Bono and Hozier take to Grafton Street for Christmas Eve busk

Bono, Hozier, Glen Hansard, The Script and The Coronas took to Dublin’s Grafton Street this Christmas Eve in what has become an annual busking session for some of Ireland’s biggest musicians.
A large crowd gathered to join in the sing-along outside Dunnes Stores, with many people taking to social media to post photographs and videos.
They kicked it off with Hozier’s hit song Take Me To Church, and followed it with U2’s When Love Comes To Town.



http://www.irishtimes.com/

U2 to donate €2 million from Irish gigs

It's a great day for U2 fans in Ireland, the band have put an end to rumours and speculation and confirmed they will play in both Dublin and Belfast this November.

It's been a saga of will they, won't they, for the past number of weeks and due to the sheer scale of their iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour, there was a real danger U2 where not going to play any live shows in Ireland this year.

Over the weekend The Edge addressed the speculation and assured fans they were doing everything in their power to take their world tour to Ireland and insisted it would be a "huge disappointment" if  it did not happen.
They band have been very vocal that their iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour is only suitable for particular types of venues which gave fear to fans that it would not fit in any indoor arena south of the Irish border.

The Edge added: "This show is designed for a type of venue and unfortunately there isn't one, certainly in the south. I think there might be one in the Belfast area, so we're looking at that as well.

"But you can't invent a venue. It's either there or it isn't. So, we're doing a lot of head-scratching right now to see if we can figure out something."

But now it seems all logistical and staging issues have been surmounted and Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton will take to the stage in Dublin and Belfast this coming November.

The band will play in the SSE Arena in Belfast on 18 and 19 November before four nights at the 3Arena in Dublin on the 23, 24, 27 and 28 November.

The band has announced that €2,000,000 from the concerts will go to Music Generation, Ireland's national music education programme.

Its director, Rosaleen Molloy, said:  "Music Generation would not exist without U2's vision. It was the band's very own personal experience of music education as children and teenagers that has driven their commitment to kick-start this ground breaking project."

"We are extremely grateful to the band for their continued support of children and young people's access to music education in Ireland and we welcome this announcement with enthusiasm and excitement."

http://www.rte.ie/

Ali attended a fundraiser for Chernobyl Children International

Ali Hewson at Liz O Donnell's annual fundraising lunch for Adi Roche's Chernobyl Children International at Fire Restaurant ,Dublin.

As one half of Ireland's most generous power couple, the mum-of-four proved her generosity once again at the Liz Lunch at Mansion House, raising funds for Chernobyl Children International (CCI).

Wearing a ball black ensemble, the brunette beauty led the charge of famous faces out to support charity board director Liz O’Donnell and Adi Roche.

RTE star Kathryn Thomas, wearing an Orla Kiely summer dress, was joined by her boyfriend Padraig McLoughlin, while Morah Ryan took her 2FM DJ daughter Lottie.

Guest MC Lisa Fitzpatrick kept guests entertained and also helped raise funds for the CCI.

The charity's CEO Adi Roche said:

“Thanks to the overwhelming support of everyone here at Liz’s Lunch today, (when put alongside the almost 30 years of work and enduring commitment of thousands of volunteer workers and donors North and South), we will be able to send a team of international paediatric cardiac surgeons to the region in the coming months.

"We are also looking at setting up a dedicated children’s cath lab in the cardiac unit atKharkiv Hospital, Ukraine," she added. This will greatly speed up the scale of the operations and reduce waiting times for these seriously-ill children."

http://www.independent.ie/

U2 contribute to new Irish Hospice Foundation book

Celebrating the "unique relationship" between a man and his child, Sons+Fathers is a new book from the Irish Hospice Foundation with a large number of A-list contributors.

It takes its inspiration from Bono, who has donated drawings of his father towards the end of his life for the anthology. Also offering personal contributions from the world of music will be the other members of U2, Paul McGuinness and his son Max, Paul McCartney, Bob Geldof, Julian Lennon and Gavin Friday.

From film and stage: John Boorman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gabriel Byrne, Neil Jordan, Paul Cusack and Colin Farrell. 

Writers include John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Robert Fisk, Paul Auster, Mick Heaney, Colum McCann, Joseph O’Connor and Salman Rushdie, while Colm Tóibín pens the introduction.

