Bono said what ?

To many times we have said “Bono,said what?” and come to find out that Bono has had a lot to say about many subjects. Over the years the press has had an opportunity to catch the one liners, and of course write them up. - Often its a snap shot into a bigger message.

Bono said……

As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

Rock ‘n’ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

The less you know, the more you believe.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

Americans, Irish people, are good at charity. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it. But justice is a higher standard.”

“And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing — because it’s already blessed.” 

“As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It’s so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don’t use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I’m the worst example of it, so just kinda keep my mouth shut.”

“At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.” Bono Quotes

“But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—-. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace.” Bono Quotes

“But my point is that the world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.”

“But we’ve got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are. Outside these gates, and even within them, the culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other isms” of indifference.” 

“But you know what’s amazing? Everywhere I go, I see very much the same thing. I see the same compassion for people who live half a world away. I see the same concern about events beyond these borders. And, increasingly, I see the same conviction that we can and we must join together to stop the scourge of AIDS and poverty.” 

“Celebrity is currency, so I wanted to use mine effectively.” 

“Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Jesus says that [Luke 6:30]. “Righteousness is this: that one should… give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives.” The Koran says that [2.177]. Thus sayeth the Lord: “Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord will be your rear guard.” The Jewish Scripture says that. It’s Isaiah 58 [verses 7-8] again. It’s a very powerful incentive: “The Lord will watch your back.” Sounds like a good deal to me, especially right now.”

“Eight million people die every year for the price of going out with your friends to the movies and buying an ice cream. Literally for about $30 a head per year, you could save 8 million lives. Isn’t that extraordinary? Preventable disease - not calamity, not famine, nothing like that. Preventable disease - just for the lack of medicines. That is cheap, that is a bargain.”

“Even then I prayed more outside of the church than inside. It gets back to the songs I was listening to; to me, they were prayers. How many roads must a man walk down?” That wasn’t a rhetorical question to me. It was addressed to God. It’s a question I wanted to know the answer to, and I’m wondering, who do I ask that to? I’m not gonna ask a schoolteacher. When John Lennon sings, “Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes are wide open” — these songs have an intimacy for me that’s not just between people, I realize now, not just sexual intimacy. A spiritual intimacy.”

“Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.”

“Every era has its defining struggle and the fate of Africa is one of ours. It’s not the only one, but in the history books it’s easily going to make the top five, what we did or what we did not do. It’s a proving ground, as I said earlier, for the idea of equality. But whether it’s this or something else, I hope you’ll pick a fight and get in it.”

“Fear is the opposite of faith.”

“I believe in the kingdom come. Then all the colors will bleed into one.”

“I love this work I do. It’s a privilege to serve the poor,….”

“I was jumping up and down. The president deserves a lot of credit for that. He really stuck his neck out. He was right, it’s important the people know at this time what America is for as well as what America’s against. on George Bush’s announcement of increased AIDS funding for Africa.”

“If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there’s a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in straw poverty”; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me.”

“If I could, you know I would. If I could, I would let it go. This desparation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation.”

“I’m not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you’ve nothing to say, other than ‘Help!’”

“Imagine if a third of the kids at your local primary school were AIDS orphans. That’s a reality in Africa where the parents of 13 million children have been killed by AIDS.”

“Isn’t equality a son of a bitch to follow through on. Isn’t Love thy neighbour” in the global village so inconvenient?”

“It’s not enough to rage against the lie…you’ve got to replace it with the truth.”

“It’s patently clear to anyone living in New York or London that whole corners of their cities were about to be taken out, whether with chemicals or dirty nuclear devices. So I’m not full of criticism for the way the Americans have behaved. I’m with them.”

“Look at what happened in Southeast Asia with the Tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to the greatest misnomer of all misnomers, mother nature.” Well, in Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.”

“My heroes are all alive. I never have worshipped at that altar of burnt-out youth.”

“Sing the melody line you hear in your own head, remember, you don’t owe anybody any explanations, you don’t owe your parents any explanations, you don’t owe your professors any explanations. You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out. But it’s not. The future is not fixed, it’s fluid. You can build your own building, or hut or condo, whatever.”

“So my question I suppose is: What’s the big idea? What’s your big idea? What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?”

“The attention of the world might sometimes be elsewhere, but history is watching. It’s taking notes. And it’s going to hold us to account, each of us.”

“There are many side roads and back streets to rock ‘n’ roll, and most of us get lost down them at times.”

“There are potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa, and it is cheaper by a factor of 100 to prevent the fires from happening than to put them out.”

“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”

“We have to have a very simple standard of doing business, which is: If you are not tackling corruption, if you are not allowing civil society to do their job, we are not giving you any money. Outside of famine, and outside of those kinds of catastrophes, which need money pumped in no matter who’s in charge. We are not marching the streets to redecorate presidential palaces for anyone.”

“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.”

“Well this is the time for bold measures. This is the country (America), and you are the generation.”

“Well, the going rate for change is not cheap. Big ideas are expensive.”

“We’re not here today for a victory lap; we’re here to pick up the pace. Because AIDS is outrunning us.”

“When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.”

“When you sing, you make people vulnerable to change in their lives. You make yourself vulnerable to change in your life. But in the end, you’ve got to become the change you want to see in the world.”

“Yes, I sometimes fail, but at least I’m willing to experiment.”

“You have worked your ass off for this. For four years you’ve been buying, trading, and selling, everything you’ve got in this marketplace of ideas. The intellectual hustle. Your pockets are full, even if your parents’ are empty, and now you’ve got to figure out what to spend it on.” Bono Quotes

“You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

Raise a pint to Bono !

