Rock giants U2 prove they are still going strong after unforgettable show in Glasgow

ROCK giants U2 proved they are still going strong after four decades together and 31 years to the day that they brought their Unforgettable Fire tour to The Barrowlands.

The rock legends arrived in Glasgow for two shows on November 6 and 7, 1984, with a set list that kicked off on both occasions with 11 O’Clock Tick Tock and I Will Follow before closing with New Year’s Day and Pride In The Name Of Love.

This time the frontman Bono, guitarist - or as Bono put it - "on guitars and a whole load of sh** even he doesn't understand" - The Edge, bass player Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr were bringing their iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE 2015 tour to the SSE Hydro in Glasgow – itself proving hugely popular – just shy of 40 years after forming the legendary Irish group in Dublin.

And having previously played a raft of live dates in the city stretching back to the Boy tour in January, 1981, when they played 14 songs to students at Strathclyde University, and a Glasgow Tiffany’s show for the October tour that October, it was perhaps appropriate that they decided to take fans on a trip down memory lane with a raft of hits spanning their incredible career.

Bono, 55, belted out songs that still sounded as fresh as ever including the opening The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) followed by The Electric Co from their debut album Boy and a snippet of Saints Are Coming before the blistering Vertigo.

Then came a rousing I Will Follow as the band pulled out all the stops for the gig that was proving a home away from home.

Playing just a few hundred feet from the SECC where they brought the Joshua Tree and Zoo TV tours in 1987 and 1993 respectively, he told the crowd: "Its been a while. Thank you it's quite a welcome. We're so close to home. Thank you for your patience, thank you for sticking with us and giving us a great life. These streets are so familiar to us and they could even be our streets."

The band created a funeral march onstage during Sunday Bloody Sunday and recreated the existing section of the Berlin Wall using a caged screen inside which they performed a batch of songs before escaping for Mysterious Ways.

And one stunning female fan, Jacqueline Chandler, from Fife, got pulled onstage by Bono to dance with him during the song, enjoying a dance with him.

Earlier, launching into Iris (Hold Me Close), dedicated to his late mother and breaking into David Essex's Seventies pop hit Hold Me Close, he added: "I started this journey when my mother died when I was 14 years old. She's left me an artist."

And the thousands packed into the SSE Hydro could but agree.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/

Amazing, Innovative “Innocence” Show

I can’t say U2 is taking it easy. Their “Innocence and Experience” show at MSG last night was about as exciting and innovative as you can get.

Of course, they could have called it “I’m Still Standing” as the entire floor of the Garden is General Admission– i.e. no seats. Three hours. If you go– and you must– wear sneakers and bring a cane!

Two nights ago, Paul and Nancy McCartney stood in one of the two VIP risers on the floor. McCartney, a great live show man, must have really soaked in how Bono et al re-designed the Garden in a way I’ve never seen for a rock show.

Last night the guests included Charlie Rose and Gayle King,actor Peter Sarsgaard, a bevy of models, designer Tory Burch, and AOL-Verizon chief Tim Armstrong.

The show, an interactive video extravaganza, turns the usual rock concert on its head. It’s at once grandly bombastic and simply intimate, with many stages running lengthwise cutting through the center of the venue. The staging reminded me a little of David Byrne’s Public Theater musical, “Here Lies Love.” Maybe that show was an influence. But it definitely relieves the rock band of the static notion of always being at one end of the stadium. Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry are able to move about freely through the giant room. And there’s no obstructed view– it’s rock in the round. Special kudos to the lighting designer.

The show also has nods– and I’m assuming pays royalties to– a variety of other composers including Patti Smith, Paul Simon, the Sex Pistols, Johnny Cash (who is literally the intermission entertainment, his animated image performing against the Berlin Wall), and Stephen Sondheim. Bono sort of knits together all of his favorite things– including the Irish troubles, Nelson Mandela, and the themes of freedom and equality.  U2’s “One” charity and “Red” products are also heavily promoted, in a good way.

The set included requisite U2 hits– “With or Without You,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”– as well as a bunch of cuts from the band’s latest album, “Songs of Innocence.”

The real achievement (aside from the financial– no seats and all standing means they can pack in more people) of this show is seeing how all four members of U2 function as one. Edge’s jangly guitar still sends goosebumps. Larry Mullen’s drums pound propulsively. But it was Adam Clayton’s bass that really caught my eye last night– it’s maybe key to U2’s trademark– and for some of us– brilliantly reassuring sound.

Bono remains a great show, gifted with gab and ceaseless energy, a sense of humor and that unmistakable voice. He has the heart of a crooner even when he’s belting over the sonic accompaniment of his three colleagues.

All photos c2015 Showbiz411 on a Lumix ZS20

http://www.showbiz411.com/

Who's the greatest, U2 or the Stones?

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 jbream@startribune.com

http://www.startribune.com/

Songs of Innocence

So the epic tale of U2’s recording odyssey through 13 studio albums and 35 years reaches the present day — and, as ever, the only direction is forward.

