cause. But, she said, "I would venture to say most people are going to this concert for the music, not a social cause."


Images of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a song dedicated to her.


Dori Kenyon, 38, a representative for Amnesty International manning one of several booths outside the venue, did not entirely agree. "You get all types. Some people are here because they [U2] have been around for 30 years, and they love the music…There are others who are here because they believe in what we’re doing, and Bono supports that."

Kenyon had made the drive from Lancaster, Pennsylvania with her son because she said, "We have a responsibility to everyone around the globe." She was collecting signatures in support of three causes – a bill guaranteeing maternal health benefits for women in the U.S., a petition urging U.S. lawmakers to deliver a plan that fulfills "the human right to health care," and another urging the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other "prisoners of conscience" in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi was in the spotlight on this night almost as often as the band members.

The group’s Web site encouraged fans attending the show to download and print a mask of her face, and to wear it during their performance of "Walk On," a song written for her. Her image was beamed over the giant video screens above the set as Bono talked about her lengthy detention and fight for freedom.

Her plight was probably news to most in attendance. Not a single fan I spoke to beforehand had even heard of her, and no one visible in the crowd had donned the mask of her image.

Yet all eyes were on Bono as he spoke, and as he sang, in part:


"You could have flown away

A singing bird in an open cage

Who will only fly, only fly for freedom"

South African Bishop Desmond Tutu’s video message to the crowd, which preceded the encores, received a raucous cheer. Tutu reminded the crowd that they were "the same people" who protested for civil rights in America, against apartheid in South Africa and the troubles in Northern Ireland.


A video message from Bishop Desmond Tutu preceded the encores.



A few minutes later we were reminded that contributions from Americans to the "ONE" campaign had helped deliver life-saving drugs to 34 million African schoolchildren, along with a couple of other encouraging statistics.

When the concert was over, those in attendance began to file out, talking excitedly about what they’d just witnessed. And while none I heard were talking about Aung San Suu Kyi, they’d all been given a primer as part of the price of admission.

fieldnotes
Walking, rocking on from ignorance


Opinion
September 27, 2009 2:00 AMLast weekend my wife and I and our friends Denise and Terri headed down to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. We tailgated, we drank beer and we chowed down on some sensational bourbon-soaked steak tips. We goofed off and we joked.

Then we entered the stadium and rocked out with U2.

I've always admired the band's ethos and character, and I like a lot of their songs. Wouldn't say I'm a U2 fanatic, though, which was true of half our crew. While I respect the nobility of their commitment to improve the world, I also sympathize with those who find them preachy.

But when these guys took the stage, they put on a show that blew me away. Not only through their tunes and theatricality, but in the way they blended their message with their music. They truly are the "School of Rock." Their tutelage was, for me, most profoundly delivered during the intro for their classic tune "Walk On." Lead singer Bono dedicated the song to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese writer and activist who by rights should have been her country's prime minister. Instead, she's been under house arrest off and on for the past 20 years, persecuted by a brutal military junta.

Earlier in the evening, as fans began filling the seats, we had seen people with masks of a very attractive woman's face on the back of their heads. When the band launched into their performance of "Walk On," a long line of volunteers marched up on stage holding these masks in front of their faces.

This, we now realized, was Aung San Suu Kyi. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I really didn't know much about the woman.

Based on what my friend Bono told me — and the other 60,000 people in the crowd — she sounded like a remarkable person. If the band's plot was to trick us into thinking beyond ourselves, it worked in at least one instance. I was so intrigued by Suu Kyi's story I looked her up online the next day.

Aung San Suu Kyi is 64 years old now. Her father, Aung San, is kind of like the Burmese George Washington — except that he was assassinated when she was 2. Her mother was also a prominent leader and Burma's ambassador to India. Suu Kyi was educated at Oxford University in England and lived in New York for a time, working for the United Nations and writing.

In 1988 she returned home to care for her ailing mother and found her country in turmoil. Massive protests were occurring throughout the nation — especially during the famous 8/8/88 rallies that August — and an oppressive military responded by killing thousands of demonstrators. In her first public speech, Suu Kyi spoke out for democracy before a crowd of half-a-million people that year.

When the military banned gatherings of more than four citizens and started arresting and sentencing people without trial, Suu Kyi defiantly embarked on a speaking tour all across the country.

She helped form the National League for Democracy, which was dedicated to civil and nonviolent disobedience.

When her mother died that December, the funeral became a massive rallying cry for democratic government. Eventually the military government announced it would hold a general election, but in 1989 prohibited Suu Kyi from campaigning for office. The military continued to harass and murder her supporters. At one point, when soldiers aimed their rifles at her at the Irawaddy Delta, Suu Kyi calmly walked right up to them.

She was placed under house arrest in July, but the following May her National League for Democracy won a stunning 80 percent of Burma's parliamentary seats. As general-secretary of her party, Suu Kyi should have taken office as prime minister; instead the army leaders threw out the results and continued her imprisonment.

To put this into context, imagine if Democrats had won 80 of the 100 seats of the U.S. Senate, only to be told that the election was disallowed and Barack Obama was to be confined to his home in Chicago.

But while all this was going on, the rest of the world was taking notice. In 1991, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her sons accepted the honor on her behalf, and she used the $1.3 million prize money to start a health and education trust for her countrymen.

She was eventually released from house arrest in 1995, but when her husband Michael Aris, an Englishman dying of prostate cancer, asked to visit his wife in Burma one last time, the military junta refused. If she wanted to see her husband, they said, Suu Kyi would have to leave the country. She refused, realizing they wanted her to leave so they could bar her from returning home.

Her husband, the father of her two sons, died in 1999. He hadn't seen his wife since Christmas 1995. And Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest again in 2000.

She was released in 2002 and then arrested again the following year when scores of her supporters were massacred by uniformed government thugs in the town of Depayin. She remains a prisoner today. As recently as this past July, the head of the United Nations was prohibited from meeting with Suu Kyi during his visit to Burma.

It turns out Suu Kyi was actually the inspiration for "Walk On." U2 wrote the Grammy-winning song as a tribute to the activist for their 2000 album "All That You Can't Leave Behind' (which was also taken from this song.)

It was an amazing experience to see the band perform the song while dozens of ghostlike Suu Kyi faces haunted the stage and a stadium full of people sang along. Knowing something of the story behind the song, however, elevates it to a whole new level:

"And if the darkness is to keep us apart/And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off/And if your glass heart should crack/Before the second you turn back/Oh no, be strong.

"Walk on. Walk on."

People joke about U2 trying to save the world, but at the very least they're enlightening their audience a bit about the world around us. And we're having fun during the learning process.

But now I'm wondering why Suu Kyi isn't already a name on everyone's lips, the way Nelson Mandela's was during his incarceration.

D. Allan Kerr knows he will lose some street cred with his kids for saying this, but U2 has to be considered when debating the title of Greatest Rock Band Ever. Kerr may be reached at the_culling@hotmail.com.
seacoastline

27.9.09

'We always want to do better': Mullen

By JANE STEVENSON -- Sun Media
September 20, 2009

U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. sat down with Sun Media in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview late Thursday backstage at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, just hours before the band performed their second show at the venue.

Mullen gets the credit for the formation of U2, as he was the one who posted an ad on his high school notice board when he was just 14, looking for bandmates. The rest is history. He used to joke it was The Larry Mullen Band for about 10 minutes, before frontman Bono walked in.

Here's the best of what Mullen had to say during our 20-minute chat. Contrary to his reputation for being quiet, he was chatty and warm in person:

Sun Media: The band formed in 1976 and put out its first album, Boy, in 1980. Why after all this time are you still touring, do you think?

Mullen: There's nowhere else to go (laughs). What else am I going to do? I'm not qualified to do anything else. It's been a long time. And it's not always an easy choice to make, leaving your family, leaving your friends. That's a huge decision. However, we are very anxious to push the boat out as far as we possibly can. We always want to be better, and to do more. And I think that comes from when we were a young band out of Dublin. We were uncool, we were not terribly hip, in comparison to our contemporaries at that time, so we've always kind of felt a little like underdogs. And I know that sounds really preposterous at this stage but we always felt a little like that. ... So when we go out on stage it's just we want to basically prove ourselves every night."

Sun Media: Does anything surprise you anymore about U2 on stage?

Mullen: It is still a lot of fun. We actually like playing together. We like each other. We enjoy it. I mean that's always a surprise because you imagine that, 'Well, you're going to get tired of this and everyone's going to go their separate ways, and it'll all just fizzle out.' And it's always a surprise that that hasn't happened (to us), and that the value and the strength of those relationships is in some ways confirmed every night when we get out and play. And I think for a lot of people, four people who have been together for this period, walking out on stage together is a very powerful thing for your audience, but it's also hugely powerful for us."

