Happy Birthday, Larry Mullen Jr!! Best drummer of the best band!! Wish you the best! Not bad for a 48 year old"hitman"...congrats!!!

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!!!

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame U2 played last night in the Madison Square Garden in New York.
From Lou Reed joining Metallica for 'Sweet Jane' to 'Stuck in a Moment' when Mick Jagger joined U2, it was a night when some of the greatest musicians jammed with each other in homage to the traditions of rock'n'roll. Annie Lennox with Lenny Kravitz, Jeff Beck with Sting and Buddy Guy, Ozzy Ozbourne rocking out with Metallica and Ray Davies leading on Kinks standard 'You Really Got Me'.

Edge, Larry, Adam and Bono, arriving on stage for a blistering rendition of Vertigo and a soaring Magnificent, were complemented by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith for the song he wrote with her 'Because The Night'. Legendary E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan was up with Bruce for 'Still Haven't Found' before Black Eyed Peas, fresh from the final 2009 dates of the 360 Tour, got in the groove for a seriously funky Mysterious Ways.


Fergie and U2 were joined by Mick Jagger for 'Gimme Shelter' while Sir Mick took the vocals with Bono for 'Stuck In A Moment'. A beautiful night had to end with a Beautiful Day, when U2 wrapped the proceedings up.

Setlist

1. Vertigo
2. Magnificent
3. Because The Night (with Bruce Springsteen & Patti Smith)
4. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (with Bruce Springsteen)
5. Mysterious Ways
6. Where Is The Love? / One (with Black Eyed Peas)
7. Gimme Shelter (with Mick Jagger y Fergie)
8. Stuck In A Moment (with Mick Jagger)
9. Beautiful Day

source:www.u2.com//www.u2fanlife.com

It´s Party Time!!

On Monday night Irish rock band U2 treated their friends and crew to and end of tour party at Bar None in Yaletown.

Bono, Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. hosted the event for crew and friends to celebrate the final show of the North American lef of the tour, which will be its last headlining gig until next year.

Adam Clayton was unable to attend the party due to the flu (Hope he gets on well soon!!!) , but U2 manager Paul McGuiness attended, as did CEO of global touring and chairman of global music for Live Nation Arthur Fogel and Craig Evans, U2 360 tour director.

Bono danced the night away with his crew and friends and was one of the last to leave (Sight to be seen!!!) The event went from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Bono and the others were very gracious hosts and mixed and mingled with the group of guests.

DJ Mateo was flown in from New York city to play at the event, and guests enjoyed Bar None’s cocktails and refreshments from Zen Japanese Restaurant and Culinary Capers Catering.

© Copyright (c) The Province

source:www.theprovince.com

U2 at The Hall of Fame

With the final 360° show of 2009 over, the band are headed back east from Vancouver to play at the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

U2 are headlining Friday's Madison Square Garden show, the second night of the two day celebration, which features a pretty stellar line-up... Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton, Metallica. The list goes on. Read more here.

30th October, Madison Square Garden, New York.

The Los Angeles Times wrote about the event here.

source:www.u2.com//www.latimes.com//www.rockhall25.com/

Last concert of 2nd leg: Destiny Vancouver

The band have been in Vancouver for a couple of days, they arrived early for a crew party to say goodbye to the 2009 360° Tour. T said goodbye to the fans, who have come out in record-breaking numbers night after night over the last few months.

And a great show in Vancouver to finish with - the BC Place is right next to the venue where the band shot the video for City of Blinding Lights on the Vertigo Tour, all those years ago. (Well, four of them anyway.) Great to see lots of the tour staff arriving on stage for a moment in the spotlight tonight, wearing the masks for Aung San Suu Kyi. Without them, this wouldn't have happened.

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com//www.u2.fanlife

Free from Berlin's Brandenburg Gate

As a prelude to the Fall of The Wall celebrations in Berlin, the band return to the city for a free ticketed performance which will be beamed into the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards.

As U2's manager Paul McGuinness put it:"It'll be an exciting spot to be in, 20 years almost to the day since the wall came down. Should be fun."


'The exceptional musical heritage of this year's EMAs spans genres and generations and we are extremely proud to be bringing U2 to Berlin for this extraordinary performance,' said Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, EVP, Music Brands, MTV Networks International and Executive Producer for the MTV Europe Music Awards. 'This year's Awards will be remembered as the night when the world's major music players came together against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate music, freedom and the birth of a new age in Europe.'

The MTV Europe Music Awards will take place at the 02 World, Berlin on Thursday 5 November 2009 and will be broadcast live on MTV at 9pm CET. The MTV Europe Music Awards are sponsored by Sony Ericsson, MTV Games/Harmonic's The Beatles' Rock Band and Dell. For more information - and to vote - please go to www.mtvema.com

source.www.u2.com

U2: Groundbreaking!!!

This partnership with YouTube for the concert in Pasadena really is groundbreaking, said Sky News about the Pasadena concert on 25th October and broadcasted live all over the world.

A historic concert, viewed by over 1,000,000 in all the world has positioned U2 again in the limelight, even though the sales of "No Line on the Horizon" were not as good as they had expected and the singles didn´t make it to n°1.

It seems that U2 is exploring new ways of communicating with their fans and adapting to new technology and ways of the music industry, what we can call pioneers...one more time!!

The concert at the Rose Bowl can now be watched again on YouTube.

From Pasadena to the whole world!!

The show at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California ,25 thOctober, 2009 was seen all over the world...
"What time is it in the world and where are we going?' Bono asked after 'Get On Your Boots'. It was every time on the clock, depended which country you were in as the U2 360°: show went out live on YouTube to millions of viewers on seven continents.

