Stories Of Innocence

Songs Of Innocence is inspired by the band's earliest days in Dublin – the gigs they went to, the places they hung out in, the friends they made. 

That story of U2's emergence in the late 1970's  is nowhere captured better than in North Side Story, the special Hot Press publication ( for U2.com subscribers).

Here's some of the ways in which Songs of Innocence and North Side Story are a perfect combination. 

1. Playing Ramones songs to the music press.

'After the Ramones', writes Bono, in the sleeve notes to Songs of Innocence, 'I could try and be myself as a singer.' Seeing Joey Ramone sing ('like a girl') had inspired the U2 frontman to find his own style, but when influential Hot Press staffer Bill Graham came to a band rehearsal in the earliest days, it's fair to say they weren't entirely being themselves. Paul McGuinness recalls the incident in North Side Story.

'They played some songs which Bill immediately spotted were Ramones songs, which was a bit embarrassing,' he recalls. '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.' 

2. Within spitting distance of the Stranglers

'We were in love with the punk rock scene', as it says in the SOI sleeve notes. The teenage band members were in the house to see the Ramones and the Clash in Dublin during those formative years, and 'The Miracle' and 'This is Where You Can Reach Me Now' (see below) pay homage to Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer respectively. 

But in October '78, the band grabbed the chance to play their own part in the emerging scene, scoring a  prized support slot for The Stranglers, at the Top Hat, Dun Laoghaire. Larry had been visiting (promoter) Pat Egan's record shop in Duke Street, drumming home the message that U2 were worthy of a bigger stage. 'He was a very polite as well as a very persistent young fella,' recalls Egan in North Side Story. 'So when The Stranglers' people told me they weren't bringing a support act with them I thought, 'Okay, I'll give these U2 guys a go.'

Turns out The Stranglers were late for their sound-check, so U2 didn't get one. Edge's guitar kept cutting out, and the 1,800 Stranglers fans didn't just hurl spit but lit cigarettes at the band. Rumours were, too, that U2 had upset the headliners by stealing beer from their dressing room. Yet still, the Hot Press review - which you can read in North Side Story - was kind: 'They won't look back at it as one of their most satisfactory sets... but the gig was a giant step. Given the circumstances, they've acquitted themselves with pride.' 

3. Complete Surrender

'I can vividly remember when I first saw the Clash,' recalls Edge. 'It was in Dublin in October 1977 at a 1200 capacity venue at Trinity College. It had a massive impact around here. This wasn't just entertainment. It was a life-and-death thing. They made it possible for us to take our band seriously. They showed us what you needed. And it was all about heart.' As 'This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now' puts it, 'We signed our lives away/Complete surrender...' 

4. Ireland in the 1970s, a tough place to grow up in.

'It was a war zone in my teens,' sings Bono on Cedarwood Road and lifelong friend, Gavin Friday, 'who lived at the top of the road', concurs. 'It felt like this wasteland,' he recalls, in North Side Story. 'The way I remember it, there was incredible violence everywhere in Dublin at the time. The amount of beatings I got was incredible, even going down to the bus...'

He remembers going to see U2 at the Baggot Inn, Dublin, when 'this crowd that called themselves the Black Catholics came and started throwing stuff at the stage. I think Bono jumped down and went for them ... It was always Bono and Guggi that defended me.' 

Cedarwood Road itself was 'full of people I still admire and love', Bono writes in the sleevenotes. 'Like Gavin Friday.' 

5. 'All of us are wondering why we're here...

...In the crystal ballroom underneath the chandelier.'  The map 'North And South Of The River:Wandering In U2's Dublin', published with North Side Story,  carries dozens of notable landmarks, including the location of McGonagles in South Anne Street, originally known as The Crystal Ballroom. A generation of people went to dance there, including Bono's parents. 'The song, 'The Crystal Ballroom', is me imagining I'm on the stage of McGonagles with this new band I'm in called U2 – and we did play a lot of our important early gigs there - and I look out into the audience and I see my mother and father dancing romantically together to U2 on the stage.' 

6. The cover star of Boy was also one of the neighbours

Just along the way from the Hewsons on Cedarwood Road lived the Rowens. 'That family were like an Old Testament tribe,' Bono writes in the sleeve notes. 'I learned a lot from them.' His close friend Derek Rowen - aka Guggi - was one of the clan . But one of the younger Rowen siblings, Peter,  also came to  prominence in U2 iconography - being photographed, as a five-year-old, for the cover of Boy, and later War, and appearing in the video for Two Hearts Beat as One.

'Bono was over in our house quite a lot,' Peter remembers in North Side Story. 'I was only a little kid, but one of my older brothers said he used to eat us out of jam sandwiches. His mum died when he was quite young, so his own house was often empty and he'd come around for a bit of company.' 

7. Early artistic influences on Cedarwood Road

Guggi has been friend and confidente throughout U2's career. 'I painted with Bono from childhood,' he reminisces, in North Side Story. 'His Dad set up a couple of little tables for us in the garage of the semi-detached house on Cedarwood Road, where he lived, and we would go out to the garage and draw and paint. Bono's dad, who himself was a painter, would give us critique and watch our progress.'

Guggi went on to become, in the words of Hot Press Editor Niall Stokes, 'one of the most successful artists of the modern generation in Ireland.'

