"From The Sky Down"

"From the Sky Down" trailer 

'Something happened on Achtung Baby that was the pivot point...'
Exclusive trailer of Davis Guggenheim's documentary, as the band return to Hansa studios in Berlin to discuss the making of the album. 'Making Achtung Baby was the reason we're still here now...' 


"From The Sky Down" opened at the Toronto International Film Festival tonight with hundreds of fans turning up as Bono, Edge and director Davis Guggenheim walked the red carpet.

'Did anyone tell you this was a documentary?' joked the director, before thanking Paul McGuinness, Brian Celler and U2's management team for their commitment to the project.

Davis welcomed Michael Brook, the composer and J Cassidy, editor of the movie, before introducing 'Mr The Edge and Mr The Bono.'

'We're very protective of our privacy and particularly of our creative process,' explained Bono. 'There's an old saying, 'If you knew what went into the sausage you wouldn't eat it..
'The only way we were going to do this was if we could find a director who was as curious about the creative process... we couldn't get Wim Wenders!' he added,  to wide applause.

Bono described Davis' enjoyment of esoteric subject matter: 'I mean - who could make a feature length film on guitar players?' (It Might Get Loud, in 2009,  starred Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge.)

Edge spoke about Michael Brook and Danny Lanois, describing how shocking it was to look back twenty years 'and see how close our band came to disintegrating.'

'If it was left up to us - it might have had a lot more jokes and a lot more asides. But what Davis has done is remarkable - hope you enjoy the film.'

Here's Bono, talking to reporters, about 'waiting for the muse to arrive' and in a BBC video report talking about how 'we ended all that people loved about our band.' 


www.u2.com

The Toast is U2!!!

GQ magazine´s article written by Elvis Costello.

What part of the story you do not know by now? The white flags flown in the smoke of  red rocks, the telephone calls from Sarajevo  or some other distant orbit,  the obsolete cars hung  from the rafters, a city constructed on a nightly basis, the deliberately contradictory  messages flashing and flickering  like a riot of neon and megapixels in a hot Shinjuku night?  

Then there is the music.

Glorious early records usually describe as anthemic, spiritually aware and even a little earnest. Curious length of inventions brought into existence by the force of personality.

Like nearly every  notable European rock ‘n’ roll band ,U2 are less a collective complementary talents than a collision of misfits , blasting past  technical limitations with sheer will. Then in one mighty  bound, they really were the greatest, biggest, baddest  band in the world. And they were suddenly funny, heartfelt and big hearted at the same time.  

This is the point  at which enters  the shallowest observation of the least-enduring quality ascribed to their work: irony. In fact,  it was simply the time to go  overground with  an evolving sense  of humour that had bound  together a  group of friends from the cups of boyhood  to being family men

So, what is there to say about these individuals?

Well, in  the words of Sly Stone ,”All we need is a drummer…” And after all, it was his band originally…

Larry Mullen Jr is a relentless motor and the necessary skeptic   of the group, while the most   underrated player  in the ensemble, Adam Clayton ,proves that good-humour languor, sobriety and rock ‘n’ roll may not be mutually exclusive.  U2 now have  songs with  inedible melodies  and mighty choruses , but even at the outset  their sound could  always  instantly be identified  by one element: Edge´s guitar playing. It is ingenious and orchestral but utterly without  the self-regarding  histrionics   of less originally “heroic”  players.  In fact, his approach  to the instrument might even be called a “church”  or a “school” , were  it not too pious  a term for one of the finest  fellows and most deadpan  straight men in music.  

Then there´s the singer.

Bono´s talent as a showman and storyteller  is there for all  to see,  but there are raw and personal  moments of songwriting  like “Kite”  among the hands thrown in the air  to soaring cadences amid strobe-lit  ,skyscraping sets. He has also found a way  to use this giant stage  to get things done.   He is a better man than I, in that he can share the air and shoot the breeze  with those who  I could cheerfully stab through the heart; to embarrass ,persuade, cajole and sometimes get them to do what they should have been doing all along.

Now, there is  no more hobbled hobbyhorse than the one that feeds on the old chestnut that the artist abuses a privilege of the stage if they sing a song of conviction or conscience. Pundits will have to stand on a soapbox  in order to lob  joke-shop arrows  at that imagined pulpit. Thankfully, those old devils don’t have all the good tunes.

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk

U2 won't be back for a while

Bono says it was heart-wrenching to wave goodbye to U2’s 110-date monster tour but says he’s done with life on the road... for a while. 

