Interview: Michka Assayas meets Bono

I'm going back to my day job, honest

Sunday Times, February 19, 2006

Michka Assayas

I first met Bono in 1980. I had come over from Paris to interview a score of new bands but nobody made an impression on me like he did. He was totally unreserved, unlike most of the British new wave, bouncing around, eyes darting, talking fast and full of energy. He was the first Irishman I ever met. Only later did I realise that his bonhomie was a national trait.

At that time U2 were sharing a tiny flat in Collingham Gardens in London that resembled the sort of spartan lodgings a cold war spy might have used. We crammed into the small kitchen, drank tea and talked politics, philosophy and music. We were young and pretentious, but even then Bono had a capacity to get the measure of a man in seconds. It's a skill that has stood him in good stead.

With hindsight, was it inevitable that this skinny 20-year-old with his jeans and frizzy hair would go on to sell 130m records, campaign on African debt, gain the ear of presidents and prime ministers and even get nominated for the Nobel peace prize? Perhaps. Bono always thought big.

Although we met a few times over the years (I once tried to take him to Notre Dame but got lost), when I turned up in Dublin to interview Bono in 1997 we had not seen one another for more than a decade. The spartan lodgings were long gone; this time our rendezvous was at a lavish recording studio after which we adjourned to the pub. Superfame sat easy on his shoulders, perhaps because, as he says nowadays: "Celebrity is currency and I want to spend mine well."

But something about Bono had changed. The expansive clown-like young man I had first met — born Paul David Hewson in Ballymun, Dublin, to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father — had become a little more hidden, more distant, taking greater care with his words. His stare was more focused and he scanned the room carefully. This caution, a kind of wariness, seemed to be the price of his fame. Later we decided to work on a book together (Bono on Bono, Hodder) a record of our conversations which happen every so often. This is my account of our most recent one which began with Bono singing a snatch of a John Lennon song.

I laughed at him. Didn't he think it was a bit inappropriate to take Lennon's part in Sgt Pepper on stage at Live 8 last year? "Oh, I don't think like that," he laughs right back. "I have the immodesty of foolishness. I was proud to stand in his shoes."

Were you proud of everything that day? How about the lack of African artists on the bill? "There were a few of us worried about it," he sighs. "Geldof gave up his life for a year working on this stuff. No sleep and a lot of grief. Some balls were going to be dropped. Most went in the back of the net. Personally, yes, I think it was a mistake not to have more African artists. There were a few of us worried about it. Bob was being protective of the ratings because the ratings, he felt, would in the end be the thing that protected Africa. I wasn't so clear-cut, though. But it was Bob's show . . . many African artists performed in Jo'burg that day. Most of the world cameras chose not to cover the concert there which maybe proves Bob's point."

I point out that the musician and local mayor Ali Farka Toure from Mali was just one African who said that he didn't support Live 8 because he wasn't interested in being used as a political pawn. Bono's response? "If he doesn't reckon Live 8 are helping his people, maybe they should rethink him being mayor."

Last year was a colossal year for Bono, one in which he spent months away from his home near Dublin where he lives with Ali Hewson, his wife of 24 years, and their four children. For one thing, there was the 118-date world tour with U2, which 3m people saw and which earned the band $260m. Then for a couple of weeks the G8 summit propelled Africa and Bono's crusade to the top of the geopolitical agenda.

Bono has been campaigning for Africa for the past 25 years. Last year, the Live 8 concerts that he organised with Bob Geldof and his lobbying of world leaders at the G8 summit in Gleneagles secured a $50 billion aid package. Despite sniping from some other aid agencies that it was too little, this money was the biggest success yet for Bono's charity Data (Debt Aids Trade Africa), which he co-founded in 2002. Yet he certainly has his critics. Paul Theroux, the author, believes him deluded for sending money to corrupt African governments. Having known him for 26 years, even I have doubts about what he is trying to achieve. I think he sees his cause with the eyes of love, and such lofty ambitions are mostly wishful thinking. President Clinton was a huge fan, though. Does he get a frostier reception at Dubya's White House?

Bono sniggers. "Well, look, I have had sour times over the Aids funding level back in 2003 when the cash was coming too slow. We had a bit of a row in the Oval Office, and even a few [months] ago we had another difference over funding for the Global Fund [the UN programme to fight Aids], but the Bush administration has funded the most extraordinarily successful Aids programme with nearly 400,000 Africans on ARVs anti-retroviral drugs]."

In the past few years Bono has won the support not only of two American presidents, but also of Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair, Kofi Annan and George Soros, the multi-millionaire. While most people's (certainly most rock musicians') ambitions might not include becoming the next Mother Teresa, Bono was always different, perhaps because faith has shaped his life. On the eve of U2's world domination in 1983, he nearly quit the band over fears that the lifestyle was not compatible with his religion. Although he stayed a musician, from that point on it was obvious that music alone would never hold his entire focus.

So the fact that the Millennium Challenge Account, the US initiative for Africa which was created in early 2004 to direct funds and aid to the continent, has devoted only a fraction of what it promised must infuriate him. "I'm pissed. I'm mad, in fact, that not more has happened," says Bono. "But still, more has happened than any could have imagined from them. Even though $400,000 is the figure [so far], over $2 billion has been set aside for Africa. We have had a heated debate about this, myself and the president. Funnily enough, he was almost as pissed off as I was."

What did he say exactly? "He said there was no excuse. But it's clear they had a lot on their mind. After 9/11 and entering into the war, some desks got very overcrowded. It's not an excuse that I'm accepting but I do believe they will put it right. Even the most staunch critics of the administration's aid development will concede that the president has tripled aid to Africa. Is it enough? No."

Some might say that publicly denouncing the Bush administration would help his cause more than being pally with them. "I've been through this," he says, exasperated. "We have had lots of rows and we have denounced the Bush administration when they have made mistakes, but we're not placarding and throwing rotten tomatoes at people who are trebling aid to Africa.

"Our critics — I've met them in rock'n'roll in the early years and they're the same people: cranks carping from the sidelines. A lot of them wouldn't know what to do if they were on the field. They're the party who will always be in opposition so they'll never have to take responsibility for decisions because they know they'll never be able to implement them. We get hits from the left, we get hits from the right, but in the end, every year, the world's poor are better off for our presence."

Despite the success of Gleneagles and progress in the fight against Aids and malaria, it still seems as if fair trade for Africa is not on any rich country's agenda. On this issue he must surely concede failure?

"Look, we've made progress on debt and aid, and that must be celebrated," he says quickly. "Trade will be an epic, long-term battle. France is one of the biggest problems in reaching a trade deal. People are worried that dismantling the common agricultural policy [CAP] in Europe would really affect small French farmers. We don't think it should. The giant corporate farmers in America and Europe are receiving most of the subsidies. These subsidies are cruel to a farmer in the developing world who is trying to compete."

Naturally, he remains positive though. At the moment the One Campaign, aiming to sign up Americans to fight the African Aids crisis and extreme poverty, gathers apace. "We've got others coming through now: Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Brad Pitt. It's the movement that will stop the tin-cupping [and] give us real political muscle. By 2008, the year of the next [American] election, I am assured that there will be 5m Americans, which makes us bigger than the National Rifle Association."

He laughs, enjoying the thought. "Now, the NRA, if you mess with them, they go after you."

Last year's exertions have taken their toll. For my money, Bono sounds tired. His back has been giving him problems on tour, the consequence of a punishing schedule and age, too, perhaps. It was, he says, "a very difficult year, going into G8 and Live 8. There was very little sleep. There was a cost there.

"I'll tell you this, I am parched for time to spend writing and time spent with the band. This year I really want to just lose myself more in the music and I will have to have a lower profile."

That won't be difficult.

© Sunday Times / Michka Assayas 2006.

That Was 2005 That Was (Larry's Take)

Source: U2.com

This is how Larry looked back on the year and he drew us a very cool self-portrait too.

What was the best show of 2005?

There hasn’t been one best show – I’d have to say that it’s probably the best tour we’ve ever done…Best tour we’ve ever been on…I'd say hands down that this is it.

How is the show different than when you started the show in San Diego?

We’re in a different gear now. San Diego was definitely the best opening of a tour we’ve ever had. When we started the first leg we were changing the set list around and then when we got to Europe – we changed the set again and put in older songs. By the time we came back to North America it felt like we could do whatever we wanted – it became easier to just throw songs in; covers and songs we never play.

What has been the highlight of your tour thus far?

I think, if I’m to be honest, it’s having done 100-plus shows and I feel like we played every show like it might be our last and every time the audience responded like it might be their last U2 show. There’s a sense of real achievement when you come to the end of a tour and you feel like you’ve won the World Cup.

A recent review in a British Magazine described you as having a face of someone swallowing piss…How do you feel about that?

It made me laugh out loud. And the thought crossed my mind that if I see another one of those signs with SMILE LARRY I might have to use some of my drum sticks for more than drumming. Sadly for me I’m not a multi-tasker. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. And for 25 years it’s been hitting things. And when I master that I promise I’ll smile and wave and set up my own charity.

Grammy Preview: U2

5 NOMINATIONS * Album of the Year * Song of the Year * Best Rock Album * Best Rock Song * Best Rock Performance

Source: Rolling Stone

"We're reapplying for the job [of] best band in the world," U2's Bono said at the 2000 Grammys. In the past five years, fans have accepted that application and then some: That year's All That You Can't Leave Behind and 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb have been Grammy favorites -- and two of the best-received discs of the group's long career. U2's chief sonic architect, guitarist the Edge, called from his dressing room an hour before one of the final U.S. shows on the Vertigo 2005 Tour. "We're all just going to show up to the ceremony," he says. "And if we don't win, we'll try to look gracious."

You guys have more Grammys -- seventeen -- than any other rock band. Where do you keep all those trophies?

Half in the office, half in my house. Luckily enough, they're fairly small, so you don't have to worry about them taking up too much space. They fit nicely on the shelf, and they look cool. I haven't run out of room yet.

All That You Can't Leave Behind was seen as a huge comeback for U2. How hard was it to have to follow it up?

Coming off that tour carried us into the songwriting for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. It was always in the back of our minds as we were working on the songs -- playing them live. We really started becoming the band we are onstage. The best place to learn what your songs are like is to try them in front of the U2 crowd.

Atomic Bomb is even truer to the idea of All That You Can't Leave Behind: "four guys playing a room."

Yeah, that's probably a fair thing to say. We had been spending most of the Nineties trying to obliterate the core idea of what a band is. With this last couple of records, we've really found ourselves being inspired again by what a rock & roll band can be. Right now, a band playing guitar, bass and drums on a stage with very little else going on is a very fresh sound. Just looking at the other Grammy nominees -- the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay, the Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire -- it feels like rock & roll is resurgent. And that's a really great feeling.

What was U2's greatest Grammy moment?

I think that first time winning Album of the Year [for The Joshua Tree, in 1987] is pretty hard to beat. That time was kind of the recognition of the other side of the music business, which doesn't really have its eye on radio or selling huge numbers of units. It just felt good -- it felt like a good move for everybody, everyone who was committed to this, who had lost themselves to this great form of rock & roll.

When you vote in the Grammys, do you generally vote for U2? Or is that bad luck?

It depends. I try to be as honest as I can -- often I would vote for U2, but not always.

Did you vote for U2 for Album of the Year this year, for instance?

Well, I haven't voted yet. But I will. [Laughs] Definitely -- are you kidding?

What do you guys have planned for next year?

We're going to be doing some more touring -- not in Europe or America -- but in some of the areas we didn't get to, like South America.

How about plans for the next record?

Well, I've been working a lot on material during the tour, and I have a lot of ideas that I think are very promising, so I'd be trying to work on a record in early 2006, developing the material. Then we'll just see where that takes us. I've got some definite ideas.

Quit moaning about Bono, thank him

Source: Sunday Independent, written by Brendan O'Connor

December 26, 2005

NO DOUBT the usual cranks and begrudgers will be bitching about Bono over the Christmas. "Man of the Year?" the taxi-drivers will say, "Time fecking magazine? I'll give him Man of the Year. And Time magazine. It's far from it he was reared."

It's easy to have a pop at Bono. It's practically an instinctive reaction at this stage. "Oh, he might fool that crowd of Yanks at Time magazine and that George Bush fella, but he can't fool us. We knew him when he hadn't an arse in his trousers."

Frankly, that kind of thing reflects more on the people who say it than it does on Bono. Because, if you think about it, Bono hasn't actually done anything wrong. And it's not as if you could disagree with most of his causes. He's often compared to Jesus, in a negative kind of smart-arsey way. But, in fact, he is a bit of a Jesus - though in a good way.

Whatever your personal opinions about Jesus, it'd be hard to disagree with most of his messages: Don't kill people and be nice to the poor and so on. And Bono is pretty much the same. The message is inherently sound: Cure Aids, be nice to black people and eliminate poverty. You can't fault that kind of thing.

And in fairness, his heart seems to be in the right place. There are people who claim that he does it all as a big PR thing to sell even more records, but that doesn't really stack up. If anything, the preaching is probably putting people off the records.

But for the other members of the band it has a musical benefit. Larry Mullen broke ranks recently to say it was handy when Bono headed off out of the studio and let them get on with their work. He'd go off and meet George Bush or whatever and they'd get on with making the album, and when it was all nearly ready he would come back in and do his singing thing.

And it's not easy being some class of a living saint. In fact, if you listen to Bono properly he actually spends a lot of time trying to tell us that he's not a saint. In fact, he goes to great lengths to try and convince us that's he's only a human being - and a flawed one at that, a bit like the other Christ. He's always telling us what an eejit he is and how he lets people down and how he goes on the piss and doesn't have time for his friends and how he's insecure and hugely egomaniacal.

But still people think he goes around thinking he's a saint. But he doesn't. People are just projecting.

And the fact of the matter is that the rest of us haven't really got time to think about world peace and curing Aids and poverty and the environment and all that other stuff. Most of us have jobs and just need to try and look after our own little corner of the world.

And we could easily forget that all those big problems exist and we could sleepwalk our way into a situation where it all falls apart for future generations.

But Bono has the time and the money to be thinking about it all and doing something about it. And it kind of takes the pressure off us a bit. He's kind of like our nagging conscience. And of course he's the nagging conscience of the politicians as well. If he wasn't bugging them and embarrassing them they'd probably happily enough ignore the whole saving-the-world business as well.

The other thing to bear in mind is that he doesn't have to do all this stuff. He could happily sit around on his arse out in Florida, make one album every five years and be loaded.

But he's taken this job on himself. And what a job it is. He could have taken on something simple, like paying for an orphanage or a school or something. Instead, he decided to try and solve the insoluble, to do a job that is as wide as it is deep, a job that often seems to have no tangible results, and a job that he gets the complete piss taken out of himself for doing. It's not only impossible, it's thankless.

So, for the New Year, we should thank him. We should start ignoring the knee-jerk reaction to seeing him mugging around the world with the Nelson Mandelas and the George Bushes and all that. We should remind ourselves that he is doing a good thing.

And, not to be cliched about it, but he really is a great ambassador for this country. He'd actually make you proud to be Irish.

In a world of their own

Who would have thought it? Twenty-five years on from his first encounter with U2, Paul Morley joins the band on tour in North America to discover the ways in which they're still rewriting rock's rule book

Source: The Observer 

December 18, 2005

U2: 1

In a vast penthouse suite on top of a hotel that could be anywhere in the world overlooking a city that seems to shimmer out of an endless mist, Bono Vox (Latin for Good Singer, a nickname given to him by his new band mates in U2 back in the Dublin Seventies because it seemed to suit this cocky, stocky kid) serenely pads through a sitting room carved out of gold, mahogany and marble that is a shrill hybrid of Sir Elton John plush and Sir Mick Jagger ornate. He chuckles at the flamboyant surroundings that look a little vulnerable in the harsh yellow light of the day. 'It's the size of a small nation,' he unapologetically grins. A small nation having no problems with poverty. Baskets laden with fruits, chocolates, cheese and champagne are littered across the land. The champagne has been drunk, a few hours earlier, when the penthouse suite at night looked a little prouder. A denim jacket is slung over the back of a chair that Cher would wish to be draped over when she is buried. A badge pinned to the jacket's lapel announces: 'Horses changed my life.'