Sun Media: Are Canadian audiences different than European or American audiences?

Mullen: Before we were big in the United States, we were big in Canada. Canada has always been huge for U2. And Canada traditionally has been very open to new music and, particularly, to U2. So we know this audience and they know us. Does it mean we don't have to work hard? No. Because it's a discerning audience because they know music, so we gotta work hard ... I'm not exaggerating and I'm not blowing smoke. Canada sustained us through some difficult periods of time. (Canadians) always supported us and, again, were music savvy, so they were always, on a musical level, an educated audience. So it was very important to us. So I love coming back here. I've spent a lot of time in Toronto and Montreal, on and off, on my own time, and I love it. Actually, I came back here a lot when I hurt myself. I had some injuries after the last tour and there were a couple of doctors here I was coming to see."

Sun Media: Do you have a post-show routine?

Mullen: I'm not a young man. I'm doing all right but over the years from bad posture I've managed to injure myself. I've been playing since I was nine, a street drummer. I didn't learn properly and so I did all the wrong things, and I certainly didn't expect to be playing 25, 30 years later. I thought you'd end after a certain period of time and I'd get on with my life. So continuing to do this and to pound and to play badly really has had an effect. The good news is that I found a physical therapist ... On stage I wear a plaster on the back of my neck just to hold my neck up, which is something I've never done before, I've always sort of tilted forward. So it forces me back just very slightly so it's made a huge difference ... I'm feeling much better. I'm actually really enjoying it."

jam.canoe
Bono reveals U2's next albums

By JANE STEVENSON - Sun Media
September 20, 2009


Before their second Toronto show in as many nights, Bono and U2 caused quite a stir yesterday on Yonge St. as they arrived for a last-minute guest spot on 102.1 The Edge. (Jack Boland, Sun Media)

FROM THE BACKSEAT OF BONO'S SUV, DOWNTOWN TORONTO -- Most first dates involve having dinner and seeing a movie.

Yesterday afternoon in Toronto, U2 frontman Bono picked me up in a shiny black Chevy Suburban on Yonge St., and it was non-stop talking.

OK, so it wasn't a date. Bono wasn't actually driving, and I got in the car first.

But the scenario was that one of the world's biggest music stars and his equally famous bandmates -- guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. -- had just visited 102.1 The Edge radio station, drawing dozens of fans for the last-minute appearance. And I ended up talking to the singer, resplendent in a denim ensemble and tinted glasses, in the backseat of his car, en route to last night's second show by U2 at the Rogers Centre.

The only others with us were his driver and his security man, while the car was given a police escort through downtown Toronto.

Ah, the life of Bono.



We talked about the band's current 360 Degree Tour, their latest album No Line on the Horizon, the possibility of not one but two new albums by U2, David Bowie, and the significance of space travel.

Here's the best of what he had to say in a Canadian newspaper exclusive with Sun Media. The rest of my exclusive one-on-one chats with his fellow band members at the Rogers Centre before last night's second show will appear in tomorrow's editions.

How did you feel about the first Canadian show of the 360 Degree Tour on Wednesday night at Rogers Centre? (The only other Canadian date is Oct. 28 in Vancouver.)

Well, I was in really great singing form, and the band played very well. The sound was good 'cause the roof was open. I mean, if the roof were closed we have a PA that can cope with it, but it was great to have the CN Tower as part of our light show. Thank you for contributing that to our show.

Are Canadian fans different than those in Europe? (They opened the 360 Degree Tour on June 30 in Barcelona.)

We've always had a really kind of progressive audience here. They've allowed us to push and pull them in different directions, because over the years we have kind of swerved all over the road a little bit musically, and that's the fun of it for us. And some people, some fans like U2 as a straight-ahead rock and roll band, some people like us as a folk mass, some people like us as a rave, some people like it as a political rally. I think in Canada, they actually like us to be all those things.

How does it feel to walk out onto the massive "spaceship" stage every night?

The scale of it was a little nerve-wracking at first. I was drawing this on napkins in restaurants, and I was building it with forks and things like that. But when you see it in front of you, I must say I did have a little bit of a knee wobble.

Did you think you were taking a risk playing so much of the new material off No Line on the Horizon (co-produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno) off the top of the live show, given the album hasn't produced any real hits?

I love hits, I love 45s, they're a thrill but our first responsibility for this album was to make an extraordinary album. We wanted to make an album as they were a dying species, a nearly extinct species. We said, 'Let's make an album with a beginning, middle and end, and take people into a world,' and so that was our first thing ... just to be challenging both of ourselves and our audience, and we succeeded with that. And maybe in that mindset you don't write a pop song, and that's probably what happened. But they're great songs, they're just not pop songs.

What's the status on a second more ambient album, to be released from the Lanois-Eno sessions, with the working title Songs of Ascent, and then the Rick Rubin session before that?

We've got a few albums up our sleeves. We've got a whole album we started with Rick Rubin, which is a rocking club album with beats and big guitars, and I can't wait to get back to that. So we're going to see where the mood takes us. But it's not like we have to start afresh. We have five or six songs on that album. We have about 12 on the Songs of Ascent, plus The Edge and myself have written Spider Man: The Musical -- that's nearly done. It's been an incredible time as songwriters ... If you're going to go out on the road, you have to have songs that have the attitude and the ambition to play in a venue like (the Rogers Centre), because if they haven't got it, you're not going to play them because whilst we like people to look a little startled, we're not going to do a crap show just to promote our new album. So they have to be great.

LATEST TOUR TAKES YOU TO A DEEP PLACE

Houston, we've got liftoff.

Before U2 walk out on their "spaceship-like" stage on their current 360 Degree World Tour, they blast David Bowie's Space Oddity in its entirety.

So what's with all the space stuff?

"His prolific imagination had a huge impact on me, as a teenager and to this day," Bono said in a Canadian newspaper exclusive with Sun Media yesterday in Toronto. "I can't get over his body of work.

"And the spaceship (stage), to me, it looks like some sort of mad spaceship ... and I just think it stands for, 'Well, we can go anywhere.' Which has always been the throw-down at any U2 show. 'Where do you want to go?' You can stay in the stadium if you want, or we can go to this other place where the streets have no name. We can go to this other place, the place of imagination, the place of soul, the place of possibility, and we can just get lost in it. And a great show, when that happens, people don't know where they are, I don't know where I am. And that's what I think it stands for."

U2 connected with the international space station during part of their show on Wednesday night.

"It's a strange thing, because we were working on this space idea for this tour (in) an intuitive way, not knowing it was the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon literally the month we went out. And we had begun talking with the international space station in preparation for something we're going to do with (Canadian) Guy

LaLiberte of Cirque du Soleil, which I'm really looking forward to. He's getting ready to go, at the end of the month, to the international space station and we're going to beam him into our show."

Bono, whose well-known social activism has included the ONE Campaign, said he was nine years old at the time of Armstrong's lunar walk, and "it formed in me a troublesome thought. Something has bothered me ever since, which is that it's the impossible that makes stuff fun and worthwhile, and if you can put a man on the moon, that as capable as human beings are, of self-delusion and destructive behaviour and greed and nihilism, we're also capable of harnessing the best of us to do the impossible."

jam.canoe
Q&A: U2's manager still hasn't found what he's looking for
Ray Waddell, Reuters
Published: Wednesday, September 23, 2009



Just one man in a stadium: Bono serenading via his great circular catwalk on Wednesday night at Toronto’s Rogers Centre.


As U2 wraps the 2009 dates of its groundbreaking 360 world stadium tour, the band is expected to gross about $300 million and sell about 3 million tickets to fewer than 50 shows.

Rather than a high-end ticket price, the big numbers are more about a unique staging concept that boosts configurations at stadiums, and fans know that U2 is again pushing the production envelope. The tour is in support of the band's latest album, "No Line on the Horizon," and if it isn't scaling the sales heights of previous sets -- since its March release, "Line" has sold 991,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- the band's manager, Paul McGuinness, credits that more to overall market conditions than a decline in the act's popularity.

Though sometimes outspoken about industry issues -- his 2008 MIDEM keynote excoriating the industry for its lackluster response to digital distribution still resonates -- McGuinness is anything but riled as he sits in an office backstage at Chicago's Soldier Field just before U2 went onstage. "What do I possibly have to be pissed off about?" he wonders. Both pragmatist and gambler, McGuinness guides the career of what has become arguably the biggest band in the world, and it has been a banner year for the group he has represented since the start of its career.

