Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Bono, Ali and Jordan at Love Ball in Monaco

He's found what he was looking for: U2 frontman Bono attended the ball with his wife Ali Hewson, right, and daughter Jordan Hewson
He's found what he was looking for: U2 frontman Bono attended the ball with his wife Ali Hewson, right, and daughter Jordan Hewson





Guests included U2 frontman and philanthropist Bono, who attended with his wife Ali Hewson and 24-year-old daughter Jordan.
Tennis ace Novak Djokovic appeared with girlfriend Jelena Ristic, who was elegant in cobalt blue, while model-turned-photographer Astrid Munoz, 38, stood out in a pretty red and white floral gown.
Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and English socialite Tamara Veroni also showed up to the glittering event.

Guests were treated to dinner, live entertainment provided by Russian opera, ballet and classical music stars, as well a charity auction. Items up for grabs included a trip to Monaco complete with Louis Vuitton luggage, Christian Dior couture, a Riviera diamond necklace from Russian jewelers Yana and an internship under Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel in Paris. Vodianova hosts the Love Ball each year to raise awareness for The Naked Heart Foundation, which she founded in 2006 to help disadvantaged and special-needs children in Russia.

On Mick Jagger At 70


In a wide-ranging interview with the journalist Martin Scholz for Germany’s Die Welt, Bono has paid homage to Mick Jagger who turned seventy on Friday. Bono is a longtime friend of The Stones frontman and says one of the many things he likes about Mick as a person ‘is that he always speaks his mind openly and he never talks much about himself. He is not a narcissistic person.’ 

Die Welt asks Bono '…. what goes through your mind when you see this man running across the stage for more than two hours, dancing, shaking, singing without stopping, as he has done it for more than, well, 50 years now?' 
'There are a lot of things I admire about Mick Jagger, ' replies Bono, 'He looks like Baryshnikov, he is like a ballet dancer from another age. And he has a very beautiful face, and it is made more beautiful by all the lines in his face. Why? Because he wears them so well. I love the lines in his face.’ 

As consecutive tours by U2 and The Stones continue to break audience records, Bono laughs that any competition between the bands is ‘only on a humorous level’. ‘If you put on big shows, people understand by now better that you are spending the money on them. High production cost are investments in the audience, because you want to make sure that they get something for their money.’ 

Die Welt asks what is the most common misconception about The Stones. Bono muses that 'people often wonder why Mick is so savvy, they criticise that he is so good with the numbers and money' before explaining the reason is that The Stones lost a lot of money in the early days. He goes on to say. 'It´s that left-brain-right-brain-thing that I particularly admire, the combination of the creative and the management-part which is a rare thing among artists, musicians – not amongst filmmakers or architects though.' 


Friday, July 19, 2013

Best in years, says Gavin after early listen to new U2 album


Gavin Friday
“I’ve heard the new album and it certainly is a development. U2 turns corners very quickly and what hits you is how fresh it sounds. With Edge involved, there is still plenty of guitar”.
“They asked me what I thought and I told them I really liked it. It’s definitely their most exciting release since Achtung Baby.”
BONO'S pal Gavin Friday has claimed that U2's upcoming album is their "most exciting release since Achtung Baby".
Friday (54) has been given an exclusive listen months ahead of its release. He has been described as a "consultant" by U2 – and he is very much giving a thumbs-up for their 13th album.
"I've heard the new album and it certainly is a development. U2 turns corners very quickly and what hits you is how fresh it sounds. With Edge involved, there is still plenty of guitar," Gavin told the Herald.
"They asked me what I thought and I told them I really liked it. It's definitely their most exciting release since Achtung Baby."
Although the Finglas-born neighbour and life-long friend of Bono came up with the title of early U2 single 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, Gavin revealed he had not made any suggestions for song titles on the new U2 record. "U2 have plenty of their own ideas for song titles," he said. "I'm planning on releasing two albums myself next year, one electronica, the other more guitar-orientated."
A long time supporter of the Dublin Samaritans, Gavin was speaking to launch a new Active Listening seminar next Monday, July 22 at 112 Marlborough Street, Dublin, at 8pm.
The Dublin Samaritans can be contacted on 1850 60 90 90, text 087 260 90 90 or by email at jo@samaritans.org.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Bono pledges his support for Mandela Day

For Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday, Bono urges activists around the world to reflect on our interconnectedness in the fight to end extreme poverty. Listen to his short but inspiring message in the player below:




Special thanks to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory for this video.


Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Bono, Commandeur De L'Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres


Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti presented the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters to Bono, in a ceremony at the Ministry of Culture and Communication in Paris.

The award, which is the highest cultural honour of France, is awarded in recognition of Bono's contribution to music and the arts.

Speaking of Bono today Minister Filippetti said: “Beyond notes and beyond words, you committed yourself and dedicated your fame and career to wage some of the greatest wars of our time. Not for charity’s sake but in the name of Justice.”

Bono said of the award: “This is a huge honour for me, but really it belongs to the band.  I've got the biggest mouth and the loudest voice but the music we make comes from each other. Being an Irish Francophile, a student of many great French artists and writers… it is unspeakably special to receive an award from France for being an artist.  Thank you.”

Previous recipients of the award include: Patti Smith, Václav Havel, David Bowie, Séamus Heaney, Anish Kapoor, T.S. Elliot and Bob Dylan. Today's award follows a 2003 honour, when Bono received the prestigious French decoration, the Legion D’Honneur from the then President Chirac. Other awards  include being made Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2005, and an honorary British knighthood in 2007.

More pics here



Monday, July 15, 2013

Bono in Nice at James Joyce`s event

Bono will be honored  on Tuesday in Paris with France's highest cultural honor when he's made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Meanwhile, Bono was on hand at a ceremony in Nice today unveiling a plaque in honor of Irish author James Joyce. The Irish ambassador was there, along with Paul McGuinness and Bono's longtime pal Guggi.

View image on Twitter
Bono, Paul McGuinnes, Guggi and the Irish Ambassador unveiling a plaque in honour  of Joyce



Monday, July 8, 2013

Glastonbury 2011: when Bono put me in the frame

What happened when the U2 singer borrowed the Guardian photographer's camera?

by David Levene for The Guardian



Bono reaches for David Levene's camera
The photographers in the pit had to leave to allow others to take their place but I’d arranged to stay. I think that’s why Bono noticed me. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

At the end of U2's third song, Bono knelt down in front of me and stretched his hand towards the camera. At first, I thought he was just doing a rocker pose. But then he got closer and closer, and I thought: He wants my camera. So I just gave it to him.





Bono with David Levene's camera
I didn’t think he’d actually taken any photos. This was taken by a friend who was in the pit at the same time. Photograph: Pete Mariner




I was initially worried he wasn't going to be able to use it. You can't generally take a photo with the camera unless the auto-focus is engaged – and that's quite a faff to figure out. So it was only when I had a look later that I saw he'd fired off four or five frames.


Bono's picture of Guardian photographer David Levene
I was taking pictures of him with another camera as he was taking pictures of me. One of them might have to go up on my wall at home. Photograph: Bono/U2


They were a bit underexposed, but I was just very impressed he'd managed to take any photos at all.


Guardian photographer David Levine was  awarded first prize in the 'arts' category for his photography of Bono on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.

Designed for press photographers, The Press Photographer's Awards remains the only competition that showcases the outstanding press photography taken for, and used by the UK media, and now celebrates its seventh year.


http://www.theppy.com/http://www.guardian.co.uk

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Bono and Larry on Holidays in the South of France



Bono was joined by his wife Ali and bandmate Larry Mullen Jr. on Thursday on the French Riviera.
The 53-year-old singer of the popular Irish band and his 52-year-old wife lead the expedition with Larry and a few friends to trendy Club 55, the oldest beach club in Saint-Tropez.
Bono wore a Panama hat that has become de rigueur at the beach club and accessorised it with a bright red rose in the hatband.

