U2 # 40 : U2 Special Front Row -BBC Radio 4

U2 Special.

Their first performance was in the school gym. They can now command the biggest arenas around the globe and the attention of world leaders.

John Wilson meets all four members of U2 in their Dublin rehearsal studio, where they reveal their working methods and guitarist The Edge demonstrates his distinctive sound. Singer Bono discusses his political activism, including his encounters with President Bush, while fellow band members Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton offer their own views on Bono's campaigning and consider how he balances his two careers.

Listen to the broadcast here.

Rare U2 recordings from 1980 go up for auction

A rare U2 live recording and audio from an interview are set to go up for auction.

The recordings come from an early concert from the band, which took place at the Vera venue in Groningen, Holland on October 16, 1980. The live recording is made up of four songs, and the previously unheard interview audio is 15 minutes long and consists of frontman Bono and guitarist The Edge discussing their plans for the band. 

Stockport's Omega Auctions have said that the interview includes quotes from the pair in which they say: "We don't like England". They also show their ambitions for the group, commenting: "U2 wanna be the biggest group in the world." In addition they add their thoughts on the United States, saying: "America is sick and wounded and has a lot of bad groups".

The sale takes place on May 30 and the recordings are expected to sell for £1,000. The recordings also come with previously unpublished photos, shown above, which come complete with copyright, as does the interview audio. However, the live recording is being sold as an artefact and is therefore for personal use only. 

A spokesperson for U2 recently denied that the band have pushed back the release date of their 13th studio album to 2015. Investigations by Billboard suggested that the band would now be releasing their new LP next year. It reported that the band had booked further studio time with producers Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder, who would join the project's main producer Danger Mouse. 

Speaking to The Guardian, a spokesperson for the band flatly denied the claims, saying: "U2's album is planned for this year (2014), is still on track and touring plans haven’t been confirmed yet."

http://www.nme.com/

'Give And Take'

“We give something to the crowd and they give us something back,” says Bono. “Everyone pushes themselves until they sweat – and through that, a type of force or power is created by the people."

North Side Story is the definitive account of the emergence of U2 in Dublin in the 1970's and early '80's. Along with a unique catalogue of interviews and reviews from Hot Press magazine, the book features a series of profiles from influential European music titles  - including this one from Germany's Music Express in 1982.

It was by far the biggest gig that U2 had undertaken as headliners. Rather than doing two nights in the National Stadium in Dublin – scene of the triumphant gig, which had secured a deal for them with Island Records – the band had decided to up the ante significantly with a show in the Main Hall in the RDS. It was a statement of intent that this was a band that could fill big venues and make it work. That was the spirit in which Island Records issued an invitation to Steve Lake to travel to Dublin to see their hottest young charges in action for German magazine Musik Express. The writer, Steve Lake, was quartered in one of the most obviously jerry-built hotels in the city, which may well have aˆffected his mood somewhat. As it turned out, his view of Dublin was far folksier than would have seemed right to Irish eyes at the time. Nor was he entirely sold on U2. No matter....

'As the plane drifts towards Ireland, green meadows can be seen through the window. Farmland stretches to the horizon: rectangular fields, dark patterns marked by the plough. Has it ever been different here? A voice sounds through the speaker: any passengers, who came in contact with farm animals over the past week, please register with the Department of Health after landing. The honest farmers form a queue, as Airport Security checks our luggage, filled with the cameras, tape-recorders and other equipment needed for our work. I feel like a visitor from outer space. 

And when Dublin tries to meet the so-called demands of our so-called lifestyle, something doesn’t quite fit. We pitch our tents at the Stillorgan Park Hotel, an unimpressive cluster of imitation Art-Deco bars and discos. Tears form in our eyes at the sight of this imposing debris, in what is a barren residential area.

In the bar, the Coconut Grove, waitresses clad in tiger-print numbers bring cocktails to our table, which is situated between two Palm Trees. And although the drinks have exotic and decadent names – “Miss, can I have a multi-storey Coconut on ice?” – their efforts to impress us are in vain. The highlight of the afternoon comes when Alan Bangs spots a giant canister of rat poison in the restaurant. In town, however, things look a whole lot different. Dublin comes to the fore. There are travellers out on the street. The bookshops are overflowing with Irish literature and an avalanche of religious works. The range of rock’n’roll LPs in record stores is nothing when compared with the volume of trad records. Guinness on tap magically fills the pubs with life. The real Dublin seems self-sufficient, as if it has its own sense of time, different to that of its neighbour England, yet in no way inferior. 

A change of scenery. We find ourselves in the Main Hall of The RDS, where I meet a mass of Irish kids, who have come to pay respect to their hometown heroes. The band’s manager whispers something about ‘six and a half thousand’ in my ear. Although it doesn’t look like that many to me, the number is not important: I am intrigued instead by how unusually dressed the crowd is for a Rock ‘n’ Roll show. At first I’m not sure how or why: then I see it. Or rather, I see nothing. No colour, no fashion. Hair that is not particularly long, nor particularly short. And clothing? There’s almost nothing but Levi’s for the working masses and teeshirts all round, on men and women alike. Which is refreshing after seeing nothing but Phil Oakey fringes in The Rainbow when Human League played there in December.

In this respect, the support acts – Jump Iceland and Some Kind of Wonderful – hardly distinguish themselves from the audience. They look as though they’ve come directly from working in a dockyard, a building-site or a bakery. Something similar could also be said about U2, had I not heard by chance how bassist Adam Clayton had ordered silk pyjamas from the band’s fashion advisor, Jenny something-or-other. I guess that U2 have somewhat cultivated their radical chic: however, I won’t judge them for that. It is showbiz after all; contact with a different world has clearly rubbed off on the band. However, as soon as The Edge, the creative guitarist of U2, plays the opening chord, the crowd is electrified, moving in rhythm just like football fans: a remarkably open-minded response to a remarkably dramatic entrance from the band. That is what the band’s singer Bono calls ‘a question of give and take’. 