In a rare interview with Guilty Pleasures, the singer lifted the lid on the Irish band’s two-year 360° Tour during an evening when he was hounded and rounded on by other stars at the GQ Men of the Year Awards.

Pining for his travels across five continents, the charity campaigner told me: ‘They say every tour is ten days too long. Not with this one. We genuinely loved every single night and at the end we were so sad.’ 

Despite the nostalgia, the 51-year-old says he needs a breather and says the Joshua Tree rockers won’t be back ‘for a while’. 

He earlier told the audience: ‘Growing up is not what is meant to happen to a rock band. It has happened, we are now men.’ 

He then apologised for the absence of 49-year-old drummer Larry Mullen Jr, who opted to skip the bash. ‘He hasn’t aged very well,’ he joked. ‘He tries to avoid the red carpet.’ Bono was also forced to laugh off the jibes from comedian Michael McIntyre, who taunted him: ‘Bono, when it comes to coolness you always have the edge.’ 

He then asked the Dubliner if he had watched Simon Cowell’s new Red or Black? TV show and quipped: ‘Bono you would have been dealing with peace.’ 

Kylie was the next to single him  out when she went on stage to present an award and treated Bono like a roadie by asking him to adjust the height of her microphone. 

Even his own camp turned on him, when U2 guitarist The Edge mocked him for stealing all the limelight. 

Hoping for some of the attention himself, the 50-year-old told the crowd: ‘I am a middle child. I am in a band with Bono. If there are any members of the print media here, please hack into my phone.’

www.metro.co.uk

Men of the Year

GQ Magazine has confirmed something we all knew, didn´t we?? U2 MEN OF THE YEAR... the style, the glam, the rock 'n' roll...U2!!!

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/men-of-the-year/http://scatterolight.com/u2fansparaguay 

Questions about the Baby?

On Friday  Edge and Bono join director Davis Guggenheim to discuss his documentary  From The Sky Down, which opens The Toronto International Film Festival this week.

Got a question for Edge, Bono or Davis about the making of Achtung Baby?  Post it on Twitter using  #THESKYDOWN.

Questions need to be submitted before 12noon Friday (EST) and we can't guarantee how many we'll get through.

You'll be able to tune in for the live chat here on U2.com  from about 1.30pm (EST), finishing 2:15 approx.

www.u2.com

Gavin Friday: the concert of a lifetime

Gavin Friday, Electric Picnic, Ireland - September 2, 2011

Photo copyright © Caroline van Oosten de Boer

Gavin Friday gave the concert of his life at the Electric Picnic on Friday night. But don't take my word for it. Take The Edge's. "I haven't seen Gavin perform in many years," he told me after the show. "Then, suddenly, I realised there is no one else who can perform quite like him. There is only one Gavin Friday and I think Bono might need to take some lessons," the enigmatic U2 guitarist added with a smile.

Helena Christensen was equally full of praise for Mr Friday, who blew 15,000 fans away with a rousing and innovative stormer of a show -- his first "official gig of my music in over 15 years", he told me himself. (He is playing the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, in November).

The Danish supermodel told me backstage after the show that Gavin's performance "brought her from Heaven to Hell and back again". Well, his brilliant new album is called Catholic.

Gavin Friday - Electric Picnic

The boys in the band:

Herbie Macken, Gavin Friday, Dik Evans (Edge´s brother, who plays guitar in the band), Jolyon Vaughan Thomas ,David Mooney, Andre Antunes.

 Barry Egan

Originally published in 

http://www.independent.ie//http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinfriday

Happy Birthday, Freddie Mercury!!!

Freddie Mercury would have been 65 today.  In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time. Allmusic has characterised Mercury as "one of rock's greatest all-time entertainers", who possessed "one of the greatest voices in all of music".
Back in 1985 when Bob Geldoff´s great idea of joining great rock bands to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine took place, U2 and Freddie Mercury met. Both bands wrote history in that concert for different reasons. 
U2's performance established them as a pre-eminent live group for the first time with their acclaimed  14-minute rendition of "Bad", during which lead vocalist Bono jumped off the stage to join the crowd and dance with a girl. 

Queen galvanised the stadium with some of their greatest hits, in which lead singer Freddie Mercury at times led the entire crowd of 72,000 in thundering unison refrains. In their 20 minute set the band opened with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and closed with "We Are the Champions". Queen's performance on that day has since been voted by more than 60 artists, journalists and music industry executives as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music. Mercury and fellow band member Brian May later sang the first song of the three-part Wembley event finale.

This is the finale, a moment in rock history to remember forever...