Baltimore, Maryland, 22th June 2011

What a beautiful midsummer nights dream' said Bono, towards the end of one of the hottest nights of the tour in Baltimore tonight. 'Unbelievable...'


 'Real Thing'  opened the show but  it was a surprise to hear Edge wind up The Fly after that - hard to beat the 'Kraut Rock - circa 1991'.


Florence and The Machine were up earlier for their first night on the tour and Bono thanked them for taking a ride on the space ship.

'It's great to be back, it's so beautiful, Maryland...' The rolling hills reminded him of Wicklow - that went down well.


After introducing everyone else, first of several special mentions to Clarence Clemons as 'Still Haven't Found' featured snatches of Springsteen before we were all singing Stay (Faraway So Close).

'If I could stay, then the night would give you up.
Stay, and the day would keep its trust.
Stay, and the night would be enough....'

Setlist 

Even Better Than The Real Thing
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
Until The End Of The World
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / The Promised Land
Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Beautiful Day / Space Oddity
Elevation
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Miss Sarajevo
Zooropa
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Crazy Tonight / Discothèque / Psycho Killer
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Scarlet
Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone
One
Amazing Grace (snippet) / Where The Streets Have No Name
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender / Jungleland

Picture gallery

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On the Hill with Bono

By Sheila Nix for ONE


ONE’s cofounder Bono came to Washington, D.C., today to meet with House and Senate lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to thank them for their bipartisan commitment to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease -– and to talk about the importance of continued support for effective programs that are saving millions of lives in the poorest places on the planet for less than 1 percent of the federal budget.


We had very good meetings in the Senate and House. US leadership in the fight against extreme poverty has been a global game changer. Thanks to effective programs, more than four million African men, women and children are on life-saving AIDS medicine and malaria deaths have been cut in half in countries across the continent –- all in a few years.

Bono is also meeting with members of the Obama Administration while he is in town to discuss these same issues. Urged on by ONE members, President Obama made a strong commitment last week to help fund vaccines that will ensure kids in poor countries don’t die from preventable, treatable diseases like rotavirus. Now we need the Congress to do its part as well on vaccines, and based on our meetings today and the support of champions on both sides of the aisle, I believe it will.

It was great to have Bono in town today to help make the case that this stuff works, and it’s more important now than ever.

ACT NOW, JOIN THE PETITION!!!TELL THE IMF TO GIVE ALL CANDIDATES A FAIR SHOT AT THE TOP SPOT


JOIN ONE!!!

Glasto!!!

Bono & Glastonbury on NME current issue cover

These last days is all about Glastonbury Festival. U2 will be playing at the Pyramid stage in the festival next Friday. 






The song created for the festistival which U2 could not premiere last year.





Edge talks about the famous festival:

'It's About The Songs..."

Larry Mullen Jr. did a short interview Monday night on Zane Lowe's BBC radio programme,he talked abouy  U2's upcoming performance at the legendary Glastonbury Festival. 


'It's about the songs,' explained Larry, calling in to Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show last night. 'About a band being able to get up and play the music...'

Larry sounds in great form and dropping some clues about how the band are thinking ahead of the Glastonbury set.

Listen in to the whole of the interview here  -scroll forward to just past 1:03.


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'A Time To Run For Cover...'

Is there a time to run for cover

A time for kiss and tell.
A time for different colours
Different names you find hard to spell..

Miss Sarajevo captured live in Anaheim and featuring a remarkable new animation by Run Wrake.

The idea of using childrens drawings came from Bono, who remembered an exhibition he'd seen of children's pictures in Mostar. Images of princesses and beauty queens seque into drawings from warzone, the matter-of-fact childrens illustration style complementing the theme of the song. 


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Anaheim, California: 2nd Night, Club Night!

'Saturday night in Anaheim, hope you like our big ol' rock show,' says Bono. 'Now I know this is Angels territory… and miracles abound, but there’s a magic trick that we'd really like to try tonight. It's called 'Shrink This Stadium, Turn It Into A Club...'

It's a trick the band have been playing for some time and they pulled it off again tonight, mixing up the set list and dropping in some surprises.

'Closeness is not about physical proximity, we feel close to you up there on the top tier, we're feeling it (and) over to the left... can you feel us?'

The deafening response from another capacity audience suggested everyone in the house was feeling the closeness tonight. So 'Real Thing' took us off the ground and then this.
'Are you ready for some Kraut Rock - circa 1990?'

Were we ever ? Second nights often throw up something no-one is expecting and no-one was expecting The Fly.

'It's no secret that the stars are falling from the sky
It's no secret that our world is in darkness tonight...'

Wow! After that this show was in orbit, circling the planet in the 360 spaceship.