“We give something to the crowd and they give us something back,” he says later. “Everyone pushes themselves until they sweat – and through that, a type of force or power is created by the people. I believe that’s important, because there’s so much BULLSHIT out there – so much highly polished, heartless music, like the cover of fashion magazines.” 

“It’s like with the synth-bands, they say: ‘The world is coming to an end – and we’ll watch it go down’. That’s what I fight against. We try to fight against this mood of impending doom, against this encroaching music of the dead.” And so they begin with ‘Gloria’ – not Van Morrison’s wonderful proto-punk song but their own composition. And just like many of Morrison’s works, there are mystical and religious undertones in the U2 song. On ‘With A Shout’, Bono blabbers something about a new Jerusalem, while ‘Rejoice’, a song about laughing in the face of destruction and “buildings tumbling down” invokes a near Buddhist mindset: “I can’t change the world/ But I can change the world in me.” 

I have a weakness for the same feeling. To try and change the gears of the cosmos, however awkwardly – that seems to me to be a job most suited to artists. The bottom line here is something more remarkable than the triviality of dishwashing or job centres, which a lot of the New Wave outfits seem to dwell on. Although U2 hardly approach religion with the same sensitivity as Van Morrison, let alone James Joyce or Yeats, the fact is that the attempt alone shows an awareness of their heritage, in a land where they have had to deal with conflicts over religion for centuries. To make their feelings of nationality clear to every last person, U2 unveil a bagpiper for ‘Tomorrow’. The instrument delivers an incredibly fluid, bellowing drone. It’s a shame that the group can’t use the instrument on all their songs. Beyond their handful of truly inspired songs, U2’s music is difficult to analyse. This is partly because they are not yet fully developed and partly because their direction, though apocalyptic, in the end appears – at least to this listener – to be somewhat flat and forced.

In the beginning, in their enthusiasm, the band play overexcitedly. They exhibit a wildness, which can’t be surpassed later. This is an old problem in rock music. Someone once wrote that the most exciting moment at a concert by The Who is when they arrive on stage – from then on, it’s all downhill. I think the analogy is interesting, because U2 could be the next Who. They fill a vacuum in contemporary pop music. Hip music critics crave a scene led by the likes of The Lounge Lizards or Red Crayola, but that could never work in commercial terms. U2 hit all the right notes, delivering a reasonable illusion of unrestrained energy and absolute force – and the listener doesn’t need to read the well known music magazines to understand what the band represents.

Considering their relatively conservative sound, U2 could have worked equally well in the ‘60s as they do in the ‘80s: it is a quality that makes them more marketable. The 16-year-old kids in The USA, whose support guarantees that concerts by The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead are sold out, need a band of their own generation, with whom they can identify. U2, who make old-fashioned music (this is not at all a negative characteristic), could really bridge this gap. The band was formed five years ago, in an experimental school in Dublin, when Bono, The Edge, drummer Larry and bassist Adam discovered their common interests in music: you guessed it, The Stones and The Who. 

At this remarkably enlightened educational institute – Ireland’s first inter-denominational school – teachers support the founding of bands, even so far as giving them use of rehearsal rooms. Nonetheless, things moved slowly in the beginning. Still today, U2 willingly admit that The Edge is the only musician in the band. Adam is, measured by modern standards, just an average bassist and Larry is a workable yet primitive drummer. Bono would be an interesting singer, had the songs an interesting structure. 

“Had you heard us four years ago,” Bono says, “then you’d have really laughed. I was supposed to be the guitarist at the start, but because I couldn’t manage that, I became the singer.

“Still today, our rhythm section is highly unusual,” he adds, “because we have a bassist who is unable to clap in time, never mind playing the bass. But as we began, we decided: ‘Good. It’s about who you are, not how you play – and we’ll get through it all together’. And then to witness how Adam became a musician – he’s at least halfway there! What really scared me, during the last tour, was that he even learnt to dance.” 

“In U2, we measure ourselves by our own unique standards,” he adds. “Our scale is what we expect of our music. We want nuances of feeling to come through. We want to broaden the medium and we want to use the colour palette of bass, guitar and drums to the maximum. We want to convey not just feelings of happiness, naturally; and not just feelings of anger, although they do play a part. But when I see a certain mentality in pop acts, The Exploited for example, who come along with such a violent attitude, it really gets me wound up. You know that it’s nothing more than a pose.

 “I know violence,” Edge states. “I grew up beside it. Fifty miles from here, people bled to death on the streets. And then they try to sell violence as an image, as a cheap little trick. That’s just amoral. “It’s always somehow frightening, the fanaticism a band can cause, isn’t it? I’d really like to believe that we couple our influence with a sense of responsibility – and that the people who come to our concerts get rid of their aggression in a positive way, that they don’t go back out onto the streets filled with hate.” 

(First published: Musik Express, Germany, April 1982)

Commissioned from the Hot Press team in Ireland, North Side Story  covers six formative years from 1978 to 1983, from the first single, 'U23', to the live album, Under A Blood Red Sky.  Running to 274 pages, this heavyweight book of rare photos, original interviews, diaries, letters and profiles comes with 'North & South Of The River, Wandering In U2's Dublin', a poster-size map charting U2's Dublin.

http://www.u2.com

'Starting From Scratch'

North Side Story, the definitive account of the emergence of U2 in Dublin, is a limited edition publication which comes with a U2.com subscription.  Among the scores of revealing interviews is one with Paul McGuinness and in this extract he recalls his earliest days in the music business - and first meeting U2. 

'I first got involved in the music business managing Spud, who I suppose were a kind of a poor man’s Horslips. This was in the mid ‘70s. They didn’t write their own songs. They did bluegrass and a bit of trad, which was never going to be easy to sell internationally. Initially they didn’t have a drummer and that meant that they were only able to do cabaret gigs and pub gigs – so there was no future in that. And so when I started to manage them I encouraged them to get a drummer, which was pretty obvious really. But it meant that they could do concerts and it helped me to get them gigs outside Ireland.