May 10.  The year was 1960.  It was a leap year.  A dozen eggs cost 57 cents.  In the 60’s, the world rose up and broke rules.  The rules were broken when Iris Rankin and Bobby Hewson fell in love.  After all, love has no rules.  Their union gave us a human being who was destined for fame and humanitarianism after rising from his own ashes.

As the story goes, Paul David Hewson came into this world crying and did so for three years before finally settling down (Bono from U2 by U2).  The events that shaped his life were hard lessons for a young man; his mom passed away at a young age and his dad suppressed any dream to which he dared to aspire.  The moment he entered school he was fixing for a row with anyone who crossed him.

One of the aspects of Bono’s personality that I admire so much is how he grew on this spectacular journey.  How he was willing to deconstruct his ego in order for him to be the performer he wanted and needed to be.  Many people sometimes live in denial of their situations perfectly happy to move through life sleeping.  Bono chose to move through life fully awake.  Coming from a small Dublin town born of a Catholic father and Protestant mother, street fighting and general trouble in the country in the way of domestic terrorism was a daily occurrence.  On September 25, 1976, just sixteen years old, he answered Larry Mullin’s ad to form a band.  Less than ten years later, he married his steady girlfriend who he has loved since 1975…Ali Stewart.  Four children and an entire musical career later, they’re still married.  And interestingly enough, the couple’s oldest daughter also shares her dad’s birthday and turns 21 today!

These days, there are people who sharply criticize his involvement with politics and the choices he makes in his life (is there EVER a story I write in which I don’t mention the “haters”?)  Contrary to popular belief, he never fancied himself a hero and doesn’t think he deserves the title.  He’s sees his humanitarian work as work we all should be doing, on any level, big or small.  A self-conscious man with suffering self-esteem who craved attention saw only one vocation for him and he pursued it with great vigor, KNOWING from the moment he answered Larry’s ad that this is what he was going to do with his life.  After all, he needed to have arenas full of fans screaming and proclaiming their love for him so that he could feel accepted.

We are all a product of our environment which shapes our ideals and our belief systems based on our experiences and Bono is no different.  He’s human like the rest of us and chooses to use his celebrity to further the most urgent and important causes of our time.  In my eyes, he’s a man who has accepted his journey with open arms and was led to become one of the most influential people of our time and made his designer shades one of the most recognizable pieces of pop culture of the last two decades.

Happy Birthday to you and your daughter Jordan, Bono!  Keep doing the magnificent work that you do with the band, and thank you for all you’ve done and continue to do for those in need!  All of us fans appreciate the artist and person you are.  Today, we raise a pint to you!  Cheers!



Bono, Happy Birthday

Singer, activist. Born Paul Hewson on May 10, 1960, in Dublin, Ireland. The son of a Roman Catholic postal worker, Bono’s Protestant mother died when the boy was just 14. He joined the band U2 in October 1976 when he was in high school, and was dubbed “Bono Vox” (good voice). He was made frontman for the Irish rock band though his singing at the time was less compelling than his stage presence.

 U2 began touring almost immediately and released its first album, Boy, in 1980. In 1987, they released The Joshua Tree, their sixth album and the one that catapulted the band — and its outspoken frontman — to stardom.

Subsequent albums secured U2’s reputation for range and innovation, including 1991’s industrial-sounding Achtung Baby, 1993’s funkier-edged Zooropa, and techno-influenced 1997’s Pop.

U2 has returned to its modern rock roots with 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Creating simple, but powerful music, the group scored with such tracks as the soaring “Beautiful Day,” which won the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of Year. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) also fared well, both commercially and critically. Its two leading singles, “Vertigo” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” made strong showings on the charts and won several Grammy Awards.

In March 2009, the band released No Line on the Horizon, which reached the top of the American pop charts. It featured such popular songs as “Get On Your Boots” and “Magnificent.” To support the album, Bono and the rest of the group have been touring extensively.

Throughout U2’s career, Bono has written most of the band’s lyrics, often focusing on untraditional themes like politics and religion. In fact, social activism has always been close to the singer’s heart, and he continues to use his music to raise consciousness with performances at Band Aid, Live 8, and Net Aid, among others. In 2006, U2 joined forces with the punk-influenced band Green Day to record a cover of the Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming” to benefit the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The next year, Bono and the rest of U2 contributed the title track to Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur.

Outside of music, Bono has used his celebrity to generate awareness about many global problems. Over the years, he has met with world leaders and many U.S. politicians to discuss such issues as debt relief for developing countries, world poverty, and AIDS. Bono has lobbied tirelessly on behalf of many causes, including two he helped create. DATA, which stands for Debt AIDS Trade Africa, is dedicated to fighting AIDS and ending poverty in Africa. Started in 2004, One is a nonpartisan campaign to “Make Poverty History” and is supported by more than 100 nonprofit organizations as well as millions of individuals, including many celebrities, such as Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Brad Pitt.

In 2005, Bono and his wife Ali Hewson established EDUN, a socially responsible clothing line. While it is a for-profit enterprise, its mission is to foster “sustainable employment in developing areas of the world, particularly Africa,” according to its website. That same year, Bono was named one of Time magazine’s Persons of the Year for his charitable work along with Bill and Melinda Gates. Across the Atlantic, Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight of the British Empire in 2007.

