CORRECTED - Scandal hurts Lynch more than Fidelity-analysts - March 7, 2008
(Corrects paragraph 9 to show Peter Lynch is a vice chairman not a vice president)
By Muralikumar Anantharaman
BOSTON, March 6 (Reuters) - The reputation of Fidelity Investments' most famous fund manager, Peter Lynch, will be hurt more by the scandal involving gifts from Wall Street brokers to staffers of the world's biggest mutual fund company than Fidelity itself, analysts said this week.
Privately owned Fidelity agreed on Wednesday to pay $8 million, and Peter Lynch, who ran its main Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, agreed to pay about $20,000 to settle charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC charged Lynch, Fidelity and 12 other current or former employees with improperly accepting travel, entertainment and other gifts paid for by Wall Street brokers and accused Fidelity of allowing business to be swayed to these brokers.
"Far more damage has been done to Peter Lynch than the fine," said John Bonnanzio, editor of independent newsletter Fidelity Insight.
Lynch's involvement in the scandal came to light on Wednesday. However, many aspects of it were revealed a year ago after brokerage regulator NASD ended its probe into the matter and fined four Fidelity-affiliated companies $3.75 million.
Once known as America's most successful fund manager because Magellan at times generated returns more than five times that of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, 64-year-old Lynch relied on two Fidelity traders to procure 61 tickets worth $15,948 for various events from 1999 to 2004, the SEC said. These included sold-out Ryder Cup golf tournaments, a Santana rock concert, and 11 tickets to see Irish rock band U2, according to the SEC.
"In asking the Fidelity equity trading desk for occasional help locating tickets, I never intended to do anything inappropriate, and I regret having made those requests," Lynch said in a statement on Wednesday.
"I want the public to know that I have never worked on the trading desk, and, since retiring from investment management at Fidelity over 17 years ago, I have not placed any trades on behalf of Fidelity with any brokerage firm."
Lynch is now a vice chairman at Fidelity.
FIDELITY ACTION REDUCED IMPACT
In a preemptive move in 2006, Fidelity decided to pay $42 million to its mutual funds for the gifts taken by traders, taking the sting out of the SEC's probe, begun in late 2004.
The company said in a statement on Wednesday that the SEC did not find that accepting the gifts caused financial harm to its funds' shareholders.
"Fidelity was embarrassed by this, but it's of minimal significance beyond the embarrassment factor," said Jim Lowell, editor of independent newsletter Fidelity Investor.
Some analysts expected investors to be supportive of the Boston company, which last week reported record revenues of $14.9 billion and pre-tax income of $2.2 billion for 2007.
"In this business all sins are forgiven when you are making money for your clients," said Bonnanzio of Fidelity Insight.
Fidelity Insight and Fidelity Investor are unrelated.
Both Fidelity and Lynch settled the SEC charges without denying or admitting them.
"It certainly does mar both of their reputations to some extent," said Lou Harvey, president of research firm Dalbar Inc. But for Fidelity's business, it was just a "pin-prick", he said.
"The big effect is they are going to have to answer questions from people who operate pension plans and other kinds of institutional investments. So it will be more of an administrative burden than any strategic change," said Harvey.
Closure of the gifts investigation was expected to remove a distraction for Fidelity management and help it to focus more on its core mutual funds business where it has lost market share to competitors such as Vanguard Group and American Funds.
According to funds flow research firm Financial Research Corp, Fidelity saw net inflows of $4.3 billion in its stock and bond funds in 2007 against $76.2 billion for Vanguard and $74.7 billion for American Funds.
"They have got that gorilla off their back, but it's a jungle out there, and there will be plenty of other monkeys jumping on their back," said Fidelity Investor's Lowell.
reuters
21.3.08
25 Years of War: 5 Questions with Steve Lillywhite - March 2, 2008
@U2 interviews the legendary producer of U2's War album
@U2, March 02, 2008
Matt McGee
There's a soccer match on TV, another one coming in via a bad Internet feed, and the audio of the latter match can be heard on Sirius satellite radio. This was the scene at Steve Lillywhite's house when he picked up the phone to talk about the War album -- made long before the days of satellite radio and online soccer matches. What was planned as a five-question interview with War's producer turned into something closer to 10 questions with plenty of enjoyable memories on the occasion of the album's 25th anniversary.
Matt McGee: Neither you nor the band originally intended that you would produce War. So what happened that put you back in that chair?
Steve Lillywhite: Having done Boy, which was pretty successful, and then October, which was a bit of a dip due to various things -- Bono losing his lyrics, the typical not-having-enough-time-to-do-your-second-album, and all that -- I said to the band, "Look, you really do need -- you should try another producer." And they did go off and do a little bit of recording with a guy called Sandy Pearlman, who had done Blue Oyster Cult. Then they gave me a call and said, "Steve, what are you doing in September?" So, I said, "Nothing." And they asked, "Well, do you want to do our third album?" And I said, "Well, I've never done three albums with anyone." So, I went.
What was the hesitation on your part?
The hesitation on my part was, for some reason I had this silly idea that producers could work with lots of different bands, so it was good for bands to work with different producers. I did say to them after Boy, you should use someone else for October. And they said, "Why? We really enjoyed it." So, I said, "All right, then." But after October, I said, "Really, guys, it's been great fun, but I work with lots of different bands all the time. You don't. You need to learn from other people, because my way of making records is only my way. Other people make records completely differently, and you should learn. If you really want to be the big band that you want to be, that's how you should be."
So, that was my reasoning. In those days, I thought bands should work with different people. But in this current climate, I would never have got to do the third album, because someone at the record company would have said, "Wait, they need a change of producer."
Or, "We need to drop them altogether."
Or, "We need to drop the band altogether," which, the boss of the record company -- the guy below Chris Blackwell -- apparently wanted to do. And it was Chris Blackwell who said, "Hang on. There's something about these guys that I love. Let's give them another chance."
We know the October sessions were a real struggle. How would you describe the band's approach to the War sessions? Were they more focused?
Yeah, I think it was a case of, "OK, guys, we need to be The Clash." I always have these memories of Bono saying to Edge, "Don't do that! Don't be like The Edge! Be like Mick Jones!" -- trying to push Edge into a more aggressive guitar playing. Edge is a very whimsical, ethereal sort of person, and I think Bono was trying to get him to be more pointed and more sharp. He had his echo box, and you play around the sound you make, so Bono was pushing him to be more aggressive. I seem to remember the words "The Clash" came out more than once in the sessions.
How much talk was there about finding a hit single or having the album be a breakthrough on the charts?
Absolutely none! Absolutely no talk whatsoever, and never on any of the first three albums. There was no talk of what's going to be the radio song? Never! It was art. We were making music. And a lot of producers will say this, so it's not my line, but all the songs are equal. You don't put more effort into one song than any other.
It was funny -- it was actually one of the young guys in the studio, one of the runners, who was going, "Ohhh, that song, 'New Year's Day,' that's fantastic!" And we were all going, "Really? You like that one? But we like 'Surrender,' or we like -- " [laughs] I mean, it's only time that gives you hindsight. I love "New Year's Day," but I loved "Surrender" and some of the other ones.
War sounds nothing like Boy or October. What did you do to make that happen?
