Bono and Edge attend commemoration service for Louis le Brocquy

U2 SINGER Bono yesterday spoke about his decades-long friendship with the late artist Louis le Brocquy.

Bono  and his wife, Ali, attended a memorial service for the painter in St Patrick's Cathedral last Saturday.Among the many figures from the arts world in attendance were  the Edge from U2 and his wife Morleigh, Séamus Heaney, Robert Ballagh and John Boorman.

Yesterday, he fondly remembered the "walks, dinners and lunches" he shared with the artist, who called him an "old friend".

He also told how he had got a "bit of a fright" when the painter captured his likeness as a "big exploding head", and how, as a favour to Bono, he once passed on an autographed copy of U2's 'The Unforgettable Fire' album to his friend, Samuel Beckett.

"He was a kind of mentor to young artists. The fact that myself and Edge weren't painters didn't preclude us. He let us in, and Anne (le Brocquy's wife, the artist Anne Madden) as well. They were great educators," Bono said on RTE radio.

The frontman recounted how himself and his best friend, the artist Guggi, had attended exhibitions by le Brocquy as teenagers.

"Myself and Guggi used to go and see his work in our early teens. We couldn't believe it. We would stop and stare and try but we couldn't figure it out. We knew there was something going on and it was worth trying to understand, and these were these paintings of heads . . . That's when it started for us, the fascination."

His friendship with the painter began in his mid-20s when Bono "didn't know much about the world but he (Louis) seemed to know it all.

"He managed to slow down the molecules in everyone else. He spoke so calmly and everyone wanted that stillness. I am a much more kinetic and anarchic personality, so I was very attracted to that. Edge is a bit like him," he said.

The artist was to paint Bono on at least two occasions. One likeness, unveiled in 2003, now resides in the National Gallery.

"If you are a famous person, people just look at you. He seemed to look at the other you," Bono said.

"He was keen on meeting who you really were, and so when I saw that big painting of me in the National (Gallery), that was a bit of a fright. It was a big exploding head. I was thinking, I'm not sure I know where to put that head. It was a strange feeling, to be the subject of one of those paintings, and overwhelming,"he said.

The 51-year-old revealed how le Brocquy indulged him by talking about his friends Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon.

"I used to bother him all the time about various characters like Samuel Beckett. 'What's he like,' I'd ask him. And he said, 'I should tell Sam about your work,' and I said, 'Really, would you do that?' So in about 1984 I signed a copy of U2's album 'The Unforgettable Fire' and I gave it to him. He told me Sam likes to know what is going on in Dublin, in music and film and everything like that."

- Ken Sweeney Entertainment Editor

http://www.independent.ie



RTE news

The band has paid tribute to the great expressionist painter Louis Le Brocquy

The Irish  expressionist painter  Louis Le Brocquy   died in Dublin at the age of 95. 
The band has paid tribute to  the great   painter  via U2.com.



'From the moment we met him at an Amnesty International event in 1984, our band had a strange intimacy with this giant of the art world - a gentle giant who taught manners to the world around him just by having more of them than anyone else. 
'We were fans but he called us friends, starstruck friends were common in his orbit. To so many of us he  was the brightest star in the firmament, always there to guide, to encourage, to push you to realise your potential… a bit professorial but that was ok… we behaved like a bunch of  students, asking about Beckett, Bacon, Balthus, whoever. He mostly indulged our inquiries. We were, we are, eternally grateful for this education.
'Now the painter that took our breath away as teenagers, the same way Bob Dylan or Patti Smith did, is gone from us but the illumination in the work he has left behind will take some pain out of that loss - and we have his beloved Anne to treasure.'


Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry 

Bono by Louis Le Brocquy 

Born in Dublin in 1916, Louis Le Brocquy's work has spanned seven decades with particular accolades coming for his evocative portrait heads of great literary figures, friends and fellow artists including WB Yeats and James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney and Bono (above).


Discover more about the life and work of Louis Le Brocquy  here.  

U2 has been nominated in the Top Touring Artist category at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards,  announced next month in Las Vegas. Other artists nominated in the category are Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift, Take That and Roger Waters. U2's 360 tour wrapped up last summer as the highest-grossing concert tour ever.

