Larry, the youngest U2, turns 50!!

Larry turns 50: as time(?) goes by...

The sexiest vegetarian , youngest member of U2, the man who posted that note on the school bulletin board, the actor, the father of 3 and faithful partner since he was 13 turns 50 today!!! Ah!! One of the best drummers in rock and roll!!! 
Happy Birthday, Larry!!! Thanks for that note, for the beats in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and for being "the squeaky wheel in U2 that always has to be serviced and oiled." according to  Paul McGuinness.

Larry: "I like the red ones, they sound the best"

Adam Talks on BBC 6

Huey Morgan ( frontman of Fun Lovin' Criminals) covers Lauren (of the Lauren Laverne show)  and is joined by Adam Clayton of U2. The band release the 20th Anniversary edtion of their seminal album Achtung Baby next week, and their bassist joins Huey to tell all about how the most important album of their lives came together.
There is the first airing of an unreleased song called "Blow your House Down" which is now part of the new album.


The audio will only  be available for seven days on the BBC6 website.


www.bbc.co.uk

More Achtung Baby Covers

Glasvegas playing "Acrobat".




Nine Inch Nails playing "Zoo Station"









And one of the most awaited ones, at least by me, Gavin Friday singing "The Fly"







youtube user:  ToneNoir

Bono´s "Bongolese"

'Ah this is Bongolese... this is how they write their songs.'

Making the new documentary to mark the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby, Director Davis Guggenheim discovered how the band write their songs.

www.u2.com/you tube user, U2hellas

If we don't come up with a good reason to make a new album..."

...we should just f*** off' ended Bono in an interview for  Irish Times. (Brian Boyd) 

Bono ,Adam Clayton, Edge and Larry Mullen in Morocco at the time of Achtung Baby. Photographs: Fred Dufour/AFP/ Getty Images and Anton Corbijn

'Achtung Baby’ was the making of U2. As the album is rereleased after 20 years, alongside a film about the band, Bono and Edge recall the turmoil that surrounded the recording and talk about their future

IT’S WHEN THREE glasses are raised to toast “12-step programmes” that you realise perhaps one too many cocktails has been taken. It’s a bar in Toronto and the caipirinhas were Bono’s idea, with Edge not slow to get his round in. “If we don’t come up with a very good reason to make a new album, we should just f*** off,” says Bono. “Why does anyone need a new U2 album?”

For the first time in their 35-year career the notoriously “faster, stronger, higher” band have put the brakes on and taken a long look in the rear-view mirror. A new film about the band, From the Sky Down , documents how their huge success in the 1980s provoked a bout of self-loathing and almost broke up the band as they struggled to stay true to their vision of a band forged in the white heat of Dublin’s punk/new wave movement.

To mark the 20th-anniversary rerelease of their key Achtung Baby album, U2 had a rush of blood to the head. They decided to open their archives and cede editorial control to the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim to make a film ostensibly about the troubled gestation period of Achtung Baby . The result was something very different.

“Watching From the Sky Down the first time made for painful viewing. I hated it,” says Bono. “U2 never look back. It’s never been what this band is about. Edge will tell you that when we put together our best-of collections he forced me – actually had to physically force me – to listen to them before they went out. I’ve never been interested in what we have done. I’m interested only in what we’re about to do. But I think there comes a time when it actually becomes dysfunctional not to look into the past, and for the Achtung Baby album we made an exception.

“The film is not about us per se. It’s about how bands function – or, in this case, don’t function. But when I saw it first I just saw these four people talking intensely about their music, and, really, does the world need that at this time? Davis didn’t tell us he was going into our past to put a context on what really happened to the band after the success of The Joshua Tree and how bad things were in Berlin when we started to make Achtung Baby . He didn’t tell us because we wouldn’t have agreed. Now that I’ve seen it a few times I realise it is actually about the creative process. Let’s face it, the era of rock music is going to end soon, and if you are interested in rock music and rock bands you’ll be interested in their internal dynamics: what makes a rock band tick, the tribal aspect, the idea of the clan. The irony for me now is that we made Achtung Baby to set fire to our earnestness and now here’s this very earnest film about the making of the album.