Every time you do more than one record with someone, you try to go on a journey. You try to not repeat the things you've done before. My thought is, it's going to sound like the same band, anyway, because it's going to be the same guy singing. You can try to dress it up and try to make that difference. Yourself -- you're going on a journey, and you're taking your fans along with you. It's never about trying to copy what you did before. It's always about the art, about trying to make something that's timeless and being true to yourself. That's one thing I've really learned from the band. Bono has often said he's a traveling salesman, and he wants to make sure the thing he's carting around the world for the next two years is something he's proud of.
Do you have a favorite story from the recording sessions for War?
I do remember, on "New Year's Day," actually -- I mixed "New Year's Day" in 15 minutes. What happened was, I'd spent a whole day mixing it, and everyone seemed to think it's good enough, but I had this thing in the back of my head that it really could be better. We were running out of time and had one more song left. Bono said, "Give me 20 minutes to write the lyrics. I've just got to finish them off." So, I said, "OK. I'll remix 'New Year's Day' in that time." I knew [the song] so well. I just put the tape on and did it. And I always say to people, if I could mix "New Year's Day" in 15 minutes, if I've got three hours left [on another project], I've got plenty of time.
Where does War rank for you among all the U2 albums?
Oh, God, I'd never like to say that! I mean, my favorites probably go Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, All That You Can't Leave Behind ... [thinks] then maybe War joined on with Atomic Bomb. Or maybe Boy, I don't know. I like Pop, but I think it was a bit ... confusing to people. And a few people have recently come up to me and said how October moves them in a certain way that no other record does. I think when they're great is when they're really focused. Oh! Unforgettable Fire -- I like that one, as well. They've made some good records! [laughs]
Yeah, they've had a modicum of success! [laughs]
They have! But you know, a lot of effort goes into it. It doesn't come easy for them. In some ways, their inadequacies in certain areas have really helped them because it's made them push themselves more. Do you know what I mean?
I do, yes. They're very up front about where they struggle.
Yes. They don't jam. I mean, they were so nervous at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because they thought they might have to jam -- that's what people did at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But that's not their style at all, God bless them. [laughs]
Any other stories [I can share]?
"40" -- that was literally the last song, the last morning?
Yes, that was the last morning. We were finishing the record, and the next band were literally -- this is very Irish -- the band who were booked in the studio from the following day, they were this band who really thought they wanted to get a jump on their sessions. They wanted to start at 7 in the morning. So they were literally standing outside the studio at 6:30 in the morning, while Bono was in there doing the last vocal of "40." And I basically mixed it, and it was all done.
But every U2 album has this legendary last -- you know, the last day of recording any U2 album is fantastic. Even on the last one [Atomic Bomb], it was coming up to midnight, and we were all thinking, It's going to happen. We're [actually] going to finish at midnight. And then Bono walks in and says, "OK, guys, I've got an idea! Set up the band, we're going to record" -- well, it was called "Xanax and Wine" at the time, and later became "Fast Cars." So we did that song in three hours at the end of the night.
Even "Party Girl" -- see, I had this other thing that you should never spend more than a half an hour on a B-side. So, I would let them all have one go -- you could play it once. They didn't know what they were playing, but it was just a real snapshot of that little moment.
Great thanks to Steve Lillywhite for helping @U2 celebrate the 25th anniversary of U2's War album.
(c) @U2, 2008.
atu2
@U2 interviews the legendary producer of U2's War album
@U2, March 02, 2008
Matt McGee
There's a soccer match on TV, another one coming in via a bad Internet feed, and the audio of the latter match can be heard on Sirius satellite radio. This was the scene at Steve Lillywhite's house when he picked up the phone to talk about the War album -- made long before the days of satellite radio and online soccer matches. What was planned as a five-question interview with War's producer turned into something closer to 10 questions with plenty of enjoyable memories on the occasion of the album's 25th anniversary.
Matt McGee: Neither you nor the band originally intended that you would produce War. So what happened that put you back in that chair?
Steve Lillywhite: Having done Boy, which was pretty successful, and then October, which was a bit of a dip due to various things -- Bono losing his lyrics, the typical not-having-enough-time-to-do-your-second-album, and all that -- I said to the band, "Look, you really do need -- you should try another producer." And they did go off and do a little bit of recording with a guy called Sandy Pearlman, who had done Blue Oyster Cult. Then they gave me a call and said, "Steve, what are you doing in September?" So, I said, "Nothing." And they asked, "Well, do you want to do our third album?" And I said, "Well, I've never done three albums with anyone." So, I went.
What was the hesitation on your part?
The hesitation on my part was, for some reason I had this silly idea that producers could work with lots of different bands, so it was good for bands to work with different producers. I did say to them after Boy, you should use someone else for October. And they said, "Why? We really enjoyed it." So, I said, "All right, then." But after October, I said, "Really, guys, it's been great fun, but I work with lots of different bands all the time. You don't. You need to learn from other people, because my way of making records is only my way. Other people make records completely differently, and you should learn. If you really want to be the big band that you want to be, that's how you should be."
So, that was my reasoning. In those days, I thought bands should work with different people. But in this current climate, I would never have got to do the third album, because someone at the record company would have said, "Wait, they need a change of producer."
Or, "We need to drop them altogether."
Or, "We need to drop the band altogether," which, the boss of the record company -- the guy below Chris Blackwell -- apparently wanted to do. And it was Chris Blackwell who said, "Hang on. There's something about these guys that I love. Let's give them another chance."
We know the October sessions were a real struggle. How would you describe the band's approach to the War sessions? Were they more focused?
Yeah, I think it was a case of, "OK, guys, we need to be The Clash." I always have these memories of Bono saying to Edge, "Don't do that! Don't be like The Edge! Be like Mick Jones!" -- trying to push Edge into a more aggressive guitar playing. Edge is a very whimsical, ethereal sort of person, and I think Bono was trying to get him to be more pointed and more sharp. He had his echo box, and you play around the sound you make, so Bono was pushing him to be more aggressive. I seem to remember the words "The Clash" came out more than once in the sessions.
How much talk was there about finding a hit single or having the album be a breakthrough on the charts?
Absolutely none! Absolutely no talk whatsoever, and never on any of the first three albums. There was no talk of what's going to be the radio song? Never! It was art. We were making music. And a lot of producers will say this, so it's not my line, but all the songs are equal. You don't put more effort into one song than any other.
It was funny -- it was actually one of the young guys in the studio, one of the runners, who was going, "Ohhh, that song, 'New Year's Day,' that's fantastic!" And we were all going, "Really? You like that one? But we like 'Surrender,' or we like -- " [laughs] I mean, it's only time that gives you hindsight. I love "New Year's Day," but I loved "Surrender" and some of the other ones.
War sounds nothing like Boy or October. What did you do to make that happen?
Every time you do more than one record with someone, you try to go on a journey. You try to not repeat the things you've done before. My thought is, it's going to sound like the same band, anyway, because it's going to be the same guy singing. You can try to dress it up and try to make that difference. Yourself -- you're going on a journey, and you're taking your fans along with you. It's never about trying to copy what you did before. It's always about the art, about trying to make something that's timeless and being true to yourself. That's one thing I've really learned from the band. Bono has often said he's a traveling salesman, and he wants to make sure the thing he's carting around the world for the next two years is something he's proud of.