'Saturday night, Sunday morning, that's the kind of band we are...' And it's time to give thanks for Lenny Kravitz, his last show with the tour tonight and his 'fine and extraordinary band.'

'Thank you Orange County for your patience, some of you are two years older than you were when you bought your tickets for tonight's show...
'A lot can happen in that time, for example Adam… you may see there's an extra bounce in his step. That's because Adam Clayton is a proud father.
'Larry. A movie star, it had to happen. Our Lawrence plays opposite the great and gifted Donald Sutherland in a new movie called Man On A Train.
'And The Edge became a farmer, just yesterday actually. He had a slightly different plan. He was going to build a nuclear reactor, but farming is good, he’s back to wind farming. On guitars and everything else - The Edge!'


Lots of special friends at Angel Stadium tonight. Quincy Jones is here and Still Haven't Found is dedicated to him, while 'Stuck in a Moment' goes out to Michael Hutchence, 'a beautiful man, he loved it here.'
'Big love to Morleigh' - she and Edge celebrate their wedding anniversary today - as well as shout-outs to everyone who signed up to the One campaign. But tonight the most special dedication brings the show to a close on a poignant note.

'I want you to think about the beautiful symphonic sounds that came out of a saxophone...' says Bono, referencing Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. 'This man carried music and music carried him until this day...'

Moment of Surrender is dedicated to Clarence Clemons.

Setlist :

1. Even Better Than The Real Thing
2. I Will Follow
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Mysterious Ways
6. Elevation
7. Until The End Of The World
8. Happy Birthday for Paul McGuinness
9. All I Want Is You
10. Stay
11. Beautiful Day / Space Oddity
12. Pride
13. Miss Sarajevo
14. Zooropa
15. City Of Blinding Lights
16. Vertigo / Are You Gonna Go My Way
17. Crazy Tonight / Discothèque / Life During Wartime / Psycho Killer
18. Sunday Bloody Sunday
19. Scarlet
20. Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone
21. One
22. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow / Where The Streets Have No Name
23. Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
24. With or Without You
25. Moment of Surrender

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Anaheim, California

"Birthday wishes in Anaheim" For the first time on stage, Paul McGuinness to celebrate his 60th birthday.

'Tonight might be the night to toast a man who has meant so much to this band...

'Without this man, things might have turned out a little differently.

'Larry Mullen Jnr would not be the drummer of U2.. he'd be a highway patrol man. But in Dublin!

'Adam Clayton, what would he be without this man? I'm thinking hand bag designer. Really posh ones though... a designer of fine things...'

Edge, continues Bono would have been a city planner and as for himself, probably a theatre critic - but none of those histories came to pass because four young musicians in Dublin bumped into Paul McGuinness and tonight, at the opening show in Anaheim, for the first time in three decades they persuaded him to join them on stage.

'So tonight,  we want to toast our manager, Paul McGuinness,  whose sixtieth birtday it was yesterday. Here with his wife Kathy, his daughter Alexandra and his son Max. It's impossible to say what this man means to us... '

And disappearing backstage Bono returns to introduce Paul McGuinness to 90,000 people who wouldn't have been here on this night if he hadn't seen what he saw in those four musicians all those years ago.

'For the first time ever on the U2 stage..' says Bono, as Paul greets the band who lead the audience in a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday. 

It Was Lenny Kravtiz who got everyone in the right groove on a balmy evening at Angel Stadium and when Even Better Than The Real Thing marked the arrival of the main attraction everyone was on their feet as two and a half hours passed in a moment.

'Thank you… thank you... thanks to Los Angeles favorite son Lenny Kravitz for opening the show, our very special guest. Incredible dude, the kids a star. Thank you all for your patience… '

Also in the house tonight, another special guest with a key role in the story of this band - Chris Blackwell who signed U2 to his Island Records when they were barely out of their teens. Stay is dedicated to Chris while Pride is dedicated to Maria Shriver. Can't fail to mention yet another compelling new video making a debut  tonight, this one created by Run Wrake  for Miss Sarajevo - more coming on that soon.

Before you knew it, the lights were down and Bono was pointing out the milky way of cellphones illuminating the night, inviting everyone to think about our small blue planet, spinning round the sun 'and all the people trying not to fall off.'  And that was Moment of Surrender on a night of birthday wishes.

SET LIST

                                                       Even Better Than The Real Thing

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

Magnificent

Mysterious Ways

Elevation

Until The End Of The World

All I Want Is You

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

Beautiful Day

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City Of Blinding Lights

Vertigo

I'll Go Crazy / Discotheque

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On

ENCORE

                                                                               One

Where The Streets Have No Name

ENCORE 2

                                                   Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

With Or Without You

Moment of Surrender

More pics here 

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