“We held back nothing from Davis. We opened up our archives to him and he really had carte blanche. The first time I saw it I was going, ‘Oh no, no, no,’ and I went to him and made a few suggestions as to the changes I wanted. There was no battle of wills. He just didn’t even get into a discussion with me. He didn’t change anything. But I was looking at it, going, ‘Why is this film talking about Cedarwood Road [where he grew up], the Baggot Inn and my grandmother? I thought we were making a film about the Achtung Baby album. What is going on here?’ ”

What is going on in the film is a look at how a band who shared musical DNA with Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire ended up sitting at music’s high table alongside Elton John and Dire Straits – but without the AOR table manners. A generation before Nirvana dragged alt-rock into the musical and media mainstream, this punk-theatric band ended up on the cover of Time magazine, in April 1987, as “Rock’s Hottest Ticket” and selling out arenas around the world.

Disgusted with the idea of being rock idols and disillusioned by their stadium-rock billing, they were at breaking point. “We were carrying Catholic guilt around – the sin of success,” says Bono. “We had emerged from playing with The [Virgin] Prunes and hanging around the Project Arts Centre getting mime lessons from Mannix Flynn. And the context here is that the musical scene we came from had this very Maoist music press. There were certain canon laws: thou shalt not go platinum; thou shalt not play in a stadium or an arena; thou shalt not go to America; thou shalt not be careerist. If you even thought about those things you had committed a sin.”

DESPERATE NOT TO turn into a cigarette-lighter-in-the-air stadium-rock band, U2 boarded the last flight to East Berlin just before Germany reunified, in 1990. It was one of the harshest Berlin winters, their recording studio, Hansa, was a former SS ballroom, their hotel was rubbish and they had no songs. “On a scale of one to 10 we were at a nine for breaking up,” says Bono.

For Edge, U2 were over the moment they walked into Hansa – or, at least, Rattle and Hum U2 were over. “It would have been insanity for us to have stayed in Rattle and Hum mode; that was a wonderful, great little aside, but it was never who we really were,” says the guitarist. “Who we really are is all about the future and innovation. We were getting a bit purist and a bit ‘disciplist’ about roots music, but we needed to become disciples of what is coming next. I arrived in Berlin with drum machines and loops, telling everyone what was happening in Manchester,” he says, referring to the Hacienda nightclub and to The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, among other bands. “I was also big into industrial music, but the producer of the album, Danny Lanois, was going, ‘Okay, this all sounds interesting, but show us where it’s going musically.’ And I couldn’t.”

Things deteriorated rapidly. As Bono has it, while outside they were tearing down the Berlin Wall, U2 were building their own wall inside Hansa. On one side were the so-called traditionalists: Adam, Larry and Lanois; on the other, Bono and Edge were throwing club- culture and dance-rhythm shapes. Bono had always felt aggrieved that whenever a club DJ would play a U2 song, it would empty the dance floor. He wanted to make U2’s music sexy.

“To Danny Lanois, from his perspective, we were kindred spirits to his love of roots music,” says Edge. “He loved the organic feel to our music, the material that was on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree . But no one knew how to make the bits of new material we had into U2 songs. The first two weeks were a nightmare. Everything we tried would just nosedive. It got to the stage where we lost trust in each other . . . and there was a clear dilemma.

“There were options: one was to see whether U2 could absorb new material and make it their own, or whether U2 as a band were inflexible and couldn’t stretch. The other option was to throw out all the material, start again and . . . extend the line-up or bring in other musicians.”

With the band having to take some very hard decisions about continuing to flail around in the studio or just cancelling everything, a deus ex machina arrived in the shape of the discarded second bridge from a song called Sick Puppy (later renamed Mysterious Ways ). That bridge was shaped into the intro for a new song,One . “As soon as One came into that room it stabilised everything,” says Bono. “Everyone just sort of surrendered after we had that. By surrendering, we got over the hump.”

