Who's the greatest, U2 or the Stones?

The Rolling Stones vs. U2. Mick vs. Bono. Keef vs. the Edge.

Who is the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band? Baby boomers might argue the Stones. Gen Xers might advocate for U2.

Last week, this baby boomer had the rare opportunity to see these iconic bands on back-to-back nights: the Stones on Tuesday in Milwaukee, U2 on Wednesday in Chicago.

How were the shows? Outstanding. Was one better? Yes. Which band was the greatest? I’ll answer that later. First, impressions and experiences.

Just given their ages, the four Stones, 68 to 74, have to be in the autumn of their 53-year career. U2, a quartet ages 53 to 55, are in midcareer — year 39, to be exact — sort of like the Stones in the mid-1980s. U2 is coming off two slow-selling, hits-devoid albums, the latter of which, “Songs of Innocence,” resulted in bad karma because it was sent for free last year to hundreds of millions of iTunes users, some of whom saw it as unwanted spam.

Songs from the new album, which was produced by trendy hitmakers including Danger Mouse and Ryan Tedder, are the focus of U2’s current Innocence and Experience Tour. The Stones, by contrast, haven’t released a studio album of new material since 2005 and their ZIP Code Tour is a corny euphemism for Just Another Greatest Hits Tour.


Although both bands are onstage for about 2 hours and 10 minutes, the shows are as different as Mick Jagger, the athletic businessman extraordinaire, and Bono, the stocky, soul-searching activist. The Stones were inspired by American blues, U2 by American idealism.

Sir Mick and the Stones just want to have fun — like a bunch of carefree but handsomely paid guys gigging in a rock club. Seeing them at the Marcus Amphitheater (the smallest venue on their stadium tour) was almost like seeing them in a large club. The stage was smaller than at Minneapolis’ TCF Bank Stadium, the runway shorter. From the 13th row, I had little sense of the 25,000 people behind me.

The Stones were loose, mostly devoid of choreography though they had color-coordinated outfits (shades of green) for original members Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. As he did in Minneapolis, Jagger made localized comments. “Hello, Cheeseheads,” he declared to beer-boosted cheers.

When they’re on, the Stones are a relentless rhythm machine, and they found their groove on “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Brown Sugar,” “Midnight Rambler” and the Lisa Fischer-fueled duet “Gimme Shelter.” While Jagger was the consummate frontman full of practiced charm and ageless moves, Richards provided the key riffs on “Start Me Up” and “Satisfaction” that have helped define the Stones’ sound.

The moment that may have illustrated the essence of the Rolling Stones was when opening act Buddy Guy, a 78-year-old blues legend, joined them for the blues chestnut “Champagne and Reefer.” Completely unrehearsed with Jagger ordering solos on the fly, it was truly a case of veteran musicians creating music for the sheer joy of it.

While the Stones play rock ’n’ roll, U2 performs rock as art. Their show at United Center (repeated Monday and Thursday; no Twin Cities dates) is meticulously staged, overwhelmingly purposeful and undeniably thrilling.

In his long-winded way, Bono talked about the idealism of his youth — the days of innocence — and how things have changed. He even portrayed his younger self confronting current Bono: “Who are you? Have you forgotten who you are?”

The Man for All Causes discussed the wars in Ireland and the significance of the idea that America stands for. Despite all Bono’s pontificating, the sound of these four musicians was, at turns, throbbingly powerful, stripped-down gorgeous and elegantly crafted. While the new tunes had more impact and drama live than on disc, the high points were “Pride,” “Where the Streets Have No Name” and other time-tested anthems.

What ultimately elevates the concert to greatness is the staging. The innovative presentation features two giant LED curtains hanging over a runway the length of the arena, with a catwalk between the video curtains creating a cool see-through effect of the musicians performing inside their larger projected images.

In an unexpected moment, Bono thanked Jagger for showing up at United Center — humbled and honored by being respected by one of his own heroes.

After the respective concerts, U2’s crowd was definitely more abuzz than the Stones fans, who had dropped as much as $400 for 19 songs while the U2 faithful had paid up to $275 for 24 tunes.

Years ago when I asked Richards if the Stones were the world’s greatest band, he said, “On any given night, any band can be the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. There’s got to be 50 out there — at least — tonight. Everyone’s up for the title.”

Last week, the Stones were the greatest on Tuesday, but U2 was even greater on Wednesday.

 jbream@startribune.com

http://www.startribune.com/

Bono: The goal is 'to write and make it hurt'

Saint-Bruno, Quebec -- Bono confides that he isn't feeling particularly spry as he settles down at a table in a small French restaurant in the countryside outside Montreal, where U2 has just completed a four-night, sold-out run of arena concerts.

He's only had a few hours sleep and "woke up this morning like someone took a blowtorch to my throat." In November, he was seriously injured in a biking accident in New York's Central Park, and is still recovering. Nerve damage has left part of his left arm feeling numb and two fingers on his left hand have limited movement, preventing him from playing the guitar.