Bono and his wife Ali have been married since 1982. They have two daughters, Jordan and Memphis Eve, and two sons, Elijah and John Abraham.

As Bono turns 50

Bono has much to celebrate, not least achieving world domination as the frontman of U2.

But are his lyrics worthy of celebration and will they be relevant in another 50 years, asks TONY CLAYTON-LEA 

CONSUMERS OF pop music are fussy about lyrics; the examples of good and bad are far too numerous to list (this writer’s favourite clunkers include “there were plants and birds and rocks and things” from America’s Horse With No Name , and the geographically unsound “Coast to coast, LA to Chicago” from Sade’s Smooth Operator ), but you can guarantee that one person’s rounded gem of a lyric is another person’s dog-eared phrase.

For more than 30 years now, Bono’s lyrics have been on the receiving end of brickbats and bouquets; his detractors might point you to the likes of: “Some days are slippy, other days are sloppy; some days you can’t stand the sight of a puppy” ( Some Days Are Better Than Others ), while his fans might direct you towards this example from So Cruel: “You don’t know if it’s fear or desire/Danger the drug that takes you higher/Head of heaven, fingers in the mire/Her heart is racing you can’t keep up/The night is bleeding like a cut/Between the horses of love and lust we are trampled underfoot.”

The Vatican, meanwhile, extols the spiritual quality of Bono’s lyrics. Earlier this year, in L’Osservatore Romano , a newspaper viewed favourably by Vatican officials, Italian music critic Andrea Morandi argued that references to religion (via the Psalms, Habbakuk and the Magnificat) can be discerned in almost every U2 song. “What Bono is writing is very sophisticated and often misunderstood,” noted Morandi, implying, perhaps, that the mixture of the two can often lead to an appealing level of enigma.

Another religious publication, the somewhat more evangelical Christianity Today , states that, “for many Christians of a certain generation, combing through the lyrics of U2 songs in search of biblical images or references to Jesus Christ and his teachings is almost a sport”.

It is little surprise, then, to discover that at various Church of England ceremonies (known as “U2-charists”) Bono’s lyrics take the place of traditional hymns. Originally devised in 2005 by American Episcopal priest Rev Paige Blair (who has since advised more than 150 churches of U2-charists in over 15 US states and seven countries), the lyrics used are culled from songs that include When Love Comes To Town, Mysterious Ways and Elevation .

“Methodist hymn writers once wrote contemporary music,” Blair has noted. “Are we worshipping Bono? Absolutely not. No more so than we worship Martin Luther when we sing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God .”

Don’t talk to acclaimed US music critic Dave Marsh about such matters, though. In 2009, in the political newsletter Counterpunch , he wrote an article in the wake of Bono withdrawing from a public debate (“Celebrity politics – a complete failure?”). Marsh, possibly suffering from a residual surge of humiliation and hubris, opined that: “It can’t be denied that Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton and the Edge can still make fascinating music.

“Bono’s yelped vocals are another matter, his hollow lyrics – where every platitude yields to an obscurantist pretension and back again – yet another.”

So, on the cusp of Bono’s 50th birthday, where does all of this leave us with regard to what he writes and how it’s received? He’s no Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave or Elvis Costello, but neither is he a Noel or Liam Gallagher. Bono has himself said that the first two lines of Where the Streets Have No Name are “inane”.

In the 2005 publication Bono On Bono he also said: “With the cadence and the way the melody falls, they can be more articulate than any purely literate response. Pop lyrics, in a way, are just a rough direction that you sketch for where the listener must think toward. That’s it, the rest is left up to you. When U2 songs are written, I don’t write them in English. I write them in what the band call ‘Bongelese’, I just sing the melodies and the words form in my mouth, later to be deciphered.”

ALICE JAGO, IRISH SINGER-SONGWRITER 

Bono has got a great eye for detail. Look at the lyrics in Bullet the Blue Sky : “Across the tin huts as children sleep/Through the alleys of a quiet city street/Up the staircase to the first floor/We turn the key and slowly unlock the door/As a man breathes into his saxophone.”

He has also a simplicity of language in lyrics like “all the promises we made/From the cradle to the grave/When all I want is you”. I agree that when you take away the music, it’s something else and maybe a little less profound, but it all works in unison.

He’s a great lyricist, but maybe not a great poet. They are two very different things. Most songwriters aren’t overly concerned with how words read on paper, the words work around the melody, and the sound of U2 would be completely different if he was trying to fit colourful language into such strong melodies.

Bono isn’t as poetic as Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen, but he has a unique instinct for what works in a song. He also has a sense of humour that he’s not afraid to use, like in No Line On The Horizon : “Every sweet tooth needs just a little hit/Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot/How can you stand next to the truth and not see it.”

Favourite Bono lyric : It’s from Bad : “If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind/Leave this heart of clay, see you walk/Walk away into the night and through the rain/Into the half-light and through the flame.” It’s more like an anthem, isn’t it?

Least favourite lyric : It’s from Elevation : “A mole digging in a hole” Actually, the whole song drives me mad.

ADRIAN CROWLEY, SINGER- SONGWRITER, WINNER OF THIS YEAR’S CHOICE MUSIC PRIZE 

I never considered U2 as the type of band that came from a school of great lyricists. I always saw their appeal as something else, so it’s never entered my mind that Bono would consider the lyric as a really important thing in the songwriting process.