With a song to anchor the album, they returned to Dublin for Christmas and finished off the album in a rented house in Dalkey, in south Co Dublin.

Released in 1991, and hailed as a triumphant reinvention, Achtung Baby sold more than 20 million copies. It remains their most important album, and the resulting tour, Zoo TV, changed how live rock music would be presented and experienced.

It’s dark outside in Toronto now, and an interview that began in sunshine has gone way over time. There’s just one more thing. It may well be an act of lese-majesty, but here goes: one possible interpretation of the film, Bono, is that, without Edge, you’d still be in the Baggot Inn. “Sure,” he says, nodding.

“That’s a lovely thing to say,” says Edge. “But I don’t think that’s true. It’s symbiotic. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without Bono, and I think that’s reciprocal. He makes me great. I help him to be great.”

Before they descend into you’re-my-best-friend territory, we slip away. Bono is saying, “Being in U2 is like being in the priesthood. There’s only one way out. And that’s in a coffin.”

---

Achtung Baby is rereleased next Friday in five formats, including a remastered CD and a six-CD, four-DVD edition that includes the film From the Sky Down 

Revisiting U2's dark, dramatic 'Achtung Baby'

USA Today´s Interview.

Bono and The Edge are enjoying vodka martinis at the inveterate Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrated time capsule of bygone Hollywood and the former haunt ofCharlie Chaplin, Raymond Chandler and Rudolph Valentino. The dark booth seems a fitting spot for the singer and guitarist to ponder U2's newest project: a dusky catalog jewel.

Reissuing 1991's Achtung Baby with a new companion documentary wasn't an easy decision for a forward-looking band averse to rearview glances, says Edge, 50. "How big a deal do we make of an anniversary when we're in the middle of what we're doing now? We had a hard time figuring that out. We're not a heritage act. We're still very active. But this record was so pivotal that we felt it was OK to revisit it.

The Irish quartet doesn't just drop by. This is an extravagant homecoming. The refurbished album arrives Tuesday in five versions: the original CD ($14), a double CD loaded with extras ($30), a four-disc vinyl box ($120), a super deluxe set with six CDs, four DVDs, 16 art prints and hardbound book ($168), and the wallet-busting "Uber" edition in a magnetic-puzzle tiled box that adds such bonuses as vinyl singles and Bono's "The Fly" sunglasses ($470).Extras include B-sides, demos and remixes, "kindergarten" early versions plus such previously unreleased songs as minimalistic Oh Berlin, emotional ballad Heaven and Hell and tense waltz Everybody Loves a Winner.

Recorded over six months in Berlin and Dublin, U2's seventh studio album found the passionate, rootsy rockers of The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum confounding expectations with daring leaps into irony and sex, wrenching emotional candor, intoxicating dance rhythms and industrial clatter, delivering the iconic One and such classics as Mysterious Ways and Even Better Than the Real Thing.

"We had become very earnest by the late '80s," says Bono, 51. "We were carrying quite heavy moral baggage, and the strain was showing. When you write a song about Martin Luther King, people think you must have aspirations to be like him. You can never live up to these songs. So the '80s put us in this situation where the songs and our actual selves were very different.

He laughs. "We finally owned up to the shallow people we are in Achtung Baby."

U2 Revisit ‘Achtung Baby’ – and Question Their Future for Rolling Stone

Bono: 'We'd be very pleased to end on 'No Line on the Horizon''

Those words were published by Rolling Stone magazine and they sound harsh. Let´s read the rest of the article by Brian Hiatt.

Ask Bono a tough question and you might get a tougher answer. U2 are about to release their most expansive reissue project yet, for 1991's Achtung Baby – the album where they traded in earnest uplift for funk, noise, sex, irony and self-doubt. So how does this lavish look back square with the band's old lyric "You glorify the past when the future dries up."I'm not so sure the future hasn't dried up," says Bono, who's been irritating his bandmates lately by publicly questioning U2's relevance – despite the fact that they just finished the highest-grossing tour of all time. "The band are like, 'Will you shut up about being irrelevant?'" he says. But Bono can't help himself – even though U2 have been in and out of the studio with various producers recently, he raises the possibility that the band may have released its final album. "We'd be very pleased to end on No Line on the Horizon," he says, before acknowledging the unlikelihood of that scenario: "I doubt that."