From the political world there are contributions from President Clinton, Alastair Campbell and Bobby Shriver.

Sons+Fathers is set to be published this summer to coincide with Father's Day (Sunday June 21) and proceeds will go towards The Irish Hospice Foundation’s Nurses for Night Care Programme, a service which provides over 1,400 nights of free nursing care at home annually to people with a non-malignant terminal illness.

Irish Hospice Foundation CEO Sharon Foley says:

"Bono planted the seed for this book with his generous gift of the drawing he made of his father when he was dying.  He asked if they could be used to raise money for The Irish Hospice Foundation, so we decided on a book, and the net was cast wide and far. We were blown away by the response and generosity of the participants, all who are very busy, well-known people."

 http://www.hotpress.com

The Edge’s first guitar to be sold at Dublin auction

U2 guitarist learned to play on ‘modest little’ instrument expected to fetch up to €1,800

A classical guitar that launched one of the most successful careers in Ireland’s musical history has turned up at auction.

The “learner’s classical guitar” was originally bought by the late Gwenda Evans, a Malahide primary school teacher, in the 1970s for her son David. He later joined a band called U2, styled himself “The Edge” and became one of the best-known rock guitarists in the world.

But, according to Whyte’s auctioneers in Dublin, “he left his first guitar behind at his mother’s house”.

Teaching colleague

Stuart Purcell, a spokesman for Whyte’s, said “around 1980, when a teaching colleague of Gwenda’s in Scoil Íosa, Malahide [a community school in north Dublin], mentioned that she needed a guitar, as she was beginning lessons, Gwenda offered to sell her The Edge’s old one for the price she had bought it for”.

Mr Purcell said the unnamed woman, who paid about £20, later abandoned the lessons but kept the guitar.

Then, “years later she met The Edge who signed the guitar”.

She has now decided to sell it and consigned it to auction. It will go under the hammer in Whyte’s sale of “Rock, Pop & Movie Memorabilia” in Dublin on March 15th and has been assigned an estimate of between €1,200 and €1,800.

David Evans (53), of Killiney, Co Dublin, and known as The Edge or, simply, Edge, was born in England but moved to Ireland with his family during early childhood.

‘Mrs Edge’

He joined the band which became U2 while a pupil at the Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Clontarf in 1976.

Following the death of Gwenda Evans in 2012, U2’s lead singer, Bono, referred to her as “Mrs Edge” and recalled she was the band’s “first roadie” who had driven the schoolboy rockers to various gigs in her orange Volkswagen car.

In 2007, The Edge donated a cream-coloured Gibson Les Paul guitar to a charity auction in the United States, held to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina, which sold for $240,000.

Whyte’s said that guitar had been regularly used in live U2 performances and had been seen by millions of concert-goers worldwide, whereas the Malahide instrument was “a modest little guitar”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/

Bono back in town...and nursing his injured arm

Bono nurses his injured arm as he walks down Grafton Street in Dublin on Saturday. Photo: Peter O’Doherty


Bono stepped out in Dublin over the weekend for the first time since he had an operation on his arm. 

 The singer underwent surgery after he fell off of a bike in New York last month. He held his arm under a heavy black jacket as he tried to protect the injury from the cold on Grafton Street on Saturday. The fall resulted in three fractures to his left shoulder blade, a fractured little finger and a break to his funny bone that saw the bone fracture in six places and tear through his skin. In total, he needed three metal plates and 18 screws inserted during the lengthy operation. Bono was forced to miss the band's performance at a World Aids Day benefit concert in Times Square, New York, earlier this month. 


http://www.independent.ie/

Bono & Edge in “The Late Late Show” (RTE One)

'It's a strange feeling when the plane comes down and you see the lights of Dublin, a lovely feeling and this show, growing up in Ireland, it's quintessential...'

Edge and Bono were guests of Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show last night - performing acoustic versions of 'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)' and 'Every Breaking Wave'. 


See all the interview here. 


www.u2.com//www.rte.ie/

The sights and sounds of 'Songs of Innocence' - top 10 locations that influenced the evolution of U2

by Ed Power

U2's latest album, Songs Of Innocence, may be their most personal yet. The record is suffused with the sights and sounds of seventies Dublin – to an unprecedented degree, Bono bares his soul as he sings about growing up on the northside of the city, losing his mother at age 14 and the traumas he experienced at a time when Ireland was still a depressive and sometimes violent place.