That’s not to say that U2’s songs are forgettable; it’s just most songs of theirs that I know are geared towards that one line that is anthemic. The lyrics never really profoundly touched me. In fairness to him, he hasn’t really put himself up as a great lyricist, so perhaps he’s more aware of his flaws than other people, and if this is so, then that’s a good trait. You know, he might have come to the conclusion that all the songs need are the words he gave them, and nothing else.

When you take some songs apart, like those by Leonard Cohen, you can publish those in a book of poetry; every single one that I know of his would stand as poetry. But not all songs are like that.

So for me, U2 are about the overall sound, not the words. The atmosphere, say, of The Unforgettable Fire , really brought me into the band, but I subsequently discovered that was more to do with Brian Eno than anything else.

I think U2 have reached a level now, creatively, that works for them. It’s almost as if they have a type of song and they’ve been writing that type of song for a long time. How can you go on that long writing the same type of song? Someone like, say, Scott Walker, has certainly changed over the years.

I don’t think Bono has changed that much since the very, very early days.

PAUL MULDOON, POET 

“The first time I was conscious of Bono as a lyricist who might be capable of an excellence that’s rare enough in popular songwriting was as early as the song Bad on The Unforgettable Fire . The litany of “this desperation/dislocation/separation/ condemnation/revelation/in temptation/ isolation/desolation/ let it go” marked the first indications of a gift for the incantatory that has stood him in such good stead. We see it right the way through, in the great combinations of religious iconography and raw eroticism in With or Without You, I Still Haven’t Find What I’m Looking For or Mysterious Ways . In this last, Bono invests William Cowper’s hymn God Moves in Mysterious Ways to move us in ways even more mysterious.

While it’s the combination of lyrics and music that makes U2 such an extraordinary band, there’s no doubt that Bono is becoming a better lyricist per se than ever. One need look no further that the mesmerising One Step Closer on How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb or, on the most recent album, No Line On The Horizon , two of his best songs to date.

I’m thinking of Magnificent , with its really envy-inspiring turn on “justified till we die, you and I will magnify/ the magnificent”.

A similar regard for wordplay that enters the realm of “serious fun” is to be found in Moment of Surrender , in which Bono refers to “a vision of a visibility”, a vision brilliantly grounded in the image of his own reflection staring back from an ATM.

Moment of Surrender also includes a verse with one of the most haunting slant rhymes I’ve come across in a while: “The stone was semi precious/We were barely conscious.”

The “surrender” to which the song refers again combines the sexual with the spiritual, but it also signals a regard for the profound sense of artistic humility to which I’m certain Bono subscribes. He’s willing, I believe, to allow the word to make of him an “instrument”, an idea that all of us who imagine ourselves to be writers would do well to foster.

PAUL REES, EDITOR OF Q MAGAZINE 

I’d question whether anyone’s lyrics, with the arguable exception of a Bob Dylan or a Leonard Cohen, would stand up to scrutiny outside the confines of a song. That’s the context they’re written for – they’re not poetry.

Bono has written some clunkers, true, but then so do almost all rock stars. He also wrote One , which coupled with the music, is a genuinely moving work. Something from Oasis, for instance, like “See me walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball” is an awful piece of writing per se, but it still sounds rousing being sung by a stadium. That’s what it’s built for.

The same applies to Bono’s lyrics, with the same successful result.

He’s never put himself up as being a great wordsmith, so I think he does self-deprecation very well. I would rather hope that at this point he really neither reads nor cares what his detractors think. He is a rock star, not a poet. And he’s not done too shabby a job of being the former. In fact, I would say his approach, whatever it is, has served him very well over the years.

He hasn’t got too many reasons to change it, has he? I’d similarly posit that as a songwriter, he’s written his share of proper tunes – most artists, whether they like U2 or not, would trade an appendage for the hit quotient of The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby alone.

Favourite Bono lyric : One , as previously noted. I also think he wrote some of his best lyrics on No Line On The Horizon .



U2 Surprises on the way

U2 360 Tour Gaint Stadium 2009 With the new DVD, ‘U2360° at the Rose Bowl’ released next month, U2.com figured it was high time for a chat with U2’s longtime Show Director Willie Williams.

On a sunny afternoon in the UK, they tracked Willie down to his London studio where we found him and his production team hard at work developing ‘visual content’ for the 2010 leg of the Tour.

U2.COM said “Unsurprisingly, the ideas are highly original and we’d love to tell you all about them… but then he’d never speak to us again. Which would never do, as Willie writes the best rock’n’roll touring diary there is” - and only for U2.com subscribers. Still he does drop a few hints in the interview. And, like everyone else, he’s delighted at how the Rose Bowl shoot looks on the new DVD.

‘There is a certain style or how live concerts can look on camera,’ he explains, but the 360° set up has changed all that. ‘You definitely know which show you are at…’

U2’s 360° production team is looking to get you involved. Willie is working with band and production team on a series of new visual ideas for on-screen content. For starters Willie is looking to fans to submit three simple questions which could end up in a new piece of screen content for the show.

The questions are simple - one U2 question, one personal question, one philosophical question. They can be serious or trivial, quite ridiculous… or quite important.

If you’d like the chance for your question to appear on screen on the 360° Tour, fill out the form on u2.com (Members Only). You can pose questions in written form or record them as an MP3 audio file.

If your not a member we would suggest that you sign up before the tour starts. We would have to agree is one of the best around.