It's some approximation of midday the day after Bono has performed with U2 in this city located firmly inside the international 21st century. His dark glasses have yet to be put on, and his penetrating, mesmeric eyes are rubbed, pinched and scraped raw from the performance, on the back of all the other performances, and a late night, possibly the ten thousandth in his life, spent crammed inside a VIP area not the size of a small nation roped off in a local club. When he's in a city, as a visiting star with demotic political power and the unstable charisma of someone who cannot enter a room without wanting to add it to his collection of rooms that he owns, his immediate points of reference are: airport, hotel, venue, local nightclub, possibly the home of the local billionaire philanthropist or the office of an important politician, and the roads that join them up. The rest is filled in with his imagination.

He looks glamorously wrecked, his face beaten by the weather of thought, fame, anxiety, delight and a conscience that endlessly snakes around the globe, a face becoming beautifully lined with the adventures he's had since the stocky Irish kid with a gift on his shoulder became world champion philanthropic fundraising performing playboy poet pop star multi-millionaire philosopher of persuasion with a strong political habit and a halo of lusty pretension.

He's just out of bed where he's been on the phone, to his wife, or the prime minister of a large nation, or Bob Dylan, or Bill Gates, or Paul Allen, or, somehow, himself, some other version of himself he has left in some part of the world at some time that might not yet have happened. He's hurriedly zipped up a black hoodie over a black T-shirt and a largely destroyed pair of jeans. The first thing on his schedule this morning is an interview. Before a question can even be asked, he's talking, answering questions he's heard a million times before, or questions he would like to be asked, or questions he's asked himself in his dreams as he puts off that moment when he wakes up and finds that, in fact, he is still boy Bono in Dublin in 1978, and this penthouse suite, this view of a shining city in the grand middle of everywhere that could make anyone think they can see for miles, doesn't exist, this voluptuous pop star fame, evangelical strangeness and political influence has not happened.

He's talking, sometimes it's like he's growling, as if to himself, but as if the rest of the world might be listening, at least to some of what he has to say.

'...U2 attempt to make ecstatic music, and one of the important factors in that musical crescendo, if it's going to happen, is the crowd. So I would love to say, yeah, U2 are the same thing in an empty stadium, playing for themselves, but it just isn't. The audience are part of the arrangement of the music...and when we made, you know, our reapplication in 2000 to be the best band in the world, after it seemed we'd gone too far out in the Nineties, so far out we'd disappear, we did all the things we weren't supposed to do, to reconnect with the audience, we did Saturday morning TV shows, and we're not good at TV, and it was even madder to suddenly try to be good at it, but that's what we did. When you believe in your music, in the end you'll turn up anywhere, and we demonstrated yet again that belief, and we pressed flesh, we did the photos, we did the circuit, and we sort of came back even though we hadn't really gone anywhere, even though we were older than we had any right to be, and there were those who thought - hoped - that we'd blown it with the Pop album and the Popmart tour. They thought we were off to the fish farm in Wales, the rock star retirement, or the Betty Ford Clinic, the nostalgia shows, isn't that what's supposed to happen? We succeeded, and they hated us for that - can't you do anything right? Get a fat arse for fuck's sake...and there we are, it's 2001, and you start to think, what are the possibilities of a combo who have made music together for 20 years but who are now more able intellectually, artistically, musically than they've ever been. Oh boy! This could be very interesting. The four-piece combo if it stays true to itself can still be a very efficient organisation. After doing this kind of thing for so long, it becomes a grudge match...against your opponent, which is of course your lazy self, or the other self, which fancies the fish farm in Wales, or in my case, in Kenya - go and live on the beach, you've earned it, and for us it becomes a fight against that temptation. But because we formed in the punk Seventies, the smithy of our soul, to quote Joyce, was the British music press, and the intellectual ideas of the time, some of which were preposterous, and people grew out of them, but they were great thoughts, and the memory of not wanting to be in a crap band, not wanting to turn into the pointless two-headed Seventies rock monster, to not become a roaring cliche, that's what makes us resist the temptation to grow fat. And each of us has a version of that stubbornness, and we keep sharp on each other, and we never blame each other. At the heart of this group is love and respect for the people you have travelled so far with and who have seen you at your most naked and raw, and bellicose in my case, and you're still talking to each other, and in a busy room you will always find yourself moving in their direction. Our belief in what we do has not been rubbed away by the business, the routine, the madness, the media, the sheer size. Look, as a band, we've managed to have all this success, never compromise our music, done pretty much what we wanted, and not set fire to ourselves or lose an eye or a limb...and maybe it's because, well, there's a line of scripture...to be as shrewd as a snake and as innocent as a child. You know, we're performers, so there's always an element of insincerity, as well as all the sincerity we can muster.'

He rubs his eyes, which collapse into a black hole, and stares either into the middle of nowhere, or the very centre of the dream.

'Actually, what do you call a person who knows that he has put a rabbit into the hat and who later when the rabbit comes out of the hat is shocked and surprised? A magician! You know what the trick is but you can still be amazed. I know every piece of that puzzle that we performed last night, and sometimes I really wish I didn't know how it works, but I am still gobsmacked when our equivalent of the rabbit comes out of the hat. Every time. I cannot believe that it has happened, even though we are totally prepared for it.'

He puts on some dark glasses - this pair is tinted amber, giving his depleted eyes a quick shot of golden strength - and he's ready once more to look life straight in the face.

U2: 2

It's Saturday, it's just after 9pm, if you are in Montreal, Canada. God knows what time it is in the heads of the four members of U2 who have spent most of the year on tour playing their Vertigo show crossing countries, seas, time zones, a hundred hotel rooms, and the eyes, minds and ears of thousands of fans. They will have completed 110 shows this year, with 25 to come next year in South America, Japan and Australia, before a final show in Honolulu in April, when they finally come down to earth, or completely tumble off the planet.

It's relatively peaceful as a very relaxed looking U2, dressed to perform, as if in a kind of armour, slowly make their way towards the stage at the Montreal Bell Centre. The excited noise of anticipation of 15,000 fans piled high to the ceiling is muffled by heavy velvet curtains. The group are surrounded by serious looking aides and helpers, and the space they are entering into is cleared by security guards creating a little bubble of empty space around them. Some members of the local group Arcade Fire, who have just played a stunning set of well-mannered mayhem, are about to make their way out front to watch U2. They are held back by the guards from the space U2 are entering, as if that space is in the shape of the moment of truth, but just as U2 make their move to the side of the massive custom-built stage they are about to perform from they spot Arcade Fire. They move over to where Arcade Fire are being held, and thank them for their performance. Each member of U2 shakes the hand of each member of Arcade Fire. There are friendly hugs and happy smiles. In some obvious way U2, nearly 30 years together as a group, are the elders in this relationship, passing something on to the newcomers - the baton, the flame, a musical message, some kind of experience. In another way, Arcade Fire, influenced by the same music U2 were way back at the beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century, are handing something precious and secretive over to U2, as if U2 are the fresh-faced newcomers eager to learn. U2 are the only group of their age and history who you could imagine being supported by such a novel, radical new act and not in any way being shown up.

The lights go down in the arena. Audience roars penetrate the curtains. U2 play yet another show. By now - at the end of a hard touring year, after 25 years of being a group always on the edge of making it bigger, always on the edge of crashing in flames, always in the middle of changing direction or changing their minds or sticking to their guns, always fighting for historical rights and reputation even as they top the charts and have the world at their feet or over their shoulders - they should seem beat, dimmed, routine, vulgar, ordinary, even a little preposterous. They should seem a shadow of their former selves.

They are now in their forties, and some of the songs they are playing they have played a thousand times or more, but the show is packed with songs from their latest album, and they're all hits, and they don't sound wrong laid out alongside the songs and hits they wrote when they were younger. In fact, the new songs pull those older songs into the future, freshen up the repertoire. The group that formed because of the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, the Ramones and Television, that emerged blinking and fumbling in the light and dark of the post-punk period that produced Joy Division, Gang of Four, Public Image, but who never quite fitted, who never connected directly with anything going on around them, now sound more relevant and fascinating than ever. Now that the time line has picked up from the early 1980s as if nothing has happened, musically, in the meantime, there's U2, still going, still evolving based on those early punk principles, still responding to the absurd, ridiculous demands of late Seventies music paper writers wanting the world to change for the better instantly, facing up to and dealing with artistic, technological, cultural and business challenges that seem like science fiction compared to the almost innocent prehistoric days of 1980.

They sound like the group they always wanted to be, a group you could put between the Clash and Gang of Four - as well as between Dylan and Van, Britney and Eminem, Franz and the Killers, Bjork and Beck - without it seeming wrong. At the same time, along the way, while they've been working out just what and who they are, and why it sometimes works, and why it sometimes doesn't, they have become the most successful rock band in the world.

Those who have spent a lot of time on the Vertigo tour as part of the U2 community that creates a kind of mobile village that helps U2 go to tour decide it is one of the best U2 shows of the year. They get better as they go along. For those of us who have watched U2 on and off for 25 years, our affections turning on and off and on again as the group skidded along a corridor between triumph and failure, folly and fantasy, genius and desperation, it's as great a show as they have ever played, alive with the aliveness, and self-awareness, that with most commercial rock groups has long faded by now. It has the same hunger that was there when I saw them play a support slot at the West Hampstead Moonlight Club in 1980, when their immediate ambition was to top the bill in London, and then maybe get a song played on the radio, when they were a group who wanted to play like Led Zeppelin, the Band or Pink Floyd but barely had the ability of the Ruts or the Lurkers, which meant they couldn't even do the Ramones. They could just about touch the hem of the Skids but not even the shadow of Joy Division. They just made you believe with the sheer vulgar vigour of their own delight in being a group that they might be, could be, should be that good. Nothing was going to stop them.

U2: 3

Up in the penthouse, because nothing can stop him, Bono is kissing the sky, he's pouring the coffee, the light is sliding off his restless eyes and bouncing around the room, he's wondering what the 21st century equivalent of E = MC2 might be, it's all about understanding everything and finding symmetry, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics, he's saying the rich have feelings too, it's a sexy but sexless age, I'm over the concept of rebel music but I'm not over the idea of rebellion, especially against yourself, U2 are so lucky as a group it's like we've robbed the bank of Monte Carlo, it's been a bit of a charge and plenty of people have fallen off the wagon train but the important people are still on board, it's not about getting bigger it's about getting it right, but I've a hunch it's going to get even bigger, I think it might be time for a departure with the next album, I think we can make some extraordinary music, get some of that otherness back we had in the Nineties, the pot-smoking fans of Sixties psychedelic music are dreaming up the 21st century, he's quoting Keats, that truth is beauty, beauty truth, and there's a place on the Spanish steppes where Keats died, and you can see that line written in ink by Keats's own hand and you can feel the chill in the room, and it's 1999 and he's in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton, and Clinton's smoking a cigar, and that's a scene, and he's challenging the President of the United States to come up with a big idea, he's talking in billions, he's banging heads together, forcing nations together, as if for real, he's talking off the record...

U2: 4

Bono, a few hours before, or after, he performs one, or other, of two particularly intense Montreal shows. Outside the light is either fading or growing, it's just before dawn, or it's tea-time. Through the windows we can see a crowd of fans waiting outside the hotel, unaware that just a few yards away Bono has slung his left leg over the side of an arm chair and is chatting away as relaxed as if he's on holiday, not in the shifting, chiming midst of a world tour where he plays a number of roles ranging from earnest lecturer via master media manipulator, defiant fantasist, determined realist and compassionate monster to spaced out rock'n'roll superhero. Today his hoodie has been pulled on over a bare chest, and wiry grey hairs tumble out into the open.

I first interviewed Bono a quarter of a century ago in a small hotel in Ireland as U2 began a journey that's never stopped since. Nothing much has changed in the way he talks, and what he talks about, and his curiosity, and wonder, and need to find answers, and his search for the fresh moment, the new thought, the unexpected idea. He always wants something to happen that hasn't happened before, and he'd like it now, please, quickly, before he's moved somewhere else, to look for something else. When I interviewed him in 1980, to call up some of the old style NME arrogance and narcissism, a journalist from the London music papers would have been about the most famous person Bono had met. Now Bono has met poets, presidents, major players in world politics, business, art, science, economics, social engineering, entertainment and he mingles with those who have made it their job to plan, for better or worse, how the 21st century might evolve. If pop culture is a nation, he is its president, democratically elected because of the number of records U2 sell, a bit of a dictator who doesn't care that might not be the case. He represents, as a politician you love or hate, laugh at or with, mock or respect, the abstract dimension, the imagination, the fifth province, the world of dreams. As he says, it's unhip, it's uncool, it makes him look silly even while he's carrying the weight of the world along genuine corridors of power, but, quite simply, he can't stop himself.

'We began as a group not being able to play that well but having great ideas, and a badly played song with great ideas is better than a well played song with no ideas. That's punk rock. And my activism, which I admit is probably basically just the Catholic guilt I feel being so rich and famous, is like that. I've got an idea about how to make things better, and OK, I'm not as educated or able to execute the idea as I should be, but it's a better idea than that one over there, so let's go after it. Let's find out how to do it properly later - first, the idea.'

Meanwhile, he seems very at ease with the Elvis side of things.

'It would be awful to have all this thrown at you and not a) find it absurd and b) enjoy it. I have now reached a stage where I can completely forget that I'm in a band - unlike the guy in the Eighties, who was just so self-conscious about it. I felt it painfully back then, which is why I want to give myself a slap when I see myself from that time. Self-consciousness can make the face ugly. I don't really notice that side of it any more, the need to act out some kind of role. I've found a way to be completely myself. I think I'm over being a rock star. I'm at ease with the idea. I've got used to all the lifestyle contradictions that as a young man you think you have to resolve. You realise that the contradictions are what make it interesting - not just wealth versus starving Africans, but singer in a band versus political activist, flesh versus spirit, left versus right, art versus business, family versus U2. I love those tensions now, rather than being intimidated by them. They're what leads to the creative tension that makes things work.'

We never imagine that this kind of thing could be done at 45.

'That was a juvenile thought. To think of the music as juvenilia. I mean, Bob Dylan is much more interesting with age, not less interesting. Some pretty boy face on the cover of a style magazine, or him! I want to stare at Dylan's face and I want to hear what he has to say because he has travelled a long road and he's got something worth hearing. I'm also interested in the new arrivals, the exploding stars, but this is not just about being young. I was thinking yesterday - in 10 years time, I'll be 55. What will it be like to stand on a stage then? And then I thought - the Chieftains! Kris Kristofferson is 65...and I saw the Who play a 9/11 benefit with such unspeakable authority, they were real MEN, with such hard-earned experience, and such colossal understanding, and I thought, there's a clue there to how we can age with dignity. Some of course might say, we've already ruined that possibility. You know what - I don't agree.'

He is a face and voice of radical ideas, the kind of rock dreamer not seen since Lennon. Hanging outside the hotel, I can see a few likely characters who might love, or hate, Bono so much they want to make him a martyr, or absorb some of his power by destroying him. Does he ever fear for his safety?

'Every so often something comes up and you have to be a little bit careful. I don't really have any fear in me on that level. I'm not going to take silly chances, but I suppose I don't really think about it. For such speechifying maybe I deserve not to be shot but to be clipped around the ear. Nothing more than rotten eggs, perhaps. I don't think my crimes are punishable by a bullet.'

U2: 5

I have been able to procure the correct combination of passes, laminates, wristbands, badges, stamps and code words, so I get to watch U2's show from inside an inner circle where fans who queue early or win competitions or just pray enough get to stand, as close to the group among 15,000 people as I was when I was among less than 10 people at the Moonlight. (Four of them were U2 on stage.)

Nothing has changed about the way the group commit to their performance, about the way they push themselves into the audience and then pull the audience away with them, except the context and size of that performance. They now fit, they belong in cultural time and musical place, better than at any time during their history. Their peers - give or take the anti-U2, the Fall - dropped away, self-destructed, stuck to the past, died, ran out of things to say, had nothing much to say in the first place. U2 alone take on the ideas and ideals of the late Seventies and early Eighties, a period that we can now see, sonically, philosophically and artistically, has more actual truth and meaning than most, and thrust them deep into the dissolving new century. It shouldn't have happened, and deep into the Nineties when they seem ultimately carried away by their ambition it didn't look like it would happen, but U2 have ended up everything they always sort of said that they were, or wanted to be, even when people felt they were melodramatic sellouts, misfits, freaks, charlatans, bloated, boring, self-important, wrong, even when the group themselves wondered if they were all huff and puff, smoke and mirrors, a deeply dysfunctional band that couldn't decide exactly what it was they were and hadn't quite got the hang of how to write song.

They have become the biggest and best contemporary rock band in the world, because they believe that actually matters, and they're shinier and showier than they ever were, shifting shape in front of our eyes as they smartly, quickly respond to whatever's happening around them, whether that's musical, visual or to do with the way music is commercially distributed. They used to be shadows of what they are now. It's the way that it should be, but it very rarely is.

U2: 6

U2 seem to own the hotel they are staying in, as if no one else is staying there but the group and their entourage, as if, like the Rolling Stones a few weeks before them, they have booked every room in the place. When I turn on the television in my room, I see Bono on the steps at the front of the hotel, a few floors down, surrounded by media and fans, holding court in a large cowboy hat, charged with passion about some issue, or problem, or solution. Through the night as the television murmurs in the background, Bono pops up all the time. At some point he seems to be having angry words with the Canadian Prime Minister. Bono doesn't look pleased, but he seems to be in his element. In most countries around the world, when U2 come to town, it's an event, it makes the front pages of the newspapers, and it's an event based around substantial ideas, and argument, and passion, not about their gossip status as celebrities.

At some point, I watch Bono on the television, put down a copy of a Canadian national newspaper with him on the cover, and join him, the real him, as far as I can tell, as he walks through the hotel, his own private mansion, on the way to his next appointment. He's about to burst through the front doors of the hotel, where the cameras and the fans are gathered in the snow, probably to appear on the television again, with some warning, or demand, or request. I'm not in my room to watch this appearance. I'm lurking behind him as he signs autographs for fans who shake so much they drop their pens, photographs, cameras.

Just before we leave the hotel, he stops to introduce me to someone he says I really have to meet. I imagine it might be a local up-and-coming politician, or a fellow activist, or an artist Bono's taken a fancy to. In fact, it's a member of staff, a petit young girl called Maud Champagne-Joly. She's wearing a dinky, lacy hotel uniform, and is so cute you think both her parents must be buttons. Bono is concerned that she didn't come to the show the night before, and that she must come the next night. She blushes, and explains that she will be on duty.

Bono is in full flirt mode, in some deeply charming place between the ripe, royal rock superstar and the smooth beguiling politician, explaining that he wants some members of staff to come to the show, as a special treat, as a thank you for looking after U2. He especially wants Maud Champagne-Joly to come, if only for her name. He cannot believe she will be made to work! She blushes even deeper, and explains it is up to the manageress of the hotel, whose name appears to be Madame Formidable. Bono puffs out his chest, and goes in search of Madame Formidable, another challenge for his well-honed powers of diplomacy.

U2: 7

I ask U2 manager Paul McGuinness if he ever gets embarrassed at Bono's ceaseless lobbying activity, the unlikely buddy bonding with George Bush, the religious wrestling with right-wing ex-senator Jesse Helms, if it gets in the way of the idea of U2 as evolving artistic business.

'In Marxist terms, Bono is a syndicalist. He will work with whoever he must to get something done. He will go into the fire. And he doesn't care if he doesn't share their views, not at all, so he will often find himself in what seems like strange company. But he has achieved extraordinary things again and again, changed people's minds, forced real practical change in the world of debt relief and AIDS, and in the end it seems better that he tries than that he does not. If you've ever seen him with Clinton or Mandela, well, there's something that links him to them, an incredible talent at communicating, at making the world bend to their will, some kind of force that wins votes and sells records. And it gives him great material for songs, so it's a good bargain.'

U2: 8

Towards the end of the Saturday show, Bono takes longer than usual for a specifically political speech, connected to the Canadian election, and the importance of the backing of Canada in his quest for finance, and influence. Larry behind the kit looks at his watch, and times how long Bono is taking.

U2: 9

Minutes before U2 are due on stage one night or another in Montreal, drummer Larry Mullen Jr, who founded the group and in a gang of strong, proud characters is the most erratically protective of the idea of U2 as Great Rock Group on a wild perfectionist mission, ponders the issue of Bono as ubiquitous world saviour, or high-concept heckler, or plain old busybody.

'Sometimes I really wish he would do something that we could punch a big hole into. I'd really enjoy that - to go up to him and say, you fucker. Sometimes, it's just so constant, the meetings, the speaking, the mouth, but in the end even I have to say he's doing a great job, and he's getting things done. Look, if it was possible to have a really good kick at what he does, as a band we would have done it before anyone else. During the recording of our album, he'll be away on a venture, and it's like, great, peace. He gets impatient in the studio, and we tell him to fuck off, go and meet George Bush. And he does! Maybe it's our fault! And then he comes back and he's been working on a lyric and he's fresh and really into it. So it does work out.'

Adam Clayton, U2's bass player, whose unhurried approach to being in U2 has been whittled down to something approaching a kind of Zen, marvels at Bono's pugnacious resilience. The Edge, the guitarist who still has Magazine, Television and Echo and the Bunnymen ringing in his ears, concedes that if, after everything, 30 mad years of making music, it comes down to the fact that U2 music is merely a soundtrack to Bono's epic campaigning, it wouldn't be as awful as he once thought it might be. 'We began really as a band who believed that music mattered, that it could change things, and whatever you think of Bono, whether you think he's right or wrong, he's proved, as a musician, on the world stage, that music really does matter as something that can have a profound impact on the way things are.'

U2: 10

'They're very tolerant,' smiles Bono, remembering sullen meetings where no one would look him in the eye because of some wild, wonderful mad-hearted scheme about Africa or AIDS he wanted to lash to the back of U2. 'It's not that they don't agree with the issues, I just think they sometimes wish it could be someone else doing it all. I'd love there to be another Bono who doesn't go to the meetings with Blair and Bush, who can have a gigantic sulk and a tantrum and it really mean something and change events. We could use one of those characters right now. It would be great to have someone banging the dustbins and chaining himself to the railings, as well as me meeting with the politicians. I'd love to do both, but I can't, but I don't think even my worst critic would say that things would be better if I didn't take those meetings and make those speeches. And we make our audience feel powerful, like they're part of something, and that doesn't often happen with a rock band. You know me, I like a bit of a row. It keeps you sharp. To be honest with you, I expected far more bile and spleen than I actually get. I'm used to that. Oddly, in the last few years it's died away a bit, people have been quite generous and prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt for my work. I expected a hail of blows, and I'm up for it!'

U2: 11

Up in the rock star penthouse, overlooking a city dreaming itself awake, or peacefully asleep, Bono is still talking and thinking and asking himself questions. 'You know, that idea of me being like the leader of the nation of the imagination, that's interesting, it's like there are four provinces in Ireland, and the fifth province is the province of the imagination, and it is as important as any physical constituent. It should be represented. The American constitution was really a poetic tract, full of wild imaginings. Ideas about how the world should be run should come from a place other than conventional politics. The whole of society should have the din of argument as much from musicians and film-makers and writers as anyone else. That's what makes everything better. In a way, the hardest place in the world for what we try and pull off as U2, with my stuff stuck on the side, is the UK, where the arts and politics are very separate and people don't like you to cross over disciplines. They like the politics in one place, pop in another, art over there. But it's better that they all rub against each other, that's when things can really start to happen.'

U2: 12

In the library, closer to the pavement, it's getting darker, and soon Bono will be whisked away back into the calm moving fury, or repetitive cracked everydayness, of the U2 machine. The crowd outside waiting for a sign, or a signature, is steadily growing, but Bono is for now oblivious to them. I tell him that the Sex Pistols have just been inducted into the American rock'n'roll hall of fame. Does he feel that such institutional actions sanitise pop music, turn it into something meek and ordinary?

'I shouldn't in some ways be put out by the idea...but yet I am...and some of the best nights of my life have been spent at Hall of Fame induction evenings. We give awards and honours to film-makers, authors, poets, artists...why are rock'n'roll people meant to be more rebellious than film-makers? Are they truly more wild and frightening? Ultimately, this is another really juvenile idea. Maybe because me and you came to life during punk there's a bit of us that resists rock being like any other discipline. We believe that music is some kind of sacrament, it's special, it's like they say, all art aspires to the condition of music. That's why zealots like you and me will cut off someone's head defending it. We're on a crusade. This is not just a business, or fun, or fashion, this is the holy cup! There is something about music that unlocks our spirit in ways other drama cannot...not on a daily basis...not unless EastEnders has got really incredible while I've been away. That's what it is - it's not about feeling that these ceremonies betray some irrelevant notion of rebellion, it's that they threaten to take away the mystery. They're fun, but you don't really want the smoke and incense to be taken away.'

It's dark in the library, the only light coming from a crackling fire. Bono, in the twilight, is wearing those damned dark wraparound glasses. His dad hated them when he was alive - Bono takes them off when he sings on stage the song he wrote for his father 'Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own' - his brother hates them, and during my own arguments with non-believers, I find opponents scoffing at this middle-aged man apparently making such a prat of himself.

'Well, I'm quite happy for it to offend the kind of people who find it offensive. I understand why people get upset - it's like, you look at Jack Nicholson in the front row at the Oscars, that's something where you laugh with him, and I suppose some people just don't want to laugh with me. They're always going to laugh at me, whatever happens. Look, there are practical reasons, it's body armour, it's a note of necessary insincerity, and the eyes are a giveaway, and although I have got used to the stares I get, I quite like not having people who I don't know looking right into my eyes, as if they might find something out about me. They do, they walk right up to you, and stick their head right into your face. So it's good that there's a barrier. And of course, the light, and the drink, makes my eyes go red, there's bit of vanity there, I don't want people to see me all puffy. Yeah, they're really handy, for a myriad of reasons. You go and tell people that!'

I guess you deserve a little kink of Howard Hughes behaviour this far in.

'It should be OK, for God's sake! But, you never know, it might be time for the naked face. It might be coming. The naked stare.'

U2: 13

After the interview is over, I follow Bono out of the library into the lobby of the hotel. He spots the blushing Mademoiselle Champagne-Joly, and asks if she's coming to the next show. No, she admits. Bono is puzzled. Hasn't it been arranged? Yes, some people from the hotel are coming to the show, but she isn't one of the chosen ones. Why not? She does not know. Bono promises to find out what is going on. She thanks him, and for a moment I swear she curtsies. In the lift, Bono worries that she has been picked on because he showed favouritism towards her, anticipating all manner of shadowy, intriguing hotel politics. No cause is too big, or too small, for Bono.

I leave the lift when it reaches my floor. As the doors shut, we salute each other, for old times' sake, or even new times' sake. 'See you along the road,' he says. That could mean next year, in five years, or 10 years. It might even be that U2 will still be touring, and getting better, and Bono will still be talking, and rearranging the world, in another quarter of a century.

The lift doors shut, and Bono rises to the sky.

Yes, we love him...

'Bono has a willingness to lead, to achieve what his heart tells him, and that is nobody - nobody - should be living in poverty and hopelessness.' George Bush, 2005

'I think that politicians are attracted at first by the celebrity, but once they meet him, they find that he is an outstandingly capable interlocutor.' Harvard economics guru Jeffrey Sachs, 1999

'You have made people listen. You have made people care, and you have taught us that whether we are poor or prosperous, we have only one world to share. You have taught young people that they do have the power to change the world.' Kofi Annan (UN secretary general), 1998

'He's a poet. He's a philosopher. And last night, I think I saw him walking on water.' Mick Jagger introducing Bono as he received his MTV Free Your Mind award, November 1999

'When we get the Pope and the pop stars all singing on the same sheet of music, our voices do carry to the heavens.' Bill Clinton, 2000

'He's somebody I admire. He does a lot of good in this world of economic development.' US. Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, on rumours the U2 front-man should become President of the World Bank in 2005

He's charming, he's persuasive. And the politicians can go home to their daughters and say : 'I had a meeting with Bono today".' Bob Geldof  

Rock the House, Save the World

In rock megastardom and global activism, U2 leads the way

The Oregonian, written by Marty Hughley

December 16, 2005

"It's embarrassing to want so much and expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens."

So Bruce Springsteen, who knows about this sort of thing, said when introducing U2 at the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year.

And indeed, from the very beginning U2's career has been about great expectations. Four young friends emerged from Dublin to promise rock 'n' roll transcendence to the world. Even before they were much good, they believed they could deliver. And once they began to, the world expected more. They believed they could do more, and so they did. And so on.

U2 returns to the Rose Garden arena Monday night, and for fans, the expectations go beyond that of a normal rock concert. There will be the usual sensations of artful noise and dazzling lights, the thrills of hearing favorite hits and being in the presence of the famously charismatic. But along with such visceral pleasures likely will come things we don't often get in our garden-variety mass entertainment: a call to consciousness and action, a sense of social connectedness that brings both joy and responsibility, perhaps even -- for those open to it -- an element of the spiritual.

U2 arguably is the most beloved rock band in the world, with good reason. For more than 25 years, the redoubtable quartet has stayed together, worked consistently, kept the music fresh and relevant and never failed to dream big.

Singer Bono, drummer Larry Mullen Jr., bassist Adam Clayton and guitarist the Edge have been global superstars since the mid-1980s when hits such as "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" brought their passion and high-mindedness to a mass audience. Few, if any, pop performers have ever navigated the winding channel between mass popularity and artistic progress so successfully. In the '90s, U2 segued from self-seriousness to satire with the layered confections of such albums as Zooropa and Pop and some of the most over-the-top, irony-drenched tour productions ever.

And they stepped away from that brand of grandeur just as gracefully as they'd embraced it. The band's latest album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is one of the very finest of its career, extending the back-to-basics approach of 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind to a more consistent set of songs full of characteristic toughness and beauty.

Love of the broad gesture does get them into some trouble, or at least it does Bono. He's not only among the more demonstrative of rock stars, but he's also regularly in the news for his (long-running and remarkably high-level) lobbying to promote international debt relief, foreign aid and campaigns against AIDS and malaria.

And for some reason this gets on a few nerves. Wrote the Irish newspaper the Sunday Independent: "We get Bono addressing world leaders, Bono on the beach with a straw cowboy hat on him, we get Bono taking over the Conan O'Brien show, Bono receiving awards. And it all becomes too much. The window display in the religious bookshop across the road from our office last week was taken up with a book on the gospel according to Bono. I rest my case."

And yet, Bono leavens his sense of mission with a self-deprecating sense of humor, much as the band balances seriousness and fun, flash and substance, grandiosity and intimacy. U2, it seems, wants us to have it all.

And from U2, that's a reasonable expectation.

© The Oregonian, 2005.

The Complete U2 Fan

The Oregonian, written by Joseph Rose & Marty Hughely

December 16, 2005

Favorite books

Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, by Steve Stockman: No big secret that three members of U2 are Christians. The War album ends with a song called "40," an acoustic rendition of Psalm 40. And Bono reportedly persuaded Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms to give up his judgmental ways about AIDS by reading him a passage from the Gospel of Matthew and reminding him of Jesus' compassion for lepers. Stockman, an Irish Presbyterian minister and gifted writer, recalls how U2 met God and put him in show business, took inspiration from the psalms of lamentation, took a lesson from C.S. Lewis, and what the band means when it proclaims, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

U2 & i: The Photographs 1982-2004, by Anton Corbijn: The ultimate U2 coffee-table book, filled with brilliant, vivid and often intimate pics by the band's favorite photographer. Spanning more than two decades, the shots chronicle their haircut history (remember when Bono was trying to save the world with a mullet and the Edge didn't seem to have a beanie sewn to his head) and Bono's sunglasses collection, but also impart a sense of who they are beneath the surface. The book is heavy with black-and-white images. It's not cheap, but it's a worthwhile purchase for the serious collector of real things U2.

Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, by Michka Assayas: For anyone who wants to get deep into the mind and heart of Bono, delve into this series of long but telling and inspiring interviews by a French journalist and friend of Bono. It's all here, albeit in nonlinear fashion: his musical influences, surviving the tough streets of Dublin, the birth of his faith, the death of his parents, his friendships with the other band members and how that has played into U2's long success. His work on poverty, AIDS and free trade. Even the insecurities of a rock star who has become a world leader.

U2: The Complete Songs: For the U2 completist, or anyone who wants to travel deep into Edge's brain, this book presents sheet music and guitar tablature (plus lyrics, of course) for every song written by U2 from 1978 to 1999, in alphabetical order. Commentary is minimal, but do-it-yourselfers will discover much.

U2 Show, by Diana Scrimgeour: Subtitled The Art of Touring, its 300-plus large-format pages offer a multilayered look at the concept, design and execution of the rock concert, as presented by U2. There's loads of dazzling photography (especially of the extravagant ZooTV and PopMart tours), but the meat of the book is the interviews -- with agents, video directors, sound technicians, stage managers, graphic artists, promoters, record execs, even stars such as Peter Gabriel and Steven Van Zandt -- which offer multiple perspectives on the business of touring, the growth of the rock stage spectacle, and U2's commitment to doing as much of it as possible with integrity and heart.

5 best U2 songs not released as singles

1. "So Cruel," from Achtung Baby: A song about love coming in for a crash landing, at a time when the Edge's marriage was balancing on a razor blade. The hammering, plaintive guitar work is the sound of a heart breaking. Choice line: "Between the horses of love and lust we are trampled underfoot" -- a reference to the death of Jezebel.

2. "Red Hill Mining Town," from The Joshua Tree: A song of earth, love and holding on to a dying way of life. The band wanted to release the song as a single in 1987 but stopped short when Bono realized he would have to try to hit the soaring high notes every night on tour. Bono was sure it would destroy his vocal chords. They even shot a video that was never played in the States. Choice line: "We scorch the earth, set fire to the sky/Stoop so low to reach so high."

3. "In a Little While," from All That You Can't Leave Behind: U2 takes a lesson from the Beatles' "Oh! Darling." Raw and unpretentious, just an honest song about the frailty of love, with scaled-down drum and guitar tracks. Too bad Bono and McCartney didn't play this one when they appeared on the Live 8 stage together this year. Choice line: "When the night takes a deep breath and the daylight has no air/If I crawl, if I come crawling home will you be there?"

4. "Until the End of the World," from Achtung Baby: A love song, sort of, through the eyes of Judas (he wants forgiveness). It features some of Edge's best guitar licks and has been one the band's in-concert standouts. Fortunately, according to the play lists on U2tours.com, the band is playing it again on the road. Choice line: "In the garden I was playing the tart/I kissed your lips and broke your heart/You, you were acting like it was the end of the world."

5. "Miracle Drug," from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: Inspired by a school-age friend who was a paraplegic yet managed to write poetry by punching out words with a device attached to his head, the song also includes allusions to the fight against AIDS. Gentle, poetic and hopeful, it asks big questions about the cultural conflict between God and science. Choice line: "The songs are in your eyes/I see them when you smile/I've had enough of romantic love/I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up/For a miracle drug."

Essential U2 CDs

1. Achtung Baby (1991): A seductive, darkly dazzling album that trades in the misty grandeur of earlier U2 records for a sound like gritty film noir futurism, at once brittle in tone and relaxed in feeling, with echoes of industrial rock, European dance music and the glam cheekiness of T. Rex. Bono drops his magisterial howl for a hushed delivery that's just as powerful but far more sonically seductive.

2. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004): Combining the power and passion of its early work with the subtleties and experimentalism of its middle period, U2 reaches another peak, with the Edge sounding especially revivified. The album strikes a fine balance between reflection and abandon, and leavens its largely straightforward guitar rock with enough atmospheric detailing and stylistic twists to throw off any nostalgic inertia.

3. The Joshua Tree (1987): Toning down the bombast and letting the beauty shine through, U2, led by producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, created a refined, ruminative, resonant sound that translated into colossal sales and legendary status. With "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "With or Without You," it's probably the band's most popular album.

4. War (1983): Brash, passionate and stirring, U2 makes good on its early promise with this third album, its arena rock anthems the sound of young idealists fighting for peace.

5. All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000): Pruning back its playful experimentation of the '90s, the quartet finds new possibilities within its basic guitar/bass/drums format and confidently reasserts its relevance. The first four tracks are pure magic.

Top 5 DVDs

1. U2: Coming Home, Live at Slane Castle (2002)

2. U2: Rattle and Hum (1988)

3. U2: Vertigo 2005, Live from Chicago (2005)

4. U2: Best of 1990-2000 (2003)

5. U2 - The Joshua Tree (2000)

On the Web

www.U2.com: the band's official site

www.one.org: "The campaign to make poverty history," spearheaded by Bono

www.atu2.com: a respected and in-depth fan site

www.u2log.com: a well-produced Web log and online magazine

© The Oregonian, 2005.

The @U2 Interview: Bill Flanagan

@U2, December 13, 2005

Angela Pancella

Ask fans to name their favorite U2 book, and chances are they'll say "Bill Flanagan's U2 at the End of the World." If they don't, they might well say "Flanagan's bible," the "orange bible" or the "U2 bible" -- but they're still talking about the same book.

It's popular for many good reasons. Bill Flanagan had many strikes in his favor when he embarked on this project -- a long friendship with U2 (his friend Ellen Darst flagged them as a band to watch before they hit American shores), a clear focus on a fascinating time period (Zoo TV and its immediate aftermath with a quick making-of-Achtung-Baby setup) and a witty, engaging writing style (think of his memorable similes -- stage rigging looking "like the steeples of postnuclear cathedrals," luggage bags bouncing "like happy appaloosas," a celebrating Irishman stumbling in the men's room "as if in the presence of the Beatific Vision.").

It's now ten years after The End of the World. The anniversary is a good time to catch up with author Flanagan, once the editor of the late, lamented Musician magazine and now carrying the title "Executive Vice President, MTV Networks International." We talked via e-mail; his responses came quickly. That could mean that since he's had to conduct so many interviews, he understands the deadline pressures interviewers face and wants to be helpful. It could mean he was stuck in boring teleconferences and had access to a laptop he could use for an escape. It could mean he just likes talking about U2 -- which would be great, because so many fans of U2 are fans of Flanagan talking about U2.

Your 1995 self, having just finished writing U2 at the End of the World, encounters the 2005 U2. How are they different from '95 and how are they the same?

I think they have achieved what they were hoping for. I think they were hoping to expand their musical options and grow their chops while maintaining and increasing their audience. I'd say they pulled that off pretty well. I remember at the end of the Zoo tour there was a bit of trepidation around the band that while they could keep making great music, they might not be able to count on filling stadiums in the future. Turned out they could do it all.

They have also completely integrated the innovations of Achtung Baby and Zooropa and Pop and those tours into their older (and newer) styles so that they can do any song from any period and make it all work together. They have greatly expanded the options open to U2 and continued to do very strong work. I wouldn't presume to say that Atomic Bomb is their best album, but it might turn out to be my favorite. Time will tell.

I find it interesting that you like it that much...Atomic Bomb is not an album I've been able to "get."

Well that's all just personal taste, there's no right or wrong. I like Zooropa more than Joshua Tree, too, so what do I know? On the new album, I just love the swoop and uplift, the ecstasy. It reminds me of what was so exciting about "I Will Follow" and "Gloria" back when they started, but with a lot more muscle and confidence. "Blinding Lights" almost brings a tear to my eye. "Yahweh" slays me.

What are your impressions of the Vertigo tour so far?

I thought the Vertigo tour started out last spring a little disconnected, as most U2 tours do. All the pieces were great but they did not all fit together perfectly. The shows this fall have been uniformly fantastic -- some of the best U2 concerts I've ever seen, which is to say some of the best concerts I've ever seen.

Tell me what you think of this assessment: A U2 show is a lot more like an opera than rock at this point, telling an emotional story entirely through music, and with few changes in the setlist from one city to another. Even if the songs change, the "plotline" tends to stay the same: A song with similar emotional content is substituted for whatever is taken out.

Bono certainly does have the opera in him, as he reminds us at every show. To me, those big emotions are exactly what makes it a rock 'n roll show. That's what I got out of the Who and the Clash and Aretha Franklin: big, heart-rending, lung-shredding, eardrum-popping emotions. That's why people react so strongly to Green Day and Coldplay. We need more of that.

What kind of changes in their perception within the music industry have taken place since the Zoo days? There were some interesting run-ins talked about in your book: U2 and Negativland, how Bob Guccione Jr. thought U2 broke up the Pixies, some instances of what sounded like sour grapes. Are they still a band you either love or hate?

At this point I think anyone who hates U2 has shut up and sat down. It's like hating the Beatles, or holding out for Stalinism.

Speaking of the Beatles, where are U2 now in comparison to them? Did the Beatles have it easier? They could make one appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and 75% of the U.S. would see them. U2, on the other hand, does stuff on MTV, VH-1, Oprah, 60 Minutes, Charlie Rose, CBS and on and on...and they're lucky if 10% of the country sees them. Does it make U2's popularity all the more remarkable?

Well, as big as they are, U2 have never been as big as the Beatles were. The only thing since the Beatles that has come close is Michael Jackson during the Thriller period, and he couldn't sustain it. It's true that the Beatles could reach most of the country at one time, but so did Herman's Hermits, the Searchers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Beau Brummels, the Association and the Ladybugs. Obviously reaching the whole country at one time didn't mean the whole country was going to go buy your records.

Also, bear in mind that when the Beatles were on top it was much harder to buy records, the record business itself was very primitive. There were no record superstores like Tower or Best Buy, there were not record stores in malls (in fact, for most of the time the Beatles were around, there were not even malls). Almost all records were sold from a single rack in the TV section of department stores. You had to go to Sears to buy a record, and they only had the current hits. Distribution was very primitive. And of course, there was nothing like MTV or VH1. I love U2 but I think you have to give that round to the Beatles; they pretty much invented the whole apparatus.

What would your 1995 self have said about the level of Bono's political involvement these days, and the way humanitarian appeals are incorporated in the concerts?

Bono's humanitarian work is an obvious outgrowth of his earlier convictions and his trips to Africa and Latin America after Live Aid. What's amazing is not that he's done it, it's that he has convinced (what we used to call) the straight world to take him seriously. He is a genuine political and social force in the world, respected by political leaders and activists and serious reporters everywhere. He has really cleared a new path in that respect.

I have known Bono for 25 years and he has been a big star for almost 20, but lately when I'm with him I notice a real change in the way people react to him. It's like going out with Gandhi or something. In a sort of hopeless time, he is a real beacon.

A couple of weeks ago I took a flight with him. It was pretty late at night and we went to the airport and I noticed that the crew on the airplane was acting really whacky. They all seemed to be kind of wired and falling over themselves. I couldn't figure out what was going on. We got on the plane and sat down and we were talking and the flight attendant kept interrupting to ask us silly questions and offer us all kinds of treats and drinks and pillows and magazines and about the fifth time I thought, "What's wrong with this woman? Why is she so hopped up?" And then it dawned on me, it was because of Bono. She and the whole flight crew were flipping out because Bono was on the plane. It was not how professional people normally react to a rock star or any other kind of celebrity. This was something a lot more intense. I've seen people react a little like that to Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali and Bill Clinton, but I'd have to say that this is even stronger. It's like Bono has absorbed the energy that's been looking for a place to land since the sixties.

Boy, do I hope he doesn't read this.

The praise being heaped on Bono for his humanitarian work is a big change from the Zoo TV era, isn't it? You reported on the savage reaction of the British press when they brought the war in Sarajevo into Wembley. Now, Bono plugs the ONE campaign in every concert and almost nobody grouses. One exception: I get into arguments about whether Bono wearing sunglasses around Bush constitutes disrespect for the presidential office and why he gets so much face time with Congress when he holds no elected post.

Bono wearing sunglasses does not disrespect the office of the President. Condoning and institutionalizing torture disrespects the office of the President. Slandering honest critics disrespects the office of the President. Using fear to control the population....Sorry, I went off there for a second.

Listen, why shouldn't Bono get face time with leaders? Who ever said only elected officials get face time with elected officials? Talk about a closed circle! You know who gets face time with elected officials? Oil lobbyists, teachers unions, campaign contributors, religious leaders, veterans groups, foreign dignitaries, athletes, actors, fund-raisers, journalists, watchdog groups. Why not Bono? He's one of the very few who is not being paid to endorse a position. When he lobbies for something, it's only because he believes it is right. He has no other reason for being there. How many other people on a politician's schedule any day can say that?

What about their presentation of faith and doubt over the years? In At the End of the World you ask Bono about his faith, saying that if you didn't address it in an interview directly, people might get the impression that they had gotten like the stereotype of American Episcopalians: "...and if you want, we can baptize your cat." I don't think there's any danger of people thinking that way about Bono or U2 now.

Well, I think his faith speaks for itself, really. He's not a Catholic, but he certainly does do Good Works. (Did I say that in the book about Episcopalians? I should watch my mouth.)

In your book Bono laments that he isn't paying more attention to the craft of writing lyrics; what do you think of his lyrics these days? He also wishes U2 would write songs and try them "in a few different keys." Do you know if he got his wish?

Well, I think U2's lyrics have always been good. I think Bono probably underestimated them. "The orbit of your hips" is a fantastic phrase. "Wake Up Dead Man" is a great lyric. "Kite" is a great lyric. There's a lot of 'em.

Different Keys? I doubt it. That's the price Bono pays for going off to save the world and leaving Edge, Adam and Larry to cut the tracks without him. (I wonder if they ever do one in a key they know would be impossible for him, just to make him sweat.)

How much of your Zoo TV experience got into A&R [the novel you wrote afterward]?

Gee, I don't know, it all gets mixed together. I can't think of any U2 echoes in A&R but there probably are some. It occurred to me later that I had written one book about songwriting (Written in my Soul), one about touring and recording (U2 at the End of the World) and one about the record business (A&R). Taken together I guess they make up my survey of what I know about the music business.

Oh, there's one funny connection between U2 and A&R. When I got in the first copies of A&R I sent one to Bono. A while later I got a call that he lost it and could he get another right away. I thought, "Well, he'll just lose this one, too, I don't want to send him one of the nice hardcover books with the finished cover. I'll send him one of the early paperback galleys with a rejected cover. He won't care." The next time I saw him he said, "Guess what? In our new video I'm carrying your book!" [Ed. note: "Beautiful Day" video] That's why he wanted it! He was giving me a gigantic plug! And because I was so cheap, he's carrying the only copy of A&R with a cover that was never used. No one can tell what it is! Serves me right, huh?