One important thing I learned managing Spud was this. They were about the same age as I was. They were in their mid twenties and they had started to get married and have kids and so their attitude to touring was pretty limited and lacking in ambition. They didn’t want to spend too much time on the road. They needed to get home and be with their families. And so I realised that at 25 or 26 or whatever, they were too old to make it. It needed a level of commitment that they couldn’t give. One place where we did get a bit of traction with Spud was Sweden. That was a little bit to do with the exchange rates, so that you could actually go there and make a bit of money. And so for a while I became a sort of agent, booking tours in Sweden. I also managed the Thom Moore band, Midnight Well, but I knew they were never going to be a really big band internationally. So I was always looking for something else, ideally a baby band, with youth on their side, that you could start with from scratch and aim to take over the world with.

I always felt that the Horslips model was a good one. I knew the guys in the band and their manager Michael Deeney was a friend of mine. What they did in business terms was very significant. They based themselves in Ireland and had their own record label – and so they controlled the recordings and they licensed the records for release outside Ireland. So they showed that a band could be based in Ireland and run their operation from here, which was what we eventually did with U2. When the punk thing started to happen in the UK, The Boomtown Rats came along and they were very determined to get out of Ireland as quickly as they could. They were very aggressive in their approach to getting a deal. They were very good at generating publicity and at selling themselves, so there was a lot to be learnt from them. So I was observing the business and how it operates – and doing things like reading Billboard magazine. And all the time, I was on the lookout for a young band that

would have the potential to become internationally successful.

U2, of course, were very young when they started out. They formed at Mount Temple which was a very liberal school in terms of its music policy. The music teacher there Albert Bradshaw was a remarkable man and they actually encouraged bands to play. The most important thing, I would say, was that they allowed the band to rehearse there, which was of huge significance, because a place to rehearse is the hardest thing for a young band to find. They won that talent competition in Limerick – at which Jackie Hayden was one of the judges. And the prize included studio time to do a demo, which they recorded in Keystone Studios. So they had begun to make things happen.

Adam had been managing the band up to that point and he got Bill Graham of Hot Press along to one of their rehearsals, I’m not sure where. They played some songs, which Bill immediately spotted were Ramones songs, which was a bit embarrassing! But he was impressed all the same. It is well documented that it was Bill who subsequently introduced me to the band and told me that I was going to manage them. The first time I saw them was in the Project Arts Centre, in June of 1978, supporting a band called The Gamblers – who as it happens were managed by my 16 year old sister Katy. I didn’t like to say it to her, but U2 were clearly the better band.

What struck me most about U2 that night was that they had presence. They weren’t shy in the way a lot of Irish bands were shy. The Radiators From Space had come through a little bit earlier – they were sponsored to an extent by Eamon Carr of Horslips. But they were rather shy and quiet. U2 were very different in that respect. Bono was always at the front of the stage, trying to engage with the crowd, getting them to look into his eyes. And even if they were a bit unsophisticated at that point, they had an energy and a confidence about them. They looked like a proper band on stage. And when I spoke to them, I could see immediately that they were smart. They were ambitious. And they knew that you had to work hard if you were going to become successful. And they were prepared to do that, in a way that a lot of other bands weren’t.  

They were also interested in every aspect of the process. They were interested in photography. They were interested in design. And so they were good at finding people who could become collaborators. Steve Averill, who of course had given them their name,  was working with them. And though Bill Graham wasn’t a collaborator as such, he was a very big influence at that stage. So they were very intelligent and tuned in. They wanted to know how everything worked. I started to manage them that night – at least I told them that night that I would and we spent a few months skirting around one another trying to work out who was going to do what and whether we were on the same wavelength. And, it turned out, we were.'

Commissioned from the Hot Press team in Ireland, North Side Story  covers six formative years from 1978 to 1983, from the first single, 'U23', to the live album, Under A Blood Red Sky.  Running to 274 pages, this heavyweight book of rare photos, original interviews, diaries, letters and profiles comes with 'North & South Of The River, Wandering In U2's Dublin', a poster-size map charting U2's Dublin. 

http://www.u2.com/

North And South Of The River

Drawn From Memory: Wandering in U2's Dublin is the subtitle of 'North And South Of The River', a beautiful wall map that visualises the story of U2 in their home city over thirty years. It comes with North Side Story, part of our annual subscription offer.

Drawn by Shaughn McGrath, of the band's longtime design team AmpVisual, the map captures 44 events in the life of the band, locating them in an entirely not-drawn-to-scale way which would leave you lost and confused in Dublin if you used it to navigate the city. 

PINBOARD WIZARD

In September 1976, Larry Mullen Sr suggested to Larry Mullen Jr that he put up a notice at Mount Temple Comprehensive school, looking for musicians to form a band. Seven pupils got in touch, including Dave and Dik Evans, Adam Clayton and Paul Hewson.

LARRY MULLEN BAND

Rosemount Avenue, Artane: ‘On Saturday 25th September 1976, this odd group of people convened in my kitchen in Artane. And that’s where it started. It was the Larry Mullen Band for about ten minutes, so as not to hurt my feelings. It was also my kitchen.’

ART HOUSE

Derek Rowen, later Guggi of the Virgin Prunes, lived at No. 5 Cedarwood Road. Paul Hewson, later Bono of U2, was just along at No.10. ‘Down the cul de sac’, at No. 140, lived Fionán Martin Hanvey, later Gavin Friday of the Virgin Prunes. ‘Bono and Guggi knew each other since they were four,’ recalls Gavin, ‘but I wasn’t mates till I was 12.’ No.5 became HQ for the cultural experiment that was Lypton Village. ‘We invented our own language,’ recalls Bono. ‘Dressed differently, put on these performance art things and, in the end, formed two bands, the Virgin Prunes and U2.’

MONDAYS AT FRIDAYS

Monday night was music night at 140 Cedarwood Road where teenage mates gathered around what Gavin recalls was ‘a proper stereo and the latest record collection’.

