U2 not splitting up

McGuinness ends speculation on band's future in  an interview for Belfast Telegraph.
It's official - U2 are not splitting up. The band's manager, Paul McGuinness, last night flatly denied reports that the four school friends are going their separate ways after 35 years.
Known as the fifth member of U2, Mr McGuinness (60) has steered their career from local outfit to global superstars. Asked about the constant speculation that U2 have hit the end of the road, he said: "No, and I think I would have heard. Not all all. They are always working on the next record."
Fears of a U2 split began with an interview Bono gave to 'Rolling Stone' magazine last month in which he hinted that himself, Larry Mullen Jnr, the Edge and Adam Clayton may part company sometime in 2012.
"I'm not so sure the future hasn't dried up," said the 51-year-old frontman.
"It's quite likely you might hear from us next year but it's equally possible that you won't. The band may have finally run its course."
However, at the opening of a new stage version of Edna O'Brien's novel 'The Country Girls', Mr McGuinness said: "I'm not sure what was said, but I think it was a chance remark taken out of context. I would disregard it."


www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

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."

Is it time for U2 to call it a day?

Neil McCormick gives us his view on the last "talks" about the possibility of U2 coming to an end.

The Edge and Bono have also contributed to the plot and dialogue (Photo: Getty)

There has been a lot of internet chatter about whether U2 are breaking up, following comments from Bono in Rolling Stone. He has been talking a lot recently about U2 having been “on the edge of irrelevancy for 20 years” and suggested “We’d be very pleased to end on No Line on the Horizon”. Despite a failure to deliver a hit single and a general perception that it wasn’t a classic, the album has recently reached the five million sales mark, and U2 have just completed the biggest, most technologically ambitious and highest grossing tour in rock history. Q magazine just presented U2 with an award for Greatest Act of the Last 25 years. Might it represent an opportune moment for U2 to bow out?
There is no set process for a band to break up. Usually it happens more or less accidentally and spontaneously, through internal conflict. Often it is accompanied by a decline in popularity and increasing creative divisions. But when you have been together as long as U2 (36 years and counting), and successful throughout your career, a kind of inertia can set in, where the band continues to exist just because, well, it continues to exist.
REM have been widely applauded for their recent decision to disband because of a sense that their best  days were behind them. The Rolling Stones continue despite of it, taking the critical flak to deliver music and entertainment for their massive fan base. You can’t say one is right, and one is wrong – it is each according to his own. But REM are close to U2, and belong to the post punk generation for whom an allegiance to rock bands came with high ideals and a sense of purpose. Talking about REM’s break up on Newsnight this week, Mike Mills explained that “It was an opportunity for us to walk away on our own terms. There are no external forces, no problems, we can walk away as friends and feel like we’ve accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish.”
U2 have certainly accomplished a lot, probably more than they ever dreamt… although they did dream big. I’ve got Bono on tape when Boy came out, in 1980, enthusiastically telling me that one day they would make a record as great as Sergeant Pepper. They’ve been the biggest rock band in the world for much of their career, they have constantly reinvented and reinvigorated themselves musically, done ground breaking and record breaking tours, and been at the centre of political and charitable campaigns that have helped shape the world we live in. I think this is part of the problem, actually, the very cause of the existential crisis the band find themselves in. Bono likes to be at the centre of things, part of the musical, political and cultural conversation. “Lots of people have U2 albums, why they would want another one is a reasonable question,” he admitted recently. “I don’t know if it is possible for us to make something that is current that is meaningful, not just to our audience but to the times we live in. But that’s kind of the job for me.”
U2 have recorded a lot of music over the past couple of years, with a lot of different producers, including new songs with Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton, the cut and paste wizard behind Gnarls Barkley), clubby pop tracks with Red One and meditative, quasi-ambient material with their established team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. I would like to hear those records. But there seems to be little sense in the band camp that this is music the world needs right now, something singular and original and powerful enough to stand up with their very best, as big and bold as the sprawling emotion of Unforgettable Fire, the rough hewn rock of The Joshua Tree, the industrial strength invention of Achtung Baby or killer tunes of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. And so they just keep chipping away, in search of that elusive creative breakthrough. But can a band of super rich middle-aged men ever achieve the creative heights of their youth, when making music really seemed like a matter of life or death?
Bono’s conviction that they have to create something world beating every time effectively creates a rod for their own backs. What bands have ever done their greatest and most resonant work in the middle age of their career?  When U2 made their early classics, they worked day and night in pursuit of an ideal, sacrificing personal time and private lives, giving everything to the cause of the music. Inevitably that is not the case any more. They arrange meetings and recording sessions to fit with their increasingly complex personal schedules.  Their fans may still like to believe that U2 live in Ireland and meet in the local pub or prayer meeting (hence the ludicrously inaccurate tax avoidance charge that keep being made against them). In fact, Bono lives mainly in New York now, The Edge in LA, Adam in London and only Larry remains a more or less full time resident of Dublin. They have all (apart from Adam) got wives and children who need time and attention. They have the kind of extreme wealth that ensures fabulous comfort. And Bono, their driving force, finds his time and energy much diluted by his sprawling range of extra-curricular interests and commitments, particularly political and charitable activities that inspire much antagonism in people who think a rock star should be in the business of making rock music. As Bono recognises, “We’re the most loved and the most hated band on Earth” and a lot of the reasons people don’t like them are actually about him – which he says he understands “because I have to live with me too.”
I was supposed interview Bono last week about the 20th anniversary re-release of Achtung Baby but he called it off because he felt he had done enough promotional work, and needed to take a break. He says he is becoming embarrassed by the amount of focus there is on him, as opposed to the rest of the band. It is a running joke that he sympathises with people who are sick of the sound of his voice, because he is too. And he’s plainly worn out. Or as he put it in an apologetic message: “Flat on my back from exhaustion.”
U2’s two year world tour may have finished in the summer but sometimes I think Bono just doesn’t know how to stop. He has continued his ceaseless globetrotting in connection with all his philanthropic, humanitarian and business commitments. He sang at Steve Jobs memorial in California on October 17, met Nicholas Sarkozky in Paris on the 19th as part of a lobbying group for the Global anti-poverty coalition One ahead of the G20, and was in London a few days later with the rest of U2 to pick up their award from Q magazine. It is hardly surprising that he told Rolling Stone his only future plans were to have some time off: “I want to take my young boys and my wife and just disappear with my iPod Nano and some books and an acoustic guitar.” Then on Monday, this week, he was in Dublin, as part of a delegation trying to convince foreign technology companies to invest in Ireland. He is the rock star who can’t say no.
Which is why, personally, I don’t think U2 are likely to do an REM and retire gracefully. If they ever do go, it will be in a blaze of glory or an act of outrageous folly, broken by their singer’s mad ambition. Right now, it is probably fair to say U2 need a break and the world needs a break from them. But U2 fans have heard these hints of disillusion and dissolution before – notably in 1989, after the excesses of Rattle And Hum, when Bono declared they had to “go away and dream it all up again.” They came back with Achtung Baby in 1991, probably their finest moment.
From my experience, what they tend to do is manufacture a sense of crisis to drive them. Edge refers to it as jeopardy, a constant buzzword in his discussions of their creative process. U2 need to feel that there are things at stake when they are writing and recording, deliberately using tension and risk to maintain focus. This, presumably, gets harder the more successful and comfortable individuals get. When Bono declares U2 to be on “the edge of irrelevance”, what he is really doing is raising the stakes for himself and his band, shoving them rudely out  of their comfort zone.
U2 are in temporary retreat while their leader recharges his batteries, but his own self-questioning is not actually an indication of disillusion, but an instigation to action. Fans worrying that Bono’s remarks suggest U2 are about to call it a day could not be more wrong. What he really wants to do, indeed what he feels he needs to do, is for U2 “to go away and create the album of their lives.”
I don’t know if it is possible for a band with their long history to reinvent themselves again. But, like millions of other fans, I want to hear them try.