Why do you think your book, of all the books on U2, has gotten the nickname "the U2 bible" from the fan community?

Probably because it's so thick. If I'd published all the notebooks I started with it would be called the Encyclopedia Britannica of U2.

I know a few people who wouldn't have minded that...I wonder, too, if the timing may have something to do with it. Your book came out just as Internet fandom was first coming into being. Lots of folks were discussing your book on Wire, the big fan mailing list, when I joined in '95, and that made me want to go out and buy it.

That's interesting...I was not aware of on-line conversations about the book. I never even checked what readers were saying on the Amazon chat rooms. I'm superstitious about that, once I finish a book and send it out there I really don't want to think about it any more.

Do many fans know who you are and give you any feedback about the book if they see you at shows? What are some comments you've heard?

People do come up to me on the subway or at shows sometimes and talk to me about my books or something I did on TV. They're always nice. I'm sure anyone who hated my stuff would not come up and talk to me.

It seemed like Adam was the one who went through the most change over the course of that book. I read somewhere recently that Larry told you he (Larry) came across as constantly angry, but has Adam told you anything about your portrayal of him? And what do you think of his bass playing these days?

A lot of people have been talking about how great Adam has been on this tour, how powerful his bass playing is and just what a strong presence he is on stage. I think he's always played that role behind the scenes, but now for some reason it seems to be more obvious to people in the stands.

I remember when the book was finished I sent manuscript copies to the four members of U2. The deal was they could correct mistakes but not ask me to change anything that was not factually wrong. There were a few tense exchanges, as you'd expect. Larry did actually point out that I made him look like he was angry all the time. I said he was exaggerating and he proceeded to reel off a list of descriptions from the manuscript. It was pretty funny, it was something like, "Larry is angry, Larry is mad, Larry is furious, Larry comes in pissed off, Larry fumes, Larry bitches, Larry complains, Larry admonishes." What could I say? He was right, he nailed me. I didn't know I had done it and the thing is, I like Larry so much and I get such a kick out of him that I saw these descriptions as kind of funny, but he was right -- a reader would not see it that way.

Larry, Bono and Edge were all very graceful about the whole thing -- and it was awkward for all of us -- but each of them at least suggested that I change some things in my descriptions of them. Adam was the only one who did not. Adam was a complete mensch about it. He said, "Well, there's some things in the book I wish were not there and I wish you didn't know about, but it's true so fair play to you." I thought he showed incredible class. But that's Adam. He's a very strong and dignified person.

What was the dominant impression of Edge that you got from spending time with him on the road? What would you call his biggest strengths, songwriting and playing-wise?

Edge is a remarkable talent. As Pete Townshend said many years ago, "Edge is a giant." In fact, Edge is a lot like Townshend in terms of the range of his vision and talent. He can write the records and make the records, all by himself if he had to. If Bono had not been in the band, U2 would still be a hugely important group.

Whose idea was your book in the first place? And what kind of process did you use to write it?

The book came about because Betsy Bundschuh, an editor at Delacourte, read an article I did about U2 in Musician -- the invasion of Sellafield -- and asked if I could expand it into a book. I had been approached quite a few times to write books about U2 and I always scared them off by saying I did not want to write a standard bio that went through their whole lives and every album and tour. I wanted to write something that covered a short period of time in great depth. Betsy was the first one to say yes to that idea. So I sent the band a note and Bono called and said, "This sounds like something we might want to do." I went out and spent a couple of days with them and we talked about it and they agreed to very, very generous terms -- they wanted no money, they wanted no control. They were just great about it. So I went back and told Betsy we were on.

The way I wrote the book was that I'd go out with them for about ten days at a time, as often as once a month. I kept a notebook in one pocket of my raincoat and a tape recorder in the other and tried to get everything down. Usually we'd stay up all night and I'd crawl back to my hotel room after dawn and then I'd have to stay up a couple of more hours writing down every thing that had just happened and translating all the scribbles on napkins and so on. When I got too tired to write any more I'd start talking it into the tape recorder until I fell asleep. A few hours later the phone would ring and we'd be off again. By the end of the tour I was so tired I was almost hallucinating, but I think that actually put me on the same wavelength as everybody else. The book gets more manic as it goes along, but that's appropriate, that's how everybody felt, I think.

When I got back to America I spent about six or eight months going through all the notebooks and tape recordings and trimming it down, while trying to keep that real-time feeling. A lot of the book is just typed right out of the notebooks. I tried to make it all coherent, but I didn't clean it up to the point where a reader would miss the experience. It was important to me that the book feel like what it felt like to be on that tour. I was thinking of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail a lot, and also Spaulding Gray and Armies of the Night and The Boys on the Bus and Teddy White and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic. While I was putting the book together I would get exhausted and I'd read SJ Perelman to perk up, so I'm sure that got in there, too.

Imagine you didn't have your current responsibilities at VH1 and your family wouldn't mind you devoting another couple of years to a big project. Bono calls you up and says, "Hey, Bill, let's do another book!" Would you be interested?

The suggestion of doing a second volume comes up sometimes but I think it's a bad idea. I really don't think anybody needs to hear any more from me about U2 and I would not want to impose on the band like that again. I thought Killing Bono was a really funny angle on U2, and Michka Assayas' book is just like spending a long evening with Bono, so there's lots of ways to go.

Are there other bands that you would like to see written about from an "embedded reporter" perspective?

I liked Greg Kot's book about Wilco, it was a real old-fashioned biography from someone who had clearly been moved by the music and cared about the band and felt the story was important. It seems like that should be the minimum requirement, doesn't it? I'm always surprised that so many of the rock books that come out seem to be clip jobs by writers who don't really know their subjects very well. And yet so many of the best rock writers -- Charles M. Young, Jay Cocks, Fred Schruers, Mikal Gillmore, Paul Nelson -- have not really written rock books. Then again, as my editor said to me not long ago, "YOU don't want to do it, do you? Why should they?" I'm glad Peter Guralnick is out there swinging. I wish a few more people were.

© @U2/Pancella, 2005.

Red-Hot U2 Hits Charlotte

Shows by Bono and mates can be life-changing events, fans say

Source: Charlotte Observer, written by Courtney Decores

December 11, 2005

U2 may be the biggest band in the world right now. The recent Spin and Rolling Stone cover boys are Generation X's Beatles. Their Charlotte show Monday at the Charlotte Bobcats Arena sold out in less than an hour.

The Irish rock quartet has that affect on fans. They've remained on top of their game, reinventing themselves while maintaining their sound, to attract fans of all ages, races, and religions for 25 years. Their live shows have become a huge part of their appeal.

Rafik Betabdishoo, a 37-year-old, Charlotte-based IT project manager who began listening to them in the mid-'80s while in boarding school in Italy, used three computers and two phones when tickets went on sale.

"I was constantly refreshing the pages and it would not load," he said. "I had the home and cell phone trying to dial the 800 number and couldn't get through. They're such a hot commodity now."

Charlotte-area fans such as Betabdishoo left without tickets flocked to eBay.

"I had to go through eBay to get general admission tickets," said Matt Floyd, 31. "I paid $150, which is still cheaper than the most expensive seat in the house. But I saw them on the Zoo TV tour in Columbia in '92 and decided I'd pay any amount of money to see them again."

Right of passage

U2's magic was evident early on, according to accountant Steve Rehmet, 43, who saw the baby-faced lads perform at a Hudson River venue in 1982 for $6. "We thought we hit the jackpot," he said. "At the time this country was fixated on disco and stadium bands that wore fancy stage outfits and played endless solos. U2 wore regular street clothes and rocked the daylights out of the place for two hours."

Like many fans, Floyd and Betabdishoo discovered U2 during their formative years when obsessions with bands was a right-of-passage.

"My senior year yearbook quote was a U2 quote," said Tina Cargill, 32. "I spent all of my disposable income on them. My room was covered with posters and screen-printed flags. My best friend Rita and I sent 400 postcards to a radio station to win a trip to see them in Dublin. We used to leave U2 quotes for each other on the blackboard (at school)."

Since then she's watched them from the first row and held Bono's hand in Chicago in 1997 during "With or Without You." For fans, their live shows can be life-changing.

"I saw them for the first time in 2002," said 25-year-old Ecuador-native Juan Marin, of Latin rock band La Rúa. "Without a doubt (it was) the most amazing show of my life."

Marin has plans for Monday's show.

"I'm (wanting) to come up on stage and do a song with them, as a guy did in Dallas," he said. "Or throw Bono the Ecuadorian flag with a La Rúa CD attached."

Evolved and intense

So what inspires such devotion?

"Having Bono, who has a very distinct vocal, as a frontman -- it couldn't have been anyone else," Betabdishoo said. "They are as popular as they are because of him."

Added Floyd: "The last two (albums) bring them closer to what they did in the late '80s and early '90s."

Unlike many aging bands that get stuck in a time warp, U2 has evolved but sustained the intensity of its early work, thus managing to cross age and cultural divides.

"They're such an Everyman band," Cargill said. "They know how to write a song so it hits like shotgun fire."

25 Years and an Atomic Bomb Later, U2 Thrives on Rock-Solid Chemistry

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer, written by Gary Graff

December 09, 2005

If the members of U2 are experiencing Vertigo these days, it's because they're looking down from an impressive height.

There are plenty of numbers that chronicle the Irish quartet's upward spiral -- over the past 25 years and during the past 15 months. Since the release of Boy in 1980, U2 has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and has won 14 Grammy Awards -- including a pair for its latest, 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which alone has sold more than 10 million copies.

This year the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and launched its Vertigo world tour, which will play to more than 3.3 million people.

Those are certainly laurels comfortable enough to rest on. But U2 guitarist the Edge -- real name David Evans -- says that even in its "elder statesman" status, the band still thrives on taking chances with its music and live performances.

"In some ways that sense of jeopardy is a good thing," says the Edge, 44, who founded U2 in 1978 in Dublin with school friends Bono (Paul Hewson), Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. "I would hate if we ever lost the great ability to screw up. I think it's an important part of what the band is.

"We've never fallen afoul to the risks of becoming too professional or, indeed, over-rehearsing. Those are two things we've managed to avoid up 'til now. I joke about it, but in some ways I actually do think it keeps us really fresh. When it becomes too easy, I think it just sounds that way, and that easy thing is just so unappealing."

U2, however, has never taken the easy route -- even when it very well could have. The group started shaking things up in the early '90s. After a decade of establishing its anthemic, guitar-led sound at multiplatinum levels and Time magazine covers, U2 issued 1991's Achtung Baby, revealing a darker, more textured kind of sound -- and still managed to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

More experiments followed -- U2 incorporated electronic soundscapes on 1993's Zooropa and 1997's Pop, which were reflected, too, on "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," U2's contribution to the Batman Forever film soundtrack in 1995, as well as Clayton and Mullen's 1996 re-creation of the Mission: Impossible" theme. The group also worked with producer Brian Eno in a side project called Passengers, whose mostly instrumental album Original Soundtracks I featured "Miss Sarajevo," a duet between Bono and opera great Luciano Pavarotti.

Fan reaction was sometimes mixed about these endeavors, but U2 came through them with its integrity intact -- if not enhanced. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, an outspoken admirer, notes that "of all the bands that we loved as kids, they're the only ones still going and still going great. They're a towering presence, and to us they represent kind of a peak."

U2's 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind was greeted as something of a return to form, however, although it managed to mix some of those '90s sonic adventures into the "classic" U2 sound. Atomic Bomb follows suit, from harder rocking fare such as "Vertigo" and "All Because of You" to airy, ethereal tracks like "Yahweh" and "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own."

The Edge, who feels that Atomic Bomb is "our most consistent record ever," says that U2 has found a comfort zone in mixing its varied musical threads. "We're not prejudiced against our own past," he explains. "As long as something has real vitality and the power to connect, then we're open to it. But there's a lot of things that we come up with that we reject on the basis that they are a little too much of a pastiche or too reminiscent of something that doesn't feel really worth going on with."

The Edge, Clayton and Mullen actually worked on a good chunk of Atomic Bomb without Bono, who was busy lobbying politicians and world leaders on his Nobel Peace-prize nominated anti-poverty campaign. "Some of the time we didn't even know where he was going," the guitarist recalls with a laugh. "Occasionally you'd find out after the event -- 'Oh my God, did you see Bono on CNN?' or whatever."

But the Edge says that Bono's absence was not really a problem.

"Our job as the band is to really inspire the singer; that's kind of the way we've always worked," he says. "So we worked up the music to the point where we could give him something to really go off with."

And, he adds, the rest of U2 basked in the work Bono was doing outside the studio.

"We think that it's something that's really important, and the small downside that comes with it, whether he's misinterpreted or not taken seriously or whatever, is far outweighed in every respect by the positives that come with it."

U2, meanwhile, has managed to keep its own profile high via the Vertigo tour. Changing its set list every night, the group has dipped deep into its past for rarely performed early songs such as "Electric Co.," "The Ocean" and "Into the Heart." It's also fashioned acoustic arrangements of some of its songs to bring a homey touch to its high-tech, arena-sized shows.

"We're working on the element of scale," the Edge explains. "The arenas give us the space to do extraordinary things with production, but it's also nice sometimes to kind of bring it back and try and establish a feeling of intimacy as well."

He's also pleased that Clayton and Mullen have become more active as performers, venturing out onto the circular ramp that brings the musicians closer to the crowd. The drummer is even playing piano on "Yahweh."

U2's live show has been on two DVDs -- Vertigo 2005: Live From Chicago and a set from the Live 8 concerts in July, which features U2's set in London's Hyde Park as well as its performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with Paul McCartney, which opened the show.

The Vertigo Tour will carry on into 2006, but the Edge -- who carries recording gear on tour -- says that after nine months on the road this year he's more interested in getting back to the studio for U2's next album.

"I would hope it'll be sooner rather than later," he says. "I'm trying to work up some new ideas, some of which are starting to sound pretty interesting -- nothing I can really explain, but I'm quite excited about some new innovations I'm working on.

"We'll just have to take it to the band now and see what sticks; as always, nothing I do becomes a U2 song until everyone's played on it and it has that special quality that only occurs when we're playing together. I'm really ready to start that process again."

© The Plain Dealer, 2005.

U2

Bono and friends still making good music, still a force in rock after all these years

Source: Akron Beacon Journal, written by Malcolm X Abram

December 09, 2005

Paul Hewson is a better person than you.

Not only is he rich and famous, but he helps starving and AIDS-ravaged people in Africa, has the phone numbers of the pope, heads of state and rock stars on his BlackBerry, has been mentioned as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate, has been in the same band with the same three guys for 25 years and he has a cool rock 'n' roll nom de plume.

His band mates and millions of fans all over the globe call him Bono and he is a 21st century rock star.

Unlike the rock stars of yore, who reveled in drug-induced decadence, their star status and other people's daughters (and some sons), Bono has been married to the same woman for more than 20 years and there are no sex tapes, embarrassing photographs (save the early '80s when he had his new wave mullet), or tales of him roughing up paparazzi or being rude to waiters.

In comparison to the Led Zeppelins, Mick Jaggers and Steven Tylers of the '70s or even the well chronicled sins of the hair metal bands of the '80s, Bono and his band mates, who are playing a sold-out show Saturday at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, seem pretty boring as rock stars go. Those band mates would be guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.

Even compared to the fellow long-timers and all-around nice guys in Bon Jovi (whose Richie Sambora toed the rock-star line a bit and married actress Heather Locklear), U2 seems relatively tame.

In the recently published book, Bono in Conversation With Michka Assayas, the man himself denies his status as celebrity even as he uses it to help Third World countries get debt relief, and get AIDS drugs to Africa.

"I'm a scribbling, cigar-smoking, wine-drinking, Bible-reading band man," he tells the French journalist. "A show-off who loved to paint pictures of what I can't see. A husband, father, friend of the poor and sometimes the rich. An activist traveling salesman of ideas. Chess player, part-time rock star, opera singer in the loudest folk group in the world."

It's that kind of self-awareness and self-deprecation that has made him a hero to his many fans, an annoying self-important rock star to detractors and a cover boy for Time magazine, which posed the question, "Can Bono save the world?"

Of course not, but while his altruistic deeds (he also recently launched a clothing line called Edun that uses factories in Africa, South America and India to spur trade) have brought him plenty of positive attention, perhaps the most important factor in U2's continued reign as one of the biggest rock bands in the world is the simple fact that the band is still making good music.

Yes, the aforementioned Bon Jovi has been churning out well-crafted, positive-minded populist anthems with singalong choruses for nearly as long as U2, but few music fans look to Bon Jovi's music for musical meditations on life, death, love and faith -- all common themes of Bono's lyrics.

The release of a new U2 record is still an event rather than an excuse to tour, and the band's latest, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, stands up well alongside U2's best work -- War, Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree.

And the band members know it.

"Without sounding totally phony, I think this might be our second best -- if not our best -- album," Bono told Blender magazine shortly before the album was released late last year. "It's right up there with Achtung Baby. It had to be. You can't live like this and put out a crap album or else people are going to want to shoot you."

After three albums of increasingly obtuse keyboard and electronics-laced tunage, and Bono's increasingly annoying MacPhisto and Fly personas, the band came to that point that many longtime artists reach after years of musical evolution: It has become satisfied to simply sound like U2.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is the second album to harken back to the traditional U2 sound. Its predecessor, 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind, was a welcome return to the group's signature sounds, i.e. the Edge picking out riffs while stomping on his various echo pedals, Clayton thumping his E string and Mullen laying down a steady beat while Bono wails and moans.

But where that album seemed tentative in spots, HTDAAB finds the band sounding more confident (if that's possible) and is simply filled with better songs.

It has the opening big arena rock blast of "Vertigo"; Bono's meditations on the death of his father, Bob, on the gentle "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" (which the band performed at his funeral) and on "One Step Closer to Knowing"; and the sexy, blues-abilly groove of "Love and Peace or Else." The album is sure to bring back any fans who jumped ship during the late '90s electronic phase.

In concert, the 2005 rock hall inductees' acceptance of themselves and their history has manifested itself in the revival of some long-ignored songs from their catalog, including "The Electric Co." and "40" from War, and alt-rock radio staples, such as "I Will Follow" and "New Year's Day." The excesses of the '90s, which included the band emerging from a Spinal Tap-ian, giant lemon in concert, have been stripped away to the basics of four guys (and a hidden keyboardist) plying their rock 'n' roll trade with minimum fuss, allowing the songs and Bono's inner "show-off" free rein.

Rock history tells us that eventually U2 will join the ranks of other lifers, such as the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and Aerosmith. They'll be artists who still draw tens of thousands of fans to see them play, but whose new music usually signals a trip to the concession stand or the bathroom. But at 25 years and counting, and with its strongest album in years on the charts and radio (and an Ipod commercial), U2 has managed to pull off the difficult trick of not only still making good music, but of still being a relevant force in popular music.

© Akron Beacon Journal, 2005.

Bonolithic: Political Lyrics, or Lyrical Politics?

U2 Blurs the Lines Between Art and Activism Like Never Before.

Source: Free Times, written by Anastasia Pantsios

LATE IN U2’s CURRENT TOUR SET, frontman Bono urges the crowd to hold up its cell phones. This is not a unique gesture for arena rock acts these days; it’s a contemporary version of the old hold-up-your-cigarette-lighters moment. But Bono’s purpose isn’t the stock sing-the-power-ballad-with-us frisson of familiarity and band-worship. Once the arenas become a constellation of tiny glowing monitors, a phone number flashes on the overhead video screens that had earlier been showing closeups of the band. It’s the number for ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, a consortium of international anti-poverty groups, including Bono’s own DATA (Debt, Aid, Trade for Africa). Bono’s trying to enlist the band’s fans in the issue that’s been a passion of his for almost 20 years: ending world poverty, specifically on the African continent.

In Pittsburgh in October, following his plea, Bono dedicated the set-closing song “One” — an apolitical tune about the rigors and rewards of love with its reminder that “we got to carry each other” — to former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who was in attendance. He was part of a diverse crowd that ranged from the fortysomethings who were U2’s first fans when they made their initial inroads on college radio in the early ’80s, to a trio of young women in their early 20s, one there despite battling a terrible cold, crowded near the stage to take in their first U2 concert.

That this band should attract an ex-treasury secretary as opposed to, say, a gaggle of actors, is no surprise. When rumors surfaced in March that Bono might be named to head the World Bank, O’Neill’s successor, John Snow, not only didn’t scoff, he was quoted as saying that Bono “does a lot of good in this world of economic development. Most people know him as a rock star. He’s in a way a rock star of the development world, too. He understands the give-and-take of development. He’s a very pragmatic, effective and idealistic person.”

The job ultimately went to former Defense Department second-in-command Paul Wolfowitz, whose résumé on issues such as Third World debt is skimpier than Bono’s. Still, in October, Bono had lunch with President Bush (not their first meeting), something that made some purists howl in outrage. But Bono has justified such meetings by saying that you have to work with people you disagree with to accomplish certain goals. As he told Time in 2002, “I am not willing to give up on Republicans. They’re tough, but they’re willing to listen.”

If it all sounds a bit earnest, well, it’s just another year in the life of U2. The other members — drummer Larry Mullen Jr., guitarist The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton — are not as outspoken as their hobnobbing singer, but are known to support his goals. That’s likely why the band has survived for nearly three decades with no personnel changes, making music that continues to resonate with old fans and attract new fans 25 years after releasing its first record.

That 25-year period made the band eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year and predictably, they were inducted March 14, 2005, in their first year of eligibility. Most inductees are well past their artistic peak, and that was certainly true with U2’s mates in the Rock Hall’s 20th class: soul icons the O’Jays and Percy Sledge, blues artist Buddy Guy and rockers the Pretenders.

U2, on the other hand, has had a year befitting a band in its prime. It released a new, now multi-platinum album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, last November; embarked on its sold-out, yearlong world tour last spring; and even released a custom iPod, embracing emerging technology in a way that has mostly eluded the major record labels. As other bands their age have slipped into irrelevance, U2 built upon the enormous success of its 2000 All That You Can’t Leave Behind with its new album, showing how a band can grow up gracefully and passionately without growing old and tired.

Known for songs that explore the inner workings of the heart and matters of social justice — as well as for looking distracted and overly serious in grainy black-and- white photos — U2 has always been about more than music for its fans. Writer Kristine McKenna once began a review of the band’s 1988 album Rattle and Hum by asking, “Why is it that in every picture you see of this band they look like they’re about to deliver the Gettysburg Address?”

It would be a mistake to think that the band’s passion for human rights add up to humorlessness, although it’s a mistake that’s been frequently made. The group’s always had a sense of humor — heard in Bono’s perpetual wisecracks about being a pop star, acknowledging both his status and the absurdity of the level of respect it grants him — that’s perhaps the result of having its feet firmly planted in the soil of its native Dublin, Ireland, not one of the world’s glamour celebrity capitals. Yet even in the band’s mid-’90s “ironic” period, with its giant lemons and Bono’s jokey alter-ego “Mr. Macphisto,” one could sense the serious purpose lurking behind the twinkle, as he toyed with the concept of bringing out the inner Satan in the forthrightly Christian band.

In fact, U2 has forged a stance and an attitude that has always stood singularly apart from the prevailing mood of the times, dovetailing with that mood only by accident, as it did when the events of 9/11 suddenly lent resonance to the leading tracks from All That You Can’t Leave Behind, “Beautiful Day,” “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” “Walk On” — songs about standing strong in the midst of confusion and doubt. As other acts dropped even remotely unsettling songs from their sets, U2 used the remainder of its Elevation tour to acknowledge the dramatically changed mood of the world through such gestures as scrolling the names of some of the 9/11 victims during “One” and Bono accepting and displaying the American flags proffered by fans in place of the Irish flags that have become standard audience accoutrements. It seems corny now — or shrewedly manipulative, if you’re cynical — but at the time, it felt right.

But mostly the band’s maintained a respectful distance from trends in both music and cultural attitudes, something that’s likely contributed to its ability to sail relatively unscathed through shifting music eras. It emerged in the midst of punk rock, inspired as teenagers by that genre’s emphasis on passion over professionalism, but lacking its corrosive scorn. It soared to a commercial peak with 1987’s The Joshua Tree, singing about life and death and faith and salvation when the airwaves were full of party metal bands and feel-good dance music. It forged through the ’90s grunge era as (mostly) married family men now in their 30s, with little affinity for the willful infantalism and the I-hate-myself-and-I’m-screwed-up-because-my-parents-were-divorced wallowing that was that era’s hallmark. The 1997 CD Pop sounded to some listeners like a concession to the late-’90s electronica hype, but it was more an adaptation of some of the genre’s sounds, with songs that even more deeply explored the meaning of faith in the modern world. And of course, they came roaring back with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, an album that enjoyed unexpected levels of radio airplay and sales.

With How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the band made an album that sonically consolidates its entire career, even quoting some of its signature riffs and sonic textures. And while Bono’s activism has become more prominent, reflecting a world grown more chaotic and uneasy, the band’s music had turned inward, reflecting sea changes in the members’ lives. It’s most striking on “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” a tribute to Bono’s up-and-down but ultimately devoted relationship with his father, who died in 2001 while the band was in the midst of its Elevation tour.

That song forms a mid-set turning point on the current tour. As the video screens show images of a lone man strolling, Bono lifts his signature tinted glasses in tribute to his father, who perpetually asked him to remove them. All the elements came together to make a powerful statement, visual, lyrical and musical, about the difficulty of making a connection with someone with whom you’re inextricably linked.

Though many of the fans posting on the band’s message boards feel the band’s current shows lack the gripping fervor of the Elevation tour, the band’s still showing its savvy in drawing on its entire catalogue to craft an entertaining evening that makes strong emotional and political points. It opened in Pittsburgh with “City of Blinding Lights” from its latest disc, with Bono appearing in the middle of the crowd at the point of the so-called “ellipse,” an enclosure in which fans chosen by lottery from those holding floor tickets can be close to the band in almost a club-within-an-arena setting. Early ’80s tunes like “I Will Follow” and “Electric Co.” are followed by hits both recent (“Beautiful Day”) and older (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”).

It’s right after “Sometimes You Can’t Make It...” that the evening takes a turn toward the political. In “Bullet the Blue Sky” — the Joshua Tree tune addressing the effect of war on civilians that unfortunately is just as relevant today as in 1987 — Bono’s outro rap is replaced with a nerve-jangling instrumental, featuring Edge’s unsettling guitar. “Miss Sarajevo,” recorded as a duet with Luciano Pavarotti, features Bono singing both vocal parts with startling effectiveness, given that he’s never been known as a supremely technical singer. (At one show, he was reported to have joked, “Pavarotti’s not here, but I’ve been putting on a few pounds.”) “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, the group’s tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., finds a place in this part of the set as well, followed by the most electrifying tune on Joshua Tree, “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and, finally, “One.”

A mixed bag of encores closes the evening: an acoustic “The First Time”; “Stuck in a Moment”; “With or Without You”; and “Yahweh” from the new disc, a song that seems to sum up U2 with its complicated approach to Christianity. Its poetic yet direct expression of faith, humility, yearning and celebration weaves together the different layers of its beliefs: “Yahweh, Yahweh / Always pain before a child is born / Yahweh, Yahweh / Still I’m waiting for the dawn … The sun is coming up / The sun is coming up on the ocean / This love is like a drop in the ocean / This love is like a drop in the ocean … Take this city / If it be your will / What no man can own, no man can take/ Take this heart / Take this heart / Take this heart /And make it break.”

U2 plays a sold-out concert at Quicken Loans Arena, One Center Court, Saturday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m., with Institute opening.  

Steve Boughey: Playing the ticket-scalpin' U2 blues

Source: The New Zealand Herald, written by Steve Boughey

December 6, 2005

Having the day off work seemed to have been the ultimate serendipity.

I'd be able to get in the queue real early at my local Red Ticket outlet, the Manukau City Post Shop. And no matter how long the whole process took, no worries.

Unlike the other poor souls around me who were nervously glancing at their watches and making calls to the office, as they calculated exactly how late they would be to work.

No, I thought, here I was, nice and early on the scene, and now 12th in the queue. I'd even brought my novel along to combat the ennui of the extended standing around. I was here for as long as it takes.

Everything was just hunky-dory, I thought. We'd been asked to go forward, in turn, prior to the magic hour of 9am, and give them our name and address, and the type and quantity of tickets we wanted.

Any minute now, the transaction would be complete. They'd have my $398 (plus misc. charges) and I'd be clutching my two precious "A reserve" seated tickets.

Yep, U2, I could almost taste it now. It was so close. It's not like I go to many concerts, or anything. Big Day Out passes me by, year by year, without so much as a murmur. John Farnham and Stevie Nicks are coming, and the Foo Fighters have been and gone…but, hey, did I care?

They were all but supporting players, on the stage where the top spot is indisputably occupied by the World's Number One Band (to this 40-something fan, anyway).

I could even forgive the inevitable political messages about world poverty, etc, that were inevitably going to be part of the March 17 concert. Yes, Bono is the ultimate showman, and never passes up an opportunity to make world governments as guilty as possible for their uncaring, selfish attitudes towards the less fortunate.

Live, this group rocks, period. This was going to be the event of the summer - nay, the year - and I was here on this drizzly South Auckland morning so I could be a part of it.

So you can imagine my horror when the nice Post Shop lady announced to the waiting throng that they "had no tickets, sorry".

Nada, nix, zilchimundo, nothing.

Something about computers, apparently, but by then I wasn't hearing anything clearly.

I walked back to the car in a near catatonic state, with the air of a student who's just opened his examination notice, to see 'D' written by a subject he thought was a dead cert. Or a guy who's just got a "I think we should just be friends" text message from someone he thought was the Love of his Life.

I got home and joined the army of people trying the phone booking number and their website, but the "sorry, the system is currently overloaded" messages told a grim and repetitive tale.

It was all over - and I had no tickets. In a word, aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!!

* * *

It didn't take long for the...er..ahem..."opportunists" to emerge on internet auction site Trade Me.

As I write, general admission tickets ($99) are going for anything between $400 and $1000 each.

Criticism on Trade Me's message boards has been vehement.

One writer's epithet of "Die, evil scalpers, die", seems to just about sum up the general mood of the disenfranchised and ticketless.

Some of the glib responses of sellers on Trade Me deserve their own Tui billboard: "I'm only selling these extra two tickets because I bought them for a friend of mine and he doesn't need them now." Yeah, right.

That's why I've put them on an internet auction which doesn't close for about five days or so, when the final successful bid amount will be…well, who knows?

"Supply and demand", smirks one seller. "Everything they taught me in Stage 1 economics is coming true!"

Shrewd traders, aware of the potential legal snag of on-selling tickets meant for one purchase only, are trying to cover their hides by advertising auctions for "white board marker, starting price $800 (plus - a free U2 ticket)"!

Anyway, some hope has been thrown to the frustrated masses in the announcement of a second concert, the day after March 17.

Will that mean satisfied customers, second time around? Or - God forbid - will it merely signal Round 2 in the Battle of Evil Commercialism and Profligate Extortion?

In the meantime, I remain on my hunt for the unobtainable - two tickets to Ericsson Stadium at a reasonable price. I may as well be in pursuit of Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, or 20-metre long marine life in Loch Ness.

So, there you go. A tale of greed and loathing in Auckland city. Hmm. I wonder what Bono would make of that?

Acts, Audience Connect Via Text Messaging

Source: Billboard, written by Antony Bruno

December 2, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO (Billboard) - About an hour into a typical show on U2's Vertigo tour, Bono tells the crowd to hold up their mobile phones, in what has become the modern-day equivalent of flicking on a lighter. Instantly, thousands of blue-tinted screens illuminate the darkness as he marvels at the spectacle.

"Is that a 21st-century moment or what?" Bono asks.

Soon the video screen atop the stage flashes a five-digit number above the word "UNITE."

"Time to do a magic trick," he says. "These little devices -- these cell phones -- they can do all sorts of things."

Then the band launches into the song "One," and Bono encourages the audience to use their phones to send a text message (also known as an SMS) to the one.org Web site, a sort of digital petition voicing support for poverty relief in Africa. Later, during the encore, the names of all who did so are scrolled on the same screen, and each receive a message of thanks from Bono on their phones.

This is one of the most visible examples of how the mobile phone is being used as a communication tool between artist and audience, turning the concert event into a much more interactive experience.

"It's the perfect intersection of pop culture and technology," says Andy Sheldon, a senior director at Sun Microsystems who implemented the system that manages the U2 SMS campaign.

BORN AT LIVE 8

The one.org SMS initiative began at the worldwide Live 8 concerts in July, where fans at each show were asked to text their support of Live 8's anti-poverty message to the one.org petition. More than 26 million responded. (Sun also implemented that campaign.)

U2 then picked up the concept for its Vertigo tour. The U.S. leg of the trek averages about 10,000 responses per night, totaling more than 250,000 so far.

While Bono and U2 are using wireless text-messaging for altruistic purposes, other efforts are more profit-oriented.

"This year was definitely the year of mobile at concerts and live events," says Nihal Mehta, founder and CEO of Ipsh, another company facilitating interactive messaging campaigns. "This is the year that we've felt the most traction."

Ipsh powered the SMS messaging campaigns of more than two dozen events this year, including the Austin City Limits music festival in September, Lollapalooza in July and Heineken's AmsterJam in August.

Lollapalooza mastermind Perry Farrell used SMS to engage concertgoers to join in a massive scavenger hunt, awarding successful participants with tickets to an exclusive after-party.

During the AmsterJam concert, organizers used SMS messages to direct fan attention to unfolding events, such as the arrival of Snoop Dogg's helicopter. And fans were asked to text in the song they wanted to hear for the encore.

Simon Renshaw's Strategic Artist Management earlier this year tapped Boomerang Mobile Media to manage SMS campaigns at events for several of its clients, including Ghostface, Clay Aiken and Anastacia.

As at the U2 shows, fans attending these concerts were invited to text messages to a pre-set code that let them post messages to large screens near the stage, as well as compete in trivia contests for the chance to win better seats or VIP backstage passes and to buy concert merchandise.

NEW REVENUE STREAM

For artists and their management, this new capability adds yet another layer of potential revenue to the concert tour. They often charge up to $2 for fans to send their messages during the show. Fans are notified of the fee in advance and given the option to continue. Revenue is split with the company managing the service.

U2, however, charges nothing. SMS airtime charges will always apply, and vary by carrier and subscription plan.

Rather than waiting in line to buy a concert T-shirt, fans could simply text in the code for the shirt they want, with the charge billed to the mobile phone and the product delivered by mail.

Next year, expect to see acts offering fans ringtones or full-song downloads of live performances, or the ability to pre-order an album. One proposal would send fans an SMS with a digital coupon worth $2 off the cost of the artist's CD, redeemable at participating retailers.

Kevin Wall, CEO of Network Live and executive producer of the Live 8 concerts, says interactive text-messaging will soon become as commonplace at concerts as T-shirt sales.

"The location-based SMS business is at a primitive stage, but will be incorporated into shows in a lot of different ways," Wall says. "Two years from now, it'll just be a standard thing to do."

U2's sweetest tour

Source: The Mercury, written by Kathy McCabe

December 1, 2005 

BONO, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen step off stage after their first concert at the Oakland Arena and straight into black limousines.

California Highway Patrol officers on Harley-Davidsons fire up their blue lights and roar on to the highway, escorting the four town cars and several black vans packed with members of U2 Inc. and their guests back to the San Francisco Four Seasons hotel.

Within half an hour, a small hotel bar has been cordoned off and U2 and their management - headed by the band's "fifth member", Paul McGuinness - are hosting aftershow drinks.

Metallica's Lars Ulrich, actors Sean Penn, Robin Williams and Winona Ryder and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong are among those "groupie-ing up" as Ulrich jokingly calls it, having a few quiet drinks as Bono and The Edge and their touring family wind down from another magnificent performance.

Penn taps on a glass to call everyone's attention and delivers a stirring speech extolling U2's contribution to society, both culturally and politically. Bono stands quietly beside him, looking a little sheepish as he modestly acknowledges the tribute.

Just hours ago, he and the band were receiving adulation en masse as more than 20,000 fans screamed themselves hoarse.

Seven months into the Vertigo tour, which finally hits Australia next March, U2 are indisputably the world's biggest band.

Talk to them in their comfort zone and you wouldn't know it. These are four very down-to-earth Irishmen, even when surrounded by their A-list peers and the accoutrements of rock'n'roll success.

"We don't play the star...I've never felt comfortable. I don't think of myself as a rock star," The Edge says the following afternoon. "I play U2 songs...I don't even really play guitar. What I mean is my motivation to pick up a guitar is to play U2 songs rather than for the sake of playing it.

"My guitar usually comes out only on formal occasions. I don't do the campfire or bar-room improv thing."

There is a palpable sense of gratitude in the U2 camp - dominated by people who have worked with the band for 20 years or more - that they are still at the top of their game and fans are still interested.

Every show on the second leg of their US tour is sold out. The songs from their latest album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, receive the same voracious karaoke response as classics such as Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride (In The Name Of Love) and Beautiful Day.

And every night there is at least one moment where band and audience reach that spine-tingling, mind-blowing point of mutual rapture.

"Most nights, there will be a few moments where you get really moved personally," The Edge says. "You see it in their reaction and that in itself is one of the most rewarding aspects of being in U2, that the songs do mean so much to our fans.

"When we perform, it's not so much we're receiving the adulation personally but the songs and the event...it's a community thing. Everyone wants to celebrate the same thing: the songs and what they mean to each person individually and collectively."

U2 recognise these people and their desires as keenly as their legion of fans feel a connection to the four Irishmen.

"It's important to us that there is a relationship with our audience, it's important to us we know who they are," Clayton says. "They are decent, intelligent, good people who understand where we're coming from and what we're trying to do and appreciate it when we get it wrong and when we get it right.

"And I think they get an integrity from the music which is unusual but that's the way we make music. We believe in it and we invest a lot of ourselves in it and that carries through and has a strength people pick up on. In a way, it is our life story when you join together the records, it's almost like a journal of life for us from 16 to 45."

"I don't know if you get that with many things out there," he adds. "With Britney Spears records, you're not really getting anything about Britney Spears, someone else is writing it."

The connection between band and audience is one of the most intense in contemporary music. Fans have forgiven the band all manner of trespasses, whether it be the embarrassment that was the giant lemon on the PopMart tour or Bono's seemingly all-consuming involvement in political and charitable campaigns.

The lead singer is unavailable to chat to the Australian media to announce the Down Under leg of the Vertigo tour, as he has scheduled meetings with Google and Yahoo HQ to try to organise an online community for the One campaign.

But when he returns, he takes half-an-hour out before heading to the next concert, pours his Australian guests a glass of pink champagne and charms with erudite conversation about his meetings, a new Bible translation, the Melbourne Cup and some of the more interesting church services in San Francisco.

His capacity to fit so much into one life - he sleeps very little according to those around him - is daunting and inspiring.

But his bandmates have no doubt about his commitment to U2. The Edge laughs when asked if the band has to schedule year-long tours to "kidnap" Bono back.

"Bono is so in love with his time spent with us," The Edge says. "He loves to come back and get reconnected. I don't think he's going to be giving up his proper job, his day job, for politics. He enjoys what he does with us too much."

Watching his ease in the frontman role after 30 years, seeing him finely tune the audience's emotional responses with a "C'mon" gesture or by simply standing with head bowed, is to witness an artist born to perform.

The entire band looks relaxed and confident on this tour. Clayton and The Edge employ a natural choreography, stepping to the front together or flanking Bono on an ellipse runway which juts into the audience, with Mullen stepping out once during the show to play a stripped down kit.

And none of them want Bono's job.

"I think we have all found our absolutely perfect positions in the scheme of things in terms of our own personal aptitudes and skills," The Edge says. "I think I'd have made a lousy frontman. I am a great sideman, one of the best..."

As U2 have been absent from these shores for eight years, they are delighted to be finally heading back our way. After playing the more intimate indoor arenas, they are boyishly excited about bringing the monstrous outdoor stadium production which played in Europe.

"We're more relaxed on stage now. We've replaced blind terror with enough reserves of control over the situation to feign looking comfortable up there," The Edge laughs. "We've almost fooled people that we know what we're doing."

Media Age Business Tips From U2

Source: New York Times, written by David Carr

November 28, 2005

IN pop culture, nothing lasts forever. But U2 is coming close.

On the surface, the formula U2 used to send 20,000 fans into sing-along rapture at Madison Square Garden last Tuesday night was as old as rock 'n' roll: four blokes, three instruments, a bunch of good songs. Add fans, cue monstrous sound system, light fuse and back away.

But that does not explain why, 25 years in, four million people will attend 130 sold-out shows this year and next that will gross over $300 million and how their most recent album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," has already sold eight million copies.

For that, you have to look at U2 less as a band than as a multimillion-dollar, multinational media company, one of the smarter ones around.

"We always said it would be pathetic to be good at the music and bad at the business," said Paul McGuinness, the band's manager since the beginning. And while U2 hasn't become a Harvard Business School case study (at least not yet) it offers an object lesson in how media can connect with their customers.

MEET THE CONSUMERS WHERE THEY LIVE

For years, the U2 fanzine Propaganda was used to feed the tribe. The band's Web presence was restricted to temporary sites for specific tours. But in 2000, U2 opened an extensive Web site, with an index to every song and album, lyrics, tour news that is refreshed nightly and subscriber features - for those die-hards willing to part with $40 - that allowed them access to tickets, exclusive content and streaming downloads of every song and video the band has ever made.

APOLOGIZE, THEN MOVE ON

With the Vertigo tour, it became apparent that some of those fans who had paid good money to join U2's Web site had been elbowed aside by scalpers in the scrum for tickets. The band's response was to apologize immediately and promise to do better.

"The idea that our longtime U2 fans and scalpers competed for U2 tickets through our own Web site is appalling to me," the drummer Larry Mullen wrote in a statement issued by the band as soon as the problem arose. "I want to apologize to you who have suffered that."

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY

While other big acts were scolding and threatening fans for downloading music or, in the case of Metallica, suing Napster, U2 was busy working on a new business model.

A collaboration with Apple yielded a U2 special edition iPod that was a smash hit and gave visibility to the band at a time when most radio station playlists don't extend much beyond a narrow selection of pop singers. With iTunes, U2 produced what may be the industry's first downloadable version of a box set, offering the band's entire musical history for $149.

"We thought it was an opportunity to be taken with both hands," said Mr. McGuinness. Contrast that statement with anything from Hollywood on digital technology in the last three years.

DON'T EMBARRASS YOUR FANS

Sure, U2 has recorded some clunkers (1997's "Pop" comes to mind) but the band works and reworks material until it has a whole album's worth of songs, no filler. Last Tuesday, the band played at least four of the songs from the current album, giving the songs a shot at entering the pantheon and affirming U2's status as a contemporary band, not a guilty pleasure or retro musical act that covers their own earlier greatness. (Quick, what's the last Rolling Stones' album?)

"Don't embarrass your fans," Bono told The New York Times last year. "They've given you a good life."

BE CAREFUL HOW YOU SELL OUT

U2 has been offered as much as $25 million to allow a song to be used in a car commercial. No dice. They traded brands, not money, with Apple. Bob Dylan may wander around in a Victoria's Secret ad and The Who will rent "My Generation" to anybody with the wherewithal, but the only thing U2's music sells is U2. Just because it will fold and go in someone's pocket - The New Yorker publishing ads illustrated by its cartoonists comes to mind - does not mean it will be beneficial over the long haul.

EMBRACE POLITICIANS, NOT POLITICS

I watched Bono, during the Republican Convention last year, hold Bill O'Reilly of Fox News rapt with a lengthy discussion of AIDS in Africa. Last summer, he posed for a photograph with President Bush, congratulating him for the work his administration had done for Africa.

"Their credibility is very strong," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a trade magazine covering the concert industry. "I don't think there is anybody who doesn't believe that they are sincere in what they are doing."

(Bono came close to jumping the shark by donning a blindfold and miming a prison torture scene during "Bullet the Blue Sky," the band's fatwa against United States military intervention and then saying at the end of the song, "This is dedicated to the brave men and women of the U.S. military." Which of these things, Bono?)

IT'S CALLED SHOW BUSINESS FOR A REASON

In 1980, I was standing with my sister at First Avenue bar in Minneapolis watching a then little-known band from Dublin take the stage. The Edge, the band's lead guitarist, kicked into a chiming, ringing salute, the opening chords of "I Will Follow." Bono ambled out, absently drinking a glass of water and when the drummer kicked in, Bono tossed the water into the lights above him, a mist enshrouding him - and us - as he stepped to the mike.

Much theatrical and musical combustion ensued, on that night and in the decades since. The current show is a testament to reinvestment, with a huge lighting and stage structure that managed to make Madison Square Garden seem like a cozy church, the backdrop for a secular sacrament. The Vertigo tour included seven curtains of lights, consisting of 12,000 individual bulbs, and a heart-shaped runway that may have wiped out a few hundred prime seats, but allowed thousands more to feel engaged as The Edge and Bono strode out along it during songs.

SEIZE THE MOMENT, BUT DON'T STEAL IT

For years, U2 declined invitations to play at the Super Bowl, but the first one held after the attacks of Sept. 11 had special significance. Bono, in the middle of singing "Beautiful Day," slyly opened his coat to hundreds of millions of viewers and revealed it was lined with the American flag. The band adopted industrial and electronic motifs into their music in the 90s to give currency to their sound and then promptly stripped it down for the current tour. Not every gesture and instinct resonates: Let's not forget Bono's decision to go with a mullet in the mid-80s.

AIM HIGH

Hardy fans freeze their butts in the name of love for U2

A handful camped out in line overnight just to get closer to stage for the show

Source: The Montreal Gazette, written by Allison Hanes

November 27, 2005

OH-oh-oh-OH! OH-oh-oh-OH! OH-oh-oh-OH! OH-oh-oh-OH!

The final bars of U2's Pride (In the Name of Love) could be heard blaring half a block away from the downtown Bell Centre yesterday afternoon as a light snow fell.

But it wasn't Bono warming up for last night's concert. Rather it was a bunch of diehard fans trying to stay warm as they lined up hours in advance to score the best floor seats - for the first of two sold-out shows the Irish rock band is playing in Montreal this weekend.

It was first-come, first-served to get a shot at being close to the stage for those with coveted general admission tickets, explained 25-year-old fan Emmanuelle Desrosiers.

Most concert-goers have assigned seats for the show, just like you would for a hockey game.

But the lucky few with premium tickets to dance in the throng on the arena floor had to vie for a shot at the front-row area.