Do you have a favorite story from the recording sessions for War?
I do remember, on "New Year's Day," actually -- I mixed "New Year's Day" in 15 minutes. What happened was, I'd spent a whole day mixing it, and everyone seemed to think it's good enough, but I had this thing in the back of my head that it really could be better. We were running out of time and had one more song left. Bono said, "Give me 20 minutes to write the lyrics. I've just got to finish them off." So, I said, "OK. I'll remix 'New Year's Day' in that time." I knew [the song] so well. I just put the tape on and did it. And I always say to people, if I could mix "New Year's Day" in 15 minutes, if I've got three hours left [on another project], I've got plenty of time.
Where does War rank for you among all the U2 albums?
Oh, God, I'd never like to say that! I mean, my favorites probably go Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, All That You Can't Leave Behind ... [thinks] then maybe War joined on with Atomic Bomb. Or maybe Boy, I don't know. I like Pop, but I think it was a bit ... confusing to people. And a few people have recently come up to me and said how October moves them in a certain way that no other record does. I think when they're great is when they're really focused. Oh! Unforgettable Fire -- I like that one, as well. They've made some good records! [laughs]
Yeah, they've had a modicum of success! [laughs]
They have! But you know, a lot of effort goes into it. It doesn't come easy for them. In some ways, their inadequacies in certain areas have really helped them because it's made them push themselves more. Do you know what I mean?
I do, yes. They're very up front about where they struggle.
Yes. They don't jam. I mean, they were so nervous at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because they thought they might have to jam -- that's what people did at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But that's not their style at all, God bless them. [laughs]
Any other stories [I can share]?
"40" -- that was literally the last song, the last morning?
Yes, that was the last morning. We were finishing the record, and the next band were literally -- this is very Irish -- the band who were booked in the studio from the following day, they were this band who really thought they wanted to get a jump on their sessions. They wanted to start at 7 in the morning. So they were literally standing outside the studio at 6:30 in the morning, while Bono was in there doing the last vocal of "40." And I basically mixed it, and it was all done.
But every U2 album has this legendary last -- you know, the last day of recording any U2 album is fantastic. Even on the last one [Atomic Bomb], it was coming up to midnight, and we were all thinking, It's going to happen. We're [actually] going to finish at midnight. And then Bono walks in and says, "OK, guys, I've got an idea! Set up the band, we're going to record" -- well, it was called "Xanax and Wine" at the time, and later became "Fast Cars." So we did that song in three hours at the end of the night.
Even "Party Girl" -- see, I had this other thing that you should never spend more than a half an hour on a B-side. So, I would let them all have one go -- you could play it once. They didn't know what they were playing, but it was just a real snapshot of that little moment.
Great thanks to Steve Lillywhite for helping @U2 celebrate the 25th anniversary of U2's War album.
(c) @U2, 2008.
atu2
Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road - Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008 - By BOB GELDOF
George W. Bush and Bob Geldof aboard Air Force One en route to Ghana, Africa, Feb. 19, 2008
I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. "Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?" he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. "Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?" I replied. No response.
The Most Powerful Man in the World studied the front cover. Geldof in Africa — " 'The international best seller.' You write that bit yourself?"
"That's right. It's called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn't have to be here telling people your Africa story."
It is some story. And I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people, who were paying for it. It was, for example, Bush who initiated the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by Senators John Kerry and Bill Frist. In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs — and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge. The U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.
So why doesn't America know about this? "I tried to tell them. But the press weren't much interested," says Bush. It's half true. There are always a couple of lines in the State of the Union, but not enough so that anyone noticed, and the press really isn't interested. For them, like America itself, Africa is a continent of which little is known save the odd horror.
We sat in the large, wood-paneled conference room of Air Force One as she cruised the skies of the immense African continent below us. Gathered around the great oval table, I wondered how changed was the man who said in 2000 that Africa "doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them."
"Hold on a minute. I said that in response to a military question. Condi! Canya get in here," the President shouts out the open door, leaning back in his chair. The Secretary of State, looking glamorous and fresh despite having been diverted to Kenya to articulate the U.S.'s concern over matters there before jetting back to Rwanda to join her boss, sits down. "Hi, Bob." "Hi, Condi." It's like being inside a living TV screen.
Bush asks whether she remembers the context of the 2000 question. She confirms it was regarding the U.S.'s military strategies inside Africa, but then 2000 was so long ago. Another universe. I ask him if it is the same today. "Yes, sir," he says. "Well, if America has no military interest in Africa, then what is Africom for?" I ask.
People in Africa are worried about this new, seemingly military command. I thought it was an inappropriate and knee-jerk U.S. militaristic response to clumsy Chinese mercantilism that could only end in tears for everyone concerned. (And so did many Africans, if the local press was anything to go by.)
"That's ridiculous," says Bush. "We're still working on it. We're trying to build a humanitarian mission that would train up soldiers for peace and security so that African nations are more capable of dealing with Africa's conflicts. You agree with that dontcha?" Indeed I do. The British intervention in Sierra Leone stopped and prevented a catastrophe, as did U.S. action in Liberia. Later, in public, Bush says, "I want to dispel the notion that all of a sudden America is bringing all kinds of military to Africa. It's simply not true ... That's baloney, or as we say in Texas — that's bull!" Trouble is, it sounds to me a lot like what the U.S. did in the early Vietnam years with the advisers who became something else. Mission creep, I think it's called.
"No, that won't happen," Bush insists. "We're still working on what exactly it'll be, but it will be a humanitarian mission, training in peace and security, conflict resolution ... It's a new concept and we want to get it right." He muses for a while on the U.S. and China, and their policies on Africa — Africans are increasingly resentful that the Chinese bring their own labor force and supplies with them. Then, in what I took to be a reference to the supposed Chinese influence over the cynical Khartoum regime, Bush adds, "One thing I will say: Human suffering should preempt commercial interest."
It's a wonderful sentence, and it comes in the wake of a visit to Rwanda's Genocide Memorial Center. The museum is built on the site of a still-being-filled open grave. There are 250,000 individuals in that hole, tumbled together in an undifferentiated tangle of humanity. The President and First Lady were visibly shocked by the museum. "Evil does exist," Bush says in reaction to the 1994 massacres. "And in such a brutal form." He is not speechifying; he is horror-struck by the reality of ethnic madness. "Babies had their skulls smashed," he says, his mind violently regurgitating an image he has just witnessed. The sentence peters out, emptied of words to describe the ultimately incomprehensible.
Rwanda brings him back again to Darfur. In an interview with African journalists, Bush explained the difficulties there now that the "rebels" had broken up into ever-smaller factions, no longer representing their own clans but their own warlord interests. What should we do in this very 21st century asymmetric situation? Impose a wall of peacekeepers first, stop the massacre and rape, and begin negotiating? "The U.N. is so slow, but we must act," Bush says.
Action may very well be his wish, but because of the U.S.'s intervention elsewhere and his own preemptive philosophy, it is now unacceptable for the U.S. to engage unilaterally. By his own deeds, he has rendered U.S. action in Darfur impossible. As for the rest of the world, for all their oft-spoken pieties, they seem to be able to agree on precisely nothing. Meanwhile, the rape and killing continue, Khartoum plays its game of murder and we won't even pay for the helicopters that the U.N. forces need to protect themselves. Pathetic.