"Feeling returns (to his arm) a millimeter a week, and I won't know for months how much of it will come back," he says, peering from behind gold-rimmed shades. "I may need more surgery to finally fret" the guitar.

But he remains an energetic figure both on and off stage. In this quiet Canadian suburb, he doesn't exactly melt into the scenery with his leather garb and golden earrings. On the current U2 tour, which arrives Wednesday for a five-night residency at the United Center, he serves as a narrator/tour guide/singer on the band's virtual journey from its deepest roots in northern Dublin into the present.

In between dates at the Bell Centre in Montreal, he found time to visit Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, and members of Parliament in Ottawa to lobby for AIDS relief in Africa. Though he has become a lightning rod for naysayers who accuse the band of losing touch with its ideals to cut deals with mega corporations such as Apple and Live Nation, the singer remains an effective advocate for Third World countries. His ONE and (RED) organizations have been credited with spearheading debt relief and job creation for poor countries, and securing funding to combat AIDS and malaria, and enhance education in Africa and other impoverished areas.

The current "Innocence + Experience" tour with his U2 bandmates since childhood – guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. – is where all those personal and public threads and contradictions coalesce. The show centers on the band's 2014 album, "Songs of Innocence," and expands on it by tracing the band's growth from teenage Dublin upstarts in the '70s to conflicted citizens in a violent world. It's a personal journey that morphs into a political and social commentary on the power of community.

If nothing else, the tour finds U2 again exploring multimedia in way that expands the possibilities and potential of the arena show, comparable to the way the quartet's 1992-93 "Zoo TV" tour revolutionized the art of live performance. In an interview, Bono broke down some of the tour's and the band's inner workings:

You have to be bold enough to be emotionally direct. That's what I learned from John Lennon.
- Bono
Q: The first half of the show is really dark. Was there any discussion within the band that it might not work in an arena show?


A: Yeah, there was. But people (the fans) allow us to have that level of intensity. What I was surprised by, they seem to be able to follow a narrative that was so personal and specific, the north side of Dublin, a country immersed in a war. My tragedies are minor in comparison with so many. Edge questioned me about the lyrics – he helped me write them – he says, 'We don't do nostalgia.' 'We don't do sentimental.' But we allow ourselves to do melancholy. That would be Ireland. It's in the rain (laughs). I thought if I could be really truthful about a situation of what brought me to here and now, of what brought us, the band, to here and now, through my lens, maybe other people could relate. First love, first fight, first tragedy — the album is about those first experiences. Maybe people could relate. Edge is still, 'Ehh.' 'It's arrogant to think people can relate.' It's an extremely arrogant idea from the beginning to think that any feeling you have is important or relevant to anyone else. So should we write off every novel ever written, every poem? That's how we do this, to write and make it hurt. Something like 'Iris' (a song about his mother, who died when Bono was 14), I did myself regret it at the last minute. A few days before the album launched I tried to take the song off the record. We're doing this homage to all these punk bands we loved, and here's this song about missing my mother. How punk rock is that? I panicked, 'Let's take it off.' She died when I was 14, it was September 40 years ago. But I couldn't remember what day. I texted my brother, he couldn't remember. Texted my uncle Jack, and he made me realize that the day I was trying to pull it off the album was the same day 40 years ago that she slipped away while standing by her father's graveside. She had an aneurysm and I never saw her again or was able to speak with her again. That sort of cosmic coincidence gave me encouragement to trust my instincts. You have to be bold enough to be emotionally direct. That's what I learned from John Lennon.


Q: There's a lot of new material in the show and there aren't any hits on the album. Were there concerns that it might not connect?

A: We went out on that first night (May 14 in Vancouver) not knowing. It turned out to be an ecstatic experience. On 'Zoo TV' (the 1992-93 tour that also emphasized new material) people were wrapped in the headlights, but this was more direct. My friend Gavin (Friday) who grew up on Cedarwood Road with me, said you have to explain the narrative. Explain to people as you get up on the divider, 'Come with me down Cedarwood Road.' 'What, really, like a kid's play?' (laughs) He says, 'Explain what's going on in the songs, and it'll cohere.' It worked.

Q: In the show, your younger self has a conversation with the rock star Bono, and calls you out. He's accusing you of losing sight of what you once believed, as if he's standing in place of some of your fans. What's that about?

A: Eventually, through trial and error, you learn compromise is not a dirty word. I say to the younger me, 'I try to tell a young man that ideas deserve a plan, I try to make a better world for every woman and man … I feel like a fraud, but I know that I'm not, I try to do the very best with everything I got, which is not a lot except to not get caught with my pants down and my hands up.' I like to think I win the argument (laughs). The younger self is still shaking his head. It's not 'us and them' anymore, now it's only about 'us.'