'While the atmosphere of stagnation in Dublin was profound for boys growing into, and becoming, young men, underneath all that, currents of far-reaching change were swirling,' Stokes remembers. 'Gradually clawing their way out of the anonymity of their North side suburban upbringing, U2 and their cohorts would in many respects come to embody what that change was all about.'

Painting remained an important part of the artistic relationship for the former Cedarwood Road residents. 'Later on, during the making of the Joshua Tree,' writes Guggi, 'the band had this huge house in the Dublin hills with lots of spare rooms where they had set their studio up, and Bono asked myself and Gav [Friday] whether we would go there and paint, and we did. The three of us had painted on a Wednesday night for a number of years.' 

8. Stronger than Fear

Another of the Rowen clan, Andy ('Guck Pants Delaney, we used to call him,' writes Bono in the sleeve notes) inspired the song Raised By Wolves. He was in Talbot Street, locked in his dad's van, on May 17th 1974 when a bomb went off, killing 33 people. As the lyric goes: 'I'm in a white van as a red sea covers the ground.'

Introducing the book, Niall Stokes describes how the artistic and cultural ferment in 1970's Dublin played a crucial role in helping young people counter both the social deprivation and the political troubles. 'The sectarianism and isolationism which gripped the country for... 50 years had a shockingly negative, repressive effect,' he says. Yet at this pivotal moment in the city's history, 'a less conventional breed of artists and activists - painters, poets, playwrights, actors and musicians gathered [at haunts such as the Project Arts Centre] in a spirit of experimentation and adventure.' 

9. Blood orange sunset brings you to your knees.

The sleeve notes again: 'LA seemed like the polar opposite of Dublin. We love being somewhere between extremes. I remember Edge, Larry, Adam and me getting off a plane in California and looking at each other like 'This is better than the movies' and that was just the airport!'

It was the spring of 1981, when U2 landed in California for their first ever gig in LA. And Charlie McNally,  Dublin exile living in LA, was on hand to watch the band launch their US invasion, and report back for Hot Press. The band played the Country Club, he reported, 'the most prestigious venue in Los Angeles' and  'the showcase gig in LA of everyone from local hot shots Naughty Sweeties to Ry Cooder.' U2 'took the place by storm.'

A young Paul Hewson had asked McNally two years earlier if U2 could play support 'for nothin'' to his own band, at the Stardust [nightclub] in Artane. 'Little did I think that only two years later I'd witness that same band playin' their asses off in Sunny Califonria,' wrote McNally. 'Tonight, I had the pleasure of observing a tiny paragraph in Irish rock music history - U2's debut in LA.'

http://www.u2.com/

Nostalgic of past days: Night and Day

"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter, written in  1932 for musical play Gay Divorce.

U2 recorded it  in 1990 and appeared on the Red Hot + Blue compilation album. 

A great version of a classic performed by now a band which is a classic!!!

"catholic"

Gavin Friday grew up on the same street as Bono, and was part of the ‘Lipton Village’ gang with Bono and their mate Guggi.
Gavin formed the Virgin Prunes with Guggi (and Edge’s brother Dik, among others) in 1977, and has enjoyed a celebrated and eclectic career since - as punk, performance artist, actor, soundtrack composer, and much more.  He also advises U2 on the visual and performance side of their work -  an “aesthetic midwife”, is the phrase he uses.
Gavin’s first solo album in 16 years – ‘catholic’ - was recently released to widespread acclaim. A good moment for U2.com to track him down again. (Here’s part one of our interview, with part two coming in a few days.)


U2.com:The world has changed dramatically since you were young. Where does music fit today, for you? 
I formed the Virgin Prunes as a 17-year-old from Dublin in the 1970s. Music was this incredible escape route, a way to express myself and to get out of a place I thought was going nowhere. The punk movement gave me the energy and license to form a band. I was making it up as I went along. Thirty-odd years later, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve become more of a musician than just a performer, but, at root, it’s what I do, it’s my life. I have no choice.

U2.com:Does music have the same power as it used to? 
It can make a difference. There’s so much you can do and say and create. But I look around now, and see our country in ribbons, and I’m mystified that bands aren’t annoyed or angry or even writing about it. It seems like young people are treating music as a commodity, whereas for our generation it was a lifeline; it was blood. I was interviewed on a TV chat show recently, and they showed a clip of the Virgin Prunes from 1979. And the anger and the rage were phenomenal.

U2.com: But there’s a time to mature, presumably. 
Yep. People say to me, “What you did in the Virgin Prunes was so anarchic, so expressive, so of a moment, and now look at you, making this album...” But this album is beautiful: it’s mature, and if you’re 51, you can’t be running around with make-up on, screaming.
How old is rock and roll? 55? 60? It was built on Elvis shaking his hips, the Beatles screaming, the Pistols spitting... But now, it’s a grown man. And the poignancy lies in its wisdom and its poetry. Look at U2 -  probably the most potent song for me in the last couple of years is ‘Moment of Surrender’. That came from the pen of a grown man. A 25-year-old couldn’t write that.

U2.com:How would the young Gavin Friday react to ‘catholic’? 
It’s melodramatic enough, so he’d probably like it. I was a big fan of Bowie, Roxy Music and then punk, but I always liked Leonard Cohen as a kid; I liked the melancholy. When I heard Bowie on the radio, or Roxy Music, or later the Smiths, I’d think, “I’m not alone; someone else has been there.” And the poignancy of such kinsmanship is huge.