Much like the band he represents, McGuinness continually focuses on breaking new ground, and he's constantly looking for new ideas. The 360 tour is U2's first under a new 10-year Live Nation multiple-rights deal. While he doesn't claim to have all the answers, McGuinness is open to new horizons, as evidenced by "the claw," the massive staging concept that makes U2's 360 tour truly an all-encompassing experience.


Q: How did the European leg feel to you on this run of the 360 tour?

A: Incredible. We played to staggering numbers. We've broken records in every building we play because the effect of this production economically is to increase the capacity by about 20 percent routinely. For instance, in Berlin at Olympic Stadium, we held the record already jointly with the Rolling Stones at 70,000. This time I think we put in 90,000. Every building we play we will break whatever record there is there.


Q: So you feel good about the live part of U2's business?

A: Absolutely, because in a way there's a memory in the audience. They've always known that when you come to a U2 show -- even when we were doing theaters -- we would do as much production as we could afford. Once we got into arenas, we loved it -- we always played in the round in the arenas -- so this seems natural to be in the round in the stadiums.

The engineering problems are enormous and costly. We had to find a way for it to be aesthetic and figure out a way of doing video. That cylindrical screen we have -- that didn't exist, we had to get somebody to invent that. We had to design this four-legged thing (the claw) -- and build three of them.


Q: How long will it take to get into the black?

A: When do we hit the break-even point? We haven't hit it yet. But we will sometime between now and the end of this leg.


Q: So next year is gravy?

A: Not exactly gravy, because whether we're playing or not, the overhead is about $750,000 daily. That's just to have the crew on payroll, to rent the trucks, all that. There's about 200 trucks. Each stage is 37 trucks, so you're up to nearly 120 there. And then the universal production is another 50-odd trucks, and there are merchandise trucks and catering trucks.


Q: Why do that when you can go out and set up a stage and still play stadiums and be in the black before you reach these shores?

A: Well, we have been trying to find a way of doing 360 for years. This was not something we decided to do recently -- we just couldn't find a way of doing it. The engineering to build a temporary structure capable of bearing the weight that this carries, hundreds of tons, nobody had come up with a way of doing that. (Set designer) Willie Williams and (architect) Mark Fisher had been teasing at it for years.

The other thing that has come such a long way is the LED technology -- those little guys -- we started the use of them for the industry with the PopMart tour (in 1997), and they weren't completely reliable in those days. We had a lot of technical trouble with that. The kind of modern production style really can be traced back to ZooTV (in 1992), which was a groundbreaking production. Building this cylindrical screen was only made possible by the trellis on which it's mounted, which was invented by this guy named Chuck Hoberman.

The coming together of those LED skills, the engineering skills, the imagination of the band, Mark Fisher, years of talking about this and years of seeing occasionally somebody performing in the round in a structure that would take a week or two to build and a week to dismantle. You couldn't truck it, you certainly couldn't take it up and down in a couple of days. This had to be transportable -- and it is, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.


Q: The fans seem to get it that you're bringing them something they've never seen before.

A: Each one of these shows there are 10,000 $30 tickets -- so even though the gross is expanded by the increase in the capacity, we see what's happening in the marketplace, people don't have much money. And so worldwide we came to the decision to have really low-priced tickets. We have some expensive tickets, but our expensive tickets are $250; they're not as expensive as the Rolling Stones' or Madonna's most expensive tickets. I think it's a very fair pricing. The scaling of this tour has worked everywhere we've played.


Q: Any comment on the state of the music industry right now?

A: I don't have a recipe for the solution to the woes of the record companies and the recorded side of the music business. It's very, very important, it must be supported. And there are an awful lot of people and an awful lot of industries and individuals -- the telcos, the (Internet service providers), the device manufacturers -- that have enjoyed an absolute bonanza since music went online. And I just think they should feel more responsible out of a sense of fairness to the community of creative people who make that music, which is now in so many cases completely free. Times change, mechanisms for distributing music change. I would like to see a greater recognition of the obligations the tech side of the business have to the writers and musicians.

I've nothing against big companies. Big companies are there to be infiltrated, they want to be infiltrated, they want you to come in and tell them how to do it, what to do. I've never found a big corporation hostile to anything we wanted to do. Similarly with Live Nation -- our relationship is very close indeed. This is our fourth tour with Arthur (Fogel, global music chairman for Live Nation). The first tour we produced and he promoted. The second one he produced and promoted, because that was better. And as (Live Nation) developed their plan to take Live Nation out of Clear Channel I was absolutely behind that, and I'm totally behind the plan to merge Ticketmaster and Live Nation. I think it's very good for the industry.



© Thomson Reuters 2009.

nationalpost
Bono, U2 give VIP treatment to patient who donated Make-a-Wish funds to extreme global poverty
Wednesday, September 23, 2009



Laurence Carolin recently received VIP treatment from the group U2 before a concert at Soldier Field in Chicago. The 15-year-old's first wish through the Make-a-Wish foundation was to meet Bono. When that fell through, the generosity of his second wish caught the attention of the band, the United Nation's One Foundation and residents across the country.

Sometimes an unselfish act brings blessings beyond just the gift of helping others.



U2 lead singer Bono leads Laurence to a private prayer service with band members and their minister before a concert at Chicago's Soldier Field. The band's lyrics and campaign to end extreme global poverty inspired Laurence to donate his Make-a-Wish money to the United Nation's One Foundation for the same cause. Bono later told Laurence's father, Patrick Carolin of Newbern, that meeting the young man reminded the band members of their purpose

For 15-year-old Laurence Carolin, two wishes have been granted through his experience with the Make-a-Wish program. And skeptics would be hard pressed to find someone more deserving.
Two years ago, when Laurence began slipping into an extreme depression, his family knew something was wrong. The 13-year-old had been known for his upbeat attitude and compassion for others since he arrived in his parents' arms from South Korea in 1995.

Still, he continued to spiral into a life-threatening state. While fighting suicidal thoughts, he clung to the lyrics of the songs from one of his favorite bands, U2.

Laurence was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and malignant form of cancer and Laurence was offered a wish from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. He chose to meet Bono, U2's lead singer and an advocate for the world's poor.

"I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for their music and the lyrics from their songs," said Laurence.

When his first wish was denied, Laurence thought long and hard about what he wanted to request for his second wish.

"I should have thought of my next wish as my first wish," said Laurence. "It's a much better wish. I have everything that I need. (So I requested) to give the money they would have used on my wish to the United Nations Fund (to combat) extreme global poverty."

And Laurence didn't stop there. Since making his second wish and donating his Make-a-Wish check to the One Campaign, he has worked hard to spread the news of extreme global poverty to others. He interviewed with several newspapers and magazines in both Tennessee and Michigan, and has been featured on the radio. His school paper on extreme poverty received a standing ovation at his eighth-grade commencement services.

His new passion even caught the eye of Bono, himself. Laurence received a call from both Bono and The Edge at his home. Unfortunately, he was not there. The band members left him a message and Bono sent a book, signed personally to him.

On Sept. 13, Laurence and a large group of family and friends attended a U2 concert at Soldier Field in Chicago. Members of the One Campaign met Laurence, his father, Patrick Carolin of Newbern and his mother, Lisa Carolin of Ann Arbor, Mich., before the concert and led them to a room.

"Eventually, we were led to Bono, who treated Laurence like a king," said Patrick Carolin. "He was respectful, engaging, and called Laurence 'an inspiration'."

Bono presented Laurence with a signed note with the evening's set list.

Laurence gave Bono two papers - the paper he wrote for school on extreme poverty and another relating how the band's music and lyrics helped him through his depression.

"After reading these items, instead of ending the meeting, Bono asked if he could take Laurence for a little while," said Patrick Carolin. "The manager later told us he was going to the private prayer that the band has before each show with only their personal minister."

The young man wasn't the only person inspired through the meeting with the band members who brought him hope in a dark time and purpose through an even harder time.


Laurence Carolin, 15-year-old son of Patrick and Susan Carolin of Newbern and Lisa Carolin of Ann Arbor, Mich., presented a $5,000 check to the U.N. One Foundation to help address extreme global poverty. Carolin, who was diagnosed two years ago with an inoperable and aggressive brain tumor, chose to donate his Make-a-Wish money to the organization. From left, clockwise, One Foundation representatives, Patrick Carolin, Lisa Carolin and Laurence.