U2 on the record before 5-show Chicago takeover

NTREAL -- Bono and Adam Clayton are sitting on a couch in a downtown hotel last week after a U2 concert, talking T-shirts. Suddenly they're 17 years old again hanging out at punk clubs in their hometown of Dublin, circa 1977.

"The Ramones, the Clash, the Buzzcocks," says Clayton, the band's bassist, reminiscing about the bands that he, Bono and the other future members of U2 — guitarist the Edge and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. — witnessed and drew inspiration from as teenagers.

"The Buzzcocks — the melodies were so great," Bono says, mimicking Pete Shelley furiously strumming a guitar. "What was their drummer's name (John Maher)? Larry used one of his parts on one of our songs."

"I took a few things from (the Stranglers') JJ Burnel – a great bass player," Clayton adds.

"Yeah, we opened for the Stranglers once and I asked him to wear one of our badges on stage, and he – rightly – told me to (expletive) off," Bono says with a grin. "So we cleaned out their dressing room, took all the beer."

Perhaps to even things out, Clayton wore his Stranglers T-shirt on stage earlier in the evening in front of 20,000-plus fans, the final night of the band's sold-out, four-night residency in Montreal. It served as a prelude to U2's five-night Chicago run at the United Center, which begins Wednesday.

The show finds U2 serving as tour guides to their earliest days as a struggling band in Dublin, and even further back to the adventures and tragedies that shaped their young lives. The set list focuses on an album that had a difficult birth and that engendered some of the most divisive reviews in the band's career, "Songs of Innocence."

The album was released last September as a free auto-download to hundreds of millions of iTunes users. U2 called it a "gift," but some recipients called it spam, and the backlash likely colored perceptions of the album. The bland production, which suggested U2 imitating less ambitious but commercially successful bands who imitate U2, turned the release into an underwhelming prelude for a worldwide tour.

But the tour expands upon and illuminates the songs in a way that reveals there's a lot more to "Songs of Innocence" than the conservative production would suggest. The album was in direct response to the more experimental approach taken on the previous U2 studio release, "No Line on the Horizon" (2009), with longtime collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. That album didn't produce the radio hit the band coveted.


"We probably should've allowed it ('No Line …') to be as experimental as it started out – Eno would've loved it if we would've left it that way," says the Edge, backstage at the Bell Centre arena that hosted the band's Montreal residency. "But the weight of expectation from our other work influenced our decision to try to write some songs that pushed things in a more accessible direction, and while 'Moment of Surrender' is one of our best songs, not every song on the album is as good as that."

So U2 decided to shake things up in a big way this time and work with current hit-making producers such as Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton (who has worked with the Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley), Ryan Tedder (Beyonce, Madonna) and Paul Epworth (Adele). The quartet tinkered off and on for years to get the songs into coherent shape. Finally, it winnowed the many ideas to a single 11-song album, with a follow-up studio album tentatively scheduled for release next year.


"This time we felt like we wanted to embrace what's going on out there in terms of production," the Edge says. "We wanted to stay current with the culture. We're open to new things. Ryan Tedder has a great talent for recognizing songs, what's a great melody, what's a great hook. As a band we want songs that really land with people, because they don't have time to sit with an album. If an album doesn't connect quickly, there's a good chance it won't be listened to at all."

But the album still didn't resonate in the way the band would've hoped.

"If I'm honest, there is something about the sound of the record that is a little too organized," Bono says in a separate interview. "That's what happens when you're too long in the studio."

U2 Guitar Tech Talks about Innocence and Experience Tour

Yesterday (June 14), Dallas Schoo — the guitar tech for U2’s the Edge — spoke to the Bozeman, Mont.-based AM 1450 KMMS about the Irish rockers’ ongoing Innocence and Experience tour in support of last year’s Songs of Innocence as well as the band’s work on a follow-up to the 2014 full-length.
“[The Edge] and Bono are writing and they’re trying on another young producer who’s really on his game,” Schoo said during the interview with KMMS morning man Chris Griffin, which you can listen to in full in the video above. “This stuff is more rock and serious, if I may, than the … Songs of Innocence album.”
And while he couldn’t estimate as to a timeline for the forthcoming album, Schoo noted that neither musicians are ones to “sit around” — despite being in the midst of a massive arena tour consisting of two- and four-night residencies in 19 cities.
Despite the scale of the Innocence and Experience tour, Schoo says U2 still manage to create an intimate environment for concertgoers.
“They’re trying to make it more personal,” Schoo said. “There’s this little stage out there where they play almost seven songs, and the objective is to reach out and make it like a little club.”
Schoo isn’t the only one to vouch for U2’s tour. Noel Gallagher recently caught Bono and company’s San Jose concert and said, “It starts off as a punk rock gig but then it gets intimate, there’s a lot of truth in it about where they come from and the people that they are.”


http://diffuser.fm/

More technical stuff on Innocence and Experience Tour

A conversation with  Es Devlin, creative/set designer for U2’s Innocence + Experience tour,  she worked alongside Ric Lipson of Stufish Entertainment Architects, both of whom contributed various ideas for the tour design, in what she calls a "really long, beautiful, and completely pleasurable collaboration spanning two full years."