To mark the LP's release here are some of the locations name-checked on the record as they exist today, alongside several other landmarks that have played a part in U2's story.

Cedarwood Road, Glasnevin

Internet searches for 'Cedarwood Road' are estimated to have increased one gazillion percent since the release of U2's 13th album. "You can't return to where you never left," croons Bono on the brittle dirge of the same name, "It was a war-zone in my teens/I'm still standing on that street."

The singer grew up at number 10 Cedarwood Road, several houses down from life-long friends Gavin Friday and Guggi Rowan (to whom the tune is dedicated). The street hasn't changed much since Bono's adolescence. On radio this week, old neighbours recalled the future global star as a polite young man with a considerate disposition. “I grew up just a few doors literally from the Hewsons," neighbor Bob Conway said. "On Cederwood road we started hearing Bono and the three boys practicing in the garage.”

A memorial to the victims of the Talbot Street bombings

Talbot Street, Parnell Street, South Leinster Street

On May 17 1974, three UVF bombs ripped through central Dublin (a fourth detonated in Monaghan an hour and a half late). Thirty three people were killed, including the mother of an unborn child at term. The atrocity is addressed on the new LP on the track Raised By Wolves.

"On any other Friday I would have been at this record shop, but I cycled to school that day," said Bono in an interview. "The bomb tore apart the street. I escaped but one of my mates was around the corner with his father, and it was a very hard thing for him to witness and I'm not sure he really got over it."

Des Kelly Interiors

The State Cinema, Phibsborough


A cutting edge movie house when it opened in 1954– replacing the beloved Phibsborough Cinema – The State today endures an afterlife as Des Kelley Interiors show-room. In the seventies cinemas often doubled as live music venues. On September 1978 The State hosted a gig by New York punks The Ramones. In the audience, Bono was deeply moved by their passion and work ethic (they toured practically all year). He reflects on the concert, its impact on him as an artist, on The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone), the opening number on Songs Of Innocence.

Mount Temple Comprehensive, Malahide Road, Clontarf

In September 1976, 14-year- old Larry Mullen Jr posted a missive on the notice board at Mount Temple Comprehensive School seeking band-members. Several fellow pupils responded, among them Paul Hewson, Dave Evans and Adam Clayton. U2 were up and running. A rare example of a socially progressive school in an era when Irish education was still in many respects in the dark ages, at Mount Temple students were encouraged to explore their creativity. It remains open today – other past pupils include former Miss Ireland Amanda Brunker and comedian Andrew Maxwell.

60 Rosemount Avenue, Artane

Rosemount Avenue, Dublin

Larry Mullen Jr's family home, it was here the proto-U2 (then without a name) held their first band meeting. In fact it was more 'audition' than meeting. A skilled drummer, it fell to Mullen to decide who was in and who was out. Several neighbourhood friends were politely rejected. Dave Evans and Adam Clayton made the cut (everyone was impressed by Clayton's Afghan coat). Then a slight-looking young man turned up – he couldn't play an instrument and yet everyone was struck by his charisma. "I was in charge for the first five minutes,' Mullen remembered. "As soon as Bono got there, I was out of a job."

The site of the old Dandelion Market in Dublin's city centre

Dandelion Market

In an era when much of Dublin resembled a mouldering bomb-site, the Dandelion Market offered a whiff of cosmopolitan glamour. Opened in 1970, it became a haven for counter culture in the city. You could buy dyed t-shirts, flares, studded leather watch-straps – most anything , in fact, so long as it was legal. In the twilight of its existence the Market became synonymous with U2. Through May and June 1979, the band delivered a six week Saturday afternoon residency. The admission was 50 pence and the shows were all ages, giving many teenagers their first experience of rock and roll. "People talk about these gigs as being legendary," Mullen later recalled. "They were. The Dandelion was where we really hit our stride."The Market had shuttered by end of year, to make way for St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre.