Bono concedes that revisiting the album where U2 punched themselves out of a tight corner – after 1988's Rattle and Hum movie and album helped convince some music fans they were hopelessly solemn and pompous – suggested a way forward. "Ironically, being forced to look back at this period reminds me of how we might re-emerge for the next phase," says Bono. "And that doesn't mean that you have to wear some mad welder's goggles or dress up in women's clothing. Reinvention is much deeper than that."

Moving forward has never been easy for U2, as chronicled in the outtakes, B sides and early versions of Achtung songs unearthed for a new box set – and set forth in moving detail inFrom the Sky Down, a documentary about Achtung Baby's genesis by It Might Get Louddirector Davis Guggenheim. The movie, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival, makes it clear that trying to find a new sound led to what the Edge calls "a potentially career-ending series of difficulties." In tracing the creation of "One," the film also reveals that lyrics such as "We're one, but we're not the same" are as much about the band's fraught brotherhood as anything else. "I thought [Achtung Baby] was a really supercool moment in a not always supercool life," Bono says with a laugh, "and [Guggenheim] goes and makes an uncool film about us!"

Rattle and Hum, and the horn-section-and-B.B.-King-accompanied Lovetown Tour that followed, were U2's rootsiest moment. But for a band whose actual roots were in late-Seventies post-punk, the cowboy hats and denim were starting to chafe. The Edge was listening to My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails and Einstürzende Neubauten, while also noting the fusion of rock and dance coming out of Manchester, with groups like the Stone Roses. "I always remember the intense embarrassment when I happened to be in a club and a generous-spirited DJ would put on one of our tunes from the War album," the Edge says. "It was so evident we had never been thinking about how it would go down in clubs. So we just wanted to stretch ourselves in the area of rhythm and backbeat and groove."

The band recorded the bulk of the album in Berlin's Hansa Studios, just as Germany was reunifying – and as co-producer Brian Eno wrote, aesthetic guidelines soon emerged: "Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy and industrial." "We found it was more interesting to start from an extreme place," says the Edge.

Hence the buzz-saw guitars that kick off the opening track, "Zoo Station," followed by a blast of Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums distorted almost beyond recognition. "Some of the extreme sounds weren't achieved with sophisticated, outboard equipment, dialed in carefully," says the Edge. Instead, they simply overloaded their vintage recording console. "It was literally, 'What happens if you try to go to 11?'" says the guitarist.

For the band, rediscovering the wildly different lyrics and arrangements on the early "kindergarten" versions of the songs was revelatory – "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World," for instance, sounds like an Irish folk tune. "The first time the paint goes on the canvas is a very, very exciting moment," says Bono. He was intrigued by a line in the early "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" that recasts its story as a "parasitic" love affair ("Your innocence I've experienced"), while the Edge is convinced the more restrained vocal melody on that version is superior to the released track.

One of the more intriguing outtakes, "Down All the Days," has the same backing track as "Numb," from U2's 1993 follow-up, Zooropa, with Bono singing an entirely different song. "It's this quite unhinged electronic backing track with a very traditional melody and lyrics," says the Edge. "It almost worked."

Meanwhile, U2's future plans are not set. "It's quite likely you might hear from us next year, but it's equally possible that you won't," says the Edge. Adds Bono, "We have so many [new] songs, some of our best. But I'm putting some time aside to just go and get lost in the music. I want to take my young boys and my wife and just disappear with my iPod Nano and some books and an acoustic guitar."

This story is from the November 10, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

http://www.rollingstone.com

Q´s Birthday: U2 Greatest Act

Bono, Larry Mullen Jr, Adam Clayton and The Edge of U2 attend The 2011 Q Awards at The Grosvenor House Hotel on October 24, 2011 in London, United Kingdom.

U2 have been voted the 'Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years' in a special award to mark Q's birthday.