Devlin had collaborated with U2 creative director Willie Williams in 2009 when she was lighting designer for the US theatre leg of Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour, followed up in 2012 by their work together on Complicite's The Master and Margarita at Palais des Papes in Avignon, France. "We have a similar aesthetic and approach in many ways, and we both enjoy the collision between genres. Willie approached me in Feb 2013, and I began collaborating with him along with Mark Fisher, Ric Lipson, and Gavin Friday, Sharon Blankson, Morleigh Steinberg. Willie described it as becoming a member of the 'board' of U2 creative."

With two powerhouse design companies working on the set, one might think there'd be a bit of knocking heads, but Devlin says quite the opposite, noting that the creative team's first meeting went back to March 2013 and the chemistry was instant. "I think each member of the team felt pretty established and confident, and able to pass the various aspects of the process to and from one another in a completely collegiate and supportive spirit," she says. "Everybody was sketching; everybody was making visuals to communicate the ideas. My studio team made up physical models. Ric's studio team made animations and worked closely with Tait on the construction drawings. We all inputed into a sketchbook, which became the basis for the video content."

Devlin says one of her favorite days of the two-year process was the day that Williams, Lipson, and she were in a rehearsal room in New York, while Chris Martin of Coldplay and Bruce Springsteen were downstairs rehearsing with U2 for a one-off performance in Times Square. "We were upstairs cutting and pasting and collaging and sketching and painting this final sketchbook storyboard of the show," she says. "Kanye's team came by as they were also playing in Times Square, and John McGuire, Kanye's show director, came upstairs and joined in, cutting out and pasting with us: all very analog and human and great."




Also involved in the design process are the four members of U2. Too many cooks in the kitchen? Still no. "It's been one of the really rewarding aspects of the adventure," says Devlin. "They and Willie have led progress in the art of the rock show, and they understand the craft of it and that the show will reflect the depth of their engagement with its design. We were keen to recalibrate the connection between performer and audience in an arena. We wanted to respond to the geometry of an arena: all that oval air, how to energize the whole mass of air in those spaces so that the atmosphere reaches everyone in the room equally."

Driving the creative process was the idea behind the band's thirteenth album, Songs of Innocence, which was written thematically as a look back at the band members' youth in Ireland in the 1970s. "Even before we had heard it, we were hearing about it from the band," says Devlin. "We honed the manifesto of the show down to two phrases: 'I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me,' and 'I can change the world, but I can't change the world in me.' The first phrase is a lyric from the 1981 song "Rejoice," and describes the feelings of a teenager living with his dad and looking out of his bedroom window, feeling powerless to change the exterior world of 1980s 'troubles' in Ireland but assuming that changing his own interior psychological landscape would be more possible."



http://livedesignonline.com/

Willie Williams On U2’s Innocence + Experience

U2 is full steam ahead on the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour, playing arenas this time around, rather than the huge stadiums of past tours like 360° and continuing on after the blow of the band manager’s unexpected death last week.

We caught up with creative director Willie Williams for a multi-part interview on working with set designers Es Devlin and Ric Lipson (Stufish), sound designer Joe O’Herlihy, the evolution of this tour design, and designing U2 without the late Mark Fisher.

Live Design: So, given the propensity for you and the band to start early, how long ago did this one start?

Willie Williams: The first meeting of the band and creative team was in March 2013, so the design process was a little over two years. That said, the first conversation I had with Bono about “the next tour” was on the last tour, which tends to be where these things start. Even then, on the 360°  tour, Bono was asking where we should go next and suggested that, in contrast to the 200 trucks of steel, we should start the next show under a single, naked light bulb.

The tour was due to start in the spring of 2014, but, what with one thing and another, ended up being delayed for a year, so we had a very extended design period.

LD: What were your design goals, as well as the band’s?

WW: As ever, this U2 show was borne of dialog with the band. Every U2 tour has had some kind of touchstone from which everything has grown—white flags, The Blues, architecture, a job reapplication, and of course, once it all stemmed from a pair of wraparound shades. On this project, the genesis was narrative. It’s the narrative that runs through the album: the story of four teenagers growing up in ‘70s Dublin looking out of their bedroom windows and trying to figure out how they fit into the often violent and disrupted world outside.

LD: We talked at LDI about this notion of two different shows, alternating nights. Did that happen?

WW: We fully intended to have two different set lists and make it a pair of shows. This idea survived all the way to the beginning of the music rehearsals, at which point it became apparent that it wasn’t really viable. I really believe that they could have rehearsed enough songs for two shows, and I would have very much enjoyed being able to delve into the catalog, but the question of which songs would be left out of any given show became too big to get around. The potential upset that a punter buys a ticket for the “wrong” show, depending on their personal taste, began to make it a bit of a minefield.