Bonavox Hearing Specialists, North Earl Street

Bonavox, Dublin City Centre

Still in business, this hearing aid store played an unwitting part in the transformation of shy, awkward Paul Hewson into global rock star Bono. In his teens, Bono and friends had a habit of bequeathing absurd nicknames on each other. Early monikers applied to the young Hewson are said to have included 'Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang' and 'Houseman'. It was Gavin Friday who came up with "Bonovox", inspired by the store the teenagers regularly tramped past on their excursions to town. At first Bono rejected the moniker – upon learning Bonavox was latin for 'good voice', he changed his mind.

McGonagle's, South Anne Street, Dublin

The old indie-rock dive off Grafton Street is today a Hackett men's clothing store. U2 played the venue in 1978 and received one of their earliest reviews, from Hot Press journalist Bill Graham. In his write-up, Graham seemed cautiously smitten: "U2 are impressive contenders with the appetite and talent to improve beyond their already creditable status".

Project Arts Centre, East Essex Street

Project Arts Centre, East Essex Street, Temple Bar

In May 1978, Paul McGuinness, a well-heeled Trinity College graduate, was persuaded to attend a Project Arts Centre gig by U2. He wasn't sure about the songs – the band were very much in their 'embryonic' phase. However, he was struck by their enthusiasm and dedication. Accompanying him was Hot Press journalist Graham, who had campaigned for McGuinness to oversee the group's affairs. Last November, after 30 years, McGuinness stepped down as U2 manager.

Sandymount Strand

One of U2's early, iconic photoshoots was on Sandymount Strand, with the 'twin towers' of the Poolbeg Generating Station in the background. Clearly the chimneys meant something to U2 – they would subsequently feature in the video to Pride (In The Name Of Love).

http://www.independent.ie/

Bono’s Dublin: ‘A long way from where I live’

When U2 struggled with their new album they sought inspiration in 1970s Dublin, a place of hidden violence, home to a new-wave music scene and a group of friends who were not yet U2. ‘A lot of sh*t got dragged up,’ says Bono

Sandymount Strand, 1978

Article by Brian Boyd

Bono leans in to my face so our noses are almost touching, and he sings, unaccompanied, “Life begins with the first glance, the first kiss at the first dance, all of us are wondering why we’re here, in the Crystal Ballroom underneath the chandelier . . . We are the ghosts of love and we haunt this place, in the ballroom of crystal lights, everyone is here with me tonight, everyone but you.” It is sean-nós in shades.

“I need to tell you something really weird about this song,” he says. “It’s called The Crystal Ballroom, which used to be the name of McGonagles in South Anne Street [now knocked down]. A whole generation of Dubliners would go to the Crystal Ballroom for dances, and many couples first met there. My mother and father used to dance together in the Crystal Ballroom, so that song I just sang you, which hasn’t been released yet, is me imagining I’m on the stage of McGonagles with this new band I’m in called U2 – and we did play a lot of our important early gigs there. And I look out into the audience and I see my mother and father dancing romantically together to U2 on the stage.”

Bono takes a deep breath and, speaking slowly, says, “I have just realised that my mother died 40 years ago yesterday, and here we are today playing our new album about Dublin, which is about my family and what happened to me as a teenager.
“My mother died when she was at her father’s funeral. She had a cerebral aneurysm. I was only 14. And in this song I am singing, “Everyone is here tonight, everyone but you.” And it’s me wanting to see my mother dance again in the Crystal Ballroom and for her to see what happened to her son.”

All about my mother

We are in a windowless room at Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, in the California town of Cupertino. U2 have just helped launch a range of Apple products, and it has been announced that their new album, Songs of Innocence, is being given to iTunes customers.

The Edge is here too. He flicks through his phone, finds The Crystal Ballroom and presses play. There is silence in the room as it plays. After a long pause a clearly upset Bono whispers, “Her spirit was with us today.”
This new U2 album could be read as Bono’s All About My Mother. The song Iris (Hold Me Close) – Iris is his mother’s name – finds him singing about her untimely death. “The ache in my heart is so much a part of who I am . . . Hold me close and don’t let me go . . . I’ve got your life inside of me . . . We’re meeting up again.”
Standing up and walking around the room, he highlights a lyric in the song. “I sing this verse which has ‘Iris standing in the hall, she tells me I can do it all,’ and then there’s a typical mother’s line when she says to me, ‘You’ll be the death of me.’ But it wasn’t me. I wasn’t the death of her. I was not the death of her.”