A full 360 U2's Summer Tour

u2 360 Tour 2009 U2’s 12th studio album “No Line on the Horizon” was pretty weak on CD, MP3 sales however crowds will continue to fill the stadiums as U2 gets set to kick off the next round of tour stops, starting with Utah on June 3rd. Once again around North America as it sets to blast off to Europe 3 Million plus came to see U2 worldwide and they sold out 44 venues. Remember FT Paul was quoted as 09.10 tours should gross $ 750 million breaking the old U2 record of $ 398 million set by the Vertigo tour 05//06.

The set design has not changed; U2 will have some competition this time around with Green Day setting out on tour later this summer.  The tour season starts next month as most bands still try to find sponsors and creative ways to head out on a big tour. U2’s sponsor has not changed that we know of. The U2 marketing machine can be expected to kick off in a couple of weeks

The space station touches the sky at 165 feet high at the midpoint of the stage.  Crews have been resting for a couple of months kicking back as if that was true. Most crew members not dedicated to U2 have been out on other tours awaiting the start date.

U2 360 TourSet List expectations running high with suggestions coming in that the set list may change a little by adding and dropping. If anything has been learned about the last time out, fans did attend more than one show. So the joiners need to be fresh ( Bono, memo change up some of the jokes) Some songs were staples to the set list like “Breathe,” a stand-out track from “No Line on the Horizon” which became the band’s entrance music. After 32 years together, the band still respects their stadium-rocking roots and old favorites like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Where the Streets Have No Name” often had places in the set list as well.

Songs of Ascent Possible ?

Many U2 fans have been praying that U2’s follow up release would be ready for the next round of shows. However its been reported already by RS assocaite editor Brian Hiatt ( via twitter) that release this year 2010 was unlikely, however suggestions have been made that it could be released, remember  this follow-up album as “Songs of Ascent” and its original release was supposed to be in 2009. U2 has said that the songs are part of surplus material that came out of the recording of their last album. With U2 tour dates scheduled through October 2010, perhaps fans will hear one or two new songs live before the spaceship’s final landing. Well we wll have to wait and see.

Next up Bono’s big day 

Bono, Geldof to edit Globe for a day

The Globe and Mail Bono and Bob Geldof will edit the Globe and Mail newspaper for one day later this month in a special edition devoted to the future of Africa, the Globe announced Tuesday.

The two want to explore the issue of extreme poverty in Africa ahead of the G8 and G20 meetings, which will be held in the Toronto area in June.

Kenyan activist and blogger Ory Okolloh will also be part of the team editing the May 10 issue of the Globe.

It is the first time the Toronto-based paper has invited guest editors into its newsroom.

U2 lead singer Bono is the founder of One, an advocacy group that fights poverty and disease, particularly in Africa. He also has led a global campaign urging world leaders to forgive African countries’ debt.

Bono has been a guest editor at London’s Independent newspaper and at Vanity Fair.

Geldof, an activist and musician formerly with the Boom Town Rats, organized the Live8 series of concerts in 2005 and also lobbies world leaders on poverty issues. He was editor of the Georgia Strait in Vancouver 36 years ago.

“The Globe and Mail, one of the world’s great papers of record, has, in a mad rush of blood to the head, agreed to let two Irish pop singers edit their august journal for one special day, one special edition,” Geldof said.

The two will take questions online from readers.

The special edition will feature content and commentary from African political leaders, business owners and grassroots activists and from the Globe’s Africa correspondent, Geoffrey York.

Okolloh, who is a frequent public speaker on the role of technology in Africa’s future, will oversee stories and participate in a series of online discussions.

The G8 summit in Huntsville, Ont., will deal with controversial issues such as how to improve maternal health and aid for the developing world. The G20, to be held later in June in Toronto, is expected to focus on financial reform.

Bono and President Obama Update

Bono was in Washington on Friday and visited the White House to meet President Obama to fill him in on his recent trip to Africa.

It appears the meeting was not on Obama’s official itinerary for the day, but a National Security spokesman told CNN what the two talked about.

“[They discussed] ways to make sure our foreign aid is effective, and the opportunities for innovation and technology to change the development landscape in Africa,” he said.

The Bono-founded charity organization ONE released a statement about the visit, in which the U2 front man went over some of the issues discussed.
 
“With the first Blackberry president, we discussed the power of new technology to empower activists and entrepreneurs across Africa, part of a new rising generation that’s boosting growth and governance and defying stereotypes,” read the statement.



U2 360 Tour 1 Month Away

U2 360 Tour is exactly one month away. Thats right if your reading this, its after midnight in the US and we are offically one month away from the start of the tour. U2 Fans all around the world are waiting for the start of the tour. We posted a video from the past leg to get your “BIG FAT ASS UP” and ready for some great music. ( Hey Bono said, we have no idea if you have a big fat ass !)

 

Bono gets Oval Office meeting with Obama

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and U2 lead singer Bono have met in the Oval Office to discuss the administration’s development work in Africa.

The White House says the social activist singer joined with Obama, along with members of his national security staff, to talk about ways to make sure U.S. foreign aid is effective. They also discussed opportunities for using innovation and technology to drive economic growth in Africa.

The meeting Friday comes as the administration prepares for several international summits where development will be on the agenda.



McKinley High and U2 ?

Glee U2 could be the next best-selling artists to get the Glee treatment by the talented stars of McKinley High.

Fresh from the success of the Fox series’ recent ‘The Power of Madonna’ episode, a homage to the queen of pop, there has been speculation that the Dublin rockers could be next to have one of their songs featured on the show.