‘Songs of Innocence’ finds the four lifetime friends in unfailingly dynamic form. These new songs, some of the most autobiographical of their lives, brim over with energy and inventiveness. They, and the band, are road-ready, as U2 prepare to take these new-born sons and daughters for a spin around the world, in the company of some much-loved older siblings from their incredible catalogue.

Now that the mists have cleared from the endless attention over the album’s ground-breaking digital release, what emerges is the much more important element: the sheer vitality of its content. That’s been underlined by the unprecedented demand for the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour 2015, set to start in Vancouver on May 14.

Two and a half months of North American shows will culminate in an awe-inspiring eight dates at Madison Square Garden in New York, in late July. Then the tour relocates to Europe for a sold out itinerary of more than two months that will include six nights at London’s 02 Arena.

While other bands trade entirely on former glories, the lifeblood running through U2’s veins is the need to stay new and relevant, to themselves as well as their audience. That was central to both the creation and execution of ‘Songs of Innocence,’ as Edge explained when he spoke to Rolling Stone.

He described what the band have learned about the digital age, after the free release of their new album to half a billion people, in a month-long digital exclusive via iTunes. “We're in the dawn of it,” he said. “The thing it's easy to forget when you live in modern times is that they're modern for about another 30 seconds, more so than ever.

“In a few years we'll look back on this time like we look back on VCRs and rotary phones. When the radio arrived, everyone thought that was the end of sheet music. I think music has become devalued and disposable in the commercial world – but not to music lovers or the people who make it, and not all big tech either. Apple – and U2 – fight hard for artists to be paid.

“In the future, technology has to be a better servant of music, and not its slave master. We can take advantage of the benefits of technology, and we do, but it's also beholden on those of us who have been so well rewarded by music to figure out a way to preserve the ability for artists to create and thrive.”

There may have been a five-year gap between 2009’s ‘No Line On The Horizon’ and ‘Songs of Innocence,’ but the spectacular U2 360° Tour didn’t reach the last of its 110 shows until July 2011. The new record’s evolution took in a variety of studios, with production credits going to Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood.

There were no fewer than seven settings for this new experience, with sessions at Electric Lady Studios, The Church, Shangri-La, Strathmore House, Pull Studios, Assault and Battery and The Woodshed. When the album emerged in September 2014, reviewers heard a rich synthesis of all of the band’s varied influences from different times in their career, made whole by the experiences gained across four decades of invention.

“’Songs of Innocence’ reconnects U2 with the strident, searching, wide awake band of their nascency,” wrote Mojo magazine’s Tom Doyle, “reminding not only us but themselves of their against-the-odds beginnings. The result is their best and most thematically complete album since ‘Achtung Baby.’ By turning towards their past, U2 have found their way back to the future.”

Those themes of looking homeward, and of the 1970s Dublin that the group grew up in, were evident from the robust, uncompromising and infectious opener, ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone).’ It was a tip of the hat to the lead singer of the Ramones, one of the very reasons U2 chose their career path in the first place. “I was young, not dumb, just wishing to be blinded by you,” sang Bono in tribute. “Brand new, and we were pilgrims on our way.”

Elsewhere, there was further acknowledgement of another guiding light for the young U2, The Clash, in ‘This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now,’ dedicated to Joe Strummer. ‘Every Breaking Wave’ rolled to the shore with an assured restraint in the spirit of ‘With Or Without You’; ‘Volcano’ bubbled like lava.

‘Iris (Hold Me Close)’ was yearningly anthemic, named for and inspired by Bono’s late mother, who died when was he was only 14. Swedish pacesetter Lykke Li contributed vocals to ‘The Troubles,’ while ‘Cedarwood Road’ typified that cohesion that occurs when every individual on a record is doing something great. Again, its reference points were real and personal, with a lyric about the cherry blossom tree in the garden of the Hewsons’ neighbours, when Bono was growing up.

“It’s us trying to figure out why we wanted to be in a band in the first place,” Bono told the Irish Times. “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.”

This series of album essays has travelled a million miles around the world and back, on a road that continues to stretch ahead enticingly. The ‘Songs of Innocence’ track ‘Song For Someone’ contains the lyric: “There is a light, don’t let it go out.” U2 never have, and never will.

Paul Sexton

http://www.udiscovermusic.com/

The Albums That Defined 2014: U2′s Songs of Innocence release reveals the true master of your music collection

500 million people downloaded U2's newest album, whether they wanted to or not.

The Albums That Defined 2014 explores how this year's most influential records have shaped and reflected the wider music landscape. Today, how U2's brand partnership disguised as an album release revealed a future where corporations determine what you listen to and who gets paid for it. Or, rather, a present.

On September 9th of this year, U2’s 13th studio album, Songs of Innocence, appeared on the computers and mobile devices of 500 million people, released as part of a branding tie in with Apple for the launch of their Apple Watch and iPhone 6.

It was hardly the first time we’ve seen an artist enter into a major branding effort with a corporation (Bono described this release as a “[celebration] of the ten year anniversary of [U2’s] iPod commercial”) or even the first time an artist has tied an album release to a vaguely sinister overreach by a company that makes cell phones (recall the give-away-cum-underhanded-data-mining-operation that Jay Z orchestrated with Samsung around the release of his 2013 album Magna Carta Holy Grail), but the Songs of Innocence release felt like a raising of the stakes. And that includes the backlash against it.