Edge spoke to Q backstage at the 2011 Q Awards after his band U2 picked up the Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years award supported by BlackBerry. The guitarist spoke about the honour, the making and reissue of Achtung Baby plus U2's plans for the future, including working with Danger Mouse .

More pictures of the  arrival to the  event  and in the event. 
www.qthemusic.com

U2 Need to Dream It All Up Again

Bono says U2 are under more pressure to make a good album now than they were when they recorded the career-defining Achtung Baby 20 years ago.

Echoing his "we need to dream it all up again" words when U2 played Dublin's Point Theatre on New Year's Eve in 1989, he told The Irish Times: "It's actually worse for us now than it was when we went to Berlin. We can play the big music in big places. But whether we can play the small music, meaning for the small speakers of the radio or clubs, where people are living, remains to be seen. I think we have to go to that place again if we're to survive.

"There are so many U2 albums out there. We need a reason for another one. The whole point of being in U2 is that we're not here to be an art-house band. Our job, as we see it, is to bring the art house to the mainstream; our job is to puncture the mainstream."

The singer says he sees the future of the music industry in new technology and new formats. "Our last album was the first album to be made available as an app with BlackBerry devices, but it didn't work: the functionality was not what it could have been," he says.

"New formats are going to happen. I'm always banging on about this. The app format brings you back to that world of gatefold sleeves, of being able to read lyrics - and being able to play the album at home on your plasma TV."

Bono also defended the sales performance of the band's 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon. "We're just about to come to five million sales on No Line on The Horizon, and that, these days, is the equivalent of selling 12 million records," he says. "You can actually do the figures on that. So when you look at it like that, it has the same sales as All That You Can't Leave Behind.

"That's despite the fact that No Line doesn't have A Beautiful Day and doesn't have a Stuck in A Moment. There's no pop song on No Line, but it's still sold that amount. It's been an amazing success for an album which is quite a complex piece of work and doesn't have one single pop song on it."

"People say Get on Your Boots was the wrong single, but it's great live. Unfortunately in the last few weeks of finishing the album, we didn't have the objectivity. We figured out Get on Your Bootslater, when we were on the road and it became a much better song. I think Unknown Caller is a classic, as is Moment of Surrender."

U2 release the 20th anniversary edition of Achtung Baby next week.

www.rte.ie/

Bono in "Le Grand Journal" in Channel + ,France

Bono was in the TV programme "Le Grand Journal" in Channel +, France to talk about the famine in the Horn of Africa in representation of ONE.

LE GRAND JOURNAL du 19/10/11 - P 1 : Famine

Who´s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

A new cover version  for  'AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered'. 'Who´s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses' by Garbage 

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses - Garbage by u2m

www.u2fanlife.com

Bono in ONE´s Offices in Paris

Bono visited ONE  offices in Paris where they are already debating the ideas to present in the next  G20 meeting. He will also participate in the TV programme  "Le Grand Journal" to talk about the subject.

Getty Images/www.canalplus.fr

Adam tells us about the beginnings of U2

In Davis Guggenheim's new film From The Sky Down, Adam recalls the earliest days of the band.


'We've tried this going to college thing and this going to work thing... and we want to be in the band.'





www.u2.com//www.u2fanlife.com

A Man and a Woman Performed Live for the First Time

Bono and Edge performed "A Man and a Woman" live at the Decade Of Difference benefit concert for the Bill Clinton Foundation  on 15th October at the Hollywood Bowl.  This is the first time this song was performed live by (half of) U2. 





Video by YouTube user:  rjrjr8

Bono at Steve Jobs´s Silicon Valley Memorial Service

Silicon Valley luminaries, politicians and celebrities were among the several hundred people at a private memorial service for late Apple Inc co-founder and tech visionary Steve Jobs on Sunday.
Guests arrived in dozens of black limousines and walked up a path lighted by hundreds of large white candles to Memorial Church in the heart of Stanford University's campus. The event was heavily patrolled by police and security and walled off to the public.
Among those guests was Bono who stopped to exchange words with others in the courtyard before heading in.
Rumour goes that he sang Dylan´s song "Every Grain of Sand" in memory of his friend.


www.reuters.com

Blind Man Given Bono's Guitar Pens Song

MESA - This is a story about dreams coming true, but it didn't start that way.