“The mother is so, so important in rock music. Show me a great singer and I’ll show you someone who lost their mother early on. There’s Paul McCartney, there’s John Lennon. Look at Bob Geldof and what happened to his mother.
“In hip hop, by contrast, it’s all about the father – being abandoned by the father and being brought up by a single mother. But for me it’s all about the mother. I had rage and grief for my mother. I still have rage and grief for my mother. I channelled those emotions in music, and I still do. I have very few memories of my mother, but all of them are in the song Iris.”


Bono’s mother saw him sing on stage only once, before U2, but Bono has said that if he could relive just one moment in his life he would go back to singing in front of his mother for the first time.

As a 14-year-old, Bono – then just plain Paul Hewson – had strained relationships with his brother, Norman (eight years his senior), and his father, growing up on Cedarwood Road, in Glasnevin, in north Dublin, after his mother’s death.
With no mother, Bono would find himself knocking on the doors of his neighbours: the Rowens at lunchtime, the Hanveys at teatime. Derek Rowen would become the artist Guggi. Fionán Hanvey would become the musician Gavin Friday, of the Virgin Prunes.
In the new song Cedarwood Road Bono talks about the cherry blossom tree in the Rowens’ garden. “I was looking for a soul that’s real. Then I ran into you, and that cherry blossom tree was a gateway to the sun.” In the Dublin suburbs of the 1970s, Bono says, the cherry blossom tree “seemed to be the most luxurious thing”.
The Edge then pitches in, talking in some detail about Dublin City Council’s policy on cherry blossom trees. How he knows this I can’t imagine.

Finglas, Cabra, the SFX

Songs of Innocence sees U2 trying to reconnect with the teenage kicks of late-1970s Dublin and its new-wave musical scene, which centred around McGonagles, the Dandelion Market and odd forays to the SFX or out to the Top Hat, in Dún Laoghaire.

“It’s us trying to figure out why we wanted to be in a band in the first place, the relationships around the band and our first journeys – geographically, spiritually and sexually. It was tough and it took years. Put it this way: a lot of sh*t got dragged up,” says Bono.

With songs about Finglas, going to see the Ramones play at the Cabra Grand and taking the bus into College Green to see The Clash play at Trinity College, this album seems decades apart from their last one. And in a way it is.

When Bono talked to The Irish Times around the release of No Line on the Horizon, in 2009, he took this reporter into the study of his Dalkey home, opened the windows and showed off his view of the Irish Sea, a vista in which no line was visible on the horizon – that day anyway. Ireland’s recession was going from bad to brutal, and a multimillionaire rock star was calling an album after the sumptuous view he enjoyed every day.

But the image that went around the world this week from the Cupertino launch party was very different: a paper-clad vinyl album done up to mimic the look of the band’s first release, in 1979, the U2 Three EP.

The fifties club! Bono, Sean Penn and Julian Lennon enjoy a boys' night out in Dublin

Bono leaves Cleaver East in Clarence Hotel, Dublin, where he dined with pals Sean Penn and Julian Lennon wearing his trademark tinted glasses

They're in Ireland for some high-powered political talks.

But U2 frontman Bono and Hollywood star Sean Penn, 53, made sure there was space in the diary for a boys' night out and were joined by musician Julian Lennon, 50, for supper and drinks in Dublin on Friday night.

The trio headed to the smart Cleaver East eaterie in the Clarence Hotel in Temple Bar, formerly owned by the Bono and his musician mate The Edge, until they both stepped down as directors last year.

Sated and content, they then sauntered off to Bagots Hutton Wine Bar for drinks and to chat some more into the early hours.In his signature tinted shades, Bono, 53, looked smart in a black velour jacket with long sleeves, black trousers and shiny shoes.

He wore a V-neck jumper and chain and sported a sprinkling of fresh facial hair around his chin.

It's a boys' night: Sean Penn (left) left girlfriend Charlize Theron back home in LA and joined U2's Bono and musician pal Julian Lennon (right) at Cleaver East in the Clarence Hotel where they had supper

The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty star Sean Penn, who was in town as the guest of honour at the Front Line Defenders Awards, looked every inch the scruffy Hollywood star in a leather jacket, baggy jeans and scuffed walking boots.