All aboard: Ali, Bono and Larry climbed into a boat at the swanky beach club


Larry wore a pair of blue jeans, a blue-and-white plaid short-sleeve shirt and sandals.
The drummer had his hair slicked back and wore a pair of skinny black sunglasses.

Half the band: Bono and Larry represented but Adam Clayton and The Edge were nowhere to be found
Half the band: Bono and Larry represented but Adam Clayton and The Edge were nowhere to be found
More pìcs here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz

Friday, July 5, 2013

Zooropa Turns 20

Zooropa PIc


For about a week before I wrote this piece, I was looking for an excuse to go for a long drive at night and listen to Zooropa. That was how I first discovered the album, on late night drives home from my high school girlfriend’s house, the blue and red glow of my dashboard and the gentler strobe of the tall highway lights passing through my window the closest approximation I could muster in small-town Pennsylvania for whatever bizarre European discotheque I thought U2 was trying to conjure. I never did get around to that drive this time, but instead listened to it during the day, a circumstance in which Zooropa makes no sense. The idea that this came out 20 years ago, and that someone would have had to walk into a record store in broad daylight on a hot summer day to purchase it, does not translate for me. Because Zooropa has always felt like U2′s night album. Zooropa is the one about diving deep, totally disappearing into something, in a manner that doesn’t work in the light of day.

In the end, the paradox of its release sort of makes sense. Circumstantially and thematically, Zooropa is an album somewhat out of joint — so much so, in fact, that different members of U2 have tried to write it off over the years. With none of its three singles (“Numb,” “Lemon,” “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”) becoming the sort of hits the band had become accustomed to with “With Or Without You” or “Mysterious Ways,” Bono lamented in hindsight that the band had lost touch with its pop sensibilities. (More on this in a bit, but this fixation on hit singles is crucial in understanding the U2 of Zooropa in relation to the U2 of the ’00s.) The Edge writes it off as an interlude; Larry Mullen, Jr. regularly implies that the more loop-fueled experiments the band indulged in during the mid-’90s were not his most beloved outings. Only Adam Clayton seems to own Zooropa as one of his consistent favorites.

Initially, it was exciting that the band had begun to trot out the album’s stellar title track during the U2 360 tour in 2011. That was tempered by Bono introducing it as a relic of their “art rock phase,” a little bit half-apologetic, a little bit “Oh, weren’t we weird for a bit back then, but that’s OK, this is a cool tune and anyway we’re back now, here’s ‘Vertigo.’” For an album awarded the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 1994, the band sure has tried to write it out of the narrative of their legacy. Then again, maybe that was precisely the problem — even then, Bono balked at winning an award labeled “Alternative Music.” Back then the problem was that he wanted to be seen as mainstream, but as a saboteur working within the mainstream. Now, the band is hyper-focused on maintaining a pop dominance, and more cerebral detours like Zooropa appear as blights to be air-brushed out.

That wasn’t the case at all at the time of its inception. Coming off the creative highs and wild financial successes of the Zoo TV tour in 1992, the band — particularly Bono and the Edge — wanted to capitalize on their momentum and record new music rather than deflate before the next leg of the tour. This was a remarkable time in the history of U2. In 1991, the band had unveiled Achtung Baby, their best and perhaps darkest record. Achtung Baby arrived after a three year silence in the wake of the disappointing Rattle And Hum, 1988′s partially-live, partially-studio misfire in which U2′s increasing fascination with classic rock and American roots music felt simultaneously overwrought and aimless, lacking the focus of 1987′s The Joshua Tree and bordering on self-parody. The critical backlash was more or less a first for the band, and they took it hard, disappearing to work up an entirely new image and sound. They departed from the Americana influences, from the rafter-seeking platitudes, trading them in for industrial, alternative rock, strains of shoegaze, gestures towards dance music. In some ways, the band became the antithesis of itself, adopting persona and irony and grittiness where before there was earnestness. Achtung Baby was an album with a difficult birth — a dense, complex pop album that nearly tore the band apart. But when it emerged, it emerged with a purpose, and the band embarked on the massive, visually overwhelming Zoo TV tour in support.