The Presidential Gig
Earlier, in his private lounge, which is just behind the bedroom with the twin beds with blue blankets, complete with Presidential Seal, we'd talked of personal stuff. I'd been asking about the laundry arrangements. How do they get the presidential shirts, socks, undies, etc., done on this thing? I'm used to rock-'n'-roll tours where there's a washing machine and dryers set up backstage, but this is gigging on a whole other level. At least 20 military transporters haul presidential necessities around the planet. At our hotel in Ghana, the porter carrying my bag said they had thrown out all the other guests because "the President of the World was coming."
"Laundry, huh?" the President mused. "Y'know, I've never asked that. I usually just wear the same thing all day, but if I need to change, there's always a room I can go to. Laundry, huh? Is this the interview, Geldof? It's certainly a different technique!" He's showing me around because I've asked if I can get Air Force One stuff to bring home to the kids. "Hey guys, get Geldof the links and pins and stuff. And the M&M's. Didja know I got my own presidential M&M's?" Wow. "Yeah, cool, right? They'll love 'em." They did. They're in a presidential box with his autograph on them. The Queen doesn't have that. Or the Pope. And I muse later from Car 25 in the 33-car motorcade that there are probably only three people in the world who can bring crowds like this out onto the street — the Queen, the Pope and the President of the United States, and only one's a politician. "Jed," the President says to the man doing the ironing between the twin beds. "How do we do the laundry on this thing?" "We use hotels, sir." Ah.
Nobody else gets beds. The exhausted Secret Service guys, the secretaries of state, the chief of staff, the assistants and advisers and the press pool attempt a fitful sleep in the gray-and-beige reclining seats. Some give up the unequal struggle and order dinner. Not fantastic food, with decentish wine served by nicely uniformed, friendly waiters.
Up front we're knocking back Cokes. The First Lady, elegant and composed, is reading with her legs tucked under her on the L-shaped sofa. The President throws himself into a chair in front of me and sprawls comfortably, Texas-style. He asks about growing up in Dublin. "Was it poor then?" Very. "Huh. What'd your dad do? Your mom?" We went through it. "How'd you and Bono meet up? You knew each other back then? What's his real name?"
I don't know how, but eventually we arrive at the great unspoken. "See, I believe we're in an ideological struggle with extremism," says the President. "These people prey on the hopeless. Hopelessness breeds terrorism. That's why this trip is a mission undertaken with the deepest sense of humanity, because those other folks will just use vulnerable people for evil. Like in Iraq."
I don't want to go there. I have my views and they're at odds with his, and I don't want to spoil the interview or be rude in the face of his hospitality. "Ah, look Mr. President. I don't want to do this really. We'll get distracted and I'm here to do Africa with you." "OK, but we got rid of tyranny." It sounded like the television Bush. It sounded too justificatory, and he doesn't ever have to justify his Africa policy. This is the person who has quadrupled aid to the poorest people on the planet. I was more comfortable with that. But his expression asked for agreement and sympathy, and I couldn't provide either.
"Mr. President, please. There are things you've done I could never possibly agree with and there are things I've done in my life that you would disapprove of, too. And that would make your hospitality awkward. The cost has been too much. History will play itself out." "I think history will prove me right," he shoots back. "Who knows," I say.
It wasn't awkward. It wasn't uncomfortable. He is convinced, like Tony Blair, that he made the right decision. "I'm comfortable with that decision," he says. But he can't be. The laws of unintended consequences would determine that. At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him "as a walking crime against humanity." He looks very hurt by that. And I'm sorry I said it, because he's a very likable fellow.
"C'mon, let's move next door and let Laura alone." "I spoke to Blair about you before I came on the plane." "Tony Blair? What'd he say?" "He said you don't see color. To remember that you employed the first black secretaries of state, that your worldview had changed since you began, and that Condi was a big influence with regard to Africa." "So you were a big influence on me," he says to Condi. "I don't think so ..." "Nah, I've always been like this." "But now you sound like a hippie, for God's sake," I say. He laughs.
An Emotional Man
At a lunch for Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana, the President introduces the First Lady and Condi. Then he introduces me. It turns into a very funny Geldof roast. Finally, he says, "Anyway, he doesn't look it, but he's all right. And I'm not saying that to blow smoke up his rear just because he's doing some piece on me." Thanks for the compliment, Mr. President. He makes the volunteers relaxed and easy with him. They introduce themselves. One woman tells how six months previously, she was bitten by a cobra and rushed to hospital. As she was passing out, she tells the President, "that little voice whispered to me, 'You'll be all right,' and I was." She pauses, and says meaningfully to him: "You know that little voice, I think?" "Not really," Bush says drily. "I've never been bitten by a cobra." As they tell their stories he refers to them as being among the best of America. "I like courage and compassion. We are a courageous and compassionate people." A middle-aged couple say they gave up their careers and home to come to Africa. "It's important to take risks for the things you believe in," says Bush. Then disarmingly, he says to the man, who lives in a village, "What's social life like here?" "What's social life anywhere at 59?" the man asks his President, who is 61. "Tell me about it," says Bush. "Bed at 6:30!"
I have always heard that Bush mangles language and I've laughed at the satires of his diction. He shrugs them off, but I think he's sensitive about it. He has some verbal tics, but in public and with me he speaks fluently and in wonderful aphorisms, like:
"Stop coming to Africa feeling guilty. Come with love and feeling confident for its future."
"When we see hunger we feed them. Not to spread our influence, but because they're hungry."
"U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders."
"Africa has changed since I've become President. Not because of me, but because of African leaders."
Some of these thoughts, were they applied to Iraq, would have profound implications on the man's understanding of how the world functions. ("U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders!")
Of course, it would be ridiculous to be the President of the U.S. and not change as a person or evolve in your understanding of the world. I suggest that his commitment to Africa has been revolutionary in its interest curve. "That's not true," he says. "In my second debate with Al Gore, I came out for debt cancellation and AIDS relief. I called AIDS a genocide. I felt and still do that it was unacceptable to stand by and let a generation be eradicated."
You forget that Bush has an M.B.A. He thinks like a businessman in terms of the bottom line. Results. Profit and loss. There is an empiricism to a lot of his furthest-reaching policies on Africa. Correctly, he's big on trade. "A 1% increase in trade from Africa," he says, "will mean more money than all the aid put together annually." He's proud that he twice reauthorized the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a modestly revolutionary Clinton Administration initiative that enabled previously heavily taxed exports to enter the U.S. tax-free. Even though oil still accounts for the vast amount of African exports to the U.S., the beneficial impact of AGOA on such places as the tiny country of Lesotho, and its growing textile industry, has been startling.
AGOA represents precisely the sort of coherent thinking that will change things for Africa. But we talk of how the little that Africa does export to other parts of the world is still greater than the amount that it trades within the continent. I say that's because there are more landlocked countries in Africa than anywhere else in the world. "So they can't get their stuff to market?" he asks quickly. "Exactly," I say. "You have to pay so many tariffs at each border that by the time you get to the coast, you're overpriced." "You gotta dismantle borders, then." He's curious and quick.