He made a low-key appearance in the Irish capital without his A-lister girlfriend, Academy award winner Charlize Theron, who stayed at their LA home.

Musician Julian, the only child of Beatles' John Lennon and Cynthia Powell, joined the pair looking equally sombre in black woollen coat and boots.

Let's shake on a great night! Bono thanks the doorman at Clarence Hotel before heading off to Bagots Hutton wine bar

Meanwhile, Bono was back on home turf to address the European People’s Party in Dublin.
Bono addressed the centre-right leaders - including German chancellor Angela Merkel - at the summit of Fine Gael’s European affiliate.
He told the summit: 'I want to give an enormous, enormous shout out. The biggest shout out I have in my heart, to the Irish people for coming through. I’d love to say it was the Troika but I think it was despite the Troika. The Irish people bailed the Irish people out,' he said.


Bono attended the event on foot with EPP leaders as part of his ongoing dialogue with global leaders.
He was a representative of the One campaign against extreme poverty, a group which argues that it is crucial for European leaders to introduce measures to make it more difficult to move money secretly around the world.

The One campaign believes money secretly moved from sub-Saharan Africa through the financial system amounts to some €38.6bn per year, greater than the €29.8 billion the region receives in developmental aid from wealthy western countries.

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

Bono to address EPP summit on Europe’s role in world

U2 singer invited to speak by Taoiseach Enda Kenny

U2 singer Bono will address centre-right leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel at today’s summit in Dublin of the European People’s Party, Fine Gael’s European affiliate.

Bono will attend the event on foot of an invitation from Taoiseach Enda Kenny and speak on Europe’s role in the world. He will stress that his engagement with EPP leaders is non-partisan politically and part of his ongoing dialogue with global leaders.

“For all this progress, for all these achievements, nearly 60 years after the Treaty of Rome, Europe is an economic entity that still needs to become a social entity,” he will say. “Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling.”

Bono will attend as a representative of the One campaign against extreme poverty, a group which argues that it is crucial for European leaders to introduce measures to make it more difficult to move money secretly around the world.

The One campaign believes money secretly moved from sub-Saharan Africa through the financial system amounts to some €38.6bn per year, greater than the €29.8 billion the region receives in developmental aid from wealthy western countries.

Bono will call at the EPP meeting for action in European law to introduce public registers of the ownership of “phantom firms” and off-shore companies and trusts.

“Right now your ministers . . . and your members of the European Parliament. are working on another law that could help transform the lives for the poor, and the rest of us, too,” he will say.

“It’s a law to inject daylight into the financial system to stop corrupt monies vanishing to ‘safe’ havens and combat money laundering.”

He’s also expected to praise recent initiatives to foster transparency in the trading of minerals, and say that the European politicians did something remarkable last year by passing laws which mean that “wealth under the ground” is more likely to benefit citizens of countries which are resource rich yet economically poor.

“Legislation that requires oil, gas, and mining companies to tell us how much money they pay to governments in countries – mostly poor countries – where they operate,” he will say.

“The values bound up in the legislation are justice, fairness and responsibility to stop playing our part in this corruption.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/

http://www.one.org

ACTIONS.SPEAK.LOUDER.

Bono and Edge's Unnoticed Visit

U2 exhibition at The Little Museum of Dublin

Apparently not everyone in Dublin recognises Bono and Edge. This is what happened at The Little Museum of Dublin: 

Rock stars usually arrive with a bang. But when Bono and The Edge decided to visit our new exhibition about the story of U2, they turned up unannounced – and we failed to recognize the stars!

Bono and The Edge – arguably the two most famous Dubliners alive today – made their way up to the third floor of the museum to visit a new exhibition that celebrates the success of the band over the last four decades. 

The exhibition has drawn record crowds to the Little Museum, and it’s thought that the stars may have been confused for particularly eager fans.

U2 at the Little Museum

Bono and the Edge visited the museum over Christmas, but it was only last week that their autographs were discovered in our visitors book. The signatures were then authenticated by Professor Scott Calhoun, an expert on the band and one of the curators of our exhibition.