In retrospect, Apple and U2 are perfect partners. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that a band and a brand with long track records of outsized self-regard and penchants for grandiose gestures would lead the charge in the continued blurring of marketing and popular music, but the near universal opprobrium heaped upon them seemed to catch them off guard. Apple was sufficiently embarrassed into creating a link that would allow users to reject their unwanted “gift,” while Bono displayed as much self-awareness as he could muster: a passive-aggressive apology delivered during a Facebook-branded Q&A session.

Bono says his main regret was that Apple’s unsolicited gift-giving was “rude.” It was, but the criticism frequently cast it as something more insidious. In thinkpieces and Twitter screeds the move was hyperbolized as an almost Orwellian intrusion, one that implied, in the words of journalist Chris Richards, “the utopian philanthrocapitalist democracy that Bono is always stumping for will also be a place where your belongings are chosen for you.” What Apple CEO Tim Cook called, “the largest album release of all time” was objectionable not because a major rock band and a major corporation engaged in a self-aggrandizing co-promotion, something we’re surely all used to by now, but because two major players in the music industry displayed just how far their reach extends.

On some level it’s perhaps unfair that Apple and U2 have been subject to such intense criticism. Just over the past year we’ve seen a broadening recognition that major brands have almost entirely annexed SXSW, the continued ascent of Spotify, a company that offered significant equity (reportedly close to 20%) to the major labels in exchange for allowing the streaming service to expand their market share while depressing royalty payments, and a protracted lawsuit in which Google-owned YouTube attempted to strong arm independent labels into accepting a cut rate deal to avoid being shut out of its new streaming service. Apple’s mistake wasn't leveraging their power and money to determine what music gets heard and by whom, but by doing so without enough guile.

In spite of all of this it seems likely that both Apple and U2 will ultimately count this exercise as a success. For U2, whose last two albums, 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and 2009’s No Line On The Horizon, sold 9 million and 5 million copies respectively, the 500 million people exposed to their latest effort represents a big step up, and the $100 million they were reportedly paid by Apple is likely more than they would have made from the album with a more traditional distribution model. For Apple, $100 million is a small investment, small change for the media attention it drummed up for their product launch. It doesn't hurt that it aligned them with a band who, if Rolling Stone’s recent designation of Songs of Innocence as the best album of 2014 is any indication, at least remain on the cutting edge of relevance as far as older white men are concerned.

We might not see a campaign quite like this again, but  it seems all too likely these kinds of efforts will become more common in 2015.

http://www.chartattack.com/

Inside U2’s Ambitious Upcoming Tour Strategy

Despite album backlash and a battered Bono, the band preps its first road run since 2011.

The announcement on Dec. 3 of U2’s Innocence + Experience Tour was a blast of confidence for a band that has experienced a bumpy past few months. Setting aside mixed consumer reaction to its Apple give-away of new album Songs of Innocence and frontman Bono’s Nov. 16 bike accident in New York (he shattered his left elbow, fractured a humerus bone in his left arm and injured the orbit of one of his eyes), the trek will begin May 14.

“Like any good football team, sometimes you have to adjust your game plan at halftime,” says Live Nation’s Arthur Fogel, promoter-producer of all of U2’s tours since PopMart in 1997 and 1998, noting that he would have liked to make a splashier announcement tied to a high-profile TV play, no doubt in reference to U2’s planned (and scrapped) five-night residency on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. But “given all factors, we’re OK.”

It’s a pivotal time for a band that, nearly 40 years after forming, remains consumed with its relevance (“We don’t ever want to become a heritage act,” The Edge told The Hollywood Reporter in February). The new tour will arrive with an ambitious strategy in which U2 plays two dates in each market (and four at both Los Angeles’ Forum and New York’s Madison Square Garden) with different sets on consecutive nights -- one representing Innocence, the other Experience (an indication that U2’s already confirmed next album, Songs of Experience, may be previewed or even released by then). Songs of Innocence has struggled to find success at radio, but many touring executives think U2’s track record as an elite live act will lure fans. Consider its last outing, 360°, which grossed $736.4 million from 110 shows to become the biggest tour in history, despite an accompanying album (No Line on the Horizon) that sold a third of its predecessor (1.1 million in sales versus 3.3 million for 2004’s How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, according to Nielsen SoundScan).

“I have a lot of confidence they could pull it off,” says Chip Hooper, worldwide head of music for talent agency Paradigm, of U2’s dual-night approach. “There’s a sense that they’ll deliver again.”

Affordable pricing should help generate early sales, too: A large percentage of floor seats will sell for $30 and $65, “which is kind of ridiculous, in a good way,” says Fogel. The configuration splits the arena floor in half, with a rectangular layout, though Fogel wants to keep certain details of the production secret.

After the enormity and spectacle of the stadium-based 360°, with its spider-like in-the-round stage, some insiders predicted the band will scale back on its next run. Indeed, indoor arenas serve the introspective, personal nature of Songs of Innocence well. “No matter what size the venue, they create an atmosphere and community that’s really unrivaled,” Fogel says.

