'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?
Advertisement
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
21.9.09
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)