The awards ceremony will take place Sunday, May 20th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. ABC-TV will air the event live at 8:00 pm ET.

http://www.atu2.com/http://www.billboard.com

Bono : "Hope Is Like A Faithful Dog"

Bono left this note in the guest book at Jerusalem's King David Hotel earlier this month. Someone there sends this image, with his sketch of “a dog called Hope.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com

Here pictures on Bono and family visiting the Wailing Wall .

Adam on Holidays in Brazil

It seems U2 is on holidays: Bono was recently spotted in Israel and in West Bank (occupied Palestine)  and now Adam has been seen in Rio, Brazil. The bassist  spent some time in  Bar Semente . The "Instrumental Monday" led by musician,  Zé Paulo Becker at the bar is famous worldwide. In the past  Sting, Nora Jones,  Aerosmith,  visited the place and last Monday, 9th April, Adam Clayton was there.

Adam and  Zé Paulo Becker

http://noticierou2.blogspot.com.ar/

Bono spotted in Israel

Bono in Jaffa

 




Bono is currently in Israel in what appears to be a private visit. Bono was spotted chatting with five friends at a restaurant in the Jaffa Port on Monday.

Bono's visit in Israel has been kept under wraps and the media was not informed of his arrival.

This is not the singer's first visit in Israel. In 1997, he visited the country together with U2 for one concert in Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park. Israeli producers have been trying to arrange a second U2 show in Israel since, but without success.

n 2007, Bono met former Kadima chairwoman and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in New York and was invited to visit Israel.

His current visit may possibly be related to his business ventures as it was recently reported he had invested funds in the Dropbox company, who has ties with an Israeli firm.

Meeting friends in Jaffa restaurant

http://www.ynetnews.com

For Vaclav Havel

Edge has added his support to leading Czech and international artists in backing moves to honour the great playwright and politician Vaclav Havel.

Czech writers, film makers and actors led by producer Fero Fenic and documentary maker Olga Sommerova have ignited a popular campaign -  supported by international figures like Joan Baez and Peter Gabriel - calling for the airport in Prague to be renamed as 'Vaclav Havel Airport'. 

More than 80,000 people have signed an online petition supporting the idea and now the government has indicated it  favours the move as a way of honouring the memory of Havel and his unique role in their history.

The playwright and anti-communist dissident, who died last December, was jailed by the country's totalitarian rulers before the 1989 bloodless 'Velvet Revolution'. He went on to be elected the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.

With support from 25 countries, other signatories include opera director Ladislav Stros, singer Peter Yarrow, Brent Hansen of MTV Europe, playwrights Christopher Hampton and Tom Stoppard, and former Pythons Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. 

If you'd like to add your voice to the campaign, sign up here. 


www.U2.com

Martin Luther King ,Jr ( (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

"Pride (In the Name of Love)" is the second track on the band's 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire, it was released as the album's lead single in September 1984. Written about Martin Luther King, Jr., it was a major commercial success for the band and has since become one of the band's most popular songs. It was named the 378th greatest song by Rolling Stone on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". 

 Bono had been influenced by Stephen B. Oates's book Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a biography of Malcolm X. these caused him to ponder the different sides of the civil rights campaigns, the violent and the non-violent. Other sources say that the band had been to the Chicago Peace Museum and were impressed by the exhibit dedicated to civil rights leader. Bono had been writing about Ronald Reagan and the kind of pride that comes before a fall; now inspired by King he sensed there was a different song to be written.

 Adapted from Niall Stokes´ U2 The Stories behind every U2 Song

Last time the song was played  at the Magnetic Hill Music Festival, Moncton, Canada (30th July 2011) (youtube user:SteveSparx )

Bono introduces Dierks Bentley at the 2012 Academy of Country Music Awards

Bono introduces his friend Dierks Bentley at the 2012 Academy of Country Music Awards. Here's a link to another clip where Bentley talks about his friendship with Bono and how they both "use our celebrity currency for good."

Bentley covers U2's Pride (In the Name of Love) on his 2010 album, Up on the Ridge. 

YouTube user:  bethandbono