He is also, I feel, an emotional man. But sometimes he's a sentimentalist, and that's different. He is in love with America. Not the idea of America, but rather an inchoate notion of a space — a glorious metaphysical entity. But it is clear that since its mendacious beginnings, this war has thrown up a series of abuses that disgrace the U.S.'s central proposition. In the need to find morally neutralizing euphemisms to describe torture and abuse, the language itself became tortured and abused. Rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib — all are codes for what America is not. America has mortally compromised its own essential values of civil liberty while imposing its own idea of freedom on others who may not want it. The Bush regime has been divisive — but not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent — but not in Africa. It has created bitterness — but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives.
"Guys like me always like to cut ribbons," Bush says mockingly at a ceremonial opening. But it's a dangerous modesty. Congress must still agree to fund the massive spending he's laid out for Africa, and most of it will come after he leaves the White House. It is vital that the new President continues with this policy. "Whoever is President," Bush says, "will understand Africa is in our nation's interest. They are wonderful people."
On Air Force One, Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Bobby Pittman, the National Security Council adviser for Africa, and I stayed awake as the pitch night engulfed us, only punctuated by the giant orange gas flares on the Gulf of Guinea. We ate our popcorn, drank our Cokes and watched Batman Begins as the airspace was cleared for miles around us. America was flying through the warm African night and I was hitching a ride on her. time
George W. Bush and Bob Geldof aboard Air Force One en route to Ghana, Africa, Feb. 19, 2008I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. "Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?" he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. "Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?" I replied. No response.
The Most Powerful Man in the World studied the front cover. Geldof in Africa — " 'The international best seller.' You write that bit yourself?"
"That's right. It's called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn't have to be here telling people your Africa story."
It is some story. And I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people, who were paying for it. It was, for example, Bush who initiated the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by Senators John Kerry and Bill Frist. In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs — and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free of charge. The U.S. also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — which treats another 1.5 million. It contributes 50% of all food aid (though some critics find the mechanism of contribution controversial). On a seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to Tanzanian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, another initiative of the Bush Administration.
So why doesn't America know about this? "I tried to tell them. But the press weren't much interested," says Bush. It's half true. There are always a couple of lines in the State of the Union, but not enough so that anyone noticed, and the press really isn't interested. For them, like America itself, Africa is a continent of which little is known save the odd horror.
We sat in the large, wood-paneled conference room of Air Force One as she cruised the skies of the immense African continent below us. Gathered around the great oval table, I wondered how changed was the man who said in 2000 that Africa "doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them."
"Hold on a minute. I said that in response to a military question. Condi! Canya get in here," the President shouts out the open door, leaning back in his chair. The Secretary of State, looking glamorous and fresh despite having been diverted to Kenya to articulate the U.S.'s concern over matters there before jetting back to Rwanda to join her boss, sits down. "Hi, Bob." "Hi, Condi." It's like being inside a living TV screen.
Bush asks whether she remembers the context of the 2000 question. She confirms it was regarding the U.S.'s military strategies inside Africa, but then 2000 was so long ago. Another universe. I ask him if it is the same today. "Yes, sir," he says. "Well, if America has no military interest in Africa, then what is Africom for?" I ask.
People in Africa are worried about this new, seemingly military command. I thought it was an inappropriate and knee-jerk U.S. militaristic response to clumsy Chinese mercantilism that could only end in tears for everyone concerned. (And so did many Africans, if the local press was anything to go by.)
"That's ridiculous," says Bush. "We're still working on it. We're trying to build a humanitarian mission that would train up soldiers for peace and security so that African nations are more capable of dealing with Africa's conflicts. You agree with that dontcha?" Indeed I do. The British intervention in Sierra Leone stopped and prevented a catastrophe, as did U.S. action in Liberia. Later, in public, Bush says, "I want to dispel the notion that all of a sudden America is bringing all kinds of military to Africa. It's simply not true ... That's baloney, or as we say in Texas — that's bull!" Trouble is, it sounds to me a lot like what the U.S. did in the early Vietnam years with the advisers who became something else. Mission creep, I think it's called.
"No, that won't happen," Bush insists. "We're still working on what exactly it'll be, but it will be a humanitarian mission, training in peace and security, conflict resolution ... It's a new concept and we want to get it right." He muses for a while on the U.S. and China, and their policies on Africa — Africans are increasingly resentful that the Chinese bring their own labor force and supplies with them. Then, in what I took to be a reference to the supposed Chinese influence over the cynical Khartoum regime, Bush adds, "One thing I will say: Human suffering should preempt commercial interest."
It's a wonderful sentence, and it comes in the wake of a visit to Rwanda's Genocide Memorial Center. The museum is built on the site of a still-being-filled open grave. There are 250,000 individuals in that hole, tumbled together in an undifferentiated tangle of humanity. The President and First Lady were visibly shocked by the museum. "Evil does exist," Bush says in reaction to the 1994 massacres. "And in such a brutal form." He is not speechifying; he is horror-struck by the reality of ethnic madness. "Babies had their skulls smashed," he says, his mind violently regurgitating an image he has just witnessed. The sentence peters out, emptied of words to describe the ultimately incomprehensible.
Rwanda brings him back again to Darfur. In an interview with African journalists, Bush explained the difficulties there now that the "rebels" had broken up into ever-smaller factions, no longer representing their own clans but their own warlord interests. What should we do in this very 21st century asymmetric situation? Impose a wall of peacekeepers first, stop the massacre and rape, and begin negotiating? "The U.N. is so slow, but we must act," Bush says.
Action may very well be his wish, but because of the U.S.'s intervention elsewhere and his own preemptive philosophy, it is now unacceptable for the U.S. to engage unilaterally. By his own deeds, he has rendered U.S. action in Darfur impossible. As for the rest of the world, for all their oft-spoken pieties, they seem to be able to agree on precisely nothing. Meanwhile, the rape and killing continue, Khartoum plays its game of murder and we won't even pay for the helicopters that the U.N. forces need to protect themselves. Pathetic.
The Presidential Gig
Earlier, in his private lounge, which is just behind the bedroom with the twin beds with blue blankets, complete with Presidential Seal, we'd talked of personal stuff. I'd been asking about the laundry arrangements. How do they get the presidential shirts, socks, undies, etc., done on this thing? I'm used to rock-'n'-roll tours where there's a washing machine and dryers set up backstage, but this is gigging on a whole other level. At least 20 military transporters haul presidential necessities around the planet. At our hotel in Ghana, the porter carrying my bag said they had thrown out all the other guests because "the President of the World was coming."
"Laundry, huh?" the President mused. "Y'know, I've never asked that. I usually just wear the same thing all day, but if I need to change, there's always a room I can go to. Laundry, huh? Is this the interview, Geldof? It's certainly a different technique!" He's showing me around because I've asked if I can get Air Force One stuff to bring home to the kids. "Hey guys, get Geldof the links and pins and stuff. And the M&M's. Didja know I got my own presidential M&M's?" Wow. "Yeah, cool, right? They'll love 'em." They did. They're in a presidential box with his autograph on them. The Queen doesn't have that. Or the Pope. And I muse later from Car 25 in the 33-car motorcade that there are probably only three people in the world who can bring crowds like this out onto the street — the Queen, the Pope and the President of the United States, and only one's a politician. "Jed," the President says to the man doing the ironing between the twin beds. "How do we do the laundry on this thing?" "We use hotels, sir." Ah.
Nobody else gets beds. The exhausted Secret Service guys, the secretaries of state, the chief of staff, the assistants and advisers and the press pool attempt a fitful sleep in the gray-and-beige reclining seats. Some give up the unequal struggle and order dinner. Not fantastic food, with decentish wine served by nicely uniformed, friendly waiters.
Up front we're knocking back Cokes. The First Lady, elegant and composed, is reading with her legs tucked under her on the L-shaped sofa. The President throws himself into a chair in front of me and sprawls comfortably, Texas-style. He asks about growing up in Dublin. "Was it poor then?" Very. "Huh. What'd your dad do? Your mom?" We went through it. "How'd you and Bono meet up? You knew each other back then? What's his real name?"
I don't know how, but eventually we arrive at the great unspoken. "See, I believe we're in an ideological struggle with extremism," says the President. "These people prey on the hopeless. Hopelessness breeds terrorism. That's why this trip is a mission undertaken with the deepest sense of humanity, because those other folks will just use vulnerable people for evil. Like in Iraq."
I don't want to go there. I have my views and they're at odds with his, and I don't want to spoil the interview or be rude in the face of his hospitality. "Ah, look Mr. President. I don't want to do this really. We'll get distracted and I'm here to do Africa with you." "OK, but we got rid of tyranny." It sounded like the television Bush. It sounded too justificatory, and he doesn't ever have to justify his Africa policy. This is the person who has quadrupled aid to the poorest people on the planet. I was more comfortable with that. But his expression asked for agreement and sympathy, and I couldn't provide either.
"Mr. President, please. There are things you've done I could never possibly agree with and there are things I've done in my life that you would disapprove of, too. And that would make your hospitality awkward. The cost has been too much. History will play itself out." "I think history will prove me right," he shoots back. "Who knows," I say.
It wasn't awkward. It wasn't uncomfortable. He is convinced, like Tony Blair, that he made the right decision. "I'm comfortable with that decision," he says. But he can't be. The laws of unintended consequences would determine that. At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him "as a walking crime against humanity." He looks very hurt by that. And I'm sorry I said it, because he's a very likable fellow.
"C'mon, let's move next door and let Laura alone." "I spoke to Blair about you before I came on the plane." "Tony Blair? What'd he say?" "He said you don't see color. To remember that you employed the first black secretaries of state, that your worldview had changed since you began, and that Condi was a big influence with regard to Africa." "So you were a big influence on me," he says to Condi. "I don't think so ..." "Nah, I've always been like this." "But now you sound like a hippie, for God's sake," I say. He laughs.
An Emotional Man
At a lunch for Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana, the President introduces the First Lady and Condi. Then he introduces me. It turns into a very funny Geldof roast. Finally, he says, "Anyway, he doesn't look it, but he's all right. And I'm not saying that to blow smoke up his rear just because he's doing some piece on me." Thanks for the compliment, Mr. President. He makes the volunteers relaxed and easy with him. They introduce themselves. One woman tells how six months previously, she was bitten by a cobra and rushed to hospital. As she was passing out, she tells the President, "that little voice whispered to me, 'You'll be all right,' and I was." She pauses, and says meaningfully to him: "You know that little voice, I think?" "Not really," Bush says drily. "I've never been bitten by a cobra." As they tell their stories he refers to them as being among the best of America. "I like courage and compassion. We are a courageous and compassionate people." A middle-aged couple say they gave up their careers and home to come to Africa. "It's important to take risks for the things you believe in," says Bush. Then disarmingly, he says to the man, who lives in a village, "What's social life like here?" "What's social life anywhere at 59?" the man asks his President, who is 61. "Tell me about it," says Bush. "Bed at 6:30!"
I have always heard that Bush mangles language and I've laughed at the satires of his diction. He shrugs them off, but I think he's sensitive about it. He has some verbal tics, but in public and with me he speaks fluently and in wonderful aphorisms, like:
"Stop coming to Africa feeling guilty. Come with love and feeling confident for its future."
"When we see hunger we feed them. Not to spread our influence, but because they're hungry."
"U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders."
"Africa has changed since I've become President. Not because of me, but because of African leaders."
Some of these thoughts, were they applied to Iraq, would have profound implications on the man's understanding of how the world functions. ("U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders!")
Of course, it would be ridiculous to be the President of the U.S. and not change as a person or evolve in your understanding of the world. I suggest that his commitment to Africa has been revolutionary in its interest curve. "That's not true," he says. "In my second debate with Al Gore, I came out for debt cancellation and AIDS relief. I called AIDS a genocide. I felt and still do that it was unacceptable to stand by and let a generation be eradicated."
You forget that Bush has an M.B.A. He thinks like a businessman in terms of the bottom line. Results. Profit and loss. There is an empiricism to a lot of his furthest-reaching policies on Africa. Correctly, he's big on trade. "A 1% increase in trade from Africa," he says, "will mean more money than all the aid put together annually." He's proud that he twice reauthorized the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a modestly revolutionary Clinton Administration initiative that enabled previously heavily taxed exports to enter the U.S. tax-free. Even though oil still accounts for the vast amount of African exports to the U.S., the beneficial impact of AGOA on such places as the tiny country of Lesotho, and its growing textile industry, has been startling.
AGOA represents precisely the sort of coherent thinking that will change things for Africa. But we talk of how the little that Africa does export to other parts of the world is still greater than the amount that it trades within the continent. I say that's because there are more landlocked countries in Africa than anywhere else in the world. "So they can't get their stuff to market?" he asks quickly. "Exactly," I say. "You have to pay so many tariffs at each border that by the time you get to the coast, you're overpriced." "You gotta dismantle borders, then." He's curious and quick.
He is also, I feel, an emotional man. But sometimes he's a sentimentalist, and that's different. He is in love with America. Not the idea of America, but rather an inchoate notion of a space — a glorious metaphysical entity. But it is clear that since its mendacious beginnings, this war has thrown up a series of abuses that disgrace the U.S.'s central proposition. In the need to find morally neutralizing euphemisms to describe torture and abuse, the language itself became tortured and abused. Rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib — all are codes for what America is not. America has mortally compromised its own essential values of civil liberty while imposing its own idea of freedom on others who may not want it. The Bush regime has been divisive — but not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent — but not in Africa. It has created bitterness — but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives.
"Guys like me always like to cut ribbons," Bush says mockingly at a ceremonial opening. But it's a dangerous modesty. Congress must still agree to fund the massive spending he's laid out for Africa, and most of it will come after he leaves the White House. It is vital that the new President continues with this policy. "Whoever is President," Bush says, "will understand Africa is in our nation's interest. They are wonderful people."