“Awesome!” is Bono’s verdict on the exhibition, which features never-seen photography, a Trabant designed by Maser, many rare recordings and a life-size statue of, eh, Bono.

According to our director Trevor White, “We’d like to say everyone was too cool to acknowledge the presence of Bono and the Edge. The truth is that we didn’t recognize them. They must have come the morning after our Christmas party.”

“It wasn’t the welcome we were hoping to give them,” says museum curator Simon O’Connor, “but at least they liked the exhibition.” U2: Made in Dublin remains on view at the Little Museum of Dublin.

If you visit Dublin, this is a must-see!!!

The museum is open 9.30-5pm seven days a week, with late opening until 8pm on Thursdays.

The Little Museum is on the first floor of 15 St Stephen’s Green, on the north side of the Green, near the corner of Dawson Street,  three minute walk from Trinity College.

Update video:

http://www.littlemuseum.ie/

No sign on the horizon... as U2 tower won't get go-ahead

An artist's impression of the U2 Tower Design.

THE much-hyped U2 Tower has been binned by Dublin City Council.

The plan for Dublin's Docklands was conceived during the boom, but the local authority admits there is no "realistic opportunity" of developing it. In 2007, the Geranger Ltd consortium – which included developer Patrick McKillen and Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen – beat four other tenders.

The tower was to be the tallest building in the country. The design included an egg-shaped recording studio, suspended from a 600ft luxury apartment block. The pod studio was to dangle beneath a battery of wind turbines and a huge solar panel. The proposals have been on hold since the crash five years ago. And Dublin city planner Dick Gleeson has now told councillors they are unlikely to go ahead. He was commenting on new plans for development within the Docklands. The council believes up to 30,000 jobs and thousands of new homes could be created there in the coming years. Despite years of intensive construction in the vicinity, much of the land remains undeveloped.

In the heady days of the boom, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) gave the go-ahead to the U2 Tower on Britain Quay in Dublin 2. But Mr Gleeson told councillors: "We're saying there isn't a realistic opportunity of developing the U2 Tower ... at this stage."

However, the council, which was appointed lead agency by Environment Minister Phil Hogan to help restart construction projects in the Docklands, believes there is room for a skyscraper. Mr Gleeson said: "We're suggesting there still is an opportunity to provide some landmark height, but that could be up to the height of Liberty Hall, say 60 metres."

The areas to be targeted in the latest development plans are the North Lotts and Grand Canal Dock on either side of the Liffey.

comurphy@herald.ie

http://www.herald.ie

The world’s most famous Northsider

'Finglas – A People’s Portrait' shows how the area’s stereotypical image of a troubled suburb is only one side of its story. The Northside People is proud to bring you edited extracts from the book.

IT’S safe to say he’s Finglas’s most famous former resident. Yet Ballymun also claims him as one of their own. So where exactly is Bono from?

“Oh that’s a very, very deeply upsetting and divisive question. There was a load of rows on Cedarwood Road about that very fact, because when we moved to Cedarwood Road everyone was saying we lived in Ballymun.

“Then at some point, I think when the seven towers were built and had built a reputation, some of the snobs around wanted to say, ‘no, no, no we’re from Finglas.’ So I asked my dad, who worked in the postal service, and he said, believe it or not, one part of the road is Ballymun and one part of the road is Finglas, so you can say what you like.”

Born in 1960, Paul Hewson was the younger of two boys. His mother, Iris, and father, Brendan Robert, who was known as Bob, both grew up on the Oxmanstown Road, near the Phoenix Park. They married in 1950 and lived in Stillorgan for a time before moving to Finglas just weeks after their second son was born.

From the age of three, Paul befriended neighbour Derek Rowen. From then on they did everything together, including later changing their names to Bono and Guggi.

It was on the streets of Finglas in their teenage years that Bono, Guggi and a new member of their gang, Gavin Friday, first changed their names. Their assumed identities was just one aspect of the surrealist group they formed called Lipton Village, something they used to embrace their somewhat outcast status.

“To balance the joy and the fun that I had growing up there was definitely always a threat of violence. That’s just a fact. I would say it to my Dad later and he would say, ‘I don’t remember that at all.’

“There was another life. There was a whole other thing going on because teenage boys are full of testosterone. Humour. I do remember a lot of humour, even though there were some people around who you’d have to dodge.

