Bono & Edge join Yoko Ono for inaugural 'John Lennon Day'

Yoko Ono reveals her joy under the newly unveiled tapestry showing Manhattan as a giant yellow submarine with late Beatle at the helm, which was unveiled at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration during the city’s inaugural “John Lennon Day."

Yoko Ono,  Bono ,Edge  and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito marked the city’s inaugural “John Lennon Day” on Ellis Island Wednesday, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the day the Beatle got his green card. “They let him stay, and he is still here. Yoko, he is still here,” said Bono. Ono said that her “heart was crying” remembering her late husband, who battled to get his permanent residency and stay in New York after the U.S. government ordered him deported back to Britain over a pot possession plea.

“I remember how proud and happy he was” to be able to stay in the U.S., she said. “I’m sure John would have felt great to have a New York day.”

Ono recalled Lennon's fight against violence and hatred. She said he was a feminist before his time, taking their son Sean to Central Park every Sunday, and that now she thinks of him when she sees dads pushing strollers in the city.

Ono, Bono, Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty and The Edge celebrate the 40th anniversary of the day the late Beatle got his green card on Ellis Island Wednesday.

"I just wish John was with us," she said. "Please be kind, be peaceful, and be loving."

The event, organized by Amnesty International, also celebrated Ono's gift of the rights to record cover versions of Lennon's post-Beatles songs to the human rights group, which has raised more than $5 million in royalties.

A tapestry showing Manhattan as a giant yellow submarine with Lennon at the helm — commissioned by Amnesty as a thank you to Ono — was donated to The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation for display at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration and unveiled Wednesday.

Mark-Viverito flashed a peace sign along with Bono, Ono and U2's The Edge in front of the tapestry after declaring July 29 “John Lennon Day” in New York City.

Bono claimed John Lennon and the rest of The Beatles as Irish at a ceremony on Ellis Island off New York City to unveil a giant tapestry marking the 40th anniversary of the Liverpudlian singer getting his US green card.

Speaking in the presence of the former Beatle’s widow Yoko Ono, Bono evoked the famous image of Lennon holding up his two fingers in a peace sign on Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty behind him.

“That’s why it is fitting to do this here, because John Lennon was an immigrant,” said Bono, before an audience that included U2 guitarist The Edge and Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International.

“He didn’t sail across the Atlantic in an ocean liner or a yellow submarine. He didn’t come in on a third-class ticket looking for a job in Hell’s Kitchen. He didn’t climb up out of steerage with all his potatoes in a single suitcase. But John Lennon was an immigrant all the same.”

Bono noted in his speech that the first immigrant through Ellis Island was Annie Moore from Cobh, Co Cork, who came through the door’s of the island’s immigration facility on New Year’s Day 1892. 

He referred to the Irish parentage of all four of the Beatles, describing Lennon as “one more Irish immigrant on an island full of Irish immigrants”.

“Let’s claim him, in fact let’s claim all the Beatles not as immigrants but as Irish,” he said to cheers from the crowd.

He paid tribute to Lennon, saying his music registered with him and The Edge growing up as teenagers in Dublin. Lennon offered words like All You Need Is Love to him and others “not as a balm but as a kind of dare”.

“Give Peace A Chance – there’s another dare. Will we?” asked Bono.

Speaking of the day Lennon discovered he had been granted a green card, Ms Ono said “I heard his heart beating fast, I remember how proud he was.” To mark the date, the speaker of the New York City Council Melissa Mark-Viverito declared July 29th as “John Lennon Day”.

The tapestry has been donated to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation for display at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. The cost of the commission by New York-based Czech artist Peter Sis was covered by Bono, The Edge and music business impresario Jimmy Iovine.

This is the third tapestry to be commissioned by Mr Shipsey. An art piece honouring former Czech president Vaclav Havel, also by Sis, was unveiled in Prague and funded by Bono, The Edge, Peter Gabriel, Sting and Yoko Ono, while a tapestry by Sis dedicated to the late Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney hangs in Dublin Airport.

http://www.irishtimes.com/

http://www.nydailynews.com/

Michael Hutchence in Memoriam

Michael Kelland John Hutchence (1960-1997) would have been 50 last January 2010.
The front man of the Australian band INXS had all the ingredients to be a number one: a powerful voice and magnificent stance;his own inimitable style, strong yet passionate, moving fluidly between some surprisingly funky upbeat numbers to more predictable, occasionally haunting ballads.
His music was a catchy mixture of hard rock and dance music.Hutchence had a voice that was easy to like and to recognize, and loads of charisma to make him one of the music idols of the 80's and early 90's. His life was passionate and stirring.
Hutchence became the main spokesperson for the band and gained a reputation as an enigmatic, sensual frontman, although his close friends and family always maintained he was much more introverted than his onstage persona. A talented lyricist, he co-wrote almost all of INXS's songs with Andrew Farriss, who has attributed his own success as a songwriter to Hutchence's “genius”.
In 1997 when he was working on his first solo album, he was found dead in his hotel room in Sydney. Michael was only 37 and left a daughter to Paula Gates (who passed away in 2000) Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence who now lives with her stepsisters and their father, Bob Geldoff.