On Air Force One, Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Bobby Pittman, the National Security Council adviser for Africa, and I stayed awake as the pitch night engulfed us, only punctuated by the giant orange gas flares on the Gulf of Guinea. We ate our popcorn, drank our Cokes and watched Batman Begins as the airspace was cleared for miles around us. America was flying through the warm African night and I was hitching a ride on her. time
Bono no longer has the voice for Clannad
Mar 7 2008 by Sally Williams, Western Mail - As Irish group Clannad prepare to return to the spotlight, Sally Williams speaks to guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan about their unique sound and their certain friend by the name of Bono. IT is more than 20 years since Ireland’s spiritual group Clannad teamed up with their countryman Bono for the spine-tingling hit In A Lifetime. But, as the band prepare to visit Wales as part of their first UK tour for a decade, don’t hold your breath for the U2 frontman to appear on stage with them. Guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan admits that Bono never performed the hit live and when Clannad sang it on Top Of The Pops they did it without him. Duggan says, “He (Bono) says he doesn’t have the voice for it anymore. So we will have Bryan Kennedy (who has sung with Van Morrison) singing it in Belfast and there will be other guests on tour too. “But we see Bono a lot, we are bound to bump into him in Dublin because it is such a small place.” Duggan says that while his close friend is world famous, he can enjoy life without getting mobbed in his native city of Dublin. “When the public see him in Dublin it really is no big deal. They don’t like to treat people as heroes,” he says. “It’s a case of ‘Hey, Bono is up there at the bar. Ah, so what’. He is free to walk down the road without being mobbed.” In one bar in Donegal, Bono even ended up serving pints of Guinness to customers. “There was Bono pulling pints for locals, he is really down-to-earth,” says Duggan, whose mother and father were schoolteachers but had instruments all over the house. Clannad is made up of Duggan together with his niece, lead singer Moya Brennan, his twin brother Padraig and Ciaran Brennan. It is 25 years since their timeless piece Theme From Harry’s Game became a chart hit across Europe and 10 years have passed since their last studio album release, the Grammy Award-winning Landmarks. “It’s been a long time but I still crave the stage,” says Duggan, now in his 60th year and living near Dublin. “I’ve been in a group called Norland Wind, with my brother Padraig, in Germany. A lot of old groups are coming back together now. And together again as Clannad we’ve already played Glasgow and Dublin so somebody out there still likes us.” Duggan’s other niece, the solo performer Enya, spent two years working with Clannad. “She was a very shy little girl. We don’t see much of Enya at all now. “She lives in a castle at Killiney, she lives like a queen. She doesn’t go anywhere; she is a recluse.” Clannad’s trademark mystical trance sound has featured on a number of blockbuster movie soundtracks, including Patriot Games, starring Harrison Ford, Message In A Bottle and Last Of The Mohicans. Clannad have come a long way since winning a talent contest in Letterkenny in 1970. They have since sold more than 10 million records and have also been honoured with an Ivor Novello and a Bafta award. But Noel said most fans will remember the band for the song, Theme From Harry’s Game, which was featured in the television series, Robin of Sherwood, starring Michael Praed. He adds, “Harry’s Game took the group in a different musical direction and the record company asked us to go ‘poppy’. “But we did and still do hold on to our mystical Celtic roots. “We like to sing in our native Gaelic and hope that our listeners who don’t speak it still like the sound. “I think it is important to explain what the songs are about though. “We are really looking forward to playing St David’s Hall, we expect that the Welsh audience will be great. The hall has good acoustics for our pipers, fiddle players and harmonies. “When we last played Cardiff, there was no Millennium Stadium or Wales Millennium Centre so we are expecting a lot of changes.” Duggan hopes to revisit Wales in future on holiday when he will have a chance to have a proper look around. He adds, “I’ve never been on a tour around Wales, although I would really like to some day. “I get inspiration to write the songs when the feeling takes me, which is usually when I’m walking the dog (a border collie cross spaniel dog called Woofie) in Dublin Bay first thing in the morning.” Duggan and his partner Barbara have written a history of Clannad called A Moment In Life which will be published shortly. The 2008 11-date UK tour will end at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on March 14. The concerts provide a rare chance for audiences to see them performing material from across their entire ground-breaking career, dating back to the ‘70s. Clannad are at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, tonight. Tickets are available from the box office on 029 2087 8444
icwales
Bono makes a call in to 2FM's The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show during the morning drive on Tuesday -- the announcers were commenting on recent news reports that Bono was not able to hit the high notes on the Clannad song "In a Lifetime," and Bono responds with his defense and receives an invite to sing at the wedding. You can hear the call here: rte
Bono joins Colm and Jim-Jim on air Bono was a surprise caller to RTÉ 2fm's 'The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show' this morning. Listen to show here. During the show presenters Colm and Jim-Jim had joked that Bono was not able to hit the notes any more, following a discussion with Clannad singer Moya Brennan about whether the U2 frontman could perform 'In a Lifetime' with the band. Bono then rang the duo live on air and said that he had lost none of his vocal abilities and that their show was the programme of choice in his car on the school run. The singer was then asked whether he would sing at Jim-Jim's wedding, and he hinted that he might. Bono also sang two of Colm and Jim-Jim's jingles live on air. Afterwards, Jim-Jim said: "Sharon and I hadn't even thought of a wedding band for our big day but if Bono and the lads are free then I'm up for it!" rte
Mar 7 2008 by Sally Williams, Western Mail - As Irish group Clannad prepare to return to the spotlight, Sally Williams speaks to guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan about their unique sound and their certain friend by the name of Bono. IT is more than 20 years since Ireland’s spiritual group Clannad teamed up with their countryman Bono for the spine-tingling hit In A Lifetime. But, as the band prepare to visit Wales as part of their first UK tour for a decade, don’t hold your breath for the U2 frontman to appear on stage with them. Guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan admits that Bono never performed the hit live and when Clannad sang it on Top Of The Pops they did it without him. Duggan says, “He (Bono) says he doesn’t have the voice for it anymore. So we will have Bryan Kennedy (who has sung with Van Morrison) singing it in Belfast and there will be other guests on tour too. “But we see Bono a lot, we are bound to bump into him in Dublin because it is such a small place.” Duggan says that while his close friend is world famous, he can enjoy life without getting mobbed in his native city of Dublin. “When the public see him in Dublin it really is no big deal. They don’t like to treat people as heroes,” he says. “It’s a case of ‘Hey, Bono is up there at the bar. Ah, so what’. He is free to walk down the road without being mobbed.” In one bar in Donegal, Bono even ended up serving pints of Guinness to customers. “There was Bono pulling pints for locals, he is really down-to-earth,” says Duggan, whose mother and father were schoolteachers but had instruments all over the house. Clannad is made up of Duggan together with his niece, lead singer Moya Brennan, his twin brother Padraig and Ciaran Brennan. It is 25 years since their timeless piece Theme From Harry’s Game became a chart hit across Europe and 10 years have passed since their last studio album release, the Grammy Award-winning Landmarks. “It’s been a long time but I still crave the stage,” says Duggan, now in his 60th year and living near Dublin. “I’ve been in a group called Norland Wind, with my brother Padraig, in Germany. A lot of old groups are coming back together now. And together again as Clannad we’ve already played Glasgow and Dublin so somebody out there still likes us.” Duggan’s other niece, the solo performer Enya, spent two years working with Clannad. “She was a very shy little girl. We don’t see much of Enya at all now. “She lives in a castle at Killiney, she lives like a queen. She doesn’t go anywhere; she is a recluse.” Clannad’s trademark mystical trance