LIKE A SONG

Ard Na Mara, in the coastal suburb of Malahide, where Adam grew up, is where the band first rehearsed, where Bono wrote his first song and where a photo shoot for the first single - ‘Out of Control/U2-3’ - took place in the attic. Rehearsals then moved across Malahide, to the garden shed of the Evans family home, on St. Margaret’s Park.

http://www.u2.com/

Collectors set to flock to Ireland’s first ever rock and pop memorabilia auction

A pop and rock memorabilia auction in Dublin at the weekend includes rare acetate and vinyl records, autographs, photographs and other items from artists including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, U2 and Rory Gallagher.

Organised by Whyte’s Auctioneers, the 200 lots – due to go under the hammer at the RDS on Sunday – span 60 years of international and Irish pop and rock ’n’ roll. Almost all the items were sourced in Ireland.


An original copy of the first press mention of U2 in the Evening Press in March 1978, when the band was known as U2 Malahide, is estimated at €500-€700. All the names of the band members are misspelled in the photo caption apart from Adam Clayton.

Items from Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott, Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, Christy Moore, Clannad and the Corrs are also included.

A chair designed by Stephen Colgan for Imelda May, signed by the singer, is being offered on behalf of the Parkinson’s disease charity in |Ireland. Other customised chairs signed by Nick Seymour, Michael Flatley and Daniel O’Donnell are being sold for the charity.

Ian Whyte of Whytes ’s Auctioneers said the collection had something for all music lovers.
“The items start at €100-€150 and then go up to the highest at over €50,000, but there’s something for every budget. It’s nice for fans to have a memento of their favourite music act, but there’s plenty of items for the serious collectors.”

Items are on show at the RDS from today until Sunday ; the auction tak es place from 2pm Sunday. See whytes.com/.


http://www.irishtimes.com// http://www.whytes.ie

20 Things you may not know about U2`s War

Yesterday it was the WAR's 30th Anniversary the album that turned U2 into a committed band with a message, thanks to singles like"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" or  "New Year`s Day".

After an album on relatively naive feelings of adolescence (Boy, 1980) and another one more spiritual themed (October, 1981),  U2 reflected their adult rage   in War (1983), the first album with songs  openly themed about  politics. The album  was characterised by the aggressive militant pacifist, the military boots, white flags, martial rhythms.

1-War is an album that tried to  reflect in its title concisely the tense atmosphere of the early eighties, with wars in various parts of the world (Middle East, the Falklands ...) But the war is not only an act of violence, but also  an internal fight being waged within each. Always looking for peace as the only possible ending

2- Bono wrote good part of the lyrics  during his  honeymoon in the mansion of the owner of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, in Jamaica, _called unpretentiously 'Goldeneye' (it formerly had belonged to Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond). It is significant that someone writes songs for a record called War during their honeymoon, but the singer and his wife Ali  are on their way to their 31st anniversary...

3 -While Bono, Larry and Adam were on holiday, The Edge was in charge of the first musical sketches in Dublin, frustrated by not feeling a good enough composer. In this struggle against himself emerged  the preliminary ideas  that will later become "New years' day" and models of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Seconds" and "Drowning man".

4 The sound of the album is deliberately more abrupt, harsh, angry, with less effect on Edge`s  guitars . There will be be time later to create atmospheres, this is rock battle line in their beloved The Clash`s style, but always with the epic heroism inherent to U2 from their first steps.

5 -The force of  Sunday bloody Sunday resides mainly in the martial drums  that Larry Mullen plays, who has acknowledged that  what he learned during his years in the Post Office Workers Band playing military marches is reflected in the song. By the way, it was in the recording sessions of this album when the drummer began using the click track to schedule his rhythms in the studio, something that before he felt reluctant limiting and uncreative.

6 -With the theme of Sunday bloody Sunday U2 played  a wild card, because in the British Isles it is not exactly  comfortable  talking about the issue of violence in Northern Ireland. The song refers to the Irish independence demonstration in Derry on 30 January 1972 that killed 14 people. The first time  they played it in Belfast, Bono previously warned of its subject and said that if they did not like they would not play it  anymore. The reaction could not be more positive.

7- The bass line of New Year's Day is one of the most famous one in rock music and, as usual, it  came almost by accident. In fact, Adam Clayton has admitted that it all started when he was trying to play Visage's techno pop success   "Fade to Grey". The more trained ears certainly would find similarities, never denied by the band.

8- New Year's Day began as a love song for Bono's wife, but eventually it won the political background  shaping the history of the Solidarity Movement in Poland led by Lech Walesa against the communist regime. Bono has stated on several occasions that he  thought  on Walesa  who had been imprisoned without the possibility of being visited by his wife because of  the Martial Law. Once  the song was recorded, on December 30, 1982 the military government outlawed martial law in Poland, almost in New Year, making real that of "I will be with you again" even before the album was released.

9- The first promotional video for the album was  for New Year's Day, hot topic in advance. It was recorded in northern Sweden in the snowy, icy  countryside.  Bono was unable to lip synch as his lips were frozen . Somehow this brings even a more epic detail the outcome.

10- In the album credits   Steve Wickham appears  as violinist in Sunday bloody Sunday and Drowning man. The involvement of this young man (who was just twenty years oled) could not be more casual:  he just went to The Edge while he  was waiting at a bus stop to go to Windmill Lane recording studios and asked if he was the guitarist for U2. Three days after Wickham spent half a day in the studio playing with the band and leaving his mark on those songs forever.

11- Another more or less random collaboration was the Coconuts, choir girls of Kid Creole & The Coconuts. The New Yorkers  met with Irish lads in  a party in Dublin and ended up participating in Like a Song, Surrender and Red Light.

12 Bono's stay in Jamaica  was prolific , but back in the Irish capital  he could not go back to that  creativity. While remembering those months he  always stresses that his new-wife Ali had to get  him out of bed  and practically forced him to write. Under pressure somehow Bono finally began to feel comfortable as a lyricist.

13- Next to the policts implied in New Year's Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday , there was also space in  War for other topics. For example, love in another powerful composition of the album, which was the second official single in the U.S., UK and Australia, Two Hearts Beat As One (Sunday Bloody Sunday  was in the Netherlands and Germany). Other themes include prostitution (Red light), the reaffirmation as punk rock band Like a Song, warning about a hypothetical nuclear war in Seconds, the religiosity of Drowning man ...