"Fifteen minutes later (Laurence) came back with Bono," said Patrick Carolin. "Bono told me that they travel to many places to do shows. One night blends into the next and the band meeting Laurence reminded them of their purpose."

stategazette
U2 larger than life at Giants Stadium
By Jay Lustig/The Star-Ledger
September 24, 2009, 1:57AM
Giants Stadium opened in 1976, the same year that four Dublin teenagers named Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. began playing music together. Hewson became Bono, Evans became the Edge, and the band became U2. On Wednesday night, they presented the biggest concert — as well as one of the last ones — in Giants Stadium history.

More than 82,000 tickets were sold for the show, which benefited from unseasonably warm weather. The attendance figure was not available at press time, but it didn’t look like there were many empty seat


U2 lead singer Bono at Giants Stadium Wednesday

U2’s career has been all about larger-than-life gestures, and its current tour, which includes a second Giants Stadium stop tonight, is no exception. The band is using a stage set unlike any other: a 150-foot, futuristic-looking tower with lights on its four legs, and a shape-shifting video screen suspended over the band.









Spotlights above the tower pointed straight up, reaching toward the sky, during "I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight," and Bono wore a jacket with built-in lasers during "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)." But as dazzling as the special effects and the stage were, musically it was a no-nonsense show. The Edge (guitar), Clayton (bass) and Mullen (drums) played their parts with power and precision, and no wasted notes, and Bono, at 49, still came across like an rambunctious kid, ready to change the world.

The setlist mixed classics like "New Year’s Day," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "With Or Without You" and "One" with newer hits, tracks from the band’s March album "No Line On the Horizon," and occasional surprises.

In honor of Bruce Springsteen’s 60th birthday, which the Boss celebrated on Wednesday, the band performed his "She’s the One" — with frontman Bono changing the title phrase to "he’s the one" — and segued from it to "Desire," which has the same Bo Diddley beat.

"Excuse us, Bruce," Bono said at the end of this sloppy but spirited medley.\

Bono also urged the crowd to sing along, during "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For," by saying, "Sing it for the Boss."

In honor of Quincy Jones, who was in attendance, Bono sang a portion of the Michael Jackson hit "Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough" (which Jones produced) during "Beautiful Day."

The band started with three "Horizon" songs, including two ("Breathe" and "Get On Your Boots") where Bono spat out lyrics in staccato, almost rap-like cadences. The first older song they did, a funky take on "Mysterious Ways," generated a huge crowd response.

The show’s most intimate number was a sweet, gentle "Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of," performed as a duet by Bono and the Edge (playing an acoustic guitar and singing falsetto).

Mullen ventured out from behind his drum kit to stroll around the walkway, playing an African djembe drum, during "Vertigo." And Bono pulled a boy out of the audience and ran a lap with him during "City of Blinding Lights." For the line, "Can you see the beauty inside of me?," he dropped to one knee and looked into the boy’s eyes as he sang.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave an inspirational speech, via video, at the start of the encores, and the always outspoken Bono spoke about several political issues. "Walk On" became a tribute to Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, who was elected prime minister in 1990, but was prevented from taking power by a military junta, and is currently living under house arrest.

At the end of the song, approximately 70 volunteers walked onto the stage, holding photos of her over their faces.

U2 has played at Giants Stadium before, but will never appear there again. The stadium will be replaced by a new stadium that is being built next to it, and will open next year. The stadium’s last series of concerts — five by Springsteen and his E Street Band — begins on Wednesday.

Here is Wednesday’s setlist:

"Breathe"

"Magnificent"

"Get On Your Boots"

"Mysterious Ways"

"I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For"

"She’s The One"/"Desire"

"Elevation"

"Your Blue Room"

"Beautiful Day"

"No Line on the Horizon"

"New Year’s Day"

"Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of"

"The Unforgettable Fire"

"City Of Blinding Lights"

"Vertigo"

"I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight"

"Sunday Bloody Sunday"

"MLK"


"Walk On"

Encores:

"One"

"Amazing Grace"/"Where the Streets Have No Name"

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)"

"With Or Without You"

"Moment of Surrender"


nj

24.9.09

Fã conta como deixou uma 'gotinha de Brasil' na história dos Beatles
Lizzie Bravo fez backing vocals na faixa 'Across the universe', de 68.
Carioca dava plantão na porta de Abbey Road e pretende lançar livro.

Lígia Nogueira

Lizzie Bravo, 58, foi retratada como “a esperança de óculos” na canção “Casa no campo”, famosa na voz de Elis Regina, e já trabalhou com grandes nomes da música brasileira, como Milton Nascimento, Zé Ramalho e Djavan. Mas, talvez, a sua maior façanha tenha sido a de dividir o microfone com John Lennon e Paul McCartney na gravação de “Across the universe”, quando tinha apenas 16 anos, nos lendários estúdios Abbey Road, em Londres.


A faixa foi incluída na coletânea “No one’s gonna change our world”, no álbum “Rarities” e no segundo volume do disco “Past Masters”, dos Beatles -- outra versão da música aparece no álbum "Let it be", lançado em 1970. Em 4 de fevereiro de 2008, exatamente 40 anos depois, a Nasa lançou a música ao espaço, pela primeira vez na história.

A então adolescente carioca não imaginava o quanto a sua vida mudaria depois de uma sessão do filme “A hard day’s night – Os reis do iê iê iê”. Ao sair do cinema, ela já estava contaminada pela beatlemania. Com “Help!”, segundo longa estrelado pelos Beatles, não foi diferente. Em vez de se contentar com as fotos dos Fab Four nas páginas das revistas, a garota pediu aos pais uma viagem de presente de 15 anos e foi para Londres em fevereiro de 1967, sabendo que não voltaria tão cedo.

“As pessoas até hoje não acreditam que você podia chegar perto deles”, conta Lizzie, que fazia parte de um grupo de fãs que frequentavam diariamente a porta do estúdio Abbey Road - cenário que acabou eternizado na capa do álbum homônimo e derradeiro dos Beatles, lançado há 40 anos, em 26 de setembro de 1969.


“A gente batia papo, às vezes uns mais longos que os outros. O Paul um dia me perguntou: ‘como é que você pode ser do Brasil se você tem um sotaque de Oxford?’ Eu só tinha amigos ingleses lá.”


Lizzie Bravo com John Lennon em Londres em 1967. (Foto: Acervo Pessoal)

Procura-se um agudo



Hoje, Lizzie lembra detalhes de quando McCartney reparou que ela tinha cortado o cabelo, ou quando começou a usar óculos iguais aos de John. “Era um convívio diário”, diz. A amizade foi sendo conquistada à base de bom comportamento até que, em fevereiro de 1968, Lizzie e as amigas estavam esperando atrás de uma porta de vidro no momento em que Paul saiu da sala e perguntou se alguém ali conseguiria sustentar uma nota aguda. A jovem, que sempre havia cantado no coral do colégio, se candidatou, levando com ela a inglesa Gayleen Peese.

No estúdio estavam os quatro Beatles, o produtor George Martin, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinal, além do técnico de som e seu ajudante. Eles precisavam de uma voz aguda para um coro de “Across the universe”. “Foi bom nós sermos calmas, porque senão nem teríamos gravado, eles teriam mandado a gente embora do estúdio”, lembra Lizzie, que passou cerca de duas horas e meia ali e não recebeu nenhum pagamento pelo empréstimo da voz.



“Ficou um clima legal, foi gostoso. Não tirei a minha câmera da bolsa para fotografar, não pedi autógrafo, todas aquelas coisas que eu fazia no dia-a-dia, porque eu tive consciência de que aquele era um momento único. Eu estava participando de uma gravação com os quatro Beatles ao mesmo tempo, com todo mundo tocando ao vivo”, conta.


Lizzie sentada no Rols Royce de John Lennon, no estacionamento dos estúdios da EMI em Abbey Road, Londres. (Foto: Acervo Pessoal)

Uma das características do quarteto de Liverpool, segundo Lizzie, era o humor. “Eles faziam muitas brincadeiras, muitas piadas. Durante a gravação, de vez em quando alguém falava uma frase e todo mundo começava a tocar. Então aquela frase, por pior que fosse, de repente virava um rock”, lembra.



“Eu tinha 16 anos e fiquei desbundada, mas a ficha só caiu muito tempo depois. Eu cantei no mesmo microfone com o John Lennon, depois com o Paul McCartney. Ter saído do Leme, onde eu morava, e ir para Londres cantar com um ídolo, é surreal. Quando ouvi a voz da gente na versão remasterizada [lançada pela EMI no último dia 9], fiquei toda arrepiada. Não ouço Beatles toda hora, mas quando escuto as músicas passa um filminho na cabeça.”