As for the consumer blowback to the Apple promotion, Fogel remains undeterred on its potential tour impact. “It’s noise, frankly,” he says. “These are great songs, and they’re going to translate incredibly well live.”

Only stops in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe were announced, and Fogel is tight-lipped on future plans, but it wouldn’t be out of the question for the tour to run as long as three years, returning to North America and Europe, along with visits to Asia, South America, Australia and other territories. 

Additional reporting by Andrew Hampp.

This article first appeared in the Dec. 13 issue of Billboard.


By Ray Waddell 

http://www.billboard.com/

Why U2's 'Songs of Innocence' Deserves the Rock Album Grammy

The album that attracted the most discussion this year? U2's Songs of Innocence.

Thanks to Apple, the band’s thirteenth studio effort, and first since 2009’s No Line On The Horizon, delivered to the "purchased" folders of over 500 million iTunes users, makes Taylor Swift's platinum-plus seller 1989 look like but a blip. Sure, plenty mocked the method of release -- calling it a violation and much worse -- or, on the flip side, hailed it as an ingenious publicity stunt. Furthermore, there was the opinion of musicians, even some longtime U2 admirers, who thought the band was hurting everyone but themselves by devaluing music entirely.

But what of the album? All that talk about the business model, and little on the songs, which full-heartedly deserve their place in the Best Rock Album category of the Grammys. Indeed, just this week Rolling Stone named the album its No. 1 release of the year -- and got slammed on social media for being out of touch and pandering, much like the Grammy backlash that is anticipated.

But I would posit this: If U2 hadn't once delivered albums like The Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, albums that cemented the Irish quartet's status as one of rock's all-time greatest bands, would people be praising the passion and vitality of this collection?

Make no mistake, given their long-standing catalog, U2 remains relevant, like Neil Young, Tom Waits and David Bowie, among other living legends -- all Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. And like these peers, U2 has never been afraid to experiment with its sound. Sometimes, the results are mixed -- see: Bowie's 1997 drum-n-bass experiment Earthling, or even U2's Zooropa and Pop, as examples -- but when so many other rock acts are experimenting sonically to keep up with the EDM crowd, U2 continues to surprise by returning to a more raw rock sound.

MOJO magazine called Songs of Innocence "the most startlingly fresh, energetic and cohesive U2 album in years." That is clear from the outset, as the album kicks off with "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)," a song that takes frontman Bono back to his adolescent days and the life-changing experience of discovering a new artist and sound that makes you feel someone else out there understands you.

The stripped-down sound of the gorgeous and heartfelt "Song for Someone" is U2 at its most vulnerable, like "One" was, and it is almost as effective. "Iris (Hold Me Close)" and "Raised by Wolves" are other standouts, hearkening back sonically to the days of Unforgettable Fire.

Whatever your opinion of how the album was distributed, it made the Grammy eligibility cutoff (a limited-edition vinyl version made sure of that) and deserves the same consideration as any other album that wasn't given away by Apple in 2014. And judging Songs of Innocence solely by the music from start to finish, it is one of the best rock releases of 2014.

Bono and company led the conversation about the album as art form months before Taylor Swift’s Spotify secession. Ironically, that might hurt the album’s chances. But in just listening to the music of Songs Of Innocence, there is no doubt, it is Grammy worthy. And furthermore, it gives The Recording Academy an opportunity to invite U2 to perform. What better place for Bono’s first post-injury comeback performance than the stage of the 2015 Grammy Awards?

http://www.billboard.com/

'Comfortable In Their Skin.'

A month after its surprise release and some of the monthly music magazines have published their reviews of Songs of Innocence.

The band deliver a career high says Tom Doyle in the new edition of Mojo Magazine. 

'Songs of Innocence reconnects U2 with the strident, searching, wide awake band of their nascency, reminding not only us but themselves of their against-the-odds beginnings. The result is their best and most thematically complete album since Achtung Baby. By turning towards their past, U2 have found their way back to the future.'

'The long gestation of this album,' writes David Hands in Total Guitar, 'Seems at odds with a band who sound more comfortable in their skin than on 2009's patchy No Line On The Horizon.' 

'Where do you go when you've conquered the world several times over?' asks Dorien Lynskey in Q Magazine. 'Answer: home'. 

 From the autobiographical precision of the writing, flow all the  album's strengths and narrative momentum. 'Forget the release-day hullabaloo. It's this renewed sense of purpose that makes Songs Of Innocence an unexpected coup.'


http://www.u2.com/

U2's 'Songs of Innocence': Bono sends note to Dave Fanning continuing tradition of DJ getting first play of their albums

U2 made a surprise appearance at the Apple iPhone 6 launch tonight but the first full airing of the new record was played on 2fm by Fanning 

RTE radio broadcaster Dave Fanning was sent a note from Bono continuing the tradition of the DJ getting the first play of any new album they release. 

 U2 made a surprise appearance at the Apple iPhone 6 launch tonight and it is U2's first in five years. 