LD: What is the overall feel of the design?

WW: We appear to have created a mash-up of performance, sound, video, and lighting, some of which I honestly don’t think anyone has been seen before. It’s quite a strange show in some ways, but the arc of it manages to hang together in an unexpected and pleasing way. The centerpiece is this screen-bridge-stage-light-rig hybrid object which at times is the performance area and at other times obliterates the performance area. I say it’s the centerpiece, but for much of the show, we completely ignore it, opting for the most basic rock ‘n’ roll stance imaginable.

At the other extreme, the more theatrical moments combine all of the show elements in a new and entirely modern way. After half an hour of no-bullshit rock ‘n’ roll, a giant double-sided television fills the airspace of the arena. We show some pictures, and then the singer climbs into the television, and we see him in there, physically part of the video images, hanging in the middle of the room. It’s really quite odd but entirely magical.

Bono meets leaders on Parliament Hill

U2 frontman Bono kept a low profile in Ottawa on Monday, avoiding photo ops or major announcements in favour of private chats with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Liberal and NDP rivals.
The Irish rock singer's visit sparked another round in the political debate over the Conservative government's development policy, which has focused on maternal and child health, while freezing overall development spending.
Bono remained above the fray, striking an upbeat note as he arrived on Parliament Hill repeating his mantra of "the world needs more Canada."
"Development assistance, or foreign aid as you call it here, is a really good way of showing who you are to the rest of the world," Bono said, surrounded by fans and well-wishers.
Fresh from a show in Montreal, Bono first went to the National Arts Centre near Parliament Hill to discuss foreign aid with several non-governmental organizations. He was recognized in the House of Commons after question period.

He is the co-founder of the international organization, ONE, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty and preventable diseases in places such as a Africa.
"It's my hope that Bono's visit will boost Canadian awareness and engagement on international development priorities," said Michael Messenger, president of World Vision Canada, who was at the NAC meeting.
"Today's discussions underscore that we cannot work alone — success and innovation happen when we're all at the table, committed to improving the lives of children."
Bono met Harper to talk about maternal and child health projects in Africa and elsewhere.
The Prime Minister's Office says the rocker-activist requested the meeting. Bono also met NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

NDP critical of overall aid spending

Harper has committed $3.5 billion over five years toward the maternal and child health cause, his signature foreign-aid initiative aimed at reducing deaths among newborns and their mothers in the developing world.
But the NDP criticizes Canada's overall aid spending, which has fallen to 0.24 per cent of GDP, well below the 0.7 per cent target set by the United Nations.

The Harper government froze aid spending five years ago and the most recent budget did not reverse that trend.
The United Kingdom has committed to reaching the 0.7 per cent target, despite having a less robust economy than Canada's, said NDP development critic Helene Laverdiere.
She also said the government has also allowed hundreds of millions of aid spending to lapse that could have gone towards worthy aid programs.
"Those are cuts through the back door," she said.
NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said Bono's 30-minute meeting with his party was positive and focused on the party's development goals, which include a commitment to the 0.7 per cent target.
"One critique he had was the lack of focus on extreme poverty and that's something he said he was going to be pushing the prime minister on," said Dewar.
International Development Minister Christian Paradis said the government was "very happy to welcome a good philanthropist like Bono here" as he touted the government's aid focus on mothers and children.
Paradis said that under Harper's leadership, "we will help to save the lives of 1.3 million children and newborns, as well as more than 60,000 women."
Bono,whose real name is Paul Hewson, last met a Canadian prime minister more than a decade ago, when he and Paul Martin discussed the foreign aid priorities of the time, which included efforts to combat the spread of HIV-AIDS in Africa.
In 2007, Harper declined to meet with Bono at a G8 summit in Germany, saying, "Meeting celebrities isn't my shtick." Harper has since jammed with visiting musicians in Ottawa, including Bryan Adams and Randy Bachman.

http://www.cbc.ca/

Interview with Bono and Larry Mullen Jr.

Jason Rockman from CHOM 97.7 , radio in Montreal, Canada  interviewed Bono and Larry Mullen Jr.

https://soundcloud.com/chom977/u2-interview-with-jason-rockman-from-chom




http://www.chom.com/

'Something We've Never Played Before...'

Another loud, loud  night in Montreal with plenty of special guests in the house including locals Win Butler and Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire and Guy Laliberté of Cirque du Soleil.

'We want to do something that we've never played before. If it goes wrong, blame it on The Edge.' 

Then this.

'Punk rock party in a suburban home
Everybody’s famous here but nobody’s known
We got no music cos the speaker’s blown apart...'
On the 'e'stage, and out of the blue, a surprise debut for 'Lucifer's Hands', one of the Songs of Innocence tracks released only on the Deluxe album, the one with a second disc. The 12th new song to feature in the #U2ie set list to date and can it be long until we hear 'The Crystal Ballroom' ? Funny you should ask, someone was holding up a sign making just that request. 'We'll get to it...' came the singer's response. Another surprise, for another night.

Also starting to demand it's own slot in the show is that transcendent epic from No Line On The Horizon. 
'At the moment of surrender
I folded to my knees
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me...'
Moment of Surrender popped up twice tonight, at the close of Beautiful Day and then during Bad. How long until it's played in full?



One of the biggest moments came with Pride (In The Name of Love) when the screens lit up with the faces of leading activists in Azerbaijan, imprisoned by the authorities for speaking up for human rights. Amnesty International has been banned from the European Games which have just opened in the country.
'Blessed are the freedom makers, sing for Amnesty...
Six friends of ours locked behind bars for the crime of expressing their opinion...
Emin.  Khadija.  Anar.  Leyla.  Rasul.  Intigam ...
'Sing a message of love from a city of love, Montreal...'

http://www.u2.com/

U2 pulls off a few miracles at the Bell Centre

U2 has made a career out of building bridges, and brought a full construction kit to the Bell Centre on Friday for the first of four nights. There was the long-established link between performer and audience that this band holds sacred. There was the prominent span connecting the main stage and a smaller circular platform — an ingenious layout that stretched the full length of the arena and gave the optical illusion of shrinking the room despite the sellout crowd. Then there were the conceptual bridges between innocence and experience (bingo — we have a name for the tour), ragged glory and high-tech eye candy, wordless communion and sociopolitical sermons. It wouldn’t be U2 if there wasn’t some overreaching, but few bands that want it all manage to grasp so much. They’ve maintained an ear for walk-on music and an eye for memorable entrances. Patti Smith’s People Have the Power summarized the quartet’s ideals as concisely as any U2 song could (and with the show starting an hour after the advertised time, they could have brought Patti along to do a support set), fading out just as Bono made a stealth arrival at the back of the room. Gliding from the secondary stage down the catwalk, leading more than 21,000 voices in The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)’s wordless chant, he claimed to hear “the most beautiful sound in the world.” He wasn’t far off. When the full band kicked in, they brought the right hunger to The Miracle’s tale of musical awakening — a hunger that must be incredibly rare when you’ve been at the top of the mountain for decades. The years melted together as the lead cut from last year’s Songs of Innocence segued effortlessly into The Electric Co.’s post-punk convulsion, the Edge’s shock-treatment guitar as unnerving as ever. Bono introduced his cohorts as if this were an opening set by unknowns, and if you closed your eyes, his distressed cries could have come from 1980.


For a while, this looked like it would be the most unadorned production from U2 since they conquered the world with The Joshua Tree. Vertigo was mostly played under a single oversized lightbulb, sent swinging to the rafters with a hard push from Bono. Then Iris (Hold Me Close) — for Bono’s mother, and “pour toutes les mamans” — ushered in a sequence of songs tied to youth in Ireland, and triggered eye-popping projections above the catwalk.

Stretching the length of the bridge between stages, the screens masked another walkway. At times, the bunk-bed setup of paths and the city-block-size images contributed to U2’s most tightly interlocked marriage of sound and vision since the Zoo TV tour melted retinas with 570 channels. A toughened Cedarwood Road found Bono illuminated on the elevated catwalk, pacing against scrolling images of childhood delights and temptations as bassist Adam Clayton and the Edge patrolled below. Song for Someone’s sentimental streak was heightened by animation of Bono as an aspiring artist, playing guitar under posters of Kraftwerk and the Clash.

But the imaginative staging of Invisible — with glimpses of band members only caught through cracks in the graphics — kept everyone glued in place. Until the End of the World’s magic tricks were astonishing, as the Edge perched on a giant close-up of Bono’s hand, but these set pieces must have played poorly for anyone who wasn’t positioned along the length of the screens.


While Bono’s vocals were at perfect pitch throughout the night, the frontman grew roots in much of the first set. His performance was less insular in the second, especially once he brought a guest on stage for Mysterious Ways. Well, if you looked out at your audience and saw a man-mountain decked out in mirror-ball regalia, with a “U2BROTHR” licence plate dangling from his neck, you’d notice him too.

With the band already huddled together on the secondary stage, the new arrival made room by hoisting up Bono and cradling him like a baby mid-song, while the other three didn’t disrupt the slippery groove. If this was some performance-art script, the singer’s disbelieving grin didn’t betray it. Rather than send U2BROTHR back into the general-admission crowd on the floor, he was retained as a cameraman during a celebratory Elevation.

“All this technology … is so we can get closer to our people,” Bono declared. “There is no them — there is only us.” With the new crew hire’s handheld footage beamed onto the screens — and, in a priceless moment, Bono tapping him on the shoulder to request a closeup — this was U2 doing its greatest parlour trick: levelling the barriers between band and audience in an impersonal environment.