Zooropa was born directly out of that tour thematically and structurally, its recording beholden to it. Originally planned as an EP, the band eventually planned to extend Zooropa to full LP length, but was unable to finish the recording process before having to go back on tour. The result was that Zooropa was finished on the run, with U2 flying to shows, then returning to Dublin to record in frenetic bursts. All the personnel involved — including producers Brian Eno and Flood — recall the intense pace of these sessions. Though not an album recorded on the road per se, Zooropa was an album completed in motion, the band constantly bouncing back and forth between far-flung locations. Fittingly, Zooropa has perhaps the widest range of sounds of any U2 album. It feels like an album about faraway places, both geographically and spiritually.

While Zoo TV began in support of Achtung Baby, that album’s complex interplay between religion and sexuality, of the personal and the very public (celebrity) world, were only groundwork for Zoo TV’s major thesis about media over-saturation. Indeed, while Zooropa is so often overlooked as a transitional album or a coda, it’s here that the band digs deeper into their fixations on technology and how it alters us. Discovering this album in 2008 after having grown up with the Internet, perhaps this is why Zooropa resonated with me so much more than some of U2′s earlier, more “major” outings.

Zooropa literally, sonically, emerges out from these ideas. The title track — which, for a long time, was maybe my absolute favorite U2 track — begins with two full minutes of a quiet, distorted backdrop of radio voices the liner notes credit to “the advertising world.” Around 1:45, the Edge’s guitar comes in like a beacon call from the shore, growing more prominent until the voices fade out and it’s just him. The thing is, that’d be the first impression — here’s U2, building the anxiety of our mediated culture in that intro, then disrupting it. Providing the escape and transcendence they’d so often traded in.

That’s not the case anymore. Listen to how the Edge’s guitar sounds here. It’s not the chiming, delay-based arpeggiating of their anthemic ’80s songs. It’s drenched in who-knows-what effects — I’ve always thought there was some phaser involved, but the dude’s pedalboard is insane so who knows what else is going on here. The sound is aqueous, hardly recognizable as a guitar anymore. It isn’t the sound of being called to shore; it’s what you hear when you’re fully immersed. The song begins in static and builds to a climax of Bono proclaiming “Uncertainty can be a guiding light” as he’s under threat of being overcome by the synths and guitars all around him. Static and water—two things you drown in. Like I said, this is an album about diving deeper.

In hearing the band talk about Zooropa, you’d probably dismiss the above argument and assume the album would be technophobic. And there would be a lot of evidence for that — the idea that Zoo TV was designed to overwhelm the audience, the lurid day-glo coloration of the cover and liner notes the perfect physical representation of the pop-art pastiche of “Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car.”  On lead single and album standout “Numb” the name might say it all, but what really drives it home is the Edge’s muttered spree of mantras. “Don’t move/ Don’t talk out of time/ Don’t think/ Don’t worry everything’s just fine/ Just fine,” the song begins over that indelible beat. It sounds sardonic; paralyzed by the influx of too many images, thoughts, and options, the Edge espouses an active embrace of that inability to act. Don’t this, don’t that.