www.telegraph.co.uk

AB: Rolling Stone Review

Achtung Baby (20th Anniversary Edition)

U2

by: Andy Greene

At the dawn of the 1990s, most of the biggest bands in the world – Def Leppard, INXS, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Poison – marched blindly into the new decade, releasing a watereddown retread of their last album. Not U2. Abandoning the stadium-size sincerity of LPs like The Joshua Tree, they went to Berlin, drew on krautrock and club music and created what Bono called "probably the heaviest record we've ever made" – a barrage of irony, distortion and still-huge hooks.
This deluxe box set features both Achtung Baby and its spacedisco follow-up, 1993's Zooropa, along with B sides, remixes, previously unreleased outtakes and aKindergarten disc, basically an early version of Achtung Baby. The best of the unheard tracks may be "Down All the Days," an early version of "Numb" with Bono on vocals instead of the Edge. Others are more interesting than thrilling, like "Oh Berlin," a soaring ode to the birthplace of Achtung Baby, and "Heaven and Hell," a moody synth number with some unexpected doo-wop flavor. A few tracks on Kindergarten sound nearly identical to the final versions; others went through major restructuring: In its early form, "One" sounds like a campfire singalong. The bonus material is not essential listening, but since U2 rarely pull back the curtain on their creative process, it's fascinating to hear this rough draft of history.

www.rollingstone.com

ONE´s voices resonated around Paris

The “F-word” resonated loudly last night in Paris as anti-poverty campaign group ONE teamed up with the City of Paris to send a shocking message to G20 leaders, who are meeting later this week in Cannes. The square of the Paris Town Hall was plunged in complete darkness while ONE’s “F-Famine” and “A future without famine” videos were projected onto the wall of the Town Hall.

On the eve of the G20 summit in Cannes, hundreds of members of ONE, along with a few celebrities including Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Friedreric Diefenthal, gathered on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris to recall on world leaders that if the drought is an act of nature, famine is man-made.

With the exceptional support of the City of Paris, the latest clips of ONE, called “F-Word: Famine is the real obscenity” and “A future without famine” were projected onto the walls of City Hall, first in their French version and the English version.

Read more: The ONE blog.

ACT NOW!!! I hope you’ll take a few minutes to sign ONE’s petition to help break the cycle of famine and ensure that people are hungry no more: 

http://act.one.org/sign/hungry_no_more/?referring_akid=.1756964.FNemhG 

www.one.org

Behind the scenes on U2's Q magazine cover shoot

Behind the scenes with U2 on the cover shoot for the latest issue of Q, Q305 which is out now.  Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr shot it  in Montreal earlier this year for the issue which not only sees the band discussing their Achtung Baby reissue and their future, but which comes with a special version of the iconic album that features the likes of Patti Smith, Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, Jack White and more covering tracks from the record. 



More details,here.