Every Breaking Wave enhanced that intimacy, with just Edge on piano and Bono at his most tender. In a masterful segue, the raindrop notes yielded to Bullet the Blue Sky’s thunderclap drums and political drama. As Bono barked “everyone has become an American” and prowled the catwalk with a star-spangled megaphone, one remembered just how unafraid of confrontation this band can be.

Pride’s ringing intro shot a lightning bolt up the spine, as did the “oh oh oh oh” refrain reflected back at Bono by a force of 21,000-plus. “A melody stronger than words,” he said, then offered a whole bunch of words in support of human-rights workers imprisoned in Kazakhstan. His speeches on this night were uncharacteristically studded with ums and ahs, but here he approached statesmanship.

That will serve him well when he meets with federal party leaders in Ottawa on Monday, a trip he trumpeted as he implored the audience to help end mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. If Bono’s “am I bugging you?” sermons are still hard sells for some, it surely helps when the sales pitch is immediately followed by Where the Streets Have No Name. The churchly intro, the staccato propulsion, the genuine need for escape and genuine possibility of salvation — it remains an unbreakable song.

Unbeatable, too, so if you keep going after that, you may as well end on a note of uncertainty. A comparatively subdued finale of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For was introduced as an answer to the question “why are we still here?” More eternally curious and ambitious than dissatisfied, U2 is still here for the right reasons, and hasn’t stopped making connections that elude any number of acts working on a much more human scale.



jzivitz@montrealgazette.com

Denver X 2

'THIRTY TWO YEARS AWAY...YESTERDAY.'

First of two shows in Denver, Colorado as the U2ie Tour leaves the West Coast behind and heads into the heart of America.

It was 32 years ago - and a day -  that there was a little bit of  thunder and lighting in this part of the world and the band were here for another show. That was the night they played Red Rocks and recorded 'Under A Blood Red Sky' their 1983 live album. There's a snippet of John Denver's Rocky Mountain High at the end of Electric Co and Bono still has the memory in mind during Sunday Bloody Sunday, 'Thirty two years away... yesterday.'

There's more past in the present tonight. Adam has been wearing classic punk rock t-shirts on stage for the opening shows but tonights is different, bearing the date 'March 28, 1981'. At the end of the evening the mystery is solved, turns out it marks ‘the first time we came here, mere children’.

'This is the symbol of surrender,' says Bono, holding both arms high during I Will Follow. 'The symbol of the night. From us to you. It's funny how you can't surrender when you have a phone in your hand...'

Anyone catch some background reading to take home tonight? @timneufeld on twitter noticed that 'The Master and Margarita' By Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the books thrown from the stage during Raised By Wolves. 

'Pride (In The Name of Love'), arriving after 'Hands' has taken us out of 'Bullet The Blue Sky' is proving one of the most dramatic moments of the show. Tonight, thanking the people who brought peace to Ireland ('No-one won, that's why everyone won...') there's a special mention for the support of America in the peace process and a shout-out to Gary Hart, one-time Senator and now US Special Envoy To Northern Ireland -  who's in the house tonight.

'THIS IS OUR FIRST SINGLE...'

'We’re a band from the Northside of Dublin. This is our first single. This is Out of Control...'

And the second night in Denver was out of control from then on. Here's some of the highlights.

U2ie opens with the four band members on the stage and it's not until the fifth song that we realise the potential of the huge dividing wall hanging high above the length  of the venue. That moment comes with Iris and this is how Bono introduces it tonight.

'Last night we had a fantastic time but we were really just warming up. Tonight we’re going to use your altitude to get very high…we’re not talking about the mile above sea level high... We're talking about a high as in transcendent. We're gonna change this place into something else with your help. 

'You live in a beautiful city in a beautiful state. We come from a beautiful place too - over the next few songs we're going to try and transport you there, to where we grew up, on the Northside of Dublin because there’s a part of us that’s still there. 

'There’s a part of everyone that stays on the street you grew up on. I remember my bedroom was like my whole universe. And I remember the day when that universe turned cold. When, I was 14 yrs old and my mother Iris left me. But she left me an artist and I thank her for that.

'I have tried to fill the hole she left in my heart with music. 

'If you ask Edge, or if you ask Larry or Adam, everyone has a story as to why we're here. That's mine. This is for beautiful Iris...'

And then there's Iris, lighting up the screen, laughing and joking, playing with friends. And down below the screen, it's a pretty fine performance too. 

Two days after the 32nd anniversary of the Red Rocks show, this second night in Denver finds two tracks being performed for only the second time on this tour. Volcano . 'This is a new one, we've only played this once before..' Another shout-out for Denver here, as Bono explains how two women from the city, Alicia and Ann, were first to come to his aid after his cycling accident in New York last November. They had to be pretty firm with him by all accounts ('Sit back down on your ass!') which he quite took to.

 'Alright this is a song about that little act, in a certain sense, it's called Ordinary Love. Thank you Alicia and Ann, thank you...'