 The 11-track new album is available to iTunes customers for FREE. 

 It makes it the largest album release of all time, and will be available in 119 countries. 

 Bono wrote a note for the DJ who the band have always given the first airplay of all their albums. 

 He said: "For the attention of right and always honourable Dave the raving lunatic Fanning on the occasion that U2's 13th studio long player Songs of Innocence being dropped into his hands. 

 "Therefore honouring ancient tribal custom and verbal agreement. 11 new songs from the era of pirate radio."

Frontman Bono joked at the Apple iPhone 6 launch about the band’s long-delayed follow-up to 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, saying that there were multiple albums recorded that didn’t quite cut it for the group.

He added that he wanted U2’s new album, which was finished “as of this time last week,” to be “as good as our very best work.”

The album includes 11 tracks and the iTunes page for the album says it is “rooted in the band’s early and lifelong influences including The Ramones, Bob Dylan and The Clash”.

http://www.irishmirror.ie/

"Songs of Innocence" First Reviews

'More than any U2 album before it, Songs of Innocence goes deep into Bono and the rest of band members' teenage years in Dublin in the Seventies. The first song captures the big bang of Bono's musical awakening: the first time he heard the Ramones. "Everything I've ever lost now has been returned," Bono sings. "The most beautiful sound I ever heard…We were pilgrims on our way."' 

Rolling Stone

'With occasional exceptions, Bono’s vocals are well to the fore throughout; Edge piles on the big chords and twangs brilliantly where appropriate; and in the engine room, Larry and Adam anchor things powerfully, giving U2 their unique centre of gravity.‘California (There is no End to Love)’ is a certain single: starting with an almost religious choral vocal, it is the most West Coast the band have ever sounded. There is a sense of rapture which marks it as a special moment in the U2 pantheon of great tracks.‘Volcano’ is a monster: the album’s ‘Elevation’, it's a ball buster of a riff-based anthem that opens with a full-on Stranglers’ style bassline from Adam. Packed with raw, meaty guitar slashes and psychedelic, swelling backing vocals, it is another near-certain centre-piece for their live set....' 

Hot Press

'The method of distribution will dominate the initial chatter about the album for a few days, but once people have had a chance to listen to Songs of Innocence a few times and digest it, they'll discover a substantive album that harks back to the band's earliest days, most musically and lyrically...'

USA Today

'It is an album of big, colourful, attacking rock with fluid melodies, bright anthemic choruses and bold lyrical ideas. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that, despite apparently being created in a spirit of self-doubt, it sounds fresh and cohesive, bouncing out of the speakers with a youthful spring in its step....'

Daily Telegraph

"California (There is No End to Love)," a song about the band's first trip to Los Angeles, is a modern take on The Beach Boys with a hallucinatory opening consisting of the band chanting "Barbara Barbara Barbara Santa Barbara" in the round before launching into one of those trademark power ballads that feel like a jet plane racing to the horizon....' 

US News 

'This Is Where You Can Reach Me" is a kind of howling, skanking disco-punk homage to the Clash...'   

Billboard. 

'The 11 tracks look back to the band’s musical roots in the punk and post-punk era, paying explicit homage to the Ramones and the Clash, and carrying resonances of later genres and bands, not least the many groups such as Arcade Fire and Coldplay that flourished by tapping into their influence.'

Time. 

"The music on Songs of Innocence doesn’t hark back to the open spaces of early U2; it exults in multitrack possibilities. But it connects emotionally to a time when, as Bono sings in 'The Miracle (of Joey Ramone),' “I wanted to be the melody/Above the noise, above the hurt/I was young/Not dumb.” 

New York Times


www.u2.com

The Guardian's and The Telegraph's Reviews on "Invisible"

The Guardian:

by Michael Cragg

U2 – Invisible: New music

While not a single proper, the electro-tinged Invisible is apparently a 'sneak preview of U2's forthcoming 13th album.

Invisible is the second song in as many months to be released by U2 and yet we're seemingly still no closer to an actual announcement about their much-delayed 13th studio album. "We have another song we're excited about to kick off the album," Bono told Rolling Stone when announcing Invisible, a new song (but not a single) that soundtracked an advert for the charity Red during last night's Super Bowl. "This is just sort of a sneak preview – to remind people we exist," he continued. While that last statement might seem a bit ridiculous coming from a man whose band have sold upwards of 150m records during their near-40 year career, it's also telling given the relatively muted response afforded their 2009 album No Line on the Horizon. So while November's Ordinary Love was U2 in default mode, the brittle, electronic passage that opens Invisible is something of a surprise, coming on more like Joy Division than Coldplay-covering-U2-covering-Coldplay. Of course, by the time the sky-scraping chorus crashes in, ushered by some typically chiming guitars, the whole thing shifts and we're on safer ground, but there's a more textured, characterful feel to it all. By the final coda of "there is no them, there's only us", which is the sort of chant-worthy rock lyric you'd expect from U2, you sort of feel happy to have them back.

http://www.theguardian.com/

The Telegraph 

U2 get maximum Super Bowl visibility

Bono and U2's new single 'Invisible', which was premiered in a halftime advert during the Super Bowl, is a song made for pop radio formats says Neil McCormick

"You don't see me ... but you will," sang Bono at Super Bowl half-time on Sunday. It was no idle promise. U2 used America's most coveted and expensive TV advertising slot to launch their comeback before a television audience in excess of 100 million. Their new single may be called Invisible but its aim is to achieve maximum visibility for the return of (arguably) the world's biggest and most divisive rock band.

At first, the single itself seems surprisingly modest. Sleek and tight, built on a perky drum machine and bass synth rhythm, it mixes pulsing Kraftwerk electro and chugging pop rock guitars with an initially understated and very Eighties retro feel. The chorus surges in a manner reminiscent of their early hit New Year's Day but the band seem almost at pains not to get too grandiose, aiming instead for a kind of insistent, earworm poppiness. It is certainly not the kind of stadium scale anthem fans (and, indeed, detractors) have come to expect but the hookline reveals its ambition. Bono twists the modest title by insisting "I am not Invisible" and it is fair to assume we will be hearing a lot more of U2 in the year to come.

When they finished their 360 world tour in 2011, the band appeared to be beset by an uncharacteristic crisis of confidence. Although it was the highest-grossing pop tour in history, their 2009 album No Line On The Horizon was widely deemed a creative and commercial disappointment, and failed to deliver any big singles. Frontman Bono openly questioned whether the band could remain relevant and insisted "We have to make hits if we are to survive."

Reflecting their determination not to become a vintage, nostalgia act, the four piece have spent much of the past three years writing, recording, rejecting and refining a vast amount of new material, enough for several different albums by some accounts. They have been working principally with ultra-hip American producer Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse), a leftfield maverick who has scored his own pop hits with Cee Lo Green in Gnarls Barkley, and collaborated with such cult artists as Beck, Damon Albarn's Gorillaz and neo-blues duo The Black Keys.

The first fruits of their labours suggest that U2 are scaling down their rocky sound for a contemporary pop world of small speakers and social network song sharing where digital genre bending electronica reigns supreme. Their Oscar nominated theme song for Mandela, Ordinary Love, was a subdued, stripped back, atmospheric ballad. Invisible seems to confirm an unsuspected taste for musical understatement.

However, there is nothing understated about the marketing campaign, which is what this is really all about. Thirty-second advertising spots at the Super Bowl command fees in the region of 4 million dollars. U2 are launching their new recording in conjunction with Bank of America. You can download it free for 24 hours, with each download generating a dollar donation to (RED), a global charitable fund set up by Bono in 2006 (up to a ceiling of two million dollars). It does seem a slightly odd arrangement, with a bank effectively underwriting the band's marketing with charitable donations. It's the kind of thing sure to annoy Bono 's many critics: good works and self-promotion rolled into one.

It means the single will not be eligible for the charts but I am not sure that matters. They have effectively made a song for pop radio formats that don't play old rock bands anymore, and come up with a way to deliver it straight to a mass audience. Judging by knee jerk Twitter and Facebook response, U2's dedicated fan base seem to be supportive of the band's new direction but the band will want to be seen as more than just a heritage act.

Lyrically, the song seems a subtle comment on the world's dispossessed, and by that I don't think Bono means old rock stars. He is addressing the global poor, especially perhaps the immigrant populations who work for low wages yet attract so much political opprobrium. "There's only us, there is no them," sings Bono in the coda. But while the artistic intent may be to speak for the invisible masses, the commercial drive is surely all about putting the U2 brand where a younger audience will not be able to avoid it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Achtung Baby Best Album of the Past 25 Years

 

Spin magazine´s  editors rank the top releases since the magazine's beginning in 1985. In mumber 1, they have chosen Achtung Baby , among other albums by so different artists such as Queen Latifah, Blur, Nirvana, Green Day and R.E.M. U2 has another album into the list: The Joshua Tree is ranked N° 62.
But why has AB been chosen?
Here are the editors´ reasons:


With the middling reaction to last year's better-than-you'll-admit No Line on the Horizon, U2's chest-heaving big-box spectacle seems to be fatiguing more of pop's body politic than it's inspiring. Weirdly, this was exactly the case more than 20 years ago. After the critical and commercial sweep of Joshua Tree, the Irish conglomerate followed its bombastic muse with the ponderous 1988 docu-fiasco Rattle and Hum, which featured a Bono mot that would haunt many of us for years to come: "Okay, Edge, play the blues!" Flailing and directionless, the band retreated and reconsidered whether it was time to fold up their flag for good.

Instead, three years later they emerged with the album — Achtung Baby, cheekily titled as a nod to German reunification — that would energize their career and genetically engineer rock music into the hybridized mutant we know today. Initially recorded at Hansa Studios, a former SS ballroom near the reopened Berlin Wall (and later completed back home in Dublin), Achtung was an effort, stoked primarily by Bono and the Edge, to "deconstruct" the band and rewire it with jolts of beat-generated clutter and collage, nicked from industrial music, hip-hop, dance remixes, and the Madchester scene. That method almost collapsed the band — bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., as well as coproducer Daniel Lanois, were left bewildered and cranky.