At 14 years old, Adam Bevell of Mesa was told he was going blind and nothing could stop it. Adam got through it -- in part -- inspired by the music of U2.

He learned how to play guitar, a skill that would lead him to a date with destiny -- a date with U2, arguably the greatest rock bank in the world.

Millions have seen them, but few have ever played with them. Adam Bevell got that rare chance three months ago in Nashville.

Adam's sign reading "blind guitar player" got Bono's attention. It's a moment that changed his life.

"Bono came over himself and grabbed my hand," recalls Adam. "Said 'hey come this way' and led me through all the obstacles on the stage and Bono said 'what to you want to play man.'"

Adam's pick was All I Want is You.

"Once I hit the first verse he said 'yah you can do it' and he turned around and started singing to the crowd, it was surreal… the level of kindness and his charity he showed to me I loved, and he had a great patience for me."

Bono and the band were clearly touched as well. Bono gave Adam his guitar.

Bono's Irish-Green Gretche Falcon played on some of U2's biggest hits. Bono shipped the guitar to Adam.

At first -- he was afraid to play it. Bono's guitar tech convinced him otherwise.

"There were fingerprints all over it and I didn't want to touch it. And he said, 'that guitar is meant to be played, Adam I want you to play it, Bono wants you to play it and the fingerprints are mine and Bono's.' He said, 'your fingerprints are now on this band forever Adam.'"

"I was able to send him a thank you letter to pass it on to Bono. I didn't think the thank you letter was enough so I ended up writing a song."

His first ever -- a song called hand in the darkness.

"I thought how often has it happened to me that someone has reached out to me through the darkness and led me to safety."

A thank you to Bono for his kindness that magical July night. He hopes the song will touch others.

"I thought that idea, a lot of people can relate to that idea, because you don't have to be blind to have lost your way… and that whole idea of hand in the darkness came along and I felt inspired to write this song."

Adam's moment on stage is all over you tube, and "Hand in the Darkness" is now available on iTunes.

Adam will give the proceeds to Bono's "One" foundation to end hunger.

Bono's guitar tech heard the song and loved it. He's going to pass it on to Bono.

Blind Man Given Bono's Guitar Pens Song: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com

BONO AND EDGE PERFORM FOR CLINTON FOUNDATION

Bono and the Edge perform at the Clinton Foundation's 10th anniversary 'A Decade of Difference' event. Early in the show, Bono joins K'Naan on stage to sing Bulletproof Pride. During the Edge/Bono segment at the end, they perform A Man And A Woman for the first time, with accompaniment from Edge's Macbook Pro. Bono changes the end lyrics in Sunday Bloody Sunday to reference the famine in Somalia. Staring At The Sun is played for the first time since Oct. 24, 2001, and includes a string section on stage. The strings remain for One, which also includes the Zoo TV buffaloes video and Bono ending with singing Happy Birthday to Bill Clinton. Edge plays piano in Miss Sarajevo.

Setlist:

1. Desire 
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 
3. A Man And A Woman 
4. Sunday Bloody Sunday 
5. Staring At The Sun One / Happy Birthday 
6.  Miss Sarajevo 

Maria McKee On U2

U2.com interviewed  the LA singer Maria McKee, known  for her belting hit single ‘Show Me Heaven’. But she also fronted Lone Justice, the celebrated US band which supported U2 on the Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree tours. 

U2.com: It must have been exciting in the 1980s, when Lone Justice and U2 were on the rise.

I don’t often think about Lone Justice, because I’ve lived so many lives since then. But my relationship with U2 is always present. I’m close to Bono and Ali, and I forged a whole decade of living in Ireland. It’s my second home.

U2.com: How did you come to support U2 in the first place?

Jimmy Iovine was producing and beginning to manage us, and he was also working with U2 on... was it Under A Blood Red Sky? Bono had seen us on TV and he liked the spiritual expression and the music, and he loved my voice, so he told Jimmy that he wanted us to open for U2 when they started the North American leg of the tour.

We toured off and on with them for several years; we were like family.

U2.com: What made it like family? 

I connect with Bono and Ali on a lot of levels: spiritually, musically. Bono is laugh-out-loud hilarious, and I can be quite spontaneous, as well. So there was a lot of creative humour and chemistry.

But when you look back, you see that the stars lined up in a way that made everything flow very magically. It wasn’t just the band; I remember coming to Dublin for the first time and it seemed like Paris in the Twenties; there was so much going on.

U2.com: That was in the late 1980s?

Yes, and into the 1990s. Nothing but good times, every single day. Whether it was hanging out playing music, or going to a party that would last for days, or running around the country herding sheep and then going for pints... We had so much fun.

U2.com: And you sometimes shared the stage with U2 when you toured?

Yeah. Bono would suddenly say to Dennis, the stage manager, 'Go get Maria!' - in the middle of '40', or 'People Get Ready', maybe. I’d be somewhere backstage and Dennis would arrive, red in the face, and he’d be like, 'Maria, Maria, Bono wants you on stage,now!' and so we’d have to run and run - we were playing those big arenas - and by the time I got to the stage I’d be out of breath.

And sometimes, when Lone Justice were playing Sweet Jane, Bono would just appear on stage...

U2.com: Never a dull moment?

No. Once, U2 were playing three nights in Dublin at the RDS. I’d been to the first gig, but didn’t go the next night. I was getting ready for bed, and was in the bath, when the phone rang: 'Bono wants you now!' So I had to get out of the tub and into the taxi and head straight to the venue and run up onto the stage.

That night was fun; he introduced me as his second wife.

U2.com: Were you escaping from something by going to Dublin?

I was partly escaping the music business and getting away from the pressures. I’d made a solo album, but people in America were so into Lone Justice. The solo album was received OK, but people said they missed the band.

When I came here, people in Europe were going bananas for it. Journalists were bringing me flowers, and the gigs were like church. People were hushed. Hushed.

I played this gig in Dublin at Mother Redcaps, and it was like, legendary. Everybody was there: the U2 boys, all the Hothouse Flowers, some of the Waterboys. REM were in town and some of them came. People were lined up round the block. It was a magical night, and I thought, 'I’m staying!'

U2.com: How long did you stay, in the end?

I didn’t visit the States for a year and a half afterwards. I stayed at Adam’s place, at first, until he got sick of me. I started coming and going, but I considered Dublin my home. I have three godchildren in Ireland now, so it keeps me coming back...

'AHK-Toong BAY-Bi Covered'

A host of famous names, including The Killers, Jack White, Nine Inch Nails, Snow Patrol, Patti Smith and Depeche Mode, have re-created U2’s Achtung Baby album in celebration of its 20th anniversary.

The collection of brand new recordings, 'AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered', also marks the 25th anniversary of Q Magazine, and Q Editor in Chief Paul Rees said he believes the album sets a new - and higher - benchmark for the growing popularity of free CD's.  'Not only in the sense that each of the tracks are brand new recordings by some of the biggest and most iconic names in music such as Jack White, Nine Inch Nails and Patti Smith, but also in that several of them mark the first new material we have heard from these acts in a long time – such as those by The Killers, Damien Rice and Garbage.
'This is an entirely appropriate way to mark Q's anniversary and that of Achtung Baby, one of the pivotal albums in our lifetime.'

The full track listing for AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered is as follows:

Nine Inch Nails - Zoo Station
U2 (Jacques Lu Cont Mix) - Even Better Than The Real Thing
Damien Rice - One 



Patti Smith - Until The End Of The World
Garbage - Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Depeche Mode - So Cruel
Snow Patrol - Mysterious Ways
The Fray - Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World
Gavin Friday - The Fly
The Killers - Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Glasvegas - Acrobat
Jack White - Love Is Blindness

The magazine/CD package will be available in store from October 26th and also fromwww.qthemusic.com.


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