U2.com: Bowie developed personas. Were the names you gave each other in the Lipton Village an attempt to do something similar? Did they turn out to be more than just nicknames? 
There was something to it, yes. I mean, we were only kids - 13 or 14 when we started giving each other names - and of course, most gangs of kids give each other nicknames. My real name is Fionan, you know, and my brothers call me ‘Finna’. But I was christened Gavin Friday by Bono and Guggi, because of my personality, my physicality... So the names came from something to do with our essence.
I’m not trying to big it up or put it down, but there was intuition there. A real intuition. And we held to it. When we were 17, we had these crazy ambitions - we’ll make films, we’ll do this, we’ll do that - and still, if I go out for a pint with Bono and Guggi, we’re making plans. We still have that thing that we want to keep doing.

U2.com: You’ve said that ‘catholic’ is about “waking from a deep sleep, letting go and coming to terms with loss”. What were you awakening from? 
I was at Island Records for 12 years, but by the end of the 1990s they were taking down the posters of Bob Marley and Tom Waits and putting up the Sugababes. I was dropped. At the same time, I turned 40, my marriage broke up, and I got a serious illness... But then my father died, and it was then that I started waking up. I started writing again, but more from a personal point of view.
When I turned 50, Bono and Hal Willner organised a gig in Carnegie Hall in tribute of my work... I was on stage singing my own songs again, and that was it: I wanted it more than anything.

U2.com:From Lipton Village to Carnegie Hall! 
I was completely blown out by that night. It was unbelievable who was on the stage.

U2.com: U2 were there, but didn’t play as U2? 
When Bono first suggested the Carnegie night, I said, “OK. But there’s one thing: if the four of you are playing, you’re not playing as U2, and you’re not playing any U2 songs.” It was quite liberating for them all. I never saw a happier Larry Mullen in my life than when he was playing T-Rex.

U2.com:Have you helped to save U2 from themselves? 
Yeah, I have. And they’ve helped me, too. We’re mates. We’ve been doing this since day one. I’d knock on the door of number 10 Cedar Wood and Bono would say, “Listen to this. It’s a new song we just wrote.” And I’d say, “That chorus isn’t good enough!” And he’d say, “Ah, maybe you have a point...”
So it started as kids, you know? “You’re set’s too long! Why are you doing a Ramones cover? Do your own song!”

U2.com: And still you knock on their door to lend an ear? 
When you make an album, it’s like going into a cave. You’re living, breathing, eating it. Two months later, you’re like a rabbit in the headlights... So that’s when I’ll walk in on U2 and say, “What’s that? What’s this?”
I question. I kickstart. There is no bullshit. We speak the same language. I’ve known those four people for 35 years. I can smell them. And by the way, they’re the same with me. I was once at the end of my tether, recording Shag Tobacco, and Edge and Bono walked in and said, “Look! You’ve got a single there...” I said, “No I don’t!” Well, it ended up being ‘Angel’, one of my most popular songs, but I couldn’t see it at the time.

(Part Two of the interview coming shortly)


www.u2.com

U2 History: Slane Castle, 1981

Damian Corless remembers the first time U2 played at Slane Castle.

 IT was 1981. The summer soundtrack was ‘Stars On 45’, featuring Beatles songs mushed in a blender and blared out at ear-splitting volume by the new super-pirate Radio Nova.

Every second car windscreen had a sticker boasting ‘I Shot JR’, and Bono was buzzing around his native Glasnevin doing his usual impression of a young man in a great hurry.

This time, however, he really was in a great hurry. In a few hours’ time he was due on stage 20 miles up the road at Slane Castle for the biggest gig of U2's young lives, but before he could go he had to It being the first concert ever staged in the sleepy Boyne backwater, everyone was making it up as they went along.

That included the promoters who were banking on homecomers Thin Lizzy to draw 20,000, and were tickled ever deeper shades of pink as that projected turnout looked like doubling.

Amid all the first night nerves, U2 didn't get their freebie tickets until the last minute. This led to the spectacle that Saturday morning of Bono

kerb-crawling the locality in his weather-beaten Fiat 127, hailing down friends and neighbours to ask if they'd like tickets for the show.

It was a mixed bag of a line-up. Thin Lizzy were the headliners, but they were on the slippery downslope. Hazel O'Connor was top of the pops with the stopwatch ticking down on her 15 minutes of fame.

Sandwiched inbetween, U2 were a work in progress, but with a lustful eye on the future. They were still a long, long way from arriving in that cheery place where everyone knows your name, but at least they'd finally made it past the point where tour promoters abroad were billing them as The U2s, V2 or even VR.

They'd released an album, ‘Boy’, that had crept stealthily up the Billboard Hot 100, and they arrived in Slane hot off a small but perfectly formed American tour.

They opened with a rousing new song ‘With A Shout’, and as the crowd surged forward it really did seem that everyone in the singer's neighbourhood had made the day trip. But Glasnevin was just a pocket of Dublin and Dublin just a pocket of Ireland and it quickly became clear that the vast majority there were Lizzy fans keeping their powder dry for the main attraction.

Testing his growing powers as a Pied Piper, the singer tried to rouse the serried ranks of swiggers, smokers and snoggers on the surrounding hilltop, chiding them: “Up on your feet! This is not Woodstock.”

No, it wasn't Woodstock. It was Ireland on a woozy summer's day and they weren't going to disturb themselves for some cocky upstart.