But there’s a zen to it, as well. (I’m also tempted to cite the Edge’s story of taking shrooms and walking around Tokyo during Zoo TV to be directly related to this and even that Zooropa might be U2′s drug album.) Bono’s early proclamation of “Uncertainty can be a guiding light” feels like a mission statement; just as Edge’s guitar emerges out of the static to take you farther, Bono starts the record with a slew of advertising slogans (“Be all that you can be,” “Vorsprung durch Technik”) only to embrace the miasma. On paper, lines like “And I have no compass/ And I have no map/ And I have no reasons/ No reasons to get back” or “And I have no religion/ And I don’t know what’s what/ And I don’t know the limit/ The limit of what we’ve got” could seem depressing, listless. But they’re delivered triumphantly, once the growing tension of “Zooropa” finally breaks, which also happens to be the moment Bono is “drowning” amongst the collective sounds of the song’s conclusion.

What I mean to suggest here is that even as this album cites modern technological anxiety as its primary concern, it grapples with this idea on its own terms, which is to say that Zooropa uses the language of technology to seek some middle ground, some way to function within this game. The doubling-down on the stylistic shifts of Achtung Baby are, on one hand, continuing artistic development, yes. On the other, the plasticity of European dance music and mechanism of industrial music, the heavy use of electronic instruments—these same to be born of the same capitalist world of advertising and televisual (and later, digital culture) overload.

While some of the lyrics and titles could suggest a cheeky pastiche, U2 actually continues in the vein of Achtung Baby and settles some of their most personal songs amongst material that is theoretically “ironic.” The thing is, even as the ’90s saw a severe about-face for the band, they actually delved into an even deeper earnestness that was just lacerated with irony, and occasionally buried under synthesizers claiming to only represent turn-of-the-millennium detachment. “Lemon,” perhaps remembered for inspiring the lemon mirrorball spaceship the band used to travel in from the mainstage out into the crowd during shows on the 1997-1998 PopMart Tour, is actually deeply personal: it’s inspired by an old video Bono found of his mother dancing in a yellow dress (“She wore lemon”). Bono’s mother died when he was just fourteen, and “Lemon” is actually about the idea of someone using technology to preserve and relive the past (“A man makes a picture/ A moving picture/ Through light projected/ He can see himself up close/ A man captures colour/ A man likes to stare/ He turns the money into light/ To look for her”). What, on a surface level, can appear to be the album’s goofiest song is actually using its glittery disco and synths to convey the way the personal life functions in a heavily mediated existence, not just the idea that technology somehow overruns the personal.

Zooropa thrives on these paradoxes. “The First Time” deals with a perennial topic of Bono’s — that of family ties, particularly the relationship between fathers and sons. It’s a gorgeous song, and the “But I left by the back door/ And I threw away the key” part is particularly crushing. But it sort of sounds like it could be on any other U2 album, and I’ve never connected with it in the same way as, for example, “Dirty Day,” a song that deals with similar issues — a father returns home years later after abandoning his family, to a son who doesn’t know him — but utilizes a perpetual synth drone and wah-assisted, cathartic guitar bursts and somehow just makes the themes hit harder.

Same goes for “The Wanderer,” which gets at Americana better than anything on Rattle and Hum (and maybe even The Joshua Tree) even though it’s based primarily on a wacky synth bassline. It’s part a story of a preacher walking the land post-apocalypse, part a classic tale of the man who goes out for cigarettes, never returns, and spends his time wandering the American landscape of highways and billboards as a ghost, seeking out other ghosts. It’s important to note that this song’s sung by Johnny Cash — before his comeback via his Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings series. He was a living but fallen American legend, an icon cut loose of material moorings — i.e., a physical manifestation of the mediated world Zooropa grappled with. His performance is gravelly and human, but sort of outside of time, telling a story at once personal and archetypal, mythic. It’s sort of haunting, but also a sort of beautiful coda after “Dirty Day,” a moment where the overwhelming nature of “Zooropa” and “Numb” may have found some resolution, some modicum of balance between the technological and the human.

I can’t really make the argument that Zooropa is more important than people give it credit for. It’s hard to trace specific places where its influence can be felt in the same way as War, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, or, more recently, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Aside from the sudden revival of “Zooropa” during U2 360, the main way in which the album has lived on is through the occasional performance of a neutered acoustic version of “Stay (Faraway, So Close!),” which never quite compares to the immaculate album version (that song also happens to have some of Bono’s best lyrics). Zooropa probably has become a residual casualty of the failure of the generally-maligned Pop, which I’d actually argue in defense of as well, but that’s a topic for a different essay (see you in 2017). After that album, the assumption seems to be that Achtung Baby was some triumph, then the band went too far with the art-pop and lost their way. The traditional narrative has All That You Can’t Leave Behind as the big comeback in 2000, the moment where U2 became quintessentially U2-ish in a way even they had never been before.

This goes back to the idea I mentioned earlier about hit singles. Since U2′s albums have become more infrequent, and as they’ve become a stratospherically big touring entity, each LP has to be an event, a game-changer, one that produces some big pop hits. The result has been far too calculated — the lackluster but successful How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb in 2004, and No Line On The Horizon in 2009, which the band talked up as another sharp left turn. I love about 60% of that album, but it suffers in the middle, where U2 plops their attempt at the singles and shows their hand — that they’re busy trying to be everything to everybody. U2 shouldn’t be concerned about working with Lady Gaga’s producer (thankfully, they at least traded him for Danger Mouse for their forthcoming album). They’re in their fifties; there’s no economic or physical way they could really get any bigger than the U2 360 tour. When Bono writes off Zooropa as their “art rock phase,” it’s a bummer not just because he’s sidelining one of their most interesting albums, but because it suggests they’d never be open to such unbridled experiments again. That’s a shame, because we deserve one more daring U2 album before they pack it in.

OK, I lied — here’s how Zooropa is important. It may never rise above a general estimation as a minor work in U2′s catalogue, but it’s important because it’s an example of a massively successful pop band taking some big chances, molding their sounds with all sorts of elements of the underground. This might be a bit extreme, but I’m not sure Kid A happens without predecessors like the one-two punch of Achtung Baby and Zooropa. I’m not sure Yeezus happens. For those of us who grew up when How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was new, it’s hard to imagine that this version of U2 ever existed, and certainly hard to imagine them ever becoming so bold again. But we can hope. Until then, there are a lot of highways and a lot of nights, and plenty of static and clatter to still dive into with Zooropa.




Wednesday, July 3, 2013

U2 celebrate completion of their 13th studio album in New York

U2 at the Q Magazine Awards

U2 at the Q Magazine Awards
Photo by Q Magazine

 
Bono and company were in New York recently putting the finishing touches on their latest studio album at the Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan.

This new album, the 13th album in U2’s discography, is as yet untitled but what is known is that the band has enlisted the mixing talents of musician/producer Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame.

In addition to Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., Coldplay’s Chris Martin was spotted on the scene, potentially as a featuring artist on the new album. Immediately following the wrap-up of the album, the band hosted a celebratory bash atop the studio.

Some famous faces turned up to wish the band success on the new album including Julian Casablancas of The Strokes and supermodel Helena Christensen.

At this rooftop celebration, the band also recorded an acoustic version video of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ featuring Clayton on piano for “global participatory art project” Inside Out.

Though no official release date has been stated, Adam Clayton has  told HotPress, “[They] very much want to have a record out by the end of the year, September, October, November; that kind of time.”



 http://www.irishcentral.com/

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Interview to Garvin Evans a.k.a. Edge's Dad

The Italian independent magazine "inutile" has posted an interview to Garvin Evans, Edge`s father.
u2 edge garvin evans fathers AC photo u2fathersdavegarvinevansACdublin199.jpg
"Our friend Giulia has lived  for six months in Dublin. One Sunday in church (strictly Protestant), she made ​​friends with a spry gentleman. He's called Garvin Evans, and his son is The Edge.


At some point in our life, we all dream of being a rock star. But we might ask ourselves what we are willing to sacrifice for greatness, and what is really driving us to be rock stars. Has your son made many sacrifices for music? How was he at the beginning of his career?

When the initial record contract with Island records was signed, David had already started an engineering degree course. However, once the future of the band had been secured, he left college and concentrated on the development of U2. The main sacrifices I suppose are a certain lack of privacy, and a great deal of hard work and long hours.

We don’t know the private side of the band personally, I mean when the curtain drops. This is usually a privilege for family and friends, who know the band as normal people. In this context, how was the relationship between you, your son and his music? There are songs that relate to particular moments spent together?

We have always got along very well together – which goes for all my three children – right from the time when they were very young, up to present time. We really did not have any so called ‘teenage’ problems, and I can honestly say we have never had the slightest disagreement that I can remember – ever. If that sounds too good to be true – well I guess we are lucky. Although Bono has written some lyrics that were addressed specifically to his occasionally difficult relationship with his Dad, there have been none involving me – as far as I know.

Certainly – when the band began to become famous – you and your wife have been concerned about your son’s future. What were your thoughts about his son being one of the biggest rock star in the world? Was there anything in particular to be worried about?

I never really worried about the band. They all seem to have the ability to act sensibly, and they were always far too professional to get involved in any drugs scene, or overwild behaviour. Being married, and having the responsibility of children has probably helped, but they are pretty level headed anyway.

How many shows have you attended? Have you travelled a lot with your son? I guess there were moments when you were emotionally deeply touched standing in front of 80,000 people thinking: “this guy playing on the stage is my son!”

Yes indeed, my late wife and I have travelled extensively with the band when they have been on tour, and we always enjoyed the huge ‘buzz’ that goes with touring. Many of the management and crew have been with U2 for years, and in a way it is like a large extended family. The organisation that goes into the tours is incredible. I hope to go myself to some concerts in the upcoming tour.
When I see the proposed final itinerary I will decide. I am constantly being touched by how many fans the band has, and the high regard in which they are held. From my perspective, justifiably so.

We heard that in 1981, leading up to the October Tour, David came very close to leaving U2 for religious reasons, but he decided to stay. How has counted the religion in his life and in the lives of all of you?

Certainly Bono and Edge in particular, have very firm Christian beliefs, and they are always aware of that in all that they do. There was a crisis at the time you mention on the relationship between the band and the religious principles of Bono and Edge. I never enquired closely about it, as I consider matters of conscience of that nature to be very private. They resolved whatever difficulties were involved, and moved on. I am heaviiy committed to my Christian beliefs, as was my late wife, and probably some of that may have served to motivate David in that direction.

We know that David Evans had received guitar lessons with his brother Richard “Dick” Evans before they both answered an advertisement at their school, seeking musicians to form a band. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978, but Richard left the band just before the name changed. Does he have any regrets about this choice? When the family gets together for Christmas dinners, do you talk about what happened?

Richard is an academic. He was involved with the band as a hobby initially, and later on joined another group called ‘The Virgin Prunes’. I have never spoken to Richard about his feelings about having left U2 (he was deep into his university computer science degree when the band took off. He later went on to do a Doctorate of Engineering at Imperial College in London (which was my own Alma Mater), and he works in that field still. There seems little point in getting involved in – ‘what might have been’ – I would find that sort of ‘if what’ conjecture pointless.
Just get on with your life, and try and be the best you can, is the right way to go as far as I am concerned.


Giulia Zennaro for rivistainutile

http://www.rivistainutile.it/

Bono on Julian Lennon`s New Album

Julian Lennon`s new album "Everything Changes" is available on iTunes Worldwide, with a Free Documentary & Digital Booklet. Bono appears in the new Julian Lennon documentary Through the Picture Window, discussing the creation of Lennon's latest album.




https://www.facebook.com/julianlennonofficial?fref=ts
http://www.atu2.com/