But the frisson found expression in U2's most immediately dynamic music since 1982's War, and its most emotionally frank songs to date, capturing that particular early-'90s rub of boundless possibility and worn-down despair. Bono's lyrical flights had a battered grit, like a defrocked cleric stirred to regain his flock without the usual trick bag of bullshit. "One" became an indelible anthem because it admitted "we're not the same" but urged that we've gotta "carry each other" nonetheless. The squalling swagger of "The Fly" resonated due to the rock star at its center confessing he's a liar and a thief. And for "Mysterious Ways," the Edge somehow concocted a jubilantly snarling riff that transformed Bono's gospel come-on so it didn't feel gross the morning after.

The U2 Paradox

Never has a band been more mockable, never has a band been more successful.

Extracts from  Eric Hynes´s essay posted in Slate 

Paris 1987, Joshua Tree Tour.

Photograph by Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images.

In a piece written for Rolling Stone 20 years ago this month, producer Brian Eno identified why the rock band U2 is singularly enduring and enervating. “Cool,” he wrote, “sums up just about everything U2 isn’t. The band is positive where cool is cynical, involved where it is detached, open where it is evasive.” For 35 years, rock journalists, culture’s self-appointed guardians of cool, have monitored U2’s ups and downs, smash hits and embarrassments. The relationship between critics and the band was fraught from the start, with their anthemic, highly emotive music winning them millions of fans but just as many skeptics. The rock of rebellion and decadence seemed allergic to a band this earnest, emotive, inclusive, politically engaged, and, worst of all, openly Christian. You couldn’t invent a more mock-worthy outfit.

Cool or not, Bono and co. have done quite well for themselves. They’ve sold a gazillion records, have been the no. 1 live act for a few decades, were elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, and are globally unavoidable—advocating for U2 is like telling someone to pay more attention to Steven Spielberg. This fall marks the 20th anniversary of their best and most important album, Achtung Baby. A remastered, deluxe box set of the album drops this week, and Showtime will debut the Davis Guggenheim documentary From the Sky Down, which revisits that album's tumultuous recording sessions. With R.E.M. recently giving up the ghost, U2 is basically the last band standing from the Album Oriented Rock era. Inspired by punk but drawn to pomp, suckers for abstract textures but addicted to pop, the band has straddled the realms of art and commerce more audaciously than any other in rock's history. They've sincerely tried to change the world and have strived to remain the best band in the world—differently ambitious, equally dubious pursuits. Yet for the moment, let’s put aside Bono's blathering public persona—his extra-musical forays into politics, policy, and wraparound-specs addiction—and just talk about the music and its impact on the culture. in the era of 99 cent downloads, U2 continues to conceive of albums as long-form journeys, with individual songs—like chapters in a novel, scenes in a film, or members of a band—contributing to a greater whole. They’ve always thrived on both consistency and change, applying a surprisingly strict formula to their albums while challenging one another to evolve, adapt, and reinvent their sound. And rather than choose between art and commerce, they’ve almost naively struck a course between the two. Especially today, with music acts either serving the marketplace or accepting their niche, U2 has no peer. I listened to every album, B-side, and soundtrack song, watched every music video, movie, live clip, and costume change. If you’re a fan, let’s compare notes. It you’re not, I’ll tell you what you’ve missed.

You can read the complete essay here.

www.slate.com

Lanois looks back on U2's 'Baby'

Daniel Lanois (L) on U2's "Achtung Baby" recording sessions: "There was a certain kind of aggression in the air." (Reuters file photo)

There's an adage: If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

To their credit, the young U2 never went that route. Their emotions were genuine, their motives pure. And in the '80s, their earnest anthems made them the most vital, relevant band in rock.

But by 1990, even U2 were tired of U2. The grim B&W photos, the giant white flags, the rhetoric; it reached its zenith with 1987's Grammy-winning Joshua Tree. After that, they could only go down. And they did, pushed and pursued by charges of megalomania for the Americana-obsessed Rattle and Hum, which critically crashed and burned. Finally, during a New Year's Eve gig in Dublin, Bono announced it was "the end of something" for U2, and that they were off "to dream it all up again."

What they dreamed up was Achtung Baby, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. It was their seventh album. Some say it's their best. It was certainly pivotal. It was here they reinvented their sound. They reinvented their band. And with the help of The Fly and MacPhisto, they finally figured out how to fake it. But they weren't faking sincerity, they were faking insincerity. "I'm learning to lie," claims a mischievous Bono in a vintage documentary in the new Achtung Baby box set reissue. Truer words were never spoken.

U2's sonic and stylistic rebirth began in an unlikely setting: Post-unification East Berlin. They holed up in Hansa, birthplace of albums like Bowie's Heroes and Iggy's Lust for Life. They rounded up the usual suspects -- producers Brian Eno, Flood and Hamilton's Daniel Lanois. They began chopping down The Joshua Tree.

"It was very stark," recalls Lanois. "It was cold and the food was bad. We had no windows in the studio; it was an orchestral room with a control room down the hall. We were communicating by camera ... But that's Bono; he tries to place everybody in an unfamiliar environment so they don't fall into the same old habits. And I think his instinct was right."