14 Bono, The Edge and Larry finished the last song on the album, 40, just when they were running out of time engaged in the study while the next band, Minor Detail, was waiting to enter . Desperate after a sleepless night, they took up an idea that stripped of all complexity and Bono opened the Bible to meet face to face with Psalm 40. In 40 minutes everything was perfect, thanks to the effectiveness of producer Steve Lilywhite, who mixed it in a hurry.

15- War was U2's first number one in the UK, a position which debuted in its first week, ousting no less than the almighty Michael Jackson's Thriller. In the United States it had to settle for 12th place, and was generally quite well received in all markets, albeit with disparate positions. In its original version cassette tapes bearing the entire disc with 43 minutes in each of its two sides.

16- The boy on the cover is Peter Rowen, the youngest brother of one of Bono's  best friends since adolescence , Guggi. Peter had starred in the cover of Boy (1980), and War presents a more disgruntled face, as if he had grown too fast in a short time, leaving the innocence along the way. Earlier, in 1979 Rowen appeared on the cover of U2 single-Three. Also in 1983 his image appeared again in the maxi single for New Year's Day and on the compilation The Best of 1980-1990 years later, becoming a symbolic face for fans of U2.

17- Before hats, giant screens and sunglasses, Bono waving a white flag in the War Tour concerts of 1983 is the first major iconic image of the history of U2. So much so that even a famous namesake fanzine published in Spain in the eighties, at that time without internet and social networking was called  White Flag.

18 War is a key work in U2's career. It opened the doors of massive success and carried  a handful of timeless classics. Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day in fourth and fifth place in the history list of the songs that U2 has performed live more full times (apart from 'snippets') with 751 and 698 respectively. Just behind  I will follow, Pride and Where the streets have no name.

19 An extension of what U2 did in the study was the direct War Under a Blood Red Sky (recorded at different locations) and the legendary concert in the auditorium at Red Rocks (Colorado) on June 5, 1983, a concert for which the band had invested previously  everything they had earned, about $ 30,000, with the intention to register it on video. A terrible storm was about to send it all to hell, but the group took the stage ignoring those who wanted to persuade them to quit. The mix of combat rock and inclement weather resulted in a context concert infernal battler. U2 still cemented their legend as tireless  fighters.

 20-For years, 40 was a perfect closure for the gigs , very chanted by the audience. A stadium anthem repeating like a mantra that "How long to sing this song?" Seeking explanations in a world inexplicable. The foundations of the Bernabeu still tremble to remember that moment in that first U2 concert in Spain on July 15, 1987 along with UB40 and The Pretenders. There is no other possible way to finish this memory of the album which marked the end of innocence for Irish education: 40 at Red Rocks.

David Gallardo

translation: mysteriousways©

http://rollingstone.es

Legendary Dublin studio issues tape appeal

The young U2 made many of their albums in Windmill Lane

Dublin's Windmill Lane where U2 recorded parts of their albums Boy, War and The Joshua Tree are calling on all past artists to claim the tapes which include pre-digital recordings by the likes of AC/DC, The Chieftains, U2 and The Spice Girls.

Over the years these master tapes have begun deteriorating and are taking up valuable space as the studio goes through expansion.

The studio, which was set up in 1978 by engineer Brian Masterson, was originally used by traditional musicians before U2 began working there in 1980. Windmill has since relocated from its small quayside setting to Dublin's Ringsend Road and is now owned by Pulse Recording College. However, the old studio is still a site of pilgrimage for fans visiting the much-graffitied "U2 wall."

"We're appealing to any artists who've worked here using two-inch multitrack tapes to come in and reclaim them because we're in the process of disposing of these tapes," Ian Brady of Pulse told RTÉ Ten.

"There's a lot of stuff here of huge historical interest by the likes of U2, Riverdance, AC/DC and The Chieftains but the tapes can weight tonnes and they occupy valuable space. It they're not reclaimed, they will be disposed of."

Brady adds that the studio is encouraging all enthusiasts and fans to drop in and pay a visit for their last chance ever see the significance of these nostalgic pieces all in one place.

"Disposal will commence on May 7th, and we urge any interested parties who wish to claim their tapes to contact us before that date." he says.


http://www.rte.ie/

U2's 30 Year War

This month marks the 30th anniversary of one of the 1980s best records and the pivot point for one of the world's greatest bands. February 1983 saw and heard the release of U2's third record, War, a record that heard them break into mainstream radio across the world and into the hearts and minds of audiences around the globe.
Upon its release, Bono said:

More than any other record, War is right for its time. It is a slap in the face against the snap, crackle and pop. Everyone else is getting more and more style-orientated, more and more slick. John Lennon was right about that kind of music; he called it 'wallpaper music.' Very pretty, very well designed, music to eat your breakfast to. Music can be more. Its possibilities are great. Music has changed me. It has the ability to change a generation. Look at what happened with Vietnam. Music changed a whole generation's attitude towards war.

 From its dramatic cover of a young boy (the same boy who appeared on their debut) with a busted lip and angry face, straight away, U2 were not looking to hold anything back. Opening with the battle cry, "Sunday Bloody Sunday," War immediately raged in the listeners face. Produced by Steve Lillywhite and The Refugee, War was the record that would help make U2 a household name before their landmark performance at 1985's Live Aid. It was a record that would create anthems out of protest songs and deliver a message in music at a time when pop was not saying much. Songs like "New Years Day," and "Two Hearts Beat As One," soared on rock radio and heard a band, who only two records and two years prior were singing about holding onto their innocence while leaving Dublin thanks to 1980's Boy and 1981's October. War was a far different record, it was the record that would define the bands sound and style for the rest of the decade and the record U2 had to make in order to mature and advance their sound in their following studio albums, 1984'sUnforgettable Fire, 1987's The Joshua Tree, and even 1991's Achtung Baby. It would hear the band expressing themselves not just in sound but in statements.
It took them three records to evolve into the band they wanted to be, but when the got there, U2 discovered lightning in a bottle. War was that lightning. From the album title to Bono's lyrics, Waris a combative record by a band who was frustrated with the world around them and the world within them. Edge's guitar hooks sound like he is fighting over Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton's chomping rhythm section and Bono's voice. It is a record that had the members of the band looking for their own individual attention but at the same time coming together for the sake of success and song. War is also one of the smartest assembled records, from the driving force of "Like A Song," to the somber "Drowning Man," and the funky "The Refugee," and closing with "40," a song that actually is a Bible verse, it took the listener on an emotional ebb and flow. War would only be the beginning of U2's potential to do such a task for their audience.
War would go on to become U2's biggest breakthrough at that time; it would also spawn a live record, November '83's Under A Blood Red Sky, which was recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.
Thirty years later, War still storms in speakers and iPods around the world. It has become a classic record that reminds listeners that even in our darkest hour there is a light of hope. It is a record that defined a generation living in oppressed conditions in Europe and across the globe and its statements echo the same sentiments they do today as they did three decades ago.

Salvatore Bono

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/www.u2.com

Bono: Evolution over the Years

Excellent work found in U2France. The many faces of Bono throughout the years...Enjoy it!!!




Copyrights belongs to http://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/cultura/



http://www.u2france.com

Flashback: U2 Perform on Ireland's 'Late Late Show' in 1980

'The band for the future' a year before their first album.




ByANDY GREENES

The Eighties were only five days old when U2 appeared on Ireland's Late Late Show to perform their new song "Stories for Boys." The band's debut LP, Boy, wouldn't hit stores for another 10 months, and their first single, "Another Day," wasn't even out yet. They did have a three-song EP called Three on sale in Ireland, and that was enough to get them a slot on the popular late-night show.

Journalist John McKenna gave them a freakishly prescient introduction. "What can I say about these titans among rock & rollers?" he said. "The band for the future – the Eighties or Nineties, who knows? U2!"

His words may not be as memorable as Jon Landau's "I've seen rock & roll future" line about Bruce Springsteen, but it's still quite remarkable when you look back upon it. Just two months after this appearance U2 were signed to Island Records. That same month, they met with Joy Division producer Martin Hannett about possibly producing Boy. By a crazy cosmic coincidence, they happened to visit during the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" recording session. They wound up working with Steve Lillywhite, who they've worked with (off and on) for the past three decades.

But in January of 1980 not a lot of people were calling U2 the band of the Eighties, let alone the Nineties. John McKenna did, and we take our hats off to him.

http://www.rollingstone.com

'U2 1978-1981'

Paul McGuinness was at the Little Museum in Dublin yesterday night, launching an exhibition of rare photos from the earliest days of U2.

The photographs were taken by Dubliner Patrick Brocklebank, who worked as a graphic artist and photographer in the 1970s.

 'Because I was always in town,' recalls Brocklebank, 'And because we were the same age, I’d often see U2 around the place. The show records the energy and ambition of a local band that would later conquer the world.'

At the opening, Paul remembered being introduced to the band by Bill Graham of Hot Press. 'U2 tricked Bill into coming to one of their early rehearsals. They played him a few of their 'own songs' but Bill made them stop and said: 'hang on, all these songs you're playing are by the Ramones'.

'U2 said 'Okay, you're right, but we're going to write some great songs' and that's what they have been doing ever since.'

Paul recalled the music press and pirate radio stations of the late 1970s and reminisced about early  shows at Dandelion Market and the Project Arts Centre, when, on one occasion, a gang known as the 'Black Catholics' showed up.

'The Black Catholics were dedicated to breaking up other people's gigs. I gained an early and completely undeserved reputation for physical violence by taking one of them out into the street beside the Project.'

Also joining Patrick Brocklebank at the launch were luminaries from the Irish music scene and friends of the band including Gavin Friday, Niall Stokes,  John Stephenson - who ran the Project Arts Centre - and Dave Fanning.Bono was an absentee from the opening as he celebrated his 52nd birthday in the US with his family, including daughter Jordan Hewson -- who was celebrating her 23rd birthday yesterday.

"They sounded pretty raw. Off stage Bono was a bit loose with his tongue, The Edge seemed like an academic, Adam was a lad around town, but one with a purpose, and Larry was just a schoolboy," he said.

Indeed, the young Larry Mullen doesn't appear in some of the photographs because he was busy with schoolwork, with his place taken in the shots by Guggi, then a member of rival band The Virgin Prunes.

"Looking back it wasn't so much U2's music that impressed me. It was U2 as people," said Guggi.

Limited edition prints from the exhibition are on sale at www.littlemuseum.ie.

U2: 1978-81 will run at the Little Museum of Dublin until September 2nd. More here.

Top Pic: @Gpaul1972

UPDATE:  Pics of the opening of the exhibition here.  http://www.independent.ie/

www.u2.com/http://www.independent.ie/http://www.littlemuseum.ie./

"U2: 1978-81" at Dublin Little Museum

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U2 manager Paul McGuinness will open U2: 1978-81 at the Little Museum this Thursday, May 10th(the exhibit will remain open until September 2nd.) The exhibition, which is sponsored by Jagermeister, features 32 rare early photographs of U2. It’s the first time that the collection has ever been exhibited, and the show is the subject of massive international interest.

U2: 1978-1981 reveals the early U2 as a tight but restless unit – future icons but also teenagers mucking around. The photographs were taken by Dubliner Patrick Brocklebank, who worked as a graphic artist and photographer in the 1970s. “Because I was always in town,” recalls Brocklebank, “and because we were the same age, I’d often see U2 around the place. The show records the energy and ambition of a local band that would later conquer the world.”



Mucking around in Trinity College or gigging in the Project, these images reveal the relentless surge of a band on the rise. Pots, guns and paintings are used as props, and Bono proves himself a serial scene-stealer. “Paul [Bono] couldn’t play guitar,” recalls Brocklebank, “and he wasn’t much of a singer, but he had that certain something: the swagger and stage presence that would later make U2 a household name.”
The Irish times shows a slideshow of some of the pics in the exhibition, here:
U2 1978 - 1981
http://www.littlemuseum.ie/ http://www.irishtimes.com

Memories: U2 at McGonagles ,1979

Novelist Peter Mc Cluskey recalls his band supporting U2 in 1979.

This photo really takes me back. It was taken in the dressing room of the Dublin venue McGonagles around Christmas 1979. That's me with the glasses and blue windcheater, with Bono and Ali Hewson behind me. Ali is fluffing up Bono's hair as he's just about to go on stage.

The guy with his head down is Denis Rusk, the lead guitarist in my band The Strougers. I played rhythm guitar.

That year was one of the most exciting times in our lives.

I spent my youth on the Navan Road, hanging out with friends, but I was never any good at basketball or soccer.

Then punk rock came along and anyone could be in a band. Suddenly, all our friends were coming to see us play. By chance, we ended up doing a few gigs with U2 in places such as Howth Community Centre, and the Dandelion Market, as they were just starting out too.

You wouldn't believe how many other Dublin bands hated U2 back then. They hated them because they thought they were loaded rich kids, or seemed arrogant.

Playing with them, I never found U2 like that. I suppose I was one of their first fans.

Bono was always very mannerly if we were chatting to him before a gig. I remember distinctly that if you spoke to Edge, he gave you his complete attention. He wouldn't be messing, or getting distracted; he would listen to every word you said.

Then U2 would plug in and play. I can't possibly explain how good U2 sounded playing to 20 people.

For a start, Larry Mullen had come out of the Artane Boys Band so he was a proper drummer. He could make this unbelievable racket. Edge had this very futuristic-looking Gibson Explorer guitar but he could really play it, and Adam completed the sound.

Towards the end of 1979, we ended up playing McGonagles the same night that U2 were doing the late show.

A friend took this picture on my Olympus camera, which I'd just bought. I remember taking lots of shots that night and Bono getting thrown by the flash constantly going off, but he never complained.

If you're wondering why I'm wearing a blue windcheater if I was a punk back then, all I'll say is it was a wet December night in Dublin and I wasn't going to get drowned coming in from the Navan Road, new wave or no new wave.

Not long after this picture, things changed radically for U2. We stopped playing with them and they moved into a different league, releasing an album and touring America.

A couple of years later, myself and Strougers' bass player Shay Hiney went to see U2 playing a huge gig at the RDS. We bumped into their manager Paul McGuinness and, remembering us, he gave us tickets to the aftershow.

We walked straight into Bono, who was now a big star. I remember Shay telling Bono that his girlfriend was on the way to the party, and that she was a huge U2 fan.

For a laugh, Bono starting asking Shay all these questions about 'Jenny', then disappeared.

We thought that was the last we'd see of him. But, later in the evening, he was back and straight over to Shay and his girlfriend. 'You must be Jenny, Shay's girlfriend,' Bono said, and he started listing off all these things he knew about her.

Jenny couldn't believe it because she was a massive U2 fan and Bono knew everything about her. We laughed and laughed.

People say to me, 'Your band and U2 were playing around Dublin at the same time, yet they became global superstars and you didn't'.

They expect me to be envious, but I'm not all. I was delighted U2 made it, because the night this picture was taken in McGonagles, I had already picked U2 out as a band with a future.

I think I got that one right.

Peter McCluskey's latest book is called 'My Little Lighthouse'.

Interview by Ken Sweeney.

(c) Irish Independent, 2011.

www.independent.ie

More Unknown Early U2 Pictures

The British Auction House, Bonhams, holds a sale of several old photos, among which is  a whole set of U2 ones.

"An historic set of photographs of U2 at the Stella Ballroom, Limerick, Ireland during the Limerick Civic Week Pop '78 Competition, 17th March 1978, comprising thirteen strip negatives and a corresponding set of prints, 20.5 x 30.5cm (8 x 12in), to be sold with copyright"

The sale is on 23rd June and most of the pictures belong to the  event  in 1978 which marked the first time the band appeared under the name of U2. There was a prize of £500 and the promise of a record deal. They had entered the competition under the name they were using at the time, The Hype. However, they felt that if they did well in the competition, they would be stuck with this name and so changed to U2 at the last minute, a choice they had been considering adopting for a while.

On the evening of the event the band found themselves up against a number of other, seemingly more experienced entrants and felt there was little hope of success. As Bono recalled in the book 'U2 On U2', ''There were bands there that could play in time and in tune and with great confidence, all of which we couldn't pull off. But, you know, some bands have everything but 'it'. We had nothing but 'it'.'' They played three tracks, 'Sweet Missions', 'Life On A Distant Planet' and 'The TV Song' and, much to everyone's astonishment, they were awarded first place. It was a pivotal moment for the band and Larry has commented that ''...We had no real idea how winning in Limerick would change our lives.''

One of the images has been used in the photographer's own publicity material in the past but the remainder are unpublished.





source:www.bonhams.com

U2: The Early Years

Proud Galleries , one of Europe´s most popular privately funded photographic gallery , presents U2 The Early Years by Colm Henry, an exclusive ,never before seen photographic exploration of popular music´s most commercially successful and critically acclaimed group.

A free lance photographer working on emerging Irish music magazine Hot Press, Colm Henry came across a young and unsigned U2 when they were featured in the publication.