Whatever about the audience, it quickly became evident that this would be no picnic for U2. They'd picked a bad day to be a work in progress. In the studio, they'd succumbed to the dreaded “difficult second album syndrome” trying to finish their new record ‘October’.

Bono's lyrics had been stolen so the new songs they premiered at Slane were belted out on a wing and a prayer with makey-uppy words. Not that that mattered too much since most of Bono's vocals were scattered to the squalling winds. Add in that The Edge's guitars were wrongly tuned and it was just one of those days.

When some louts started hurling bottles, Bono's frustration seemed to spill over, although he directed his ire rather oddly at “a special sort of people – they're called reporters”.

He fumed: “They find somebody like that guy over there who's throwing the bottles in the air, and then they take a photograph of him and print the photograph. And then you all are throwing the bottles. Do you see what I mean?”

U2's first Slane wasn't the shining triumph they'd hoped for. Their best success at whipping up some audience participation came when they persuaded the crowd to join in a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday To You’ for The Edge's sweetheart Aisling.

When it was done they'd scraped a pass mark for effort, but in the greater scheme of things it was another rung safely negotiated on the ladder to the top.

Three years later, U2 had scaled that ladder to dizzying heights. America was teetering before them, ready to topple given just one more tiny tip. Instead, in the summer of 1984 they were holed up in Slane Castle with visionary producer Brian Eno, intent on finding their European voice on the album they'd call ‘The Unforgettable Fire’.

In mystical tones, Bono likened the acoustics in the castle's stately rooms to those of a cathedral. He pronounced himself pleased at having finally found “a room that has life in itself, a living room”.

IF it seemed that U2 had temporarily turned their gaze from America, America came calling on them at Slane in the guise of Bob Dylan, who played Slane in 1984.

Backstage, armed with a tape recorder, Bono conducted an interview with Dylan that wouldn't have been out of place in ‘Spinal Tap’. After Bono informed Dylan that The Clancy Brothers were “like punk rock”, Bob expressed his admiration for the Irish band “Plankton”.

“Planxty,” Bono corrected him politely. A few sentences later Dylan showed that he'd been paying attention a little, but not a lot, when he asked Bono: “You know Planxty?”

The encounter climaxed with Dylan leading an impromptu singsong of Brendan Behan's ‘The Auld Triangle’, which is as good a place to leave it as any.

Slane Castle, 2001

When U2 finally returned to play Slane in 2001, both the band and the summer fixture had grown almost beyond recognition.

Slane had blossomed into one of the prestige pitstops on the world touring circuit, a tourist attraction in itself, drawing huge crowds from home and abroad to eyeball stellar names, including The Stones, Oasis, REM, Springsteen, Bowie and Queen.

And U2 had long since joined that stellar pantheon, both in terms of fame and of corporate scale.

For the duration of their first Slane performance, they were locked in a battle with the elements, with their equipment and with an indifferent crowd.

When their 200-strong army of technicians, flunkies and caterers set up camp by the Boyne in 2001 for the Slane leg of the Elevation tour, U2 were locked in an ongoing battle with The Rolling Stones for the bragging rights as to who could mount the biggest moneyspinning trek of all time.

U2 leapfrogged The Stones that year with Elevation, and were leapfrogged in 2006 by The Stones' Better Bang excursion, and this year U2 regained first place with their current tour.

Slane 2001 was a bittersweet experience for U2. Bono's father Bob died days before the first of the two shows, bringing a tinge of melancholy to the event.

The second show some days later was the sight and sound of one nation under a groove.

First the multitudes watched on giant screens as the Republic of Ireland football team beat the Dutch to qualify for the 2002 World Cup Finals, and from there, incredibly, the day got even better.

Just a perfect day.

- Damian Corless 


http://www.independent.ie

"Grounded" (2nd Part of Dave Fanning´s interview)

In the second part of U2.com´s  interview with Dave Fanning, he talks in more detail about his longtime friendship with U2 - and the common denominator amongst the many great musicians he has interviewed. (You can read the first part of this interview, here)


Was there a moment when you began to really love them? When you thought, ‘I’m getting this now’?
‘Getting it’ and ‘loving it’ are different things. I was behind them at the start more for who they were and where they were coming from, than from the fact that I thought the music was great. I never thought they would get out of a pub in Dublin to be world-conquering.

But by the time I went to national radio, I asked myself, which band’s demos have I played the most (and playing demos was a very important statement when it came to supporting local bands) and that happened to be U2.


 Can you look back now and see what sets them apart?
They had a belief in their own ability that none of the other crowd had. They were almost naive in that belief, which I found kind of funny. I remember meeting Bono once on Grafton Street and he said, “We’re going to go to London,” and I said, “Jesus, that’s been the death of every band I’ve known! Are you sure you need to do that?”

As it was, they were going because they had to do a few gigs there and get reviewed by the English press, but really, they were going to America. I didn’t know that, and I don’t even know if Bono did. Maybe even Paul McGuiness didn’t.


You are avowedly atheist in your autobiography; and U2 clearly have a spiritual dimension to their music…
Well I mean, God yeah, anyone can see they have this whole vibe about them. But whatever turns them on! It didn’t mean anything to me, but I never saw that in anyone else’s music, and if that’s what inspired Bono as a song-writer, then that’s fine by me, because it got as good as it gets. A Celebration, I Will Follow… it was there from the start.


How important is it that U2 stayed close to people like you, who’ve been there from the start?
That is one thing that amazes me. You can meet people like David Bowie and they feel pretty cool and ordinary and OK. I interviewed him once in New York and he didn’t have a minder anywhere. He was fantastic. But U2 - I don’t quite get it. I am amazed at how grounded and normal they are. I don’t think I would be; I don’t think you would be.


Are you able to be honest with them? They’ve sat you down to play each album to you. What happens if you don’t like what you hear?

 I always tell them - every time, no matter what they’re playing to me - that if you expect me to judge this on first listening, it doesn’t work like that. I am still old-fashioned enough to have to listen to an album 10 or 20 times - in the bath, in the toilet, in the car…


You wrote that the Stones have become their own tribute band. Do you worry that could happen with U2?
U2 are as vital as they can be, and it’s really important for them to be that. They never really go out on tour without a new album. And six or seven songs from No Line peppered the first year of the 360 tour, which is pretty amazing.


Is there a common denominator between the great artists you’ve interviewed?
They all want to be seen to be relevant. Guys like Prince and Paul McCartney don’t just want to play to an adoring audience. They want to release something that people respect, and that they go out to buy in their droves. It’s their lifeblood; what makes them human at the age of 60 or 70 is their work. If their work is as valued as it used to be, that’s all they could ask for. Bob Dylan is unique in the fact that his last three albums have all been critically acclaimed. With U2, they’d love to sell 10 million copies of their next album. And I’d say they’d sit there feeling baffled if they sell less albums than Duffy.


 How do you stay curious and passionate about music after all this time?
There’s always good music out there, and you’re only going to hear 10 per cent of it. But the 10 per cent can still be great. There’ll always be 10 albums at the end of the year that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

But I have to be honest with you: if music stops now, it wouldn’t worry me too much, because there’s so much to go back to, so much I didn’t hear in the first place. I know two of Frank Zappa’s albums; the other 19 I don’t know, but I’m sure I’d love them. Same with Captain Beefheart…  and a million others in between.


Dave Fanning's memoir, 'The Thing Is...' is available now.







www.u2.com

Pete Postlethwaite's last film appearance in 'Killing Bono'

The British actor,Pete Postlethwaite, considered by many "the best actor in the world" died from cancer  last January 2nd. His last movie was "Killing Bono" where he plays Karl, McCormick's camp landlord, a role written  for him especially.

Killing Bono is set in Ireland and stars Ben Barnes as Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick, a young man struggling to become a rock star in 1970s Dublin.

The film, which will be released in cinemas in April next year, is based on McCormick’s memoir I Was Bono's Doppleganger. It follows Neil and Ivan, two brothers attempting to become global stars as old school friends U2 become the biggest rock band in the world.
In this scene,Postlethwait´s  last in the film - and his acting career - his words of advice have particular poignancy because Postlethwaite already knew he had cancer.

"A word for the wise from an old man before you go. Remember only this: the measure of a man is what's left when fame falls away."

www.telegraph.co.uk

U2 were up in the clouds...

Ever since anyone can remember, Irish  rock journalist and broadcaster Dave Fanning has been the first person to air the first single from a new U2 album.

Dave has been friends with the band since their earliest days even though, when he first saw them play, ‘there were 5 or 6 other bands that I much preferred’. But, he recalls, ‘they had a belief in their own ability that none of the other crowd had.’

Ever since anyone can remember, Irish  rock journalist and broadcaster Dave Fanning has been the first person to air the first single from a new U2 album.

Dave has been friends with the band since their earliest days even though, when he first saw them play, ‘there were 5 or 6 other bands that I much preferred’. But, he recalls, ‘they had a belief in their own ability that none of the other crowd had.’

With the publication of his memoir, ‘The Thing Is…’ we tracked Dave down to ask him about the waning power of the DJ, how music has changed and some of his most memorable interviews.

Congratulations on your autobiography! Are you glad you wrote it?

I really am! Originally, I was thinking, “This is stupid. Does the world really need a book about Dave Fanning, written by Dave Fanning?” But I realised there are those who grew up in Ireland in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s who will relate to it.


But it goes wider than that. Not only did you have a ring-side seat and access to the great artists of those decades, but you played a significant part within popular culture, starting with pirate radio…

I was the biggest fish in a small pond, and that’s why I got so much of what I got. Not because I was good, or bad, but because I was ‘Ireland’ to the PR people. I could offer print, radio and TV. Robbie Williams gave half an hour to each country, and I got the half-hour here because I was able to offer all three. Don’t make me into Sir Dave Fanning. It’s just what I did.


But you were able to do something with it when you got it. You helped to introduce new bands to their audience, including U2…

No question, yes. But the world was different, then.

The power of a DJ like John Peel has completely diminished these days. If you want to find something new, you can do it instantly. You don’t need anyone guiding you through.

I think a lot has been lost. Most bands don’t get time to develop. It was only when U2 got to Unforgettable Fire - album 4! - that they really started moving, but it was to get to that point that was important, because then you get the breakthrough: suddenly it becomes The Joshua Tree.

That sort of thing doesn’t really happen any more, which I find sad. It’s all so ephemeral.


Did you ever have to play music from a play-list?

Never once in my entire life did that happen. Never. We were always meant to be the experts and we were left alone to do it.


How important does music remain within popular culture?

Good question. I do think it’s diminished… Once, if I saw someone carrying a record bag, I had to know what was in the bag, and would instantly decide on what sort of person they were! They were either an idiot or really cool…

Getting your hands on music was so difficult. Even listening to music. BBC Radio 1’s ‘Sounds of the Seventies’ was so important; even more essential than Peel. And I’d listen to the live gig between half 6pm and 7.30, even if the band was boring.

Today there are 40 channels playing music all the time, and if you go into your local supermarket, there’s a TV playing a video of the latest Black Eyed Peas cover band. Jesus Christ! What’s it become? There’s no listening to Radio Luxembourg under the covers any more, waiting to see what they’re going to play next.

Maybe I’m just too old…


Are today’s kids the Generation X-Factor?!

I’m stunned at the number of people who watch X Factor. It’s such glue for the family. Every age group, even hardened rockers… I just don’t get it.

You have Louis, who I like a lot, being pathetic every week. And then you have Simon Cowell saying, “You’re what this show’s all about.” No it’s not. It’s all about you, Simon…

These idiots have hijacked everything that was dear to me: the pop charts. And yet the amount of pleasure people get out of X Factor! So who am I, but an old fogey with my slippers and rocking chair and my Bovril?


What, for you, makes a great interview?

I’m not sure. Sometimes, you just know. The other day I interviewed Ron Wood and it didn’t work. But usually, the bigger the star, the better the interview. They have more to say, they understand the game, and they perk up if they realise you’re not just asking the normal series of questions.


Do you get star struck?

My interview with Joni Mitchell was the biggest one of all for me, because she came into the studio. I realised then that I was a little bit star-struck. For me, she was the greatest thing in the 1970s and to have her come in to do her first interview in six years – I still have no idea why she agreed to do it, to this day.

But there is always something bigger than the star: you’re consumed with having to get it right. Once I went all the way to Cincinnati to interview Peter Frampton, then straight to LA for Fleetwood Mac. It just has to work in those circumstances. And making it work is always bigger than the person I’m sitting in front of.

I usually get a bit bolder towards the end. That’s why I was so annoyed with Lou Reed. He stopped the interview 20 minutes before the end and I would love to have gone elsewhere with him.


U2 weren’t stars when you first met them - and you didn’t see much in them that suggested they would be. Is that right?

Yes. There were 5 or 6 other bands that I much preferred. U2 were trying to do something new that sounded different. And in 1978, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. The Undertones were based on decent pop music; the Rats were stealing from the Stones, and a thousand people were making short, sharp aggressive pop music. U2’s music was ethereal, up in the clouds. And it was like, “Jesus! Who do they think they are?”
It’s easier for someone like Jack White or Jimmy Page to look cool because their coolness is built on the blues, from something in the past. Edge, meanwhile, was trying to bring music into the future; and that’s a much more difficult thing to try and sell.

First part of the interview published in U2.com


www.u2.com

Bono:Irelands´s Greatest? (1 & 2)

This series looks for the greatest figures in Irish history. Dave Fanning champions U2 singer Bono, whose global human rights campaigning and charity work has inspired many. These are the first two videos of a total of five where Dave Fanning explains why Bono should be chosen Ireland´s greatest figure. The video shows Bono´s career to become a humanitarian and it  also shows  U2 videos rating from  1979 to now. Though the subject may be controversial _whether Bono could be named the greatest Irish_ the videos are worth seeing, they comprised not only Bono´s career into humanitarianism but also the band´s career into becoming the world´s greatest band.

THE POWER OF MUSIC TO SUSTAIN THE SPIRIT

A very interesting article published in www.theage.com.au about Bloody Sunday and the U2's song inspired by such terrible event in Irish history.

 FEW songs take their title from that of a historical event, the occasional mining disaster aside. Even fewer can draw a line directly to that event and yet resonate in the wider world. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 is a child of its time, yet its themes enabled it to survive, indeed grow stronger, in the years afterwards.


It was recorded in the depths of the Troubles - 1982 - and released as the opening track on the 1983 album War. Two years before its recording, Irish republicans had begun the latest wave of hunger strikes, this time in protest at their loss of status as political prisoners. Bobby Sands was the best known of the 10 who took their own lives through starvation. A couple of months after War's release, Gerry Adams was elected member for West Belfast for Westminster. In 1984, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly survived the Brighton bombing by the IRA.


Bloody Sunday occurred on January 30, 1972, in Londonderry. British troops shot dead more than a dozen civilians and wounded many more during a civil rights protest. In the aftermath, the Widgery report cleared the army.


This week, a report by Lord Mark Saville, commissioned by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1998, brought down its findings: the shootings were unjustified; the dead and wounded were not to blame for their fate.


U2's Bono was 11 at the time of the killings. Then he was just Paul Hewson. The Edge, then David Evans, was 10. They lived in the south of the island. Tony Blair was 18.


When their paths crossed later in life, all three were leaders: Blair of one of the most powerful countries in the world, and the others as part of one of the most powerful republics on earth - the empire of the song.


To quote Australian singer-songwriter Graham Lowndes: ''Survival's a song.'' It sustains the spirit. African-American chain gangs knew this.


One of Blair's favourite songs, reportedly, is U2's Where the Streets Have No Name. Bono also became a knight of the realm under Blair's watch.


It's ludicrous to think the song would have had a causal link in the chain that led him to appoint Saville to investigate Bloody Sunday. Indeed, there's no hint of it in his speech to the Commons on January 29, 1998. Nor should there have been. The inquiry was the result of tireless work by many parties to have the scales of justice reweighed. New evidence was presented to the British government that couldn't be ignored.


The wheel of history was being pushed by an invisible hand. Its force can't be quantified, but governments have risen and fallen by its touch. Mass movements have felt it, embraced it.


When the Saville findings became known in Derry this week, people gathered in the town centre broke out into We Shall Overcome, the anthem of the oppressed.


Four years before Bloody Sunday, civil rights protesters sang it on a march from Coalisland to Dungannon in Northern Ireland. The organisers had modelled their campaign on the US movement (300,000 sang it, led by Joan Baez, at a march on Washington in 1963). Thus the song flew across the Atlantic. It would also have blown through the corridors of power, too. Truncheons and bullets cannot stop it until every voice is silenced.


Artists know this.


When U2 wrote Sunday Bloody Sunday, they would have known they were getting into dangerous waters. Indeed, mentioning paramilitary groups such as the IRA and the UDA didn't last long in the performance.


Bono also prefaced it at times with ''This is not a rebel song''. But by making it more universal, while retaining its core theme, the band gave it a greater depth and strength.


Bono has made activism an artform. The band's concerts are in part high-volume, large-screen information nights. It's mass awareness. It's watering the garden. From little things big things grow.


It's true few people would sing Sunday Bloody Sunday on marches, but just in the listening, cogs are turning. Midnight Oil, and before them Redgum, used song not only as entertainment but as mass awareness campaigns. There are many bands and solo performers in America and Britain, for instance, who use their medium as the message.


Critics rail against the irrelevance of the effort. After all, an artist rarely has a voice in the boardroom or cabinet. But they miss the point. Survival's a song.

Warwick McFadyen is a senior writer.


source:www.theage.com.au///www.telegraph.co.uk

Happy St Patrick´s Day!!

Happy St. Patrick´s Day to all Irish, Irish descendants and Pats all over the world!!!

Now a St Patrick´s Day message from our favourite band (circa 1982, via MTV)

International Women´s Day

International Women's Day (IWD) is marked on the 8th of March every year. It is a major day of global celebration of women. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements.
The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Among other relevant historic events, it came to commemorate the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions.
On occasion of 2010 International Women's Day the International Committee of the Red Cross is drawing attention to the hardship displaced women endure. The displacement of populations is one of the gravest consequences of today's armed conflicts. It affects women in a host of ways. Women displaced by armed conflict – often living alone with their children – are frequently exposed to sexual violence, discrimination and intimidation. Many face poverty and social exclusion as well. International humanitarian law therefore includes specific provisions protecting women, for example when they are pregnant or as mothers of young children.

If we are talking about women who support, influence and care we can´t forget the women behind U2:Ali Hewson, Anne Acheson and Morleigh Steinberg-Evans .

Apart from being "U2´s wives", muses and inspiration, helpers and companions in life, they stand out on their own.

Ali Hewson
rappelling down Ireland's tallest building raise funds for Chernobyl Children's Project International's Homes of Hope program in 2009

Ali Hewson, Bono´s wife, is a recognized activist.She received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Political Science from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1989, shortly after giving birth to her first daughter, Jordan. She is a patron of Chernobyl Children's Project International, an organization accredited by the United Nations that works with children, families and communities who continue to be affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.[She participated in Greenpeace protests against the Sellafield reprocessing plant and narrated Black Wind White Land, an Irish film which highlighted the plight of victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She also participated in the film "Chernobyl Heart" with Adi Roche.

In addition to her own work, she has travelled and appeared with Bono extensively when participating in activist events such as campaigning against third world poverty. She and Bono founded the socially concious clothes company "EDUN".

Morleigh Steinberg-Evans

Morleigh , an American coreographer , dancer, filmmaker and lighting designer, met Edge when she was one of the belly dancers in the Zoo TV tour. Mother of two, she´s often seen accompanying her husband to events and parties, described as "a dark- eyed beauty", she has helped mould the scene of Dublin´s modern contemporary dancing.

Anne Acheson

Anne Acheson, Larry´s partner for almost 30 years, is a fine, beautiful lady with a very low profile. They met in their first year at Mount Temple School and seemed not to have separated since that moment.Mother of three children, she and Larry had been relatively successful in keeping their family life private. A great companion, she´s seen with Larry in important events, though as Larry has said "she has her own occupations".

U2 has always been surrounded by women, esp. in Principle Management ,where a great percetange of the staff are women. As Bono would sing "women are the future."


Not to forget the women who are in less advantageous position that us, ONE has launched a new campaign called Women ONE2ONE, the first step is to start an awareness campaign to end mother to child transmission of HIV.The group that can make this happen is The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – who will be meeting with their key donors next week. Please join me in encouraging Global Fund Director Michel Kazatchkine and Global Fund donors to support efforts to end mother to child transmission of HIV as a priority intervention to stop the spread of the disease:

www.one.org/women/mothertochild/


Happy International Women´s Day!!!
A Day for most of us to celebrate, why not signing ONE´s petition?

Music of Ireland

The Documentary "Music of Ireland-Welcome Home" is a two-part music special celebrating 50 years of contemporary Irish music. Part one features performances and exclusive interviews from many of the greatest Irish artists of our time including: The Cheiftains, The Clancy Brothers, Bob Geldof and U2 among many others.