By all accounts -- except Lanois, who recalls "a lot of cuddling" -- early sessions were tense and unproductive, as the band tinkered with synths and beatboxes, exploring dance and funk grooves. "We were starting to go a little more -- for the lack of another term -- industrial with our sounds," Lanois says. "There was a certain kind of aggression in the air."

The break came when guitarist Edge stumbled on the chords for One.

Much of the song was penned on the spot. Others followed: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Until the End of the World, Mysterious Ways and more. Lyrically, the tone was deeper and darker, more personal than political. Musically, says Lanois, it balanced past and future, humanity and technology.

"I like the fact that we were able to mix flesh and machine successfully. I listened to it from beginning to end a couple of months back, and as I hear the record now, the rhythm section is pretty much rock 'n' roll. The sounds of the rhythm section are not the futuristic sounds. The toppings are the futuristic sounds. So it's very rooted in tradition, and looking toward the future."

Back in the USA: U2's Victory Lap

After U2 clattered through a sped-up, revamped version of "Magnificent" at the kickoff of the final leg of their 360° Tour, Bono smiled and offered an apology to the Denver crowd: "It's in development, that one," he said of a song they've played more than 100 times over the past two years. With 7 million fans in attendance, the 360° Tour is the most successful of all time, beating the Rolling Stones' record with a $700 million gross. But with fewer than 20 dates to go, the band still considers it a work in progress. "We'd like to get it to the place that we want it to be," says the Edge. "The final one or two shows, I'm sure, is where we'll fully realize the 360° Tour. This show is still being born, even if it's two years in."

After the band flies to Vegas following the Denver show, Bono dashes over to an elliptical machine set up in his hotel room and gives it a little hug: "Hi, honey, I'm home," he says, cackling. He feels lucky to be able to work out—and to walk without a limp, for that matter. The current U.S. and Canadian dates were scheduled for last summer, until Bono needed surgery for a serious back injury. "There were some terrible things that could have happened," he says. He's fully recovered, but the tour has now gone on so long that multiple members of the crew have conceived and given birth to babies during its run.


With so much time to evolve, the set list is dramatically different from what U.S. audiences last saw, in 2009. Instead of the No Line on the Horizon track "Breathe," the show now starts with a blazing "Even Better Than the Real Thing." U2 are preparing to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby in the fall, so they're in a Nineties mood—"I'm blown away by how productive and creative that time was," says the Edge. They've also added the rarely played "Zooropa" and even a welcome snippet of "Discotheque."

U2 are happiest about a change involving the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been placed under house arrest by that country's military regime for 15 years: Each night during "Walk On," the band would make a dramatic call for her release—and in November 2010, she won her freedom. Now, in a video freshly shot in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi herself addresses the crowd before "One" (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who previously had that slot, popped up during "Magnificent"). "If you demand it, change will come," she says. "It starts with just one person. One."


Even as it embarked on the biggest tour ever, the band was trying to record a new album, and Bono and the Edge were also trying to save their troubled Spider-Man Broadway musical. "Our drug of choice in this band is doing really difficult things," says Bono. Longtime manager Paul McGuinness puts it more simply: "The expression is to bite off more than you can chew," he says. Bono acknowledges that a new U2 album probably got snagged in the web. "But we don't tell Larry and Adam that," he says with a laugh. "It's not like songwriting has stopped. We're crushing tunes every day."

It wasn't until early this year that the group abandoned the idea of getting an album out before the end of the tour, after working on separate sets of songs with Lady Gaga producer RedOne and Danger Mouse. "We had to have a meeting and look at the schedule to see if we could pick up any extra time to work on it," says Adam Clayton, "and we just realized that we couldn't. To be honest, everyone was a bit gutted. But it was the only sensible decision."


When the tour ends, the three 150-foot-high stage sets that the band has been dragging around will survive: McGuinness has been negotiating to "recycle" them as permanent event spaces around the world. The band will return to the studio, with the expectation of releasing an album toward the end of next year, most likely from the Danger Mouse sessions. "We have to focus on what we do best, and the work we did with Danger Mouse came closest to that," says Clayton. "We want to be in the clubs and make pop music as well as the thing U2 does, but in the end, the thing we did with RedOne doesn't feel like the right fit."

U2 are looking forward to moving on. "It's making me giddy," says Bono, "the idea that this thing will be over in August. I will be sad to say goodbye to the space station, but I'm very excited about the free time to finish these songs." How about some rest? "I'm not tired at all," says Bono, taking a gulp of beer. "But I'm looking forward to, as Johnny Cash said, 'Walking barefoot in my yard.'"






By BRIAN HIATT FOR ROLLING STONE

The Edge on writing new songs

 By ROLLING STONE

In this video, the Edge discusses how U2's 360 tour has evolved from a showcase for their most recent album No Line on the Horizon to a celebration of their entire body of work, past, present and future. "We're in that stage of just enjoying writing and playing and not thinking too much about creating a finished collection of songs," he says of the new material the band has debuted in recent concerts.

www.rollingstone.com