“Maybe they couldn’t stand us because we were laughing at them behind their backs, because that was our revenge. Our revenge was humour and we developed a whole sort of surreal way of seeing the world which was sort of part Monty Python and part the Mighty Boosh before the Mighty Boosh was invented.”

The friendship they forged and their collective love of music would eventually make the trio among Finglas’s most famous exports. But during their early years the local celebrity was puppet maker and Wanderly Wagon star Eugene Lambert, who lived around the corner on Sycamore Road. “The first autograph I ever got was Eugene’s. I knocked on the house. I don’t know why, we were just messing, sure kids. But I loved that they were there.”

Less than a decade later, when Bono’s band U2 hit the big time, the tables were turned.

“The first time I did the Late Late show, I came back and went to Superquinn in Finglas and I was mobbed for the first time. I’d love to tell you they were gorgeous teenage girls that were mobbing me, but it was a load of old dears who’d seen the Late Late show and who wanted my autograph.”

It wasn’t Bono’s first memorable encounter with Superquinn. At around the age of 15 he got his first proper job in the supermarket.

“I don’t think I did very well. They weren’t very happy with my performance. I just remember very long hours, like ridiculously long hours, seven in the morning ‘til nine at night, for very little pay.

“This was starting to bother me, so I said I’ll go and talk to whoever it was in Superquinn and say, listen these hours are a bit mad for the money. Maybe you could think about upping the money or downing the hours.

“I went in and they said, ‘Ah yeah, thanks for coming in and we’ve been wanting to speak to you, you’re fired.’ I had a Raleigh Chopper, which was a fairly posh bike, it was a second-hand one. It was parked in the dairy and I was so annoyed that I got on the bike, imagining myself to be Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and cycled through the shop and out the automatic doors.”

Bono’s mother died in 1974, when he was just 14 years of age. He continued to live with his father until 1982 when he married his girlfriend Alison Stewart. U2’s first two albums, Boy and October, were written while he was still living in Finglas.

Dalkey is now the place he, his wife and four children call home. But Bono says he still has friends in, Finglas, and returns to the area at Christmas. He says he is impressed by the changes he sees.

“It’s very beautiful. It’s grown into itself and it’s beautiful now and seems so much more organised and much more sophisticated.

“Cedarwood Road has lost that brand spanking new feel, but it’s weathered well and it feels like a really easy neighbourhood to be in.”

Bono is now a global superstar, one of the world’s best-known musicians and one of the most politically influential figures of his era. He says that Finglas played a big part in the person he became.

“I can’t imagine it any other way. The way you see the world is shaped way before you go into the world. It’s shaped through the way you see a community. It’s shaped through the way you see a street.

“Your relationships on those streets are, you know, you will always behave in a similar fashion when you move out. I live comfortably all over the world and people say it’s incredible that you really are a ‘wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home’ person.

“I love being at home. I love being at home with Ali and I love being at home with the kids, but I am partly that because of the way I grew up in Finglas or Ballymun or whatever you want to call it.

“Sleeping on a couch, or because my mother died when I was a kid I was in the house on my own a lot of time, so I’d knock on the door of the Hanvey’s at tea time, you know, or the Rowen’s at lunchtime.

“I’ve just become that person who is comfortable wherever I am, through that. It might be London, it might be New York, but that ability to feel comfortable where I am was definitely instilled in me on Cedarwood Road.”

• This is an edited extract from Finglas – A People’s Portrait. The full text of the interview with Bono can be read in the book, which is available in all good bookshops.

http://www.dublinpeople.com

U2 back in town with wall-to-wall support at studio

Bono checks out U2 fans' graffiti at their Hanover Quay studio in Dublin yesterday

U2 were back in town yesterday to record part of the band's newest studio album at their Hanover Quay studio.

U2 frontman Bono was spotted signing autographs for fans outside the band's Dublin studio, where many of their best-selling albums were recorded after the band bought the studios in the early 1990s.

He even took time to pose next to some of the graffiti left on the studio walls by fans of the band.

He later attended the opening of an exhibition of art by his niece, Leah Hewson, at the KTcontemporary gallery in Donnybrook.

www.independent.ie