The Herald can reveal how the new CD from the award-winning series, to be released on May 18, features 19 songs and will include a track entitled One. A song of the same title, taken from U2’s best-selling Achtung Baby album, has regularly featured in Greatest Songs Of All Time lists and has been played by the band at every one of their concerts since 1992.

Entitled Glee, The Music: Volume 3 Showstoppers, the CD includes reworked versions of songs such as Pokerface and Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, alongside Beck’s Loser and Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler.

However, show insiders are keeping tight-lipped on whether the famous U2 song appears or not, given that Creed and Metallica have both released tunes with the same name.

A publicist for U2 said they weren’t aware of any collaboration with Glee, but the band could still have given the go-ahead for its material to be used.

U2 30 Years later - New Song Released

An unreleased song composed by U2 around 30 years ago is to be revealed in the new film Killing Bono. The song, Secret Mission, was recorded by the band shortly after they formed but it has never been heard by the public before.

Despite being three decades old, the song is only coming to light now because of the film’s music producer, Ciaran Gribbin, who was given the thumbs- up by the band to rework some of their earliest material for the actors to perform. The Derry singer said he was brought in as a music supervisor and producer for the highly anticipated film and found it a “dream come true” to work with the raw song.

“Hopefully everyone will be really happy with it,” he said. “It’s an absolute dream come true. I’ve been writing music for a long, long time - I did eight songs for the movie - but it remains to be seen how it came out in the end. I hope the public will get it. I’m confident with what I’ve got though. “It was written before U2 ever existed. They never officially released it, they recorded it when they were teenagers and called themselves The Hype.

“They were probably 16 or 17, it’s one of their first ever songs. You can hear where they were going with it though. It has that early punk angst that you would find in a teen band - but there are hints of where they were going with October in there also.

Gribbin said the majority of people involved in the film have close ties to the legendary band. “There’s a strong U2 connection with the team actually making the film. One of the producers was U2’s agent when they first got signed, so they obviously know and trust him,” he added. He approached them saying they needed an early song for that first school gig scene, and they were happy to oblige.

 The singer, who performs under the stage name Joe Echo, said that he hopes his version does U2 justice. Killing Bono just been picked up by Paramount Pictures and is set for release in the UK by the end of the year.

U2 Random Tuesday

Alan Cumming has left the production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a Broadway musica with a score co-written by U2’s the Edge and Bono. Cumming, who was set to play Spider-Man’s nemesis, the Green Goblin, has dropped out of the play due to scheduling conflicts.

Cumming claims that with the production delays on the musical, his CBS show The Good Wife will conflict with his role in Spider-Man.

The Scottish actor said in a statement, “Obviously, having waited over a year for Spider-Manto be greenlit, I am very disappointed that I will not have the chance to collaborate with Bono and the Edge, and to work with [director] Julie Taymor on the stage.”

The Spider-Man project has been beset with problems from the beginning. Production delays, cast turnovers (Evan Rachel Wood, who was set to play Mary Jane, left the production last month), and money problems have plagued the production.

U2 welcomes Drew along

WHEN rock band U2 embarks on its five-month world tour in June, Bono and the gang will be accompanied by Melbourne security company boss Andrew Wolveridge. A regular and trusty face guarding red carpets across town, Wolveridge worked with U2 during the Australian leg of its 2006 Vertigo tour and was approached by the group’s head of security to co-ordinate the 2010 shows. Wolveridge will oversee logistics at stadiums in the US, Helsinki, Moscow, Istanbul, Paris, Rome and many more stops in between. What to pack for the northern hemisphere summer? Definitely Bono-style sunnies.
 

BBC Tops U2 on Money List

U2 and their manager Paul McGuinness top the Irish Sunday Times Music Millionaires Rich List.

Their combined wealth is estimated at £429m, a rise of 1% on 2009. In second place is Lord of the Dance star Michael Flatley, with his total wealth calculated at £241m. The paper said his fortunes have dipped by 2% in the past year because of a fall in the value of the Lord of the Dance brand. Dublin-based singer Enya is third in the list, with a fortune believed to be £85m. All three retain the same top three positions from the 2009 list. Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison is fourth with his wealth listed at £50m.

 

Spin 25 Ranks U2 #1

Achtung Baby is the seventh studio album by rock band U2. Produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, it was released on 19 November 1991 on Island Records. Stung by the criticism of their previous album, Rattle and Hum (1988), U2 shifted their musical direction and incorporated alternative rock, industrial, and electronic dance music influences into their sound.

Thematically, the album was darker, more introspective, and at times more flippant than the band’s previous work. The album and the subsequent multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour were central to the group’s 1990s reinvention, as U2 replaced their earnest public image with a more lighthearted and self-deprecating one.

Seeking inspiration on the eve of German reunification, U2 began recording Achtung Baby in Berlin’s Hansa Studios in October 1990.

Conflict arose over their musical direction and the quality of their material. After weeks of tension, arguments, and slow progress, the group made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song “One”. They returned to Dublin in 1991, where the majority of recordings were completed. The album title and colourful multi-image sleeve were chosen to confound expectations of the album and the group.

Achtung Baby is one of U2’s most successful albums. It earned favourable reviews and produced the hit singles “One”, “Mysterious Ways”, and “The Fly”. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. One of the most acclaimed albums of the 1990s, Achtung Baby is regularly featured on rankings of the greatest albums of all-time.