sound has featured on a number of blockbuster movie soundtracks, including Patriot Games, starring Harrison Ford, Message In A Bottle and Last Of The Mohicans. Clannad have come a long way since winning a talent contest in Letterkenny in 1970. They have since sold more than 10 million records and have also been honoured with an Ivor Novello and a Bafta award. But Noel said most fans will remember the band for the song, Theme From Harry’s Game, which was featured in the television series, Robin of Sherwood, starring Michael Praed. He adds, “Harry’s Game took the group in a different musical direction and the record company asked us to go ‘poppy’. “But we did and still do hold on to our mystical Celtic roots. “We like to sing in our native Gaelic and hope that our listeners who don’t speak it still like the sound. “I think it is important to explain what the songs are about though. “We are really looking forward to playing St David’s Hall, we expect that the Welsh audience will be great. The hall has good acoustics for our pipers, fiddle players and harmonies. “When we last played Cardiff, there was no Millennium Stadium or Wales Millennium Centre so we are expecting a lot of changes.” Duggan hopes to revisit Wales in future on holiday when he will have a chance to have a proper look around. He adds, “I’ve never been on a tour around Wales, although I would really like to some day. “I get inspiration to write the songs when the feeling takes me, which is usually when I’m walking the dog (a border collie cross spaniel dog called Woofie) in Dublin Bay first thing in the morning.” Duggan and his partner Barbara have written a history of Clannad called A Moment In Life which will be published shortly. The 2008 11-date UK tour will end at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on March 14. The concerts provide a rare chance for audiences to see them performing material from across their entire ground-breaking career, dating back to the ‘70s. Clannad are at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, tonight. Tickets are available from the box office on 029 2087 8444
icwales
Bono makes a call in to 2FM's The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show during the morning drive on Tuesday -- the announcers were commenting on recent news reports that Bono was not able to hit the high notes on the Clannad song "In a Lifetime," and Bono responds with his defense and receives an invite to sing at the wedding. You can hear the call here: rte
Bono joins Colm and Jim-Jim on air Bono was a surprise caller to RTÉ 2fm's 'The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show' this morning. Listen to show here. During the show presenters Colm and Jim-Jim had joked that Bono was not able to hit the notes any more, following a discussion with Clannad singer Moya Brennan about whether the U2 frontman could perform 'In a Lifetime' with the band. Bono then rang the duo live on air and said that he had lost none of his vocal abilities and that their show was the programme of choice in his car on the school run. The singer was then asked whether he would sing at Jim-Jim's wedding, and he hinted that he might. Bono also sang two of Colm and Jim-Jim's jingles live on air. Afterwards, Jim-Jim said: "Sharon and I hadn't even thought of a wedding band for our big day but if Bono and the lads are free then I'm up for it!" rte
Hannover Quay: Edge, Bono, Lanois
1) Bono gets “doorstepped” outside the studio in Dublin by some fans from U2Valencia.com. Note how Bono encourages Sam to bring The Edge outside, too:
Photos: interference * interference * interference * interference * interference * U2place * interference
2) Bono: 'Hello, hello, Vertigo Radio':
3)Daniel Lanois interview to U2valencia fans ('Vertigo Radio') about the new album. February 27, 2008 by Octavio Morcuende and Javier Vara:
Around March 8, 2008, Sam O'Sullivan told to some Italian fans that the work in Hannover Quay is concluded. U2.place
Bono: flickr
Bono and fans
Fan meeting Adam and Bono interference
Photos: interference
1) Bono gets “doorstepped” outside the studio in Dublin by some fans from U2Valencia.com. Note how Bono encourages Sam to bring The Edge outside, too:
Photos: interference * interference * interference * interference * interference * U2place * interference
2) Bono: 'Hello, hello, Vertigo Radio':
3)Daniel Lanois interview to U2valencia fans ('Vertigo Radio') about the new album. February 27, 2008 by Octavio Morcuende and Javier Vara:
Around March 8, 2008, Sam O'Sullivan told to some Italian fans that the work in Hannover Quay is concluded. U2.place
Bono: flickr
Bono and fans
Fan meeting Adam and Bono interference
Photos: interference
20.3.08
'Amusing Chemistry'
'A 'Little Excursion' With Adam'
Adam takes us on a 'little excursion' through a Dublin show by the photographic artists McDermott and McGough.
Adam, celebrating his birthday this past week, took his video camera along to the Irish Museum of Modern Art which is currently hosting, ‘An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 – 1890’ .
It's a retrospective covering twenty years of work by the American-born artists David McDermott and Peter McGough, who met in the East Village New York art scene of the 1980s.
They're famous for the way they fuse art and life – not least by reconstructing their own lives as Victorian gentlemen. As Adam points out, they dress in Victorian clothes, live without electricity and even date their work in the era - hence the chronology in the title of the show.
Enjoy the clip...
Read more about the show at IMMA here
If you’re passing through Dublin, the show is on until late April.
Watch Adam: U2.com
'A 'Little Excursion' With Adam' Adam takes us on a 'little excursion' through a Dublin show by the photographic artists McDermott and McGough.
Adam, celebrating his birthday this past week, took his video camera along to the Irish Museum of Modern Art which is currently hosting, ‘An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 – 1890’ .
It's a retrospective covering twenty years of work by the American-born artists David McDermott and Peter McGough, who met in the East Village New York art scene of the 1980s.
They're famous for the way they fuse art and life – not least by reconstructing their own lives as Victorian gentlemen. As Adam points out, they dress in Victorian clothes, live without electricity and even date their work in the era - hence the chronology in the title of the show.
Enjoy the clip...
Read more about the show at IMMA here
If you’re passing through Dublin, the show is on until late April.
Watch Adam: U2.com
1.1.08
Time by Pink Floyd This is about how time can slip by, but many people do not realize it until it is too late. Roger Waters got the idea when he realized he was no longer preparing for anything in life, but was right in the middle of it. He had just turned 28. The song starts with layers of clock noises that were put together by their engineer, Alan Parsons. Each clock was recorded separately at an antiques store, and the band blended them together. Parsons wanted to use the clocks to demonstrate a new quadraphonic sound system, but they ended up using it to open the song instead. This was the only song on Dark Side Of The Moon that all 4 members received a writing credit for. The album has sold over 34 million copies and was on the US charts for 762 consecutive weeks (14 years). It still sells around 8,000 copies a week in the US. On their 1973 tour, they played this just after a 4-foot model plane was released from the back of the venue, crashing into the stage and exploding. Floyd always used lots of visual effects at their shows, and had the money to make them very elaborate on this tour. The band played this live long before it was released. They played the whole album in February, 1972 at the Rainbow Theater in London, over a year before it came out. This contains a reprise back to the rhythm of "Breathe," which appears two songs earlier on Dark Side of the Moon. "On The Run", an instrumental, is in between. At the time of recording only a few tom-tom drums were available for the intro. To get the right mix and sound, the band had to tune each drum after hitting it, record it, and then blend and mix into a finalized percussion track. This was a time intensive process. The sound at the begining of the song is made by Waters' bass.
Lyrics for: Time
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town,
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
Home, home again.
I like to be here when I can.
And when I come home cold and tired,
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire.
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.
Lyrics for: Time
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town,
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
Home, home again.
I like to be here when I can.
And when I come home cold and tired,
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire.
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.
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