As 'largadas' da Apple



Dependendo da disponibilidade dos Fab Four, os temas das conversas com as meninas variavam. “Quando Paul lia coisas sobre o Brasil no jornal, ele vinha me contar: ‘tem enchente no Rio de Janeiro’.” Os Beatles, aliás, ganharam de Lizzie revistas sobre o Brasil e LPs de bossa nova, como um exemplar de “Os Sambeatles”, do Manfredo Fest Trio. E, mesmo quando não rolava muito papo com os músicos, a visita a Abbey Road sempre rendia um registro no diário das adolescentes. “Os Rolling Stones costumavam passar lá antes de sair com os Beatles para a 'night'. Vi até o Brian Jones [que morreu em julho de 1969].”

Em troca de tanta dedicação, as fãs receberam do guitarrista George Harrison a canção “Apple scruffs”, que foi incluída no disco solo “All things must pass”. Na faixa, o músico canta e toca acompanhado por Bob Dylan na gaita. A letra diz: “Vejo vocês aí sentadas / Quem passa olha espantado / Como se vocês não tivessem pra onde ir / Mas eles não sabem nada sobre as Apple Scruffs / Vocês estão aí há anos / Vendo meus sorrisos e tocando minhas lágrimas / Faz tanto, tanto tempo / E eu sempre penso em vocês, minhas Apple Scruffs / Apple Scruffs, Apple Scruffs / Como eu amo vocês, como eu amo vocês”.



Lizzie Bravo (de vestido amarelo) e amigas do lado de fora dos estúdios da Abbey Road. (Foto: Acervo Pessoal)


Lizzie Bravo, hoje, trabalha com artistas da música brasileira. (Foto: Acervo Pessoal)

Lizzie explica o significado da homenagem. “As secretárias da Apple eram muito chiques, todas transadas, e a gente era muito criança e não tinha grana para se vestir daquele jeito. Era bem evidente que elas trabalhavam do lado de dentro e a gente ficava do lado de fora”, conta Lizzie. “Fã é sempre visto de uma forma meio pejorativa e essa música foi uma demonstração de muito carinho. Eles sempre foram muito fofos com a gente.”





Gotinha de Brasil



“É interessante pensar que existe um pouco da Penha, onde eu nasci, no catálogo dos Beatles”, observa. “É uma gotinha de Brasil que está lá. Achei significativo termos ido para o espaço - os Beatles não foram sozinhos, eles levaram duas fãs.”



Bota fã nisso: só de Lennon, o seu favorito, Lizzie possui 16 autógrafos. “Fui criticada por certos fãs por ter vendido algumas coisas da minha coleção, mas prefiro me lembrar do momento.”

Para Lizzie, a separação do grupo, alguns anos depois, não surpreendeu. “O clima entre eles foi piorando até a dissolução, mas eu ainda peguei uma grande fase, em que eles estavam muito juntos. Depois a gente começou a perceber algo diferente, era óbvio. Eles passaram a não ir mais juntos ao estúdio, a gravar separados, o clima mudou. Todo mundo estava casado, com filho, a vida muda. Foi uma conjunção de fatores. Acabou sendo positivo, porque eles terminaram no auge.”

Boa parte das memórias de Lizzie Bravo devem sair em um livro, ainda sem data de lançamento, com mais de 100 fotos inéditas e trechos de seus diários de adolescente. “São coisas muito singelas mesmo, de meninas e seus ídolos. Quando olho para as fotos, penso que elas não são só minhas.”

globo.com

21.9.09

U2 think big at Gillette Stadium

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 22, 2009

BY RICK MASSIMO

Journal Pop Music Writer

FOXBORO, Mass. –– U2 doesn’t work small.

The Irish rock legends brought their U2 360 Tour to Gillette Stadium for the first of two shows Sunday night, and it’s tempting to simply review the stage.

Since it was impossible to ignore, it’s as good a place as any to start.

The gargantuan structure, which took four days to build, resembled nothing so much as a four-legged spider with light-green skin and orange polka dots. Its legs contained dozens of speakers; smoke billowed from various portals. Above the band was a huge cylindrical screen that could project or be projected upon, and which expanded to nearly reach the stage later in the show.

A 360-degree catwalk surrounded the round stage, with movable ramps connecting the two, allowing band members to stroll pretty much wherever they wanted (guitarist The Edge was further freed up by a headset microphone and a technician adjusting his guitar sounds, rather than using footpedals). Larry Mullen’s drum riser also revolved.

They displayed ambition in their set list as well, starting off with four songs from this year’s No Line On The Horizon disc and returning to it several more times in the two-hour show.

Mullen came out first to kick off the rolling, tumbling “Breathe,” a triplet rhythm with vocalist Bono spitting out rapid-fire verses alternating with slow, lazy choruses. After the midtempo title track, they finally charged out of the gate with “Get On Your Boots” and moved on to the stately “Magnificent,” with its slide-guitar solo from The Edge.

They finally dipped into the back catalog with “Mysterious Ways” (showcasing bassist Adam Clayton’s Memphis-soul chops) and the straight-up shout of “Beautiful Day” (with a quote from “Blackbird” by Bono over the coda, one of several of his trademark nods to other songs during the night).

The set mellowed out about midway through, with an affecting, acoustic, Bono-and-Edge-only “Stuck In a Moment (You Can’t Get Out Of),” with sweet falsetto vocal in the coda from The Edge; the keyboard-driven “The Unforgettable Fire” and the uplifting “City of Blinding Lights.”

Even with all the technical whiz-bangery, several moments, such as the full-on rock of “Vertigo” and the gorgeous ballad “One,” as well as the encores, saw virtually no visual trickery.

New or old material, high-tech production or no, the template has remained the same over the decades –– slow-moving chord changes with a rock-solid beat from Mullen, fast-strumming guitar from The Edge that alternates between chiming and jagged, and of course to-the-back-row vocal dramatics from the leather-lunged Bono.

They also don’t think small when it comes to statements, and there was no shortage of those, mostly from Bono, whether shouting out to Marvin Minsky, author of the artificial-intelligence book Conscious Machines, or encouraging “freedom in the streets of Iran” before “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (with visual backdrops recalling that conflict, including a wash of green light) and freedom for Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi before “Walk On,” complete with fans marching onto the catwalk while holding masks of her face.

They even threw in an inspirational video from Archbishop Desmond Tutu before “One” and a snippet of Maya Angelou’s “A Brave and Startling Truth” before the encores, which started with “Ultraviolet,” going back to the Achtung Baby album, and “With Or Without You,” both performed with Bono swinging from a hanging mike wearing a suit festooned with tiny red lights and with a lit-up disco ball luminescing from the top of the 150-foot stage during the latter.

The mournful, organ-led “Moment of Surrender,” again from No Line, closed it out - seemingly incongruous for a stadium rock concert, but in keeping with the big-hearted humanitarian theme of the show.

-

“You’re gonna have fun tonight –– but first, us,” Snow Patrol singer Gary Lightbody said early in their set. He was being a little too self-denigrating. Opening acts are opening acts. But while U2’s fellow Irishmen’s stadium-rock anthemry can wear thin on record, in an actual stadium they filled the space well, particularly Lightbody’s powerful voice.

They were allowed to use a lot of the space on the stage, and a fair amount of the technology, and they took it up, such as when Lightbody prowled the stage, guitarless, during “Hands Open.” They opened with “If There’s a Rocket Tie Me To It,” with space-age keyboard squiggles opening up to an anthemic chorus, and went into “Chocolate,” with its heroic-sounding guitar.

The lean syncopation of “Shut Your Eyes” grooved as well, and Lightbody so inspired the crowd to sing along that they took the chorus up again after the song was over, prompting a salaam from the singer.

The hit single “Chasing Cars” showed the band’s debt to the chiming guitars of The Edge and the hesitant romanticism of Coldplay, and by the time of “Open Your Eyes” it was again beginning to wear thin –– virtually any of these songs could have been the opener or closer. But then there was “You’re All That I Have” and that was it –– another virtue of opening acts.

Both bands play again Monday night.

rmassimo@projo.com
projo
Canadian audiences 'cooler': U2 bassist

By JANE STEVENSON -- Sun Media



U2 bassist Adam Clayton performs at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. (Jack Boland, Sun Media)

U2 bassist Adam Clayton is the group's resident sophisticate.

Frontman Bono jokingly described him Wednesday night at the Rogers Centre, during the band's first show at the venue, as "Adam Clayton, the effortlessly stylish citizen of the world, and sexual predator -- the only man in U2 who uses face cream."