People were watching in China and New Zealand, in Iran and in North Korea, in Russia and Latin America, in Canada and right across Europe. From Breathe to Moment of Surrender, felt like a moment of rock'n'roll history tonight.

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

Hope that for some this is not the only way to see them live!!! What about some 2010 venues in South America, Asia, Australia,South Africa...hey, guys we´ve been waiting for you!!!

source:www.u2.com//www.u2.fanlife

U2 Light in the Desert Sky

Latest concert in Las Vegas , Friday 23.

'Desert sky, dream beneath the desert sky.' "We are briefly ...In God's Country ", as Bono slipped in some lines from a 1987 Joshua Tree classic into a 2001 classic Beautiful Day.

Pretty incredible line up of special guests at the show tonight - led by President Bill Clinton, who got quite an ovation when Bono credited him for igniting the campaign to cancel the debts of the poorest countries.

Also in the house tonight rock'n'roll royalty in the persons of Chris Martin of Coldplay and Brandon Flowers of The Killers as well as Hollywood royalty with Sean Penn, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Shue and Kate Bosworth. (And a technology and design monarch in Apple's Jonny Ive.)

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

A Video You Won´t Forget!

U2's fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, has been remastered on the 25th anniversary of its original release and will be released by Mercury Records this Monday, 26th October.

Recorded at Slane Castle, Ireland, The Unforgettable Fire was the first U2 album to be produced by Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, and spawned two top 10 UK singles - 'Pride (In The Name Of Love)' and 'The Unforgettable Fire'.

To watch some parts of the video, click here


source:www.u2.com

Infinite U2

The U2 Mosaic: a spectacular show of U2 pictures that are chained to hundreds of other pictures. You just click on an area of the original picture (above) and the image is made of thousands of other pics ; you repeat the move and there are more and more pictures...it seems neverending!!!
Great work...to see it follow the link:www.u2shirts.com/mosaic

source:www.u2fanlife//www.u2shirts.com

360° Tour at University of Phoenix Stadium - Glendale, Arizona.

20th October and the roof was open in Phoenix to look into an endless Arizona sky

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One

Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet

With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

"The Claw": so big that´s invisible!

It sounds impossible, but that's what designer Willie Williams had in mind for the structure.

The man who designed the stage set for U2's current 360° Tour, which stops [Oct. 25] at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, knows that the size of his creation is cause for attention.

"How many miles of cable, how many trucks -- it's all very easy to pick up on," said Willie Williams, who has been working with the Irish rock band since 1982.

Still, Williams insists that the scale of it is "absolutely the least interesting thing about it," he said. "Even though it's very tall and very wide, the magic trick is that when you stand onstage the whole thing disappears. The reason it's so big is to make it invisible."

How, exactly, does that work? By removing the hulking backdrop that usually defines a stadium show and relocating all those tons of gear above the band's playing area, the designer said he's been able to create the illusion that the gear isn't there at all.

An early inspiration was the Theme Building at LAX, a favorite of U2 frontman Bono's. "My pitch to him was, 'Imagine the Theme Building straddling a football field with a little stage underneath,' " Williams said. "From that moment on we knew what we were doing, and over two years of work the intent never changed."

According to U2 manager Paul McGuinness, the structure has practical advantages: It allowed the band to expand the seating capacity at most venues by about 20 percent.

"We've broken a lot of attendance records," McGuinness said, "usually ones we've set ourselves."

Roughly 95,000 people are expected at the Rose Bowl tonight, so organizers are strongly urging fans to allow plenty of time -- and to use public transportation -- to make it to the show on time.

"Where U2 came from conceptually was this culture that was about everyone having access to the stage," said the group's bassist, Adam Clayton. "Scoot forward to 2009 and that's what we've created here, just bigger."

The tour incorporates three separate rigs to allow for construction and disassembly time along the way.

"We'd love the thought of finding appropriate homes for these things as festival stages in different locations around the world," McGuinness said, looking to the tour's conclusion late next year. "That's real recycling."

Mikael Wood © The Los Angeles Times, 2009.

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: U2 360 tour: Stadium in the round.Click to see how the largest stage works.

source:www.latimes.com

U2 Live on YouTube

California, US U2 have confirmed via video blog that their sold-out concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California, this Sunday, 25th October, will be streamed free, in full and live on YouTube. It's the first time a show of this size will be streamed live.

The Rose Bowl show is the penultimate U2 show this year - with more to come in 2010 - and already is set to host the venue's biggest ever audience of over 96,000 fans. The 360° Tour, which has been critically acclaimed and 're-invents rock'n'roll' (Rolling Stone Magazine), will now boast unique access for fans worldwide - as fans in territories yet to be visited by the tour, or not at all, will be able to enjoy the whole show online.

Managed in partnership with Live Nation, this sell-out tour has broken attendance records in most venues it has visited - its success due in part to increased capacity coupled with a lower ticket price and great sight lines afforded by the stunning in-the-round stage set.

U2 manager Paul McGuinness said, 'The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As we're filming the LA show, it's the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 - this time U2 can go to them, globally.'

YouTube will be streaming live across five continents. The show will be available in the usual You Tube way, as video-on-demand, following two full replays - after the live stream - on both U2.com and You Tube.