Last track on his solo album (called plainly "Michael Hutchence") is ''Slideaway'' a duet with U2''s Bono. Hutchence began writing the song just before his death but sadly didn''t finish it so Bono and Gill co-wrote an extra section. Slated to be the next single, ''Slideaway'' is a husky slice of emotion-ridden outpourings, a perfect finish to the album.

Among the greatest of INXS songs with Michael´s imprint to be remembered forever: "Mystify", "Suicide Blonde", "Never Tear Us Apart", "Don´t change", "Need You Tonight","Devil Inside", among many more.

"We were flying between shows and someone called and told me about Michael's death. I still haven't figured out quite how I feel about it. I don't know whether I'm angry or guilty... You always think if it's a mate that there was something you could have done. I still find it hard to figure it all out, because I had a conversation with him not that long ago where we talked about something like this, and we both agreed how dumb and selfish it would be, and Hutch was not at all selfish." Bono said that he and Hutchence were neighbors in France and that their personality differences helped to fuel their friendship. "He was a nice guy to be around. He was very light, whereas I don't think I'm the easiest person to be around, so we balanced each other out. But I hadn't seen him for a while, because we were both off doing our thing. I'm finding the whole thing very hard to understand..." Bono

Your songs will live in our hearts forever, Hutch.


Hollywood Walk of Fame
To commemorate Michael's 50th birthday, Michael's sister Tina Hutchence and Watcham want to get Michael's name onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For more information, http://www.michaelhutchenceinfo.com/walk%20of%20fame.htm

source:www.michaelhutchence.org//www.michaelhutchenceinfo.com

Rattle & Hum Revisited!!

Edge and Bono dropped in on Dublin's soon-to-be-opened O2 arena at the weekend, performing a couple of numbers from Rattle and Hum ... just as the band did in the same place more than twenty years ago.They were there to take part in a special RTE programme about the late Ronnie Drew, to be screened over the holiday period - and were also interviewed for John Kelly's The View, a programme that will go out on Tuesday December 16th on RTE One,Ireland.
'It was still in its original condition as a railway depot, ' remembers Edge. 'But it was absolutely amazing looking and we said, wow – this is exactly the kind of place we want, something really about Dublin City and where we came from.'

The band shot 'Desire' on their first day in the venue. 'The first morning,' explains Crosbie, 'when Bono arrived to shoot, he picked up a red guitar and played a chord and that was the first music ever played at The Point.'

U2 also famously rang in the New Year in 1990 in The Point Depot in a series of concerts during the Lovetown Tour.

'It was a joyous occasion to be with all your family and friends in Dublin. ' recalls Bono. 'It’s a sociological event, not a gig. It’s a tribal thing… and then to realise this might be it. This might be as far as the U2 story goes unless we can dig deep and draw into a different well. And we did in the end. It’s a pivotal place for us.'

Harry asked Bono to play it again for the O2, the brand new development built on the site of The Point. You can see their performance of 'Van Diemen’s Land', the first in the new O2 Arena - along with the interview - on The View next Tuesday.

'The circle is complete,' says Harry Crosbie. 'And Ireland's greatest venue had its first music played by its greatest band.'

The View, 16 Dec 2008. RTE One 11.15pm

source: www.u2.com

Rolling Stones´100 Greatest Singers of All Time:Freddie Mercury

A tribute

He's "the most inspirational frontman of all time," says My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way. A hard-rock hammerer, a disco glitterer, a rockabilly lover boy, Freddie Mercury was dynamite with a laser beam, his four-octave range overdubbed into a shimmering wall of sound on records such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Killer Queen." Even as he was dying, Mercury threw himself into his majestic, operatic singing. Queen's Brian May recalls that Mercury could hardly walk when the band recorded "The Show Must Go On" in 1990. "I said, 'Fred, I don't know if this is going to be possible to sing,' " May says. "And he went, 'I'll fucking do it, darling' — vodka down — and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal."