U2 yesterday revealed they aren’t planning to rock Croke Park on their next tour but want to play a series of smaller gigs.
Frontman Bono said the band would prefer to perform at venues such as the O2 when they go out on the road.
But it would mean they would have to put on 17 nights in the much-smaller venue in Dublin if they want to play to as many people as their usual three nights at Croker.
Yesterday, the 53-year-old said: “We’d like to play indoors. Those big outdoor shows, grand operas – some of the best nights of our lives have been there playing those. No roof over your head.
“But for these tunes, we’re certainly going to start indoors. We’d like to play the O2, those kind of places.
“They’re nice little clubs. It’s nice to play intimate things like that.”
The Beautiful Day singer revealed the change came after they played a ballroom at a charity gig for Sean Penn.
But Bono revealed their new album Invisible is yet to be finished and the band are getting sick of not having enough women around them.
He added: “It’s not done, and we’re here in some dank basement. There were mice spotted earlier.
“We call it the oil rig. Why is it that we always end up hanging out with men in overalls?
“You start a band when you’re 17 and then you get a crew if you’re lucky and they’re all in overalls.
“And then you go to the studio and there’s more people in overalls. Not enough girls. Please, girls out there, start twiddling those knobs.
“We’ll finish in a couple of months. People are feeling very upbeat about things. But that can change. It’s finished when it’s finished.”
And the Dubliner revealed U2 nearly didn’t go back in the studio as they thought for a while there was no need for another album.
He said: “We were trying to figure out why would anyone want another U2 album? And then we said, ‘Well, why would we want one?’ And there was some unfinished business.
“We went back to why we wanted to be in a band in the first place.
“We listened to all this extraordinary music in the late 70s which formed our musical tastes, because we’ve been around a while.
“Punk rock and electronic music was when it started for us. We were listening to the Ramones and Kraftwerk and you can hear both of those things on Invisible.
“And we started to think about those times and the things that made us who we were. It opened up a whole valve for me writing. It was a dam burst of sorts.”
Now Bono finds “the question of whether we are relevant” keeps coming up for them and reckons it’s healthy that other bands try and beat U2 at their own game.
He added: “We felt like we were on the verge of irrelevance a lot in our lives and that’s how you get through.
“First of all you have to make stuff that’s relevant to you and you have to make an honest note or account of what you’re going through. I poured what I’m going through now back through the eye of the experience I had when I first started being in a band and that’s what opened me up.
“And if that is relevant to other people, then great. But we don’t know. And Invisible is out there, it’s a sneak preview of our album.
“I don’t know how accessible it is but
I think it’s a great song. And that’s it, so we’ll find out if we’re irrelevant.
“I’m prepared for people to try and blow us off the stage. It’s the right instinct. We’re just not going to make it easy.”
But Bono warned that while the album is expected to be out in April, The Edge is still working on getting everything finished. He said: “Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores. The Edge is mixing it now.
“It’s tricky getting us across the line. But we are very thrilled with Invisible. It feels good. I’m just delighted that there are still people that are interested”
On Super Bowl Sunday, U2 released their new track Invisible for free with $1 – 73c – going to help fight Aids.
Yesterday it emerged the band raised more than €2.5million, after signing a deal with Bank of America to stump up the cash to Red – an organisation which fights HIV and Aids in third-world countries.
But speaking to BBC Radio 1, Bono revealed Invisible came from his experience of leaving Ireland for London.
He said: “I was writing about leaving home with just enough rage to see it through and this feeling of arriving in London, sleeping in the station and coming out into the punk rock explosion. There were really wild, extraordinary people in the late 70s and then you feel deeply not extraordinary.
“You’re screaming to be seen and you feel invisible – and you’ve got your band and this is your whole life.
“We played the clubs there and it’s that feeling of getting out of town.”
The singer said it felt great there was huge interest in getting hold of the song – especially with a fear no one would download it. He added: “That was a nice feeling. We’re at nearly two-and-a-half million downloads and there were one million downloads in one hour on Sunday.
“You never really know. And of course, with all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny.
“You think, ‘Are people interested?’
“But I think our band has something and they know that we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.”
source : http://www.irishmirror.ie/
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