'YouTube is thrilled to be able to provide our global audience with a live streaming performance from one of the world's greatest bands,' said Chris Maxcy, Director of YouTube Partner Development. 'We are always looking for new ways to connect fans around the world with their favourite artists, and this is the perfect opportunity to do just that.'

source.www.u2.com

A U2 Night in Oklahoma

Very different vibe in Norman, with a smaller stadium floor enhancing the 360 vibe. The Black Eyed Peas on their first date got things off to a great start for 60,000 Oklahomans and things just got better.

Highlights might have been: 'Crazy' - never fails to surprise people who haven't heard the live version ; the little boy in green stripes who gets up on stage for his moment in the spotlight for Unforgettable Fire; MLK ('A message of love from Oklahoma') and a very special introduction to Moment of Surrender.

'For the past few days, all over the world, people have been standing up against extreme poverty,' explained Bono. 'Last year 1.6m people stood up, there's about 60,000 of you here tonight so let's see if we can break a record..'

Strangely for the climactic moments of a U2 show, he then invited everyone to sit down and, on the count of three, to stand up. A big success, with the audience unanimous in bellowing 'Stand Up' on cue.

'This is happening in Africa and India, and now Oklahoma yes... from all of us, thank you so much.'

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source.www.u2.com

U2 Nominated for Songwriters Hall of Fame

Nominations for the 2010 inductees into the Songwriting Hall of Fame were announced Thursday. U2 are among the candidates in the "Peforming" category, along with Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed and a few more distinguished artists from various genres. For more information, visit their website.

source:www.songhall.org//www.atu2.com

Rebranding America

New article by Bono in The New York Times...

A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive.
One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.
When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won’t be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. There’s a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven’t a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be.

Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

They’re not my words, they’re your president’s. If they’re not familiar, it’s because they didn’t make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.

The millennium goals, for those of you who don’t know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They’re a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn’t there in 2000, but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.

Many have spoken about the need for a rebranding of America. Rebrand, restart, reboot. In my view these 36 words, alongside the administration’s approach to fighting nuclear proliferation and climate change, improving relations in the Middle East and, by the way, creating jobs and providing health care at home, are rebranding in action.

These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

All right ... I don’t speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don’t even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.

In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.

It is a strangely unsettling feeling to realize that the largest Navy, the fastest Air Force, the fittest strike force, cannot fully protect us from the ghost that is terrorism .... Asymmetry is the key word from Kabul to Gaza .... Might is not right.

I think back to a phone call I got a couple of years ago from Gen. James Jones. At the time, he was retiring from the top job at NATO; the idea of a President Obama was a wild flight of the imagination.

General Jones was curious about the work many of us were doing in economic development, and how smarter aid — embodied in initiatives like President George W. Bush’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation — was beginning to save lives and change the game for many countries. Remember, this was a moment when America couldn’t get its cigarette lighted in polite European nations like Norway; but even then, in the developing world, the United States was still seen as a positive, even transformative, presence.

The general and I also found ourselves talking about what can happen when the three extremes — poverty, ideology and climate — come together. We found ourselves discussing the stretch of land that runs across the continent of Africa, just along the creeping sands of the Sahara — an area that includes Sudan and northern Nigeria. He also agreed that many people didn’t see that the Horn of Africa — the troubled region that encompasses Somalia and Ethiopia — is a classic case of the three extremes becoming an unholy trinity (I’m paraphrasing) and threatening peace and stability around the world.

The military man also offered me an equation. Stability = security + development.

In an asymmetrical war, he said, the emphasis had to be on making American foreign policy conform to that formula.

Enter Barack Obama.

If that last line still seems like a joke to you ... it may not for long.

Mr. Obama has put together a team of people who believe in this equation. That includes the general himself, now at the National Security Council; the vice president, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the Republican defense secretary; and a secretary of state, someone with a long record of championing the cause of women and girls living in poverty, who is now determined to revolutionize health and agriculture for the world’s poor. And it looks like the bipartisan coalition in Congress that accomplished so much in global development over the past eight years is still holding amid rancor on pretty much everything else. From a development perspective, you couldn’t dream up a better dream team to pursue peace in this way, to rebrand America.

The president said that he considered the peace prize a call to action. And in the fight against extreme poverty, it’s action, not intentions, that counts. That stirring sentence he uttered last month will ring hollow unless he returns to next year’s United Nations summit meeting with a meaningful, inclusive plan, one that gets results for the billion or more people living on less than $1 a day. Difficult. Very difficult. But doable.

The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, “Don’t blow it.”

But that’s not just directed at Mr. Obama. It’s directed at all of us. What the president promised was a “global plan,” not an American plan. The same is true on all the other issues that the Nobel committee cited, from nuclear disarmament to climate change — none of these things will yield to unilateral approaches. They’ll take international cooperation and American leadership.

The president has set himself, and the rest of us, no small task.

That’s why America shouldn’t turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. Obama won the Nobel, the United States was ranked as the most admired country in the world, leapfrogging from seventh to the top of the Nation Brands Index survey — the biggest jump any country has ever made. Like the Nobel, this can be written off as meaningless ... a measure of Mr. Obama’s celebrity (and we know what people think of celebrities).

But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.

And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.

source:www.nytimes.com

Top 10 U2 Albums...

...according to Ed Masley - The Arizona Republic

1. "War" (1983) - "I Will Follow" was a great first move, but "War" is where they really came into their own, the first suggestion that you could be looking at the most important rock band on the planet. There's a sense of urgency, from the opening shot of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," its militaristic drum beat underscoring Bono's vivid images of "broken bottles under children's feet" and "bodies strewn across the dead end street." It's flawless, really, packed with any number of the greatest songs they'd ever write, from an impassioned "New Year's Day" to "Two Hearts Beat as One" and the jittery "Seconds," a jagged shot of post-apocalyptic funk where kids are doing the atomic bomb like it's the latest dance craze.

2. "Achtung Baby" (1991) - This total reinvention of the U2 wheel was sparked, in part, by their decamping to Berlin to work where David Bowie had recorded "Heroes" (and the Bowiesque opening track, "Zoo Station," clearly makes the most of that connection). This is also where they started dabbling more in hip-hop beats and electronic textures. But the biggest - or most notable - departure was Bono's ironic detachment. He hadn't turned his back completely on the achingly sincere, though. From the operatic grandeur of "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" to the devastated "One," there no shortage of heart on "Achtung Baby." It's just sexier is all. And darker, too. But rarely at the same time.

3. "The Joshua Tree" (1987) - "The Joshua Tree" is U2's "London Calling," the masterpiece that dared you not to pay attention. All wide-open spaces and stadium-ready choruses, it filtered Bono's youthful quest for spiritual enlightenment through a newfound obsession with all things American and backed it up with killer tunes. "Where the Streets Have No Name" pulls you in and they finish you off with two chart-topping singles, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "With or Without You." Sure, the sense of gravity is almost overwhelming, but between the Edge's atmospheric love affair with digital delay and Bono's soaring choruses, it never feels too heavy for its own good.

4. "The Unforgettable Fire" (1984) - This is the first they'd worked with Talking Heads collaborator Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, and the opening track sounds pretty much exactly like a Talking Heads song - at least until Bono starts singing. Then, the sound is unmistakably U2. An atmospheric stepping stone between "War" and "The Joshua Tree," this album features several of their greatest tracks, including "Bad," a song inspired by a friend who'd overdosed on heroin, and "Pride (In the Name of Love)," a stirring tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Other highlights of this flawless album range from the skittering funk of "Wire" to the moody soundscape of the title track.

5. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (2000) - This Y2K return to what a lot of people see as U2's strengths was hailed in Rolling Stone on impact as the band's "third masterpiece." But 9/11 took moments as hopeful as "Beautiful Day" and "Walk On," in which Bono encourages listeners to carry on when "the daylight feels like it's a long way off," and repositioned them as something more profound than a prodigal rock band returning to form. Even the opening line of Bono's finest hour as a blue-eyed soul man, "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," seemed to take on greater meaning in the aftermath of 9/11, hearing Bono reassure himself with "I am not afraid of anything in this world."

6. "Under a Blood Red Sky" (1983) - This is the sound of U2 proving they could rock the back rows of a stadium long before they got the chance. From those spirited howls in the opening moments of "Gloria" to an anthemic "New Year's Day," every gesture is bigger than life, even Bono's admittedly goofy disclaimer of "This is not a rebel song" while introducing a transcendent "Sunday Bloody Sunday." This is U2 in their element. And letting the audience have the final word on an album-closing "40" was a brilliant move. Although a lot of people wouldn't count this one because it's technically an EP, not an album, at just less than 35 minutes, it's longer than plenty of albums in my collection.

7. "Zooropa" (1993) - This rush-recorded effort may be U2's most experimental hour, pushing everything they'd dabbled in on "Achtung Baby" to its logical conclusion. Easing you in with the Bowiesque drama of the atmospheric title track, "Babyface" and "Numb" (on which the Edge takes the mike and delivers the lyrics like a sleepy-headed rapping robot), U2 hit the disco hard on the falsetto-driven funk of "Lemon." But they save the best for last - a guest appearance by the legendary Johnny Cash on "The Wanderer." If any voice could make the most of Bono's post-apocalyptic nightmares and spiritual fervor, it's the late great Man in Black, who was clearly no stranger to the dark side or the faith it so often inspires.

8. "Boy" (1980) - It kicks off with their finest hour of the pre-"War" era, "I Will Follow," making the most of the Edge's sonic shrine to Keith Levene of PiL while Adam Clayton lets it throb on bass and Bono crushes on a higher power. While there's not much else on "Boy" that reaches out and grabs you by the collar quite like that one, it's a solid post-punk effort, bathed in echo and other effects of the day. The dizzying arpeggio of "Twilight" makes another strong case for the Edge as U2's pre-"War" MVP and once you've ruled out "I Will Follow" and "Out Of Control," most highlights are as haunted as a meeting of the Bauhaus fan club. Or they would be if it weren't for Bono shining like an optimistic beacon in the darkness.

9. "How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (2004) - It's kind of weird that a band as profound as U2 would return to the national stage after four years by placing a single that rocks with the spirited glam-rock abandon of "Vertigo" in an iPod commercial. But as odd career moves go, it sure sounds perfect kicking off an album. And if nothing else here rocks as recklessly as "Vertigo," there are plenty of anthems majestic enough to speak to those who like their U2 better when they're going for that "three chords and the truth" vibe, from "Miracle Drug," with its synthesized cello and spiritual fervor, to an aching "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own."

10. “No Line on the Horizon” (2009) — I may not hear this as their best since “Achtung Baby,” but I can see why other people do. The sense of atmosphere is rarely less than panoramic. Bono's vocals still sound like he didn't, in fact, “have a choice but to lift you up,” as he claims in the aptly named “Magnificent.” And the trip-hop-flavored “Moment of Surrender” is as breathtaking a ballad as they've put to tape in years, making the most of Brian Eno's melancholy organ sound. Even “Get On Your Boots,” the lead-off single that seemed so goofy back in January, with its talk of “sexy boots,” has held up surprisingly well as a playful aside, with Bono shrugging off his role as the stadium rocker most likely to shoulder the weight of the world with “I don't want to talk about wars between nations,” followed by a winking, “Not right now.”

source:www.azcentral.com

Robert Hilburn Talks about U2

Robert Hilburn, pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times, talked about U2, their origins, and their utmost desires and ambitions...




source:www.atu2.com//los angeles time.

Corn Flakes with John Lennon

Bono has written the introduction to Corn Flakes with John Lennon, a new book of memoirs from Robert Hilburn, the longtime pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times.
You can read Bono´s full text introduction here.

source:www.atu2.com

Edge is an Astronaut!!!

Seems Edge would have been a great astronaut...Perhaps that´s one of his secret wishes...Meanwhile he had some fun at the Space Centre and pretended to be one...This is the pic he took there and posted on Twitter...

Houston: U2 have no problem!

"We feel right at home here in this the home of space stations.' said Bono as he and Edge had visited the Johnson Space Centre and spoken to the astronauts orbiting the earth. Those men and women are 'heroes to us - to you they're just next door neighbours.'

This show's been in orbit ever since Barcelona in June, but at the Reliant Stadium in Houston tonight there was more space than usual. 'Chief Flight Engineer Larry Mullen, Space Walker Adam Clayton... Houston we have no problem.'

To top it all when Your Blue Room entered the 360 orbit for one of its occasional and welcome appearances, the voices of the astronauts were speaking over the track. And who better than ZOO TV's alien space baby to show up for Ultraviolet ? Could these Texans have made any more noise? Unlikely... unless Bono muses before Moment of Surrender that 'Texas to me is the centre of the world right now'. Even more noise.

Special mention to tour cinematographer Tom Krueger, during With or Without You. 'Thanks to the our amazing U2 crew and Tom Krueger - you know how to throw a good party Tom.'

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
Your Blue Room
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

Bono and Edge at NASA

Bono and Edge visited the Johnson Space Centre.The pair then went to Mission Control and spoke to the team on the International Space Station (ISS) and Guy Laliberte, who joined the call from Russia. Guy recently spent a week with ISS, the first clown in space. The ISS is commanded by Frank De Winne, who has appeared in numerous U2 shows on U2 360, and was on the call along with four other astronauts.
Bono´s sons were there too and asked questions and showed how thrilled they were. A very interesting visit!!!



source:www.U2.com

U2 & Dallas Cowboys

Over 70,000 in the new Dallas Cowboys stadium.
It was the first of two big nights in Texas with the Houston show coming up Wednesday. Special mention for the Dallas Cowboys at the end of Breathe - this is only the fourth show in this their new stadium.
This being Texas, during One Bono paid tribute to George Bush for the work he supported as President in helping stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Setlist:

1. Breathe
2. Get On Your Boots
3. Magnificent
4. Mysterious Ways + My Sweet Lord (fragment)
5. Beautiful Day + Blackbird (fragment)
6. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For + Stand By Me (fragment)
7. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
8. No Line On The Horizon
9. Elevation
10. Until The End Of The World
11. The Unforgettable Fire
12. City Of Blinding Lights
13. Vertigo
14. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (Redanka mix) + Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (fragment) + Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough (fragment)
15. Sunday Bloody Sunday + Get Up Stand Up (fragment)
16. MLK
17. Walk On + You'll Never Walk Alone (fragment)

18. One + Amazing Grace (fragment)
19. Where The Streets Have No Name + All You Need Is Love (fragment)

20. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
21. With Or Without You
22. Moment Of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

New York Danced with U2!!!

A Big Kiss From Space

Hottest night of the tour in Tampa but it got more than cool when Bono revealed the they were to hook up with 'our friend Guy Laliberte, orbiting the earth...on a mission to teach us about water.'

And suddenly, all the way from outer space, here was 'the first clown in space', with a spine-tingling perspective on what he could see of our planet from the International Space Station.

'I see stars, I see darkness and emptiness.' he told Bono. 'But planet Earth looks so great, and also so fragile. We should not forget that we have a great privilege to live on planet Earth.'

It was a breathtaking moment and the Florida audience gave Guy an extraordinary welcome.
Could only be followed by 'Elevation, 'Are you ready for lift-off Tampa?'

"You make me feel like I can fly
So high, elevation....

Tampa was ready and the rest of the show passed in a dazzling blur, as fine a show as we've had. ('That is an unbelievable noise you make.')

One little man who will never forget this night was Troy who took the stage for City of Blinding Lights, sharing the spotlight and taking Bono's shades back to his family.

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Elevation
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

"There´s Nothing Between us and the People"

That´s what Bono answered in an interview in Chicago about the stage and the rapport in the 360° concerts.Very interesting snippets of interviews for Chicago radios, nice Bono impersonation of a Russian "We are comrades and revolutionaries"...



source:u2news

Bono makes surprise appearance at Tory conference

Bono made a surprise appearance at the Conservative party conference by video link.

The U2 singer and aid campaigner, who appeared last week in a video to introduce Gordon Brown's keynote speech at Labour's gathering in Brighton, was introduced by the party's deputy leader, William Hague, as someone "you don't normally hear from at Conservative conferences".

Bono made a short pre-recorded speech, encouraging the Tories to maintain their commitment to international development, but stopped short of making any party political endorsement.

He said: "Hello there, if you can swallow an Irish man saying what's great about Great Britain, indulge me for a minute. Because what's happened over the last few years in Britain's relationship with the developing world has been so inspiring to me."

Bono went on to encourage the Tories in their current commitment to ringfence international development and despite cutting back in other areas, keep to the target to spend 0.7% of GDP on international aid. He said: "It's a brave thing: keeping Britain's aid promise to the developing world, but it is the right thing to do and it is what's great about great Britain."

Bono has acknowledged before that he is regarded as "Labour's apologist" over his defence of the government's attempts to drive deals on international poverty and the Aids crisis.

In 2004 Bono appeared on the stage of Labour party conference, where he praised Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's achievements, calling them the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the global development scene.

source::www.guardian.co.uk

Rolling Stone´s Readers’ Rock List: U2 Songs

RS magazine asked their readers which U2 songs were their favourites for their last issue.

After tabulating the votes, it seems like we’re all in agreement: “Bad” is really good. The Unforgettable Fire centerpiece, a six-minute masterpiece that was never even released as a single, was voted the fan favorite, beating out radio hits and classics like “One,” “With or Without You” and “Mysterious Ways.” Both Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree landed five songs on the Readers’ List. To see the Top 20 U2 songs as voted by the fans, check out the full results below:

1. “Bad”
2. “One”
3. “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
4. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”
5. “Where the Streets Have No Name”
6. “Beautiful Day”
7. “With or Without You”
8. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
9. “Kite”
10. “Bullet the Blue Sky”
11. “I Will Follow”
12. “The Fly”
13. “Running to Stand Still”
14. “City Of Blinding Lights”
15. “Until the End of the World”
16. “Acrobat”
17. “Mysterious Ways”
18. “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”
19. “Lemon”
20. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”

source:www.rollingstone.com

Would you like to play U2 Rock Band?

U2 has been considering to be part of Rock Band after they saw how faithful The Beatles were depicted in their game according to USA TODAY

“We definitely would like to be in there, but we felt some of the compromises weren’t what we wanted,” bassist Adam Clayton tells USA TODAY's Edna Gundersen. “That could change. I love the idea that that’s where people are getting music, and we’d love to be in that world. We’ll figure something out. What The Beatles have done, where the animation is much more representative of them, is what we’re interested in, rather than the one-size-fits-all animation. We didn’t want to be caricatured."

source:blogs.usatoday.com

360° Atlanta

Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA, US
Opening Acts: Muse

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Elevation
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

U2 turns 360 stadium tour into attendance-shattering sellouts

An article in USA Today...

You don't need a calculator to figure out that U2 x 360 = XXL. Massive describes almost every aspect of U2's revolutionary 360° Tour, a futuristic juggernaut that defies the recession as it crushes attendance records, rewrites the stadium concert playbook and launches the Irish quartet into even higher orbit.

The imposing centerpiece, a four-pronged UFO anchored by a glowing 164-foot pylon and cylindrical LED screen, looms over a sprawling stage with footbridges that glide around ringed catwalks. U2's soaring anthems prove equally immense pounding through a state-of-the-art sound system suspended high enough to allow clear sight lines for all.

"It's a bit of a shock to go to work and find 80,000 people on the shop floor," singer Bono, 49, says as he's whisked by a police escort to his hotel after the first of two recent sellouts at Soldier Field. "The magic act is that the spaceship disappears. The people get bigger, and the place gets smaller. There's not one grand overarching theme, but there is a sense of location, where you're a tiny speck in the cosmos. It's intimate, by the way. The show takes you through all these different worlds and mood swings. Catharsis is the posh word, I think."

Ka-ching is the afterword. The tour, U2's first U.S. stadium outing since PopMart in 1997-98, is expected to rack up $112 million from 1.2 million tickets at 20 shows during its current North American trek after grossing $187 million from 1.8 million tickets at 24 shows in Europe, according to Billboard. It should start turning a profit as the second leg ends Oct. 28 in Vancouver. The band's first tour under its 12-year deal with concert promoter Live Nation resumes May 30 in Mexico City, with U.S. dates to follow in June and July.

"At the first show in Barcelona (June 30), we realized, wow, it's working incredibly well," guitarist Edge, 48, says the next day on a drive to the stadium, after he and Bono spend 20 minutes signing autographs for a sea of fans outside the hotel. "On a good night, the production, the songs, the audience, the videos, the architecture become this amazing event. Often in these big stadiums, you feel, 'Why am I here? I could be home listening to the CD.' This show makes sense of playing stadiums."

It may only make sense for U2, a band with the fan base, budget and musical might to pull it off.

The tour's in-the-round configuration boosts capacity by roughly 20%, enabling the band to break attendance records in every venue. On Sept. 24, U2 packed 84,472 into Giants Stadium, the venue's largest crowd ever, eclipsing the 82,948 drawn to Pope John Paul II in 1995.

Each of the three "claw" structures that leapfrog along the itinerary requires 37 trucks and cost upward of $40 million. The trek entails a total fleet of 200 trucks, a crew of 400 and a daily overhead of $750,000.

Though the band's No Line on the Horizon album got off to a slow start, moving 1 million copies since March, frenzied reaction to seven tracks in 360's set list is generating chart boosts. The band has sold 34 million albums and 11.2 million digital songs since 1991, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Alone in their field

Perhaps the only act riding parallel tracks of fearless artistic urges and aggressive mainstream reach, U2 may be blazing a one-band trail as it enters its fourth decade. When the biggest band on earth stages the biggest show in history, the question arises: Who will follow? There's no sign on the horizon of U2's heir apparent.

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Kenny Chesney and the Elton John/Billy Joel match-up can fill stadiums in some markets, but only the Rolling Stones, a generation older, share U2's global demand and touring ambition, says Ray Waddell, Billboard's editor of touring.