Henry´s photo exhibit is on display in London from 14th April to 2nd May. More information:http://www.proud.co.uk/exhibition-U2-The-Early-Years_54.aspx

source:www.proud.co.uk

Reveries on Adam

In a few days´times (13th March) our fave bassist will be 50.
Let´s remember those times when he bought his first bass, especially "to meet girls". U2.com has posted an excerpt from the book U2 by U2 where Adam talks about this:

'I moved school when I was thirteen, again to an Irish public boarding school, St Columba's College in Rathfarnham. The buildings were old, there were no curtains and it was cold up there, the kind of cold that you never really forget. I can't say I was hugely enthused about the move. But fairly early on I fell in with a boy called John Leslie, who could play guitar. John had cassette tapes and we would listen to The Who, The Grateful Dead, Kris Kristofferson, Carole King, Neil Young, people that were around at that time, singer- songwriter things and some far-out stuff, Hawkwind, The Edgar Winter Group, Edgar Broughton. And then the prefects at school would listen to Rory Gallagher, The Beatles, The Stones, Eric Clapton, so we'd hear a bit of that, and some American performers like the Doobie Brothers. So I was getting pretty turned on to music and it always seemed to change my mood; it somehow made it bearable to be in that school situation. I remember reading that Clapton hadn't started playing guitar until he was fifteen or sixteen and I thought, 'Well, there's still time for me!' So I bought a £5 acoustic guitar from a junk-shop down Dublin quays and I started learning chords and collecting songs. There was a guy in school who had a bit of a band going. He had an electric guitar and the school gave him a room to practise in; there was a bass player and a drummer and the sound was amazing to me. I just loved it. I don't know what it was like objectively, four teenage schoolkids struggling to play a song, probably, but the sound of drums and guitar and bass felt primal to me. I started to see that not only did this make me feel good but you got a bit of attention if you did it, too. You could meet girls and these people were considered cool. I suppose that was when I really made my decision that this was what I wanted to do. I had no interest in sports. I didn't want to be academic, particularly, and at any rate was showing little aptitude. I liked the creative things, such as painting and music; I found that community of people more interesting. So John persuaded me that we could start our own group. He wanted to play electric guitar, so he said I should play bass. I don't remember being particularly convinced at first. I knew that you needed bass and drums to make that rock sound but I didn't really know anything about music which would have qualified me to be a bassist. But John said he'd teach me what I needed to learn. I'd been taking some classical guitar lessons, and there was a folk guitar teacher who used to come by as well, so I picked up a few rudimentary things and decided to go for a bass. I talked my parents into buying it for me. I had to make a solemn promise that I was going to stick at it and all this kind of carry-on. Now that I look back it was an amazing thing for my parents to do, quite out of character. It was more my mother, I suppose. She had something of the romantic in her and probably thought it wouldn't do any harm. I guess there was enough music in the family that she could relate to it. So there I was, fifteen years old, with a dark brown Ibanez-copy bass guitar and no amp. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. Absolutely none. Not a clue. It just sounded good to me. Deep and fat and satisfying. Presumably, in the big picture, someone like me would have been expected to have a couple of years of amateur rock and roll and then move on to something more sensible. But it was all that I had. I didn't have anything else. My grades were so bad the following year that my parents said they were not prepared to keep me at this expensive school. That was pretty bad news for me, or so it seemed at the time, because we were just getting a band going. John Leslie and I had started writing an Irish rock opera based on the Celtic myth of the Children of Lir, in which children are turned into swans by their wicked stepmother. But I had to leave before having the chance to establish myself as Ireland's answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber. I thought that was it, the musical career was over. And so I was dispatched to Mount Temple, a comprehensive school in north Dublin, which was not a place where I felt comfortable at all, to contemplate a future without much in the way of career prospects. '

Taken from the book "U2 by U2"

source: www.U2.com

"Killing Bono" Set

Hot Press has been on the set of 'Killing Bono' – the Irish musical comedy film loosely based on former Hot Press writer Neil McCormick’s hilarious 2004 memoir, 'I Was Bono’s Doppleganger'.

The €3million film, which is funded by Northern Ireland Screen with help from Invest NI, is being directed by Nick Hamm, and stars Ben Barnes, Robert Sheehan, Pete Postlethwaite and Krysten Ritter.

Speaking to Hot Press writer Olaf Tyaransen, Nick Hamm – whose previous credits include The Hole (the acclaimed 2001 psychological thriller, which featured Keira Knightley) explained: “We’ve been shooting for just over four weeks now and it’s gone incredibly well. We expect to wrap on February 19th.”

A lifelong U2 fan, Hamm snapped up the movie rights to 'I Was Bono’s Doppleganger' as soon as the book came out. McCormick went to Mount Temple Comprehensive with U2 and the book tells the story of McCormick’s own ultimately fruitless pursuit of rock stardom, contrasting it with the stratospheric success of his famous friends.

“I bought the rights to the book as soon as it came out, and I’ve been working on this film for more than five years,” Hamm explains. “It took a long time, though, to get the script right because different script writers saw different things in the book, and different ways of telling the story.

“It’s a hard story to tell,” he adds. “The challenge is to find a way to balance the comedy and the emotion. Ultimately, I used the book as a kind of source material. I didn’t tell the story of the book because the book is a series of incidents, and that wouldn’t make a movie.”

Given that McCormick is a former alumnus of Hot Press, the magazine inevitably features in the movie.. “Yeah, it’s very important to me to have Hot Press involved in the whole thing,” Hamm says. “Hot Press was a very big part of that whole genesis of Irish music. It’s a seminal magazine and newspaper, that’s been world renowned, and it’s very important for us, and the movie, to have that authenticity and give the movie that sense of veracity.”

Although U2 have no financial stake in the production, the band have granted permission for two of their songs to be used. The film will also feature original music from Castledawson singer/songwriter Joe Echo aka Ciaran Gribben.

Prince Caspian star Ben Barnes (who plays Neil McCormick) performs Echo’s songs onscreen. “He is absolutely an astounding man, a wonderful musician, and a brilliant composer,” says Barnes of Gribben. “And he wrote these brilliant songs – we used quite a lot of his lyrics. He’s got these very quirky, quite cool lyrics. He writes these songs about rape, and weird things, but makes them into pop songs.

“And so we’re using some of Neil’s lyrics, but I think it’s mostly original music by Joe Echo,” he adds. “Because it should be something fresh and new as well, with that eighties feel, but still a new album. It’s something that should go along with the film. It should be a new soundtrack.”

Killing Bono finishes shooting this week.



source:www.hotpress.com//pics:www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Killing-Bono