COMING TO US TELEVISION IN MARCH

This is clip from the video, where Bono is interviewed and U2 performs "King of Trash" at Gavin Friday´s show in the Carnegie Hall.

source:u2fanlife.blogspot.com////www.musicofireland.com

New Year´s Day

To start the year with our favorite band, a memento from the 80´s...
Third song of the 1983 album "War". It is distinguisihed by Adam´s powerful bassline and Edge alternating between keyboards and guitar. It´s one of U2´s most frequently performed live song.
In 1983, Bono said of the song, "It would be stupid to start drawing up battle lines, but I think the fact that 'New Year's Day' made the Top Ten indicated a disillusionment among record buyers. I don't think 'New Year's Day' was a pop single, certainly not in the way that Mickie Most might define a pop single as something that lasts three minutes and three weeks in the chart. I don't think we could have written that kind of song.

"All is quiet on New Year’s Day.A world in white gets underway.I want to be with you, be with you night and day.Nothing changes on New Year’s Day..."

Starting as a love song, it changes into a song inspired by the Polish "Solidarity" movement.The video also features footage of Soviet troops advancing in winter during World War II.
Hope that the world could be quieter in 2009, things change in the New Year and all wars or attacks cease!!

Angels in Devil´s Shoes

This documentary came after the Lovetown tour, 18/11/1989 and it´s recorded in Australia.
Bono attempts to explain U2 music. A very interesting documentary of their early years when they were already a blast.

Bono talks about Elvis, rock and roll, black and white American music and even human rights!!!Edge explains his musical influences, such as Patti Smith, and what made him a guitar player. Larry goes back to the 70´s for "new" music and Adam explains about their discovery of American classics and how punk music opened a door to his generation.

Bono explains their "Beatles complex".

The final part of the vid shows us the original U2, white Afros, incredible mullets but a unique energy behind each performance!! The seed of the greatest rock band was already there.

While we wait for the new album...

...We can remember what the making of "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" was like. In November 2004, Time magazine published an article that revealed some of the secrets of U2´s way of working and the force behind the rhythm section of the band.

U2's Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. realize that much of the world thinks they are criminally lucky. The Edge works out most of U2's melodies on his guitar and Bono writes the bulk of the lyrics, leaving bassist Clayton and drummer Mullen Jr. just a few empty bars to fill and plenty of leisure time. But U2's less famous members are hardly dead weight. In fact, their job is to be live weight — or at least ballast. They are steady, difficult to impress and maddeningly unromantic. "If we're in the studio trying to build the rocket," says Bono, "Edge is under the hood with his slide rule, I'm trying to become fuel, Larry is pointing out the reasons it'll never fly, and Adam's asking, 'Do we really want to go there?' They're always reasonable and usually correct — and I hate them for it."

The indispensable wisdom of the rhythm section was proved most recently during the making of U2's new album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. For all its success, U2 has never enjoyed making records, largely because the force and diversity of the band members' personalities, combined with their politeness and respect for one another, turns the process into something slow, sloppy and complicated — like democracy. There was hope, though, in October 2003, when the group gathered in Dublin to give a close listen to songs that Bono, 44, and the Edge, 43, believed were ready for release. "All we needed was the assent of the politburo and the record would have been out for Christmas," says Bono. Clayton, 44, and Mullen Jr., 43, focused on each track and then voted decisively that the songs were simply not good enough. "When it comes to signing off on a project," says Clayton, "you ask questions like, 'Have we got a first single to open the campaign?' Frankly, we were missing more than just a first single." Says Mullen Jr.: "It was awkward, but it had to be said."

With 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind — an album that sold 4 million copies, spawned a $110 million — grossing North American tour and earned the band a Super Bowl half-time-show slot — U2 appeared to regain the coveted title of biggest and best band in rock 'n' roll. But neither Clayton nor Mullen Jr. could shake the feeling that the record had been overpraised by a public relieved to see aging rockers not thoroughly embarrassing themselves. "On the last album there was lots of good feeling," says Clayton, "but only Beautiful Day was a hit. I felt that, if our goal is still to be the biggest band in the world, the new record had to have three or four songs that would bring in new people. Three or four hits."

When it became clear that Clayton and Mullen Jr. were not going to budge, producer Steve Lillywhite was brought in to break the deadlock. "They played me the record," says Lillywhite, "and it was, well, it had the weight of the world on its shoulders. It certainly wasn't any fun." After several lengthy meetings, Bono and the Edge caved. "The songs were good," says Bono, "but good won't bring you to tears or make you want to leave your house and tour for a year. The bastards were right."

Acceptance of that, however, ushered in a typical U2 mini-depression. The not-good-enough songs had taken a year to make, largely because the members of U2 long ago convinced themselves that they're unskilled musicians who, as the Edge says, must "wait for God to walk through the room" before they can write a good song. The humility is charming, but it also provides a convenient excuse for working slowly. "They operate in total chaos," says Lillywhite. "They work slowly, get frustrated and then hold these epic meetings to bemoan how slowly they're working and how frustrated they are. I love them, but sometimes they just need to put one foot in front of the other."

Love to read about their chaotic creative process, almost unbelieavable taht after so much chaos there are so many good songs and lyrics.

And Bono, beware of the voice of the silent ones, because when they speak they do say what they really think!!!

U2 in Times magazines covers...

source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/