Clayton addressed some of those charges in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview with Sun Media on Thursday night backstage at Rogers Centre. Clayton was funny, smart and charming.

Here's the best of what he had to say:

Sun Media: So, I have to ask, what kind of face cream do you use?

Clayton: As it happens, I don't use face cream. I'm very lucky. I have quite oily skin, which means that you don't need to moisturize that much. So he obviously just attributes me as using a lot face cream.


Sun Media: And what about the sexual predator reference?

Clayton: I wasn't sure about that one, no. It was the sexual predator and the knob twiddling (Bono's band introduction to guitarist The Edge as a knob twiddler) in the same paragraph, that I was a little worried about, but there you go.

Sun Media: Is there a reason for the order in which you guys walk out on stage every night - drummer Larry Mullen Jr, then you, The Edge and Bono?

Clayton: It's always been that sequence because Larry's has to get to his kit anyway and he has to get settled and put his earphones in and stuff. I've tried to go on after Edge but Edge is a really slow walker and I hate that. I want to get there. I want to check my stuff is working -- 1, 2, 3, let's go. So I kind of usually nip in front of him.

Sun Media: Do you find Canadian audiences are distinctive from other audiences?

Clayton: It's most notable if you happen to be in the U.S. for six or eight weeks and you really need a bit of sorbet and a bit of freshening up. You come up to Canada 'cause people, they're just that little bit cooler. And their musical taste, it's a little bit more rounded, it's a little bit more European. I think radio is still much better up here. I think the MuchMusic channel always plays much riskier, edgier stuff.

Sun Media: Do you spend much time in Canada?

Clayton: On the last tour, I spent a bit more time here. Myself and Larry used to nip up and spend time in the city 'cause it suited us to have days off up here. And I also have some very good friends here. I was going out with a girl from Toronto for a while so I kind of know (the city).

Sun Media: What do you think keeps you guys together after three decades?

Clayton: I acknowledge bands are inherently unstable concepts, they're not really built to last, but ours is made with different glue, I think. We made some decisions early on which is based on a version of democracy where everyone gets a vote. We pretty much split the income. And there's a code of loyalty, so for all those things we have stuck together and we've sort of got passed the point where, I'm not saying people couldn't decided to opt out, but we're past the point where any of those kind of emotional or musical differences can be an issue. (That's) because I think we all know within the band we can do far more than we could do individually. Everyone has a vested interested in the band going in a certain way, and those values are good values. And people want the band to be cool, they want the band to be great, and everyone's still growing.

Sun Media: So what's your band intro like?

Clayton: Bono, over a 30-year career, is probably the best there's ever been at this kind of thing. His understanding of all the geopolitical issues, and all the emotional stuff that he'll channel into a performance, and all the references he'll pull on, and where his lyrics come from -- I don't think anyone's been there before. And Edge is doing some amazing things with the guitar and with the technology and is a fantastic composer. And Larry's just the coolest drummer in the world. You wouldn't want to go to work with anyone else. And it's great work and you get to work outdoors as well.

Sun Media: Your accent sounds way more British than Irish, it seems.

Clayton: It's a combination. My parents were English. I moved to Ireland when I was six but I was in boarding schools in Ireland, so I never really knew what an Irish accent was until I joined the band with three other Irishmen.

Sun Media: And did you understand what they were saying?

Clayton: Not initially but I'm beginning to get the hang of it now (laughs).

Sun Media: Bono told me there is another album coming, with the working title, Songs Of Ascent, the more ambient songs done with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, from the sessions for your latest album No Line On The Horizon?

Clayton: Some of it, I'm sure, is true, especially for Bono. And those are great aspirations. I'm a little bit more nuts and bolts and until there are 10 songs finished, mixed and on a shelf, then that's not definite for me. It takes us a long time. When Bono hears two notes together he hears a song complete. When anyone else hears two notes together, we hear a starting point.

Sun Media: Bono was also hopeful you guys would go back to the shelved Rick Rubin sessions, which began before the Eno-Lanois sessions.

Clayton: I'd like to. Part of the reason we didn't feel like pursuing them at the time was that they were too purist, they were too fundamental, and we tend to like our music a little bit more complex -- so I don't know at what point we'll want something as straight forward as that. Rick strips everything away. There's no real dressing. He doesn't like atmospherics and textures or any of that stuff. I think we all thought we could do something interesting together if we applied that sort of discipline, but in the end I think we realized that we like the textures and colours and tones.

(c) Copyright Sun Media, Saturday, September 19, 2009
jam.canoe
'There's no band like U2': The Edge
Posted By JANE STEVENSON, SUN MEDIA
Posted 1 day ago


U2 guitarist The Edge is largely considered the soul of the Irish rock band, what with his distinctive, atmospheric style of playing that conjures both emotion and awe with every chord.

He told Sun Media, in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview backstage at Rogers Centre on Thursday night before the band's second show in two nights, that performing live is where it's at for him.

"On a good night, I think there's no band like U2, and there's certainly no audience like the U2 audience," he said.

Here's the best of the rest of what The Edge had to say during our 20-minute chat:

SUN MEDIA: You seem to still be enjoying yourself up there after three decades of doing this.

THE EDGE: Touring is sort of a crazy way to live, but what really makes it bearable is that two-hours-15 that you're on stage playing the songs with your best friends, to some other great friends -- the U2 fans. It's a fantastic job.

SUN MEDIA: How did you think the first show in Toronto went on Wednesday night?

THE EDGE: I thought it was really one of the best shows we've played for a long time even though, yeah, it was challenging (set-list wise). I just think everyone played so well. Adam and I, the swing of us, everyone gave everything, and musically, it just sounded really top. And on a great night like Wednesday night when the music is really coming together, you get a great buzz out of that.

SUN MEDIA: Is walking out on that enormous, space-ship like stage on your current tour, still surreal after launching the trek in Barcelona on June 30?

THE EDGE: It takes my breath away. Quite often I just look over and go 'whoa' every time I go out for sound check during the day. Actually, I think it's a thing of rare beauty myself. Just the form of it and the architecture of it and the fact that it's so practical and does such a great job is obviously important, but it is beautiful to look at. It's a wonderful bit of kit.

SUN MEDIA: Your documentary film It Might Get Loud, with White Stripes guitarist Jack White and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, is coming out in Canada soon. What was that experience like for you?

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THE EDGE: It was a great experience, very inspiring. We'd not met. I think I'd met Jimmy but not really had a chance to talk about much. And Jack, I think I'd met once at an awards show, to say hello. So we'd never really sat down and had a proper talk about anything, so this opportunity was great. I really like what they do with a guitar, they're very unique players and I'm a big fan of theirs -- so it was just great to spend a bit of time with them and see what they're about. We hit it off really well. The surprise for me was how different we were in terms of what sounds we were creating and ... what we were hearing and intending to reach, in terms of the sound and the expressiveness of the guitar. They were very different. Different to each other, and different to me.

jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
stcatharinesstandard
U2's massive intimacy
U2’s 360 Tour is the latest evolution of the stadium tour, one that tries to be both big and small


Mike Doherty, Weekend Post
Published: Friday, September 18, 2009


Just one man in a stadium: Bono serenading via his great circular catwalk on Wednesday night at Toronto’s Rogers Centre

It's no secret ambition bites the nails of success - or so Bono likes to tell us. And after taking on world famine, war, and pestilence, he and his U2 bandmates have set themselves arguably their biggest task yet: trying to make a stadium show feel intimate.

On their 360 Tour, they've spared no expense to do so: they've commissioned a 150-foot steel structure housing a 54-ton video screen made up of a million separate pieces, all of which takes four days to put together (and reputedly 120 trucks to cart across North America, although this was the one figure their tour publicist declined to confirm - justifying their carbon footprint to the press, it seems, would be one miracle too many).

But why should it take so much effort, material, and money to create intimacy? The rock 'n' roll stadium show has always been a strange beast, created from commercial and logistical, rather than artistic, concerns. Thrust into an enormous space designed for sporting events, what's a band to do?

When the original stadium band toured across North America, no one had a clue how it would work, and thus expectations were low. Footage of The Beatles' famous first concert at Shea Stadium reveals how little it took to make large numbers of young fans scream in 1965. The band played for a mere half-hour on an unadorned stage near second base on an otherwise empty baseball field, using a direly inadequate sound system - they couldn't hear each other play, and the 55,000 in attendance saw very little, and heard nothing but their own prolonged hormonal shrieks.

Dissatisfied, the Fab Four retired from live performance just a year later, leaving their successors to cope with fans who had higher demands. In the early '70s, video screens sprang up above stages to ensure that stars always looked larger-than-life. At first, the strategy had problems: a 1971 Billboard magazine article lamented that the black-and-white screen projections at a concert by the band Chicago "created an impression in the rear seats that we were being fobbed off with a low-budget TV show. High-budget visuals, though, have since proved difficult to resist. In 1988, The Edge told Rolling Stone, "With U2, it's the music that makes the atmosphere. There's no laser show, no special effects." Four years later, on the Zoo TV tour, he and his bandmates would appear on stage flanked by 36 video screens showing a flashy jumble of images. 1997's PopMart Tour used an 8000-square-foot next-generation LED screen as a backdrop, and the 360 Tour has a 14,000-square-foot cylindrical video screen made up whose interlocking segments can detach from one another and expand into a giant cocoon.

And yet, one doesn't want to lose the human figure entirely; intimacy shouldn't only be an illusion created by the proximity of screens. But how to bring the artists physically closer to their fans? In 1974, David Bowie sang Space Oddity from a crane suspended above his audience - which worked brilliantly, apart from when it failed to retract and he had to crawl back to the stage along its arm. Recently, Coldplay have taken to serenading punters in the nosebleed sections directly, by running up to the aisles with acoustic guitars. U2 have always been better at swaggering than sprinting; for Zoo TV, they built their first "b-stage," where they could go and strum stripped-down songs, pretending they were still that little band from Dublin in the early ‘80s. The 360 Tour, with performances in the round, finds them reaching out onto the stadium floor with a great circular catwalk.

So once you have managed to be seen by the masses while maintaining your common humanity, the next step is to entertain, usually by playing with concepts of scale. Since the mid-'70s, bands have gleefully trotted out giant versions of animals or objects that look as though they'd be normal-sized if they were right in front of you. Pink Floyd had immense pigs that flew (and a pyramid that wasn't supposed to but did anyway, if the wind was strong enough); The Rolling Stones commissioned gargantuan inflatable lips and a gigantic yellow dog; Fleetwood Mac built a 70-foot penguin that would never properly inflate. For PopMart, U2 erected a 100-foot swizzle-stick, a 12-foot olive, and a 40-foot lemon out of which they would emerge - when it didn't get stuck, forcing them to sneak out an "escape hatch."

For the 360 Tour, the stage set itself is an oversized prop: Bono calls it the "spaceship," although it looks curiously like a four-limbed version of the spindly-legged alien invaders that Tom Cruise battled in 2005's War of the Worlds. The band members play inside its mammoth carapace, atop which a pole stretches into the sky, bearing aloft a great disco ball that shines glittering lights all around the stadium.

At the Rogers Centre in Toronto this past Wednesday, it was as if the band had descended to colonize the stadium with their message of intergalactic hope: they beamed in Bowie's Space Oddity before their set and signed off with a recording of Elton John's Rocket Man; in between, astronaut Frank DeWinne recited one of the verses to their song Your Blue Room. When you can play music with someone who's in space, the idea goes, you're shrinking our corner of the universe down to size.

And in truth, this is what the best stadium shows do - they flabbergast us with special effects, but they also create a feeling of intimacy by bringing everything, and everyone, closer together. In Toronto, U2 offered a few such moments: as Bono backed off the mic for the first verse of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and the audience sang spontaneously along with the Biggest Karaoke Back-Up Band of All Time; as Bono and The Edge cut back on the bombast and hushed us with a unexpectedly moving acoustic duet version of Stay; and at the very end, as all the lights went off and Bono suggested, "Let's turn this place into the Milky Way." Hoisting our own video-screen props - our cell-phones - we created a stadium full of tiny stars while the band played the hymn-like Moment of Surrender. Commander Bono may have been resorting to a hoary big-concert cliché, but his strategy worked - it's a safe bet that everyone in the stadium, at that point, felt as though they were not alone.
nationalpost

18.9.09

Bono talks about U2's 360 Degree Tour in exclusive interview
Posted By JANE STEVENSON Sun Media
September 17, 2009


U2's Bono arrives at 102.1 FM The Edge radio station on Yonge St. in Toronto to do an on air interview.

BACKSEAT OF BONO’S SUV, DOWNTOWN TORONTO — Most first dates involve having dinner and seeing a movie.

Thursday afternoon in Toronto, U2 frontman Bono picked me up in a shiny black Chevy Suburban on Yonge St., and it was non-stop talking.

OK, so it wasn’t a date. Bono wasn’t actually driving, and I got in the car first.

But the scenario was that one of the world’s biggest music stars and his equally famous bandmates — guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. — had just visited 102.1 The Edge radio station, drawing dozens of fans for the last-minute appearance. And I ended up talking to the singer, resplendent in a denim ensemble and tinted glasses, in the backseat of his car, en route to Thursday night’s second show by U2 at the Rogers Centre.

The only others with us were his driver and his security man, while the car was given a police escort through downtown Toronto.

Ah, the life of Bono.

We talked about the band’s current 360 Degree Tour, their latest album No Line On The Horizon, the possibility of not one but two new albums by U2, David Bowie and the significance of space travel.

Here’s the best of what he had to say in a Canadian newspaper exclusive with Sun Media.


SUN MEDIA: How did you feel about the first Canadian show of the 360 Degree Tour on Wednesday night at Rogers Centre? (The only other Canadian date is Oct. 28 in Vancouver.)

BONO: Well, I was in really great singing form, and the band played very well. The sound was good ’cause the roof was open. I mean, if the roof were closed we have a P.A. that can cope with it, but it was great to have the CN Tower as part of our light show. Thank you for contributing that to our show.”


SUN MEDIA: Are Canadian fans different than those in Europe? (They opened the 360 Degree Tour on June 30 in Barcelona.)

BONO: We’ve always had a really kind of progressive audience here. They’ve allowed us to push and pull them in different directions, because over the years we have kind of swerved all over the road a little bit musically, and that’s the fun of it for us. And some people, some fans like U2 as a straight-ahead rock and roll band, some people like us as a folk mass, some people like us as a rave, some people like it as a political rally. I think in Canada, they actually like us to be all those things.”


SUN MEDIA: How does it feel to walk out onto the massive “spaceship” stage every night?

BONO: The scale of it was a little nerve-wracking at first. I was drawing this on napkins in restaurants, and I was building it with forks and things like that. But when you see it in front of you, I must say I did have a little bit of a knee wobble.”


SUN MEDIA: Has anything in particular surprised you on this tour?

BONO: I’ve a few out-of-body experiences already on the road, which reminds me that I’m describing myself more as a doorman than a shaman. I do think there is magic in music that we don’t really understand. Moments where the song sucks you into a place where, and this sounds pretentious, but where it’s not so much where it’s you singing the song, but it feels like the song is singing you — and when that happens, I’m amazed.”


SUN MEDIA: Did you think you were taking a risk playing so much of the new material off No Line On The Horizon (co-produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno) off the top of the live show, given the album hasn’t produced any real hits?

BONO: I love hits, I love 45s, they’re a thrill but our first responsibility for this album was to make an extraordinary album. We wanted to make an album as they were a dying species, a nearly instinct species. We said, ‘Let’s make an album with a beginning, middle and end, and take people into a world, and so that was our first thing ... just to be challenging both of ourselves and our audience, and we succeeded with that. And maybe in that mind set you don’t write a pop song, and that’s probably what happened. But they’re great songs, they’re just not pop songs.”


SUN MEDIA: What’s the status on a second more ambient album, to be released from the Lanois-Eno sessions, with the working title Songs of Ascent, and then the Rick Rubin session before that?

BONO: We’ve got a few albums up our sleeves. We’ve got a whole album we started with Rick Rubin, which is a rocking club album with beats and big guitars, and I can’t wait to get back to that. So we’re going to see where the mood takes us. But it’s not like we have to start afresh. We have five or six songs on that album. We have about 12 on the Songs Of Ascent, plus The Edge and myself have written Spiderman: The Musical — that’s nearly done. It’s been an incredible time as songwriters ... If you’re going to go out on the road, you have to have songs that have the attitude and the ambition to play in a venue like (the Rogers Centre), because if they haven’t got it, you’re not going to play them because whilst we like people to look a little startled, we’re not going to do a crap show just to promote our new album. So they have to be great.”


SUN MEDIA: On Wednesday night on stage at Rogers, you ended the show by saying, “We’re just getting started.” What did you mean, given your first record came out in 1980?

BONO: The playing, just pure musicality is way ahead. And some of my singing voice. I’ve never had a voice like that. I only got this voice recently in the last five years. I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you for instance before a show. So songwriting’s come together and there’s still bits we’re missing, but this is our moment, it would appear. I think this might be our moment, especially if these albums come out quickly, then looking back on this period, maybe the most fertile period for our band. It’s unusual for a rock and roll band, but we’re not really a rock and roll band. I don’t know what we are. I always say we’re the loudest folk band in the world. I’ve had many attempts to try and explain, but we’re not that classic idea that’s based on youth culture and ... all the cliches of living fast to die young. I mean, we’re over the ’60s, I hope.”


•••



TORONTO — Houston, we’ve got liftoff.

Before U2 walk out on their “spaceship-like” stage on their current 360 Degree World Tour, they blast David Bowie’s Space Oddity in its entirety.

So what’s with all the space stuff?

“His prolific imagination had a huge impact on me, as a teenager and to this day,” Bono said in a Canadian newspaper exclusive with Sun Media Thursday in Toronto. “I can’t get over his body of work.

”And the spaceship (stage), to me, it looks like some sort of mad spaceship ... and I just think it stands for, ‘Well, we can go anywhere.’ Which has always been the throw-down at any U2 show. ‘Where do you want to go?’ You can stay in the stadium if you want, or we can go to this other place where the streets have no name. We can go to this other place, the place of imagination, the place of soul, the place of possibility, and we can just get lost in it. And a great show, when that happens, people don’t know where they are, I don’t know where I am. And that’s what I think it stands for.”

U2 connected with the international space station during part of their show on Wednesday night.

“It’s a strange thing, because we were working on this space idea for this tour (in) an intuitive way, not knowing it was the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon literally the month we went out. And we had begun talking with the international space station in preparation for something we’re going to do with (Canadian) Guy LaLiberte of Cirque Du Soleil, which I’m really looking forward to. He’s getting ready to go, at the end of the month, to the international space station and we’re doing to beam him into our show.”

Bono, whose well-known social activistm has included the ONE Campaign, said he was nine years old at the time of Armstrong’s lunar walk, and “it formed in me a troublesome thought. Something has bothered me ever since, which is that it’s the impossible that makes stuff fun and worthwhile, and if you can put a man on the moon, that as capable as human beings are, of self-delusion and destructive behavior and greed and nihilism, we’re also capable of harnessing the best of us to do the impossible.”
wellandtribune.ca

17.9.09

Bob Geldof was in Brazil (August 28-30, 2009-Rio de Janeiro) to Back 2 Black festival, a celebration to Africa



Geldof speak about Africa:


Geldof speak about his career 'I don't like Mondays':


Images of the Back 2 Black festival:


Back 2 Black official site:
black2blcakfestival

Photos:
flickr
Music Icons Rock HMV Charity Calendar
September 16, 2009 - Global | Retail

By Andre Paine, London

U.K. entertainment retailer HMV has issued a limited edition charity calendar featuring the stars of its "my inspiration" advertising campaign. HMV hopes to raise £20,000 ($33,100) for CLIC Sargent, the children's and young person's cancer charity.

The three-year press campaign is a familiar one for U.K. consumers. Iconic artists and newcomers approached for the series are invited to share the lyric or lines that have inspired them. The calendar features the selections of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, the Killers, Bono, Deborah Harry, Tom Waits, Keith Richards and other icons. HMV's campaign began in September 2006, when Bowie selected Syd Barrett's "Gigolo Aunt."

The calendar is available priced £7.99 ($13.24) - up to £4 ($6.62) will go to the charity - in more than 270 HMV stores in the U.K. and can be ordered online at hmv.com.

Bob Dylan selected Scottish poet Robert Burns as his inspiration, while Dylan was in turn named by Bono and McCartney. The former Beatle went for "She Belongs To Me" and the U2 frontman chose "Visions of Johanna."

The late Bob Marley and Elvis Presley also feature: Island Records founder Chris Blackwell chose Marley's "One Love" for August 2010, while HMV staff selected "Suspicious Minds" for Elvis in March 2010.

The A3-sized calendar, produced at cost by manufacturer Danilo, has 18 months' worth of selections, ending January 2011 with Metallica's choice of "Overkill" by Motorhead. The artist shots are by celebrated rock photographers including Anton Corbijn and Lawrence Watson.

Graham Sim, HMV marketing director, said in a statement that the campaign "reminds us that songs and even a simple lyric can hold an intensely personal meaning for us all."

"We hope that music fans everywhere will enjoy this calendar, in the knowledge that they are also contributing to our charity, CLIC Sargent, and we're grateful to everyone that has given HMV their support in making this possible," he added.

The calendar is available for overseas customers via mail order from hmv.com.
billboard
U2 opens roof for Toronto show

By JANE STEVENSON - Sun Media


U2's dazzling stage set-up, dubbed by lead singer Bono as the "spaceship," is already set up at the Rogers Centre for the band's two shows. The stage is pictured here on a previous stop.

U2's "spaceship" has landed.

That would be U2 frontman Bono's nickname for the Irish rock band's current futuristic-looking stage, which will blow the roof off (literally) the Rogers Centre tonight, as the Dublin quartet kicks off the first of two sold-out Toronto shows on their 360 Degree Tour.

"The genesis of the whole thing was to create an in-the-round stadium experience that shrank, in essence, these stadiums and brought people in," said Arthur Fogel in an exclusive Canadian interview with Sun Media. The Toronto ex-pat is the L.A.-based chairman of global music and CEO of global touring at Live Nation.

"Yes, it opens up more capacity but it uniquely makes a stadium much more intimate and inclusive, and it has absolutely achieved that.

"I think anybody who goes to the show is blown away on various levels. Particularly in North America, where we haven't played stadiums since PopMart in '97. That's a long interval, and the last tours being indoors, I think really provided an opportunity for the band to re-introduce themselves as the sort of ultimate stadium spectacle."

The big news for Toronto's 58,000 concert goers tonight and tomorrow is that they'll have the added bonus of having the roof opened for both shows, as long as the pleasant late-summer weather continues. The only other rock show to have the lid open at the Rogers Centre was Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in 2003.


"Well, the plan is to open the roof," Fogel said.

"Due to the good weather and obviously better sound quality -- and this sound system is unbelievable -- it deserves the best possible scenario. Those domed stadiums, the roofs are so high, the sound tends to go up, and kind of swirl around and bounce around, a lot of metal stuff and cement. So it's much better if it's open."

As a result, concert-goers should dress appropriately for a night of music outside.

U2 arrived in Toronto on Sunday night after playing two shows in Chicago at Soldier Field to kick off the North American portion of their 2009 tour, which began June 30 in Barcelona.

Bono and guitarist The Edge, were spotted on the TIFF red carpet Monday outside The Winter Garden for the Irish film, Ondine, starring Colin Farrell.

Fogel said he didn't expect the band to be doing any real rehearsing while they're in Toronto, as the show is pretty much set at the two-hour-and-15-minute mark.

The set list includes about a half dozen songs from their latest album, No Line On The Horizon, co-produced by Canadian Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and changes only slightly in cities where they are playing more than one show.

"They're playing really well and they're really confident," Fogel said. "And it's fun. Bono's an amazing frontman and he's got an amazing way of interacting with the audience and saying all of the right things.

"I know people get bored sometimes with the whole thing -- (some) people go, 'He's full of himself, he's trying to do too many things,' or 'He thinks of himself as the saviour of the world.'

"But the reality is much of what he says is pretty spot-on and he does a lot of amazing things around the world.

"And he's got a great sense of humour, he's very down to earth. But he's got a very serious mission side of him which is very commendable"
jam.canoe

16.9.09

U2 Mobile Album Goes Live
15 September 2009



Follow the band on the 360° Tour with images, interviews and videos on the new Blackberry App. 'It's all about U2. And it's all on your BlackBerry smartphone.'

Get inside the album with access to songs from No Line On The Horizon, essays from the band, and video clips.

View the original, origami-style photo displays inspired by the music.

Access dynamic news feeds from U2.com and receive alerts when new content is available.

View exclusive images of the band in the recording studio and on the road.

Mark your place in the crowd with geocoding, chat and share images with other fans, and view postings from the band (coming soon).

Tap into the Who's Listening section and see when and where other users are listening to the album (coming soon).

Track the tour as the band moves across the globe - see where they're going and where they've been (coming soon).

To get the Ap visit Blackberry Ap world or download from here, here.

For FAQs related to the U2 Mobile Album visit the Blackberry site.

U2.com