Desrosiers, who had already seen U2 in Boston earlier on their current world tour, said the concert will be worth the long wait.

"It was mind-blowing. It was exceptional," she said of the Boston performance.

"They won't disappoint," added Melanie Paiement, a 27-year-old Montrealer who became fast friends with Desrosiers after meeting in the line-up.

About 100 U2 aficionados bundled against the cold yesterday, many belting out the group's hits and dancing as a lone guitarist strummed away.

It was the final leg of a journey that began last March when most also endured the chill to land their premium tickets.

Christina Abrol and her twin sister Alex, 16, slept outside last spring and were willing to do it again, showing up at noon Friday with a tent, blankets and a propane heater.

But to discourage overnight campers this time around, the Bell Centre distributed bracelets and told the sisters to go home.

They did around midnight, once they were assured they would be Nos. 8 and 9 to enter the arena. They returned anyway at 6:30 a.m.

"You're so tired after. Last time I slept for like a day after, but it's worth it," said Christina, as she and Alex took turns holding their place in line.

This will be their first concert.

Sharing a blanket with the twins and the warmth of their heater, this will be 30-year-old Isabelle Hurtubise's 10th show.

"The first was the Zoo TV tour in 1992," she said. "I've been a fan since I was 11 years old."

Long hours of waiting paid off for her during the 2001 Elevation tour where the band played on a heart-shaped runway.

"I was in the front row," Hurtubise recalled. "They did my favourite song right in front of me: New Year's Day, then Out of Control back to back. It was my birthday, too."

Olivier Carrasco, 28, said U2 fans are drawn as much by the super group's music as by their socially conscious message.

Bono lived up to his reputation for pestering politicians Friday, visiting the House of Commons to pressure Prime Minister Paul Martin to increase aid to end Third World poverty.

"He uses his power and recognition to do good and make people conscious," Carrasco said. "No one's done what they've done."

The outpouring of adoration and adulation is sure to repeat itself again tonight as fans prepare for tomorrow's encore.

"There's a philosophy of brotherhood that's shared between fans," said 30-year-old Daniel Tremblay.

"As fans, we're united by U2."

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005

For Bono, God is Always In On the Act

Not everyone is a fan of U2's religion. Singer replies to detractors in recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine

Source: Montreal Gazette, written by Bernard Perusse

November 26, 2005

The musical landscape was pretty daunting when a scruffy group of Dubliners, once known as the Hype, decided to bring God on their musical journey.

A quarter century ago, any rock 'n' roller using the G-word was courting either commercial suicide or a one-way ticket to the Christian-rock ghetto. During that post-punk era, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison were still singing about spirituality, but nobody hip was listening.

When the now-rechristened U2 announced its presence with the insistent guitar phrase that ushered in "I Will Follow" -- the opening track on its first album, Boy -- the group was laying the groundwork for a very non-rock challenge: love me, love my God. If you look at their album and ticket sales, you might argue that the fans accepted those terms.

Bono might have been singing about his late mother in that song, but when he boldly spat out "I was lost, I am found," he was invoking Christian language to drown his sorrow. Matters of faith, doubt, spiritual joy and even dark nights of the soul returned with each of the next 10 U2 albums.

The closing track on War (1983) was "40," an allusion to Psalm 40 of the Old Testament. On Zooropa (1993), the group had fellow Christian Johnny Cash sing "The Wanderer," inspired by the Book of Ecclesiastes. Its latest disc, last year's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, closes with Yahweh, a prayer by Bono and guitarist the Edge.

The song, sometimes a concert-closer, is a particular favourite of Steve Stockman, a Presbyterian minister and a chaplain at Queen's University in Belfast. Stockman's book Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 explores the religious content of the group's work.

Bono "finishes rock concerts by asking God to 'take this heart and make it break.' It's an upside-down look at rock music. The Rolling Stones aren't in it to have their hearts broken for other people," Stockman said.

Objections to U2's brand of Christianity come from sources both predictable -- rock fans who prefer their decibels without the preaching -- and less obvious: fundamentalists who complain about the group's language, smoking and drinking, not to mention the lack of evangelical content in its lyrics. "They have been at the heart of the wicked rock 'n' roll scene for two and a half decades," writes David Cloud on the fundamentalist Baptist web site Way of Life Literature. "They are one of the most popular rock 'n' roll groups alive today, and this certainly would not be the case if they were striving to obey the Bible in all things."

An unrepentant Bono took on his detractors in a recent Rolling Stone interview. "People are always forcing you to make decisions between flesh and spirit," he said. "Whereas I want to dance myself in the direction of God. I go out drinking with God. I am flirtatious in the company of God. I am not a person who has to put God out of his mind to go out on the town. It's a key point. The divided soul of Marvin Gaye, Elvis -- these conflicts tore them apart. And they don't tear me apart. I reckon God loves all of me."

Stockman concurs, praising Bono's work on debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries. "Jesus doesn't seem to be saying to (the apostle) Peter, 'Here, you shouldn't go out and have a drink,' but he is saying to Peter 'You should go out and look after the poor,' and so Bono is doing more of the Christian thing than those who are blaming him for saying the f-word," he said.

Detractors also point to the 1987 opus "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" as proof that the group's faith is weak. Stockman said the naysayers are not getting it. "If you listen to that song at all -- 'You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains / Carried the cross of my shame / You know I believe it' -- there's really nothing there that's ambiguous. This is the theology of the passion and the atonement of Christ at No. 1 on the U.S. charts for four weeks," he said, laughing.

It might simply be the possibility of doubt in the lyrics and the unorthodox arena-rock approach to faith that has made U2 more palatable to those who aren't looking for salvation just yet. Bono's beliefs also come as part of a social-justice agenda that even an atheist can embrace, even though the singer uses his knowledge of scripture to speak to church leaders and evangelical politicians about responding to the AIDS crisis and poverty.

In the Rolling Stone interview, he was hardly looking to make things easier by keeping his faith non-specific. "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," he said. "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 I just kinda keep my mouth shut."

Elsewhere in the piece, Bono compared the Psalms of David to blues music. Discussing two of his favourite styles of music, he said blues was running away from God, while gospel music was running toward God. "Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the centre of the jaunt," he said. Such statements exemplify what Stockman calls the group's contribution to the spiritual culture.

"I think they keep God in the conversation of culture, where many of us as church leaders have actually put God up some blind alley that nobody wants to come and visit," he said.

© The Gazette (Montreal), 2005.

Getting close to The Edge

Source: The New Zealand Herald, by Russell Baillie

November 26, 2005

The Edge rings to say he's in Miami. It's the daily lull between soundcheck and showtime for U2's 75th show on the Vertigo tour. After he's finished talking to TimeOut he'll have dinner while trying "to remember how to play whatever new songs we are playing".

The tour will be well past the 100 mark by the time the Dublin-born band play in Auckland on St Patrick's Day, March 17.

"We promise we won't do a traditional Irish set," he quips when reminded of the date's significance.

Can't speak for everyone, of course, but we promise not to request any jigs.

Miami is an interesting place to be talking to the man who is still the biggest musical brain in the biggest band in the world. There was a song called Miami on 1997's Pop - a half-baked album moving U2 furthest away from the U2 rock which has made them stadium-fillers since the mid 80s.

After reinventing themselves in the early 90s on Achtung Baby and Zooropa, on Pop they embraced all things mirrorball and nightclub. The Edge sublimated his trademark guitar sound into the electronic barrage. It felt like one sidestep too many. It remains a downward drop on their sales chart.

"Yeah the Pop album probably was a lesson learned - don't book the tour before the album is out. But I think we were on to something.

"There are ideas on that record that are still very current and dissecting the group and taking it from a completely different point of view was an exciting idea at the time.

"We didn't quite pull it off, but it was still a valid thing to do."

It's little wonder then that on the subsequent albums (2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and last year's How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb) the band largely embraced the sound they established throughout the 80s - the one largely led by The Edge's guitar.

To be sure, that singer fella does a fair bit - lyrics, singing, being rock's greatest actual elder statesman on his days off.

But the guitar of the man born plain old Dave Evans has been what has always defined U2 as U2.

If Bono shouted it from the mountain-tops, then The Edge conjured up the rest of the landscape - the wide horizons, deep valleys, lightning storms, the occasional civil war.

The pivotal U2 songs have invariably started with The Edge's guitar churning, chiming, reverberating.

The band's early singles like I Will Follow and 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had him taking the twitchy, trebly energy of the post-punk era and turning it into a clarion call.

In the mid 80s songs like Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name were shaped by his guitar echoing off the stratosphere in layers of digital delay.

While 1991's Achtung Baby - arguably the band's best album - had The Edge at his wildest (the chainsaw buzz of The Fly) and his most sweetly restrained (One).

There are Edge moments aplenty on the band's two 21st century albums.

They are records which he sees as having connections to their early efforts and coming at a time when many a younger band is quoting U2's early sound.

Songs from the band's early years have found their way back into the Vertigo tour setlist. Having tried to embrace the future throughout the 90s, now it seems they've reconciled themselves with their past.

"It's something that we felt appropriate because it felt fresh to go back to those early songs and early albums and we found a connection with what we are doing right now in terms of the sound of the last few records."

The band has something of an anniversary coming up in the New Year - it will be 30 years since the four North Dublin teenagers first played together in drummer Larry Mullen's kitchen.

As punk raged across the Irish Sea from Britain, the band took what it needed from rock's new burst of energy and started to forge its own sound.

"There was a feeling that we had to tear up the rule book and find a new voice in what was at that point a well-established form," he says of those early U2 days, even before they had seen inside a studio.

"We drew a lot of inspiration from a lot of the groups who were around at the same time as us - the Skids, the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, the Fall, the Associates, Magazine, Buzzcocks, the Clash - bands who were our  contemporaries and they, like ourselves, were trying to do something new.

"The big throw-down for me as a guitar player was to not sound like bad white blues, which was the most common approach to guitar playing at that point. [New York art-punk outfit] Television were a big inspiration, and Patti Smith, because they similarly didn't rely on those approaches to guitar playing and song structure. And Brian Eno - they all helped in a sense to show there was another way to approach this which wasn't that real cliche white blues, which I really wasn't interested in.

"As time went by, it became kind of interesting and novel to explore the blues, but not do it in a way that everyone else had done before."

What would the young teenage guitarist of 11 O'Clock Tick Tock think of the 44-year-old bloke playing Vertigo these days? "I think he would probably like most of the things I am doing now.

"It's interesting, because listening to most of the early records and playing those early songs it does bring you back to that time and the aesthetic sensibility of that era.

"I am actually extremely impressed by the guy who played 11 O'Clock Tick Tock and the rest of his band.

"Even at that time there was an awful lot we didn't know and a lot of mistakes were made in terms of songwriting and structure and production, but there was so much that was innovative and breaking new ground and mixing it up in a great way. People, I think, were right to like those early albums."

Those quickfire early efforts - Boy in 1981, October in 1982, War in 1983, the live set Under a Blood Red Sky and Unforgettable Fire in 1984 - set up the band for their world-conquering biggest-seller, 1987's Joshua Tree.

That album included the track One Tree Hill, inspired by U2 crew member and New Zealander Greg Carroll, who was killed in a motorcycle crash in Dublin in 1986.

The band had recruited him during their first playing visit here in 1984 where they played two nights at the Logan Campbell Centre right underneath the hill.

Four years later, the band - as well as playing Wellington and Christchurch - played two nights at Western Springs with BB King in support.

The last time they played in New Zealand was in 1993 when they brought the multimedia riot that was the Zoo TV tour - complete with Bono in his devilish Macphisto guise - to the Springs.

By comparison the Vertigo tour production, says The Edge, isn't as much of an extravaganza. But it still has a point to make.

"There are some people who come to the U2 show and think, 'I preferred it when there were more devils involved. It was more of a fair fight, this is too one-sided as a debate. We liked Macphisto, we liked all that debate'.

"But I think if you come from an appreciation of U2 the soul band, this tour - and the last one - is the one that will really connect on that level.

"It's more about the songs and the spirit of the band. The theme of the tour, aside from the songs, is trying to include the political aspects - particularly of Bono's work and the band's work over the years in the context of the shows, in a way that seems organic and natural, without trying to jump on a soapbox."

The perception, though, is that Bono never actually jumps off the soapbox. That he's the political conscience of the group and the rest leave the talking to him. They're the players.

"That's probably fair enough as a description right now and the band has always been political. I've always had aspirations to use our band as a platform to do things that are worthwhile.

"The opportunity arrived a few years ago for Bono to do that and take it up a few notches. Almost by necessity that meant the rest of us had to pick up any slack of him not being around. So, yeah, that is probably a fair enough assessment right now.

"He's found a whole new approach to combining rock'n'roll and politics - rock'n'roll's role was always to be outside the meeting, the role of the activist. Bono has taken that activist idea inside the meetings and it's working out very well."

The Edge's role in the U2-biz is being the guy who puts his stamp on the music from early song sketches to finished product.

"Early on in an album project my role is mostly to generate ideas, get everybody inspired...and in the end it's about whether everybody else can find their way into those ideas. So I suppose I am mostly caught up with the music itself and occasionally with lyrics if the song is a song that I can write for. But it changes a lot, with us there's no demarcation or the sense that 'this is what I do'."

Still, when he's on stage playing guitar, fiddling with his effects units, playing occasional keyboards and singing harmonies he looks busier than the rest of them.

"Sometimes I look over at Adam [Clayton, bassist] and think, 'How did I get this gig?' But I do love it and I do love singing as well and playing guitar - that is what I do."

What role does U2 play in his life? Can he wake up in the morning and not have to worry about being in the biggest band in the world?

"Yeah, definitely. Particularly when we are not doing anything. Sometimes when we are in the middle of a tour because there is so much focus on us right now, it's hard to forget and when you are out you are quite self-conscious. But when you are not touring and there is no push in the media it's quite easy for us to kick back, zone out of the whole thing and just really have quite a normal existence...particularly living in Ireland, it's just not as intense there, that whole culture of celebrity."

Still, it's nice work if you can get it. The Edge has played guitar in a band which has had one of rock's most remarkable runs. There are not many bands who, after a 25-year run, can generate both vast ticket sales and genuine interest in their new albums.

"People still seem to like our current records. It's not like we are selling a couple of thousand of the new record and everybody just wants to hear the old songs.

"I think the reason that is, is we're interested in the culture and we evolve as music evolves. We are just absorbed in it. It's not a conscious thing.

"But we don't want to ever become a caricature of ourselves so we'll keep changing, keep developing and keep moving."

Even if much of the movement is done by private jet and motorcade?

"Yeah, but I appreciate it. All of that stuff, the motorcades and the aeroplanes, are unfortunately a necessity to get from one place to the next.

"But it's the privilege to be able to play in front of a U2 crowd that really knows and loves what we do. We all relish that and we never lose sight of how lucky we are.

"There are certain dangers being pampered rock stars, but so long as you keep it in perspective and don't lose sight of the fact that there is an aspect that is very silly about it all. You've got to have a giggle at that and not get too uptight about it and not take it too seriously."

LOWDOWN

WHO: The Edge, U2 guitarist.

BORN: Dave Evans, August 8, 1961, Barking, Essex (he shifted to Dublin when he was an infant).

KEY GUITAR MOMENTS: I Will Follow, Pride (In the Name of Love), Bullet the Blue Sky, With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Desire, The Fly, One, Numb (not a guitar song but he sang lead on it), Vertigo.

CONCERT: Ericsson Stadium, Friday, March 17.

TICKETS: On sale December 5. Prices - standing/GA $99, A reserve seats $199, B reserve seats $130, C reserve seats $99.

TRIVIA: Since releasing their first album Boy in 1981, U2 have sold more than 850,000 albums in New Zealand alone. Their biggest local seller is 1987's The Joshua Tree which sold 210,000 copies.