Rare you get the kind of dedication we did for One this evening. Shout out to 'the best crew in the world' and in particular Alastair who works in monitors whose granny lives in Dublin. 'Doris is 105 today. Take care of yourself Doris and thanks for loaning Alastair to us...'

http://www.u2.com/

Radio interview with Adam and Edge

http://www.kprifm.com/

Willie Williams On U2’s Innocence + Experience (Part 1)

U2 is full steam ahead on the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour, playing arenas this time around, rather than the huge stadiums of past tours like 360° and continuing on after the blow of the band manager’s unexpected death last week.

We caught up with creative director Willie Williams for a multi-part interview on working with set designers Es Devlin and Ric Lipson (Stufish), sound designer Joe O’Herlihy, the evolution of this tour design, and designing U2 without the late Mark Fisher.

Live Design: So, given the propensity for you and the band to start early, how long ago did this one start?

Willie Williams: The first meeting of the band and creative team was in March 2013, so the design process was a little over two years. That said, the first conversation I had with Bono about “the next tour” was on the last tour, which tends to be where these things start. Even then, on the 360°  tour, Bono was asking where we should go next and suggested that, in contrast to the 200 trucks of steel, we should start the next show under a single, naked light bulb.

The tour was due to start in the spring of 2014, but, what with one thing and another, ended up being delayed for a year, so we had a very extended design period.


LD: What were your design goals, as well as the band’s?

WW: As ever, this U2 show was borne of dialog with the band. Every U2 tour has had some kind of touchstone from which everything has grown—white flags, The Blues, architecture, a job reapplication, and of course, once it all stemmed from a pair of wraparound shades. On this project, the genesis was narrative. It’s the narrative that runs through the album: the story of four teenagers growing up in ‘70s Dublin looking out of their bedroom windows and trying to figure out how they fit into the often violent and disrupted world outside.

LD: We talked at LDI about this notion of two different shows, alternating nights. Did that happen?

WW: We fully intended to have two different set lists and make it a pair of shows. This idea survived all the way to the beginning of the music rehearsals, at which point it became apparent that it wasn’t really viable. I really believe that they could have rehearsed enough songs for two shows, and I would have very much enjoyed being able to delve into the catalog, but the question of which songs would be left out of any given show became too big to get around. The potential upset that a punter buys a ticket for the “wrong” show, depending on their personal taste, began to make it a bit of a minefield.


LD: What is the overall feel of the design?

WW: We appear to have created a mash-up of performance, sound, video, and lighting, some of which I honestly don’t think anyone has been seen before. It’s quite a strange show in some ways, but the arc of it manages to hang together in an unexpected and pleasing way. The centerpiece is this screen-bridge-stage-light-rig hybrid object which at times is the performance area and at other times obliterates the performance area. I say it’s the centerpiece, but for much of the show, we completely ignore it, opting for the most basic rock ‘n’ roll stance imaginable.

At the other extreme, the more theatrical moments combine all of the show elements in a new and entirely modern way. After half an hour of no-bullshit rock ‘n’ roll, a giant double-sided television fills the airspace of the arena. We show some pictures, and then the singer climbs into the television, and we see him in there, physically part of the video images, hanging in the middle of the room. It’s really quite odd but entirely magical.

http://livedesignonline.com/

Bono appeals to the Pope to Continue Working on Debt Campaing

The video message was  released  at Hall of Coldiretti in a meeting organized to reflect on the message of Pope Francis, for the official presentation of the book "Land and Food" of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace department of the Vatican. This appeal was seen at Expo Milano last May

U2 uses tour to highlight police failure to declassify files on Troubles bombings

U2 is dedicating a section of their world tour to a campaign calling on the British government to release classified files regarding the 1974 bombings in Dublin and Monaghan by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

The band play a stripped down version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” towards the end of the first half of the concert. The four band members all march out to the middle of the catwalk lit up in the colors of the Irish flag. Behind them, the screens show photographs of victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings interspersed with news broadcasts of the bombings.

They then lead into “Raised by Wolves” a song written about the events of May 17, 1974 when 4 coordinated car bombings, three in Dublin and one in Monaghan, killed 33 civilians and a full-term unborn child and injured almost 300 people. The bombings were one of the deadliest attacks of the Troubles.

Although the UVF claimed responsibility in 1993, nobody has ever been charged for the bombings and there have been many credible allegations over the years, some from members of the security forces, that members of the British state security forces helped the UVF carry out the bombings.

Due to pressure from the victims’ families, the Irish government conducted an inquiry under Justice Henry Barron. In 2003, Barron’s report found that the Irish police had not properly investigated the bombings and claimed that it was highly likely members of the British security forces were involved in the set-up. There is insufficient evidence to confirm of this involvement because the inquiry was hindered by the British government’s refusal to release key documents regarding the bombings. The victims’ families have campaigned for the documents' release ever since.

All photos shown are with permission of the victims families, with whom U2 is working with on a campaign to release the classified files.

http://www.irishcentral.com/