"U2 is selling out stadiums around the world and breaking attendance records in the process. A lot of bands that have been around this long have peaked commercially, and that certainly does not seem to be the case with U2. Whether or not they achieve the greatness of past albums with No Line is debatable, but it would be hard to deny that they're trying. This has never been a band content with the status quo.

"As for who's next, right now one could only guess," Waddell says. "Many in the industry say Coldplay or Kings of Leon are possibilities. Others think that the days of multiple stadium-level artists are over. Getting there is hard enough; staying there is much more difficult."

U2 bassist Adam Clayton, 49, shares that skepticism.

"Everything is so fragmented," he says from his hotel suite overlooking Chicago's skyline. "There might always be a pop phenomenon of the year that will fill a stadium, but in terms of people who build a solid career, I don't know."

Drummer Larry Mullen Jr., 47, can envision a stadium future for Kings of Leon, "who were rabbits in the headlights when they played on our last tour."

"Who would have imagined they'd have one of the greatest albums (Only by the Night) a couple years later?" says Mullen, soaking up sun outside the catering hall backstage. "They have the swagger and the capacity to go all the way. There's no blueprint. Now you're seeing a lot of bands prepared to learn and try something different. That's what it was always about for us."

Ideas for the bold framework of the 360° Tour have been brewing in Bono's head since 2001's Elevation arena tour.

"I started drawing, and building things with spoons," Bono says. "Over the years, I've had people tell me I'm certifiable. I had a lot of rolling eyes in my direction from promoters, but Live Nation was very encouraging. (Live Nation global music CEO) Arthur Fogel said, 'If you've got an instinct, follow through on it. We will work with you and finance you.' He said this business is Neanderthal, that people are not getting value."

In late 2006 at Honolulu's Aloha Stadium, last stop on the Vertigo tour, Bono walked the field with U2's longtime collaborator, stage designer Willie Williams, in an attempt to envision his sonic temple. He next enlisted designer/architect Mark Fisher.

'So close to bankruptcy'

"We had to start building it six months before the tour, before tickets went on sale," Bono says. Inflating the risk: the music industry slump and a global recession. "When we built Zoo TV (the 1992-93 tour), we were so close to bankruptcy that if 5% fewer people went, U2 was bankrupt. Even in our irresponsible, youthful and fatal disregard of such material matters, it was terrifying. I want to put on an extraordinary show, but I'd like to own my house when it's over."

Meeting demand and lowering ticket prices (seats range from $30 to $250) were catalysts for the move to stadiums.

On the band's past two arena tours, where capacity typically capped at 15,000 to 20,000, "tickets were a little more expensive and demand was so big that when the secondary market got hold of them, they ended up changing hands for hundreds, even thousands of dollars," Edge says. "Now we're close to supplying demand, so you don't get that scalping action."

U2 knows its steel cathedral isn't sufficient bait to entice the masses. The set's a jaw-dropper, but it's the band's larger-than-life performance that has fans cheering.

"There's an ease, a looseness to the performance that I didn't imagine we could achieve," Edge says. "We came out of the punk-rock, four-to-the-floor thing, a straightforward sound. That's a revelation, that the band has become much more sophisticated rhythmically."

The show typically serves up seven No Line tunes, three or four played at the top, a defiant refusal to be locked into the past. For Mullen, U2's evolution crystallizes in the techno-twisted take on I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Crazy Tonight, during which he pounds an African djembe drum while strolling the runway.

"We take a pop song and turn it into this dance rave madness — in a stadium," he says. "How did I get here? It's not what any of us expected to be doing 30 years later. That's the guiding light. It's about our need to expand and our audience accepting things they may not even understand."

On to the next stage
Whether playing stadiums or arenas in the future, the band won't recycle ideas, Edge vows. "It's important to challenge ourselves creatively and not take the soft option," he says. "That's so ingrained in the band that we'll continue to grow and develop. We owe it to ourselves and our fans to take it further out there and break new ground."

Clayton says his ambitions for the band are humbler these days.

"I want our music to be relevant," he says. "They don't have to be big-selling records. Hit records are absolutely the business you should be in if you're in popular music, and we'll always strive for that. But it's a big privilege to be able to do what you love to do. You haven't lost control of it. You're not doing it to cover bad debts or bad deals. And it's great working outdoors."

Mullen, regarded as U2's moral compass, says his drive stems in part from a belief that fans are owed rebates.

"It's an Irish-Catholic guilt thing," he says. "We should have been better and worked harder. In the '80s, we were green. We lurched. We were successful despite ourselves. Now there's a sense that we've got more to do, that we can continue to push it, to take risks. Complacency is not something we're good at or comfortable with."

It was Gavin´s Birthday Party!!!

Last night, at Carnegie Hall in New York, Gavin Friday held a concert in celebration of his 50th birthday. An Evening With Gavin Friday And Friends is part of the Red Nights series of concerts held by Product Red to raise money for the fight against AIDS. All four members of U2 are on the bill for this concert, although listed separately.

The songs featuring members of U2 were:

1. Children Of The Revolution (Bono and Edge with Gavin Friday)
2. I Want To Live (All four U2 members with Gavin Friday's musicians, but not Gavin)
3. King Of Trash (All four U2 members with Gavin Friday's musicians, but not Gavin)
4. Another Blow On The Bruise (Edge with Gavin Friday)
5.The Last Song I'll Ever Sing (Bono with Gavin Friday's musicians)
6. Sweet Jane (Edge and Larry with Lou Reed and Gavin Friday; Bono joins in at the end)
7.The Jean Genie (finale featuring all four U2 members with the night's other performers)

'This could be a very interesting evening...' mused Bono, after joining Flo and Eddie, Edge and Gavin to perform a wonderfully earthy version of the T-Rex classic Children of the Revolution. And as An Evening With Gavin Friday and Friends got underway, it got more and more... interesting.

Larry and Adam arriving for Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons to duet with Gavin; Courtney Love describing how she was one of the earliest fans of The Virgin Prunes ( 'I wasn't asked to do this show, I demanded to do this show.' ); The Prunes, she said, were astonishing, and before you knew it, Edge's brother Dik on stage along with Guggi and Gavin.

Martha Wainwright; Maria McKee; Courtney performing with Edge; Scarlett Johansson with Rufus Wainwright. One minute you're transfixed by Eric Mingus, the next Lady Gaga is telling you about a song she has written about falling in love with a man with red hair...



source:www.u2.com/u2interference

Raleigh,NC was Magnificent!

Magnificent Larry Mullen Junior, magnificent The Edge, magnificent occassion...' Only one word to describe tonight's show in Raleigh, North Carolina.

'Let's get some lift-off' comes the command from 360 flight control as Magnificent gives way to Elevation. And this show takes off.

At the end of Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono picks out of the audience a flag that reads 'People Get Ready...' complete with guitar chords. He gives his mic to the guy in the crowd, who knows that this is his moment and with the cameras putting him on screen to the whole stadium, sings his heart out.

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Elevation
In A LIttle While
New Year's Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

New single?

In the RS interview, Bono tells the magazine that "Every Breaking Wave" could be released as new single during the spring of 2010. Iit was Jimmy Iovine´s favourite, a song the band didn´t include in NLOTH.
According to what the band says in the interview, they are going to take advantage of the winter recess to go back to the studio and work with those songs they discarded for NLOTH. They also want to go back to the material they had recorded with producer Rick Rubin while Bono and Edge will devote their time(any free time?) to their Superman project.

Bono: We certainly don't want to go away for a few years. [The next] album is called Songs of Ascent, and it's a very clear idea. If we're going to do another rock record, I want to do Spider-Man. I just haven't talked Adam and Larry into that.

I would like to have one of our songs on the pop charts. It's my only disappointment [with No Line on the Horizon] People love, love the album it's had rave reviews, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. But I would like a few pop songs on it. So I would like, even on Songs of Ascent, songs that have a shot at that. I would like to come back with a new single in the spring — "Every Breaking Wave" was Jimmy Iovine's favorite song, and lots of people got upset when we took that off.

source:www.rollingstone.com

Charlottesville, Virginia, 1st Oct

College show at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville with its own special vibe from a very cool audience .

The spirit of Thomas Jefferson is with us tonight, the man who founded this University and was the lead author of an enduring little document called The Declaration of Independence. 'How is Mr Jefferson, ' cries Bono a few minutes into the show. 'Is he in the house?'

As the tour winds its way through North America the show is becoming more unpredictable with the choice of tracks and the running order changing by the night - No Line on the Horizon comes later tonight before the roof-raising, stadium-shaking Magnificent and Elevation. Your Blue Room is finding its place too, a mellow, ambient reflection before New Year's Day and Still Haven't Found launch the 360 space station into orbit again.

If Washington the other night had a distinctly political vibe, in Virginia we have another makeover as Bono introduces his bandmates for the benefit of the uninitiated.

'Would you let me introduce my room mates ? Behind me the jock, the captain of the football team....on my left, the cheerleaders friend, he plays the four-string instrument, because, in his own words, 'girls love bass'.

Setlist

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
No Line on the Horizon
Magnificent
Elevation
Your Blue Room
New Year's Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

source:www.u2.com

U2 in Rolling Stone Magazine

RS new issue is dedicated to U2...

The numbers associated with the U2360° Tour are staggering: a 170-ton stage rightfully dubbed “the spaceship,” 200 trucks carting it around, 250 speakers, nearly 400 employees and $750,000 a day in overhead. But the band’s stadium show is more than a fantastic spectacle — it’s the biggest rock tour of all time, and Rolling Stone is onstage and backstage with U2´s Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. as they make history in our new issue, on stands today.

Sales for U2’s latest album, No Line on the Horizon, may not match their biggest blockbusters, but the foursome are out to “engage and try and do something different,” as Edge puts it, as well as prove their new material can stand up next to the classics. “I walk out and sing ‘Breathe’ every night to a lot of people who don’t know it,” Bono tells RS‘ Brian Hiatt of the No Line show opener in our cover story. “I’m a performer — I’m not going to hang on to a song that doesn’t communicate and add up to something. They’re great songs live, and I think it’s a great album.” But three-fourths of U2 (save the Edge) think “Get On Your Boots” was the wrong pick for a first single.

Read the full story in our new issue to go behind the scenes as U2 prep for their opening-night show in Chicago, tweaking “Your Blue Room” from the band’s 1995 collaboration with Brian Eno; and join them in Croatia as the Edge generates new effects presets on the fly and the band reflects on the significance of performing in the once war-torn nation for the first time since 1997.

As Rolling Stone tags along in a private jet en route to Chicago, Bono also meditates on what it means to be a rock star in 2009, praising Jay-Z as “a pioneer” who’s interested in a “porous culture, where there’s much more crosstown traffic.” He adds, “In this age of celebrity and pop stardom, maybe it’s a sensible thing to question the values of being a pop star. Radiohead, Pearl Jam, a lot of people, who maybe had more sense than us, rejected it. But the thing that’s suffered from that stance was that precious, pure thing, what they used to call the 45.”


source:www.rollingstone.com