To produce the album, U2 employed Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, producers of the band’s albums The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree Lanois was principal producer, with Mark “Flood” Ellis as engineer. Eno took on an assisting producer role, working with the group in the studio for a week at a time to review their work before leaving for a month or two. By distancing himself from the work, he believes he provided the band with a fresh perspective on their material each time he rejoined them. As he explained, “I would deliberately not listen to the stuff in between visits, so I could go in cold [… ]”. The “oblique” strategies of the Lanois-Eno team contrasted with Rattle and Hum producer Jimmy Iovine’s direct and retro style.

Berlin sessions

The band believed that “domesticity [w]as the enemy of rock ‘n’ roll” and that to work on the album, they needed to remove themselves from their normal family-oriented routines. With a “New Europe” emerging at the end of the Cold War, they chose Berlin, in the centre of the reuniting continent, as a source of inspiration for a more European musical aesthetic. They recorded at Hansa Studios in West Berlin, near the recently opened Berlin Wall. Several acclaimed records were made at Hansa, including two from David Bowie and Eno’s “Berlin Trilogy”, and Bowie’s and Iggy Pop’s collaboration, The Idiot. U2 arrived on 3 October 1990 on the last flight into East Berlin on the eve of German reunification. Expecting to be inspired, they instead found Berlin to be “depressing”, “dark and gloomy”. The collapse of the Berlin Wall had resulted in a state of malaise in Germany. The band found their East Berlin hotel “bleak” and the winter “inhospitable”, while the run-down condition of Hansa Studios and its location in a SS ballroom added to the “bad vibe”.

Morale worsened once the sessions commenced, as the band worked long days, but could not agree on a musical direction. The Edge had been listening to electronic dance music and to industrial bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Nine Inch Nails, the Young Gods, and KMFDM. He and Bono advocated new musical directions along these lines. In contrast, Mullen was listening to classic rock acts such as Blind Faith, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix, and learning how to “play around the beat”.He and Clayton were more comfortable with a sound similar to U2’s previous work and did not understand the proposed new direction. The Edge’s interest in dance club mixes and drum machines made Mullen feel that his contributions as a drummer were being diminished. Lanois was expecting the “textural, emotional, and cinematic”

U2 of the The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, and he did not understand the “throwaway and trashy things” on which Bono and The Edge were working. Compounding the divisions between the two camps was a change in the band’s long-standing songwriting relationship. Bono and The Edge were working more closely together writing material at the exclusion of the rest of the group.

U2 found that they were “under-rehearsed and under-prepared” and that their ideas were not evolving. For the first time, the group could not find consensus during their disagreements and felt that they were not making progress. Bono and Lanois, in particular, had an argument that almost came to blows during the writing of “Mysterious Ways”. Mullen thought it “might be the end” of U2. Eno visited for a few days, and understanding their attempts to “deconstruct” the band, he assured them that their progress was better than they thought. By adding unusual effects and sounds, he showed that The Edge’s desire for new sonic territory was not incompatible with Mullen’s and Lanois’ desire to retain solid song structures. In December, a breakthrough was achieved with the writing of the song, “One”. The Edge combined two guitar chord progressions, and finding inspiration, the group quickly improvised most of the song. It provided much-needed reassurance for the band and re-validated their long-standing “blank page” approach to writing and recording together.

U2 returned to Dublin for Christmas, where they discussed their future together and all recommitted to the group. They briefly returned to Berlin in January 1991 to finish their Hansa work. Although just two songs were delivered during their two months in Berlin, The Edge said that in retrospect, working there had been more productive and inspirational than the output had suggested. The band had been removed from a familiar environment, providing a certain “texture and cinematic location”, and many of their incomplete ideas would be successfully revisited.

Spin Magazine Article

With the middling reaction to last year’s better-than-you’ll-admit No Line on the Horizon, U2’s chest-heaving big-box spectacle seems to be fatiguing more of pop’s body politic than it’s inspiring. Weirdly, this was exactly the case more than 20 years ago.

After the critical and commercial sweep of Joshua Tree, the Irish conglomerate followed its bombastic muse with the ponderous 1988 docu-fiasco Rattle and Hum, which featured a Bono mot that would haunt many of us for years to come: “Okay, Edge, play the blues!” Flailing and directionless, the band retreated and reconsidered whether it was time to fold up their flag for good.

Instead, three years later they emerged with the album — Achtung Baby, cheekily titled as a nod to German reunification — that would energize their career and genetically engineer rock music into the hybridized mutant we know today. Initially recorded at Hansa Studios, a former SS ballroom near the reopened Berlin Wall (and later completed back home in Dublin), Achtung was an effort, stoked primarily by Bono and the Edge, to “deconstruct” the band and rewire it with jolts of beat-generated clutter and collage, nicked from industrial music, hip-hop, dance remixes, and the Madchester scene. That method almost collapsed the band — bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., as well as coproducer Daniel Lanois, were left bewildered and cranky.

But the frisson found expression in U2’s most immediately dynamic music since 1982’s War, and its most emotionally frank songs to date, capturing that particular early-’90s rub of boundless possibility and worn-down despair. Bono’s lyrical flights had a battered grit, like a defrocked cleric stirred to regain his flock without the usual trick bag of bullshit. “One” became an indelible anthem because it admitted “we’re not the same” but urged that we’ve gotta “carry each other” nonetheless. The squalling swagger of “The Fly” resonated due to the rock star at its center confessing he’s a liar and a thief. And for “Mysterious Ways,” the Edge somehow concocted a jubilantly snarling riff that transformed Bono’s gospel come-on so it didn’t feel gross the morning after.

Unlike Radiohead with OK Computer and Kid A, U2 took their post-industrial, trad-rock disillusionment not as a symbol of overall cultural malaise, but as a challenge to buck up and transcend. Their confessions of frailty and blindness amid murky atmospherics (no doubt egged on by coproducer Brian Eno) had an air of cleansing rather than whining. That the album trails off introspectively is brave in its own quiet way.

Though they continued to bumble through periods of bloat and self-delusion and irrelevance, U2 became the emblematic band of the alternative-rock era with Achtung Baby. Struggling to simultaneously embrace and blow up the world, they were never more inspirational. — Charles Aaron

Achtung Baby has sold 18 million copies, including eight million copies in the US. It is the group’s second-highest selling album after The Joshua Tree, which has sold 25 million copies. The success of Achtung Baby prefigured the group’s continued musical experimentation during the 1990s. Zooropa, released in 1993, was a further departure for the band, incorporating additional dance music influences and electronic effects into their sound.

In 1995, U2 and Brian Eno collaborated on the experimental/ambient album Original Soundtracks 1 under the pseudonym “Passengers”. For Pop in 1997, the group’s experiences with dance club culture and their usage of tape loops, programming, rhythm sequencing, and sampling resulted in their most dance-oriented album.

U2 Earth Day Playlist

Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970. Earth Day is celebrated in spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Many communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues. The first Earth Week originated in Philadelphia in 1970 (starting April 16 and culminating on Earth Day, April 22.) Earth Day Network, a group that wishes to become the coordinator of Earth Day globally, asserts that Earth Day is now observed on April 22 on virtually every country on Earth. World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5 in a different nation every year, is the principal United Nations environmental observance.

       

Here is a sample of whats our play list today -

Beautiful Day: A celebration of the beauty of the world from All That You Can’t Leave Behind

Desire: A call for action in a world of lies and greed from Rattle and Hum

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: A yearning plea to find meaning in life from The Joshua Tree

Lemon: Is the world we have been given a lemon? From Zooropa

Moment of Surrender: In a hectic world, there still exists a brief moment of peace with God, from No Line on the Horizon

One: Among pain comes the realization of need, from Achtung Baby

Staring at the Sun: Sometimes we’re caught dumbstruck and confused by events around us, from Zooropa

The Ground Beneath Her Feet: This little known song was co-written by Salman Rushdie. Trying to bring a love back who had deceived, from The Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack

Until the End of the World: This classic from Judas’s perspective tests our understanding of fate, from Achtung Baby

Where the Streets Have No Names: Bringing heaven to Earth, or Earth to heaven from The Joshua Tree

So whats on yours ?

“One Game Changes Everything” (U2,BONO)

If you remember back 4/19 we posted the anouncement of U2 and Soweto Choir teaming up for the World Cup and also posted the “Robben Island” ad. That commercial is one of five commercials that will be rolling out between now and June 11th. U2 has a presence in each ad, and in the ad that premiered this morning at 6AM on ESPN called “United,” Bono himself narrates the 60 second spot. We have been asked to ask you to please share your feedback. Lets tell them what we think ! Great !

2010 FIFA WORLD CUP ON ESPN / ”United”

EVENT:                                                                 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP ON ESPN
(JUNE 11-JULY 11, SOUTH AFRICA)

AD AGENCY:                                                    Wieden + Kennedy NY
DIRECTOR:                                                        Lance Acord
AD CAMPAIGN:                                              “One Game Changes Everything”
WHERE AIRING:                                             Across the ABC/ESPN family of networks
TIME FRAME:                                                  April 21, 2010 through June 11, 2010

Produced by ESPN in conjunction with Wieden + Kennedy and directed by cinematographer Lance Acord (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Lost in Translation), “United” conveys the passion for the FIFA World Cup that unites disparate cultures (set to U2’s “Magnificent”).
This is the latest spot in ESPN’s “One Game Changes Everything” campaign, which consists of a total of five spots. The first spot, “Robben Island,” debuted on April 7 and focuses on the historic impact of the 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa.   Future spots focus on the passion, traditions, rivalries and glory that are unique to the World Cup.

Super Delux U2 360° At The Rose Bowl

U2 Fan Alert:Super Delux 360 Tour DVD is on its way. Reports claimed it was removed from Amazon. Has been just been proven wrong. ‘U2360° At The Rose Bowl’ will be released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray by Mercury Records on June 7, and in the US on June 3, 2010. #U2 We will posta link to where you can purchase as soon as we know.

U2's Best Supporting Act

Lenny Kravitz, Interpol, Snow Patrol, Kasabian, Razorlight, The Fray, One Republic: depending on where you’re seeing U2 this year, you’ll also get to see one of the above. Last year you might have caught Kaiser Chiefs, Glasvegas, The Hours, Elbow or Muse.

And over the years some pretty fine bands have rocked the house just a few minutes before the main attraction took the stage - sometimes long before they became household names themselves.

Anyone see The Kings of Leon or The Killers on the Vertigo Tour ? Or Garbage or Stereophonics on the Elevation Tour? Public Enemy on ZOO TV ? BB King on Lovetown ? How about The Pretenders or Los Lobos or Lou Reed on The Joshua Tree Tour in the 1980’s? Or Lone Justice when the band were touring The Unforgettable Fire. And, come to think of it, what about The Pixies, PJ Harvey, Patti Smith…

Was there an act you first discovered when they came out on stage before U2? Who was the best act you ever saw with them… and why? (Don’t forget to include the tour or year of the show.)