U2 on Mandela for French TV

Le JT du 08/12 - U2 rend hommage à Nelson Mandela

Bono and The Edge speak about the death of their friend Madiba in New York .


http://www.canalplus.fr

Thanking Paul McGuinness

 'This week U2 finalised and signed a new management contract with Live Nation and Guy Oseary.  

The band now want to publicly thank Paul McGuinness for his extraordinary leadership, guidance and friendship over the last 35 years.  

Paul has saved us from ourselves many times over and we would not be U2 without him. 

Sometime soon, U2 will begin a new adventure around the world and we totally understand and respect Paul's desire to not run away with the circus – AGAIN. 

Perhaps more than any music management operation in history, Paul, alongside Trevor, Keryn and the team at Principle Management has always fought for our rights, for our music, for our fans and for the principles that we and he believe in. His central lesson was that if you cared for your "art", you must also "take care of business" as historically with rock and roll bands, the latter has undone the former.  

We are relieved he will remain on as the mentor-in-chief. 

We've known Guy for a long, long time, and we're excited that with Paul's blessing he's agreed to take us on. He is a brilliant man with a lot of energy, and knows he has got some big shoes to fill.'

Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry 

http://www.u2.com

"Love Rather Than Hate..."

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ("Madiba" or "Tata") passed away this 5th December in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bono remembers Nelson Mandela.

"It was as if he was born to teach the age a lesson in humility, in humour and above all else in patience.  In the end, Nelson Mandela showed us how to love rather than hate, not because he had never surrendered to rage or violence, but because he learnt that love would do a better job.  Mandela played with the highest stakes.  He put his family, his country, his time, his life on the line, and he won most of these contests. Stubborn til the end for all the right reasons, it felt like he very nearly outstared his maker. Today, finally, he blinked. And some of us cry, knowing our eyes were opened to so much because of him."

As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager. He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort. And he’s been a big part of the Irish consciousness even longer than that. Irish people related all too easily to the subjugation of ethnic majorities. From our point of view, the question as to how bloody South Africa would have to get on its long road to freedom was not abstract.

Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerized by his deft maneuvering as leader of South Africa. His cabinet appointments of Trevor Manuel and Kadar Asmal were intuitive and ballsy. His partnership with Sowetan neighbor Desmond Tutu brought me untold joy. This double act—and before long a triple act that included Mandela’s wife, the bold and beautiful Graca Machel—took the success of the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa and widened the scope to include the battle against AIDS and the broader reach for dignity by the poorest peoples on the planet.

Mandela saw extreme poverty as a manifestation of the same struggle. “Millions of people … are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free,” he said in 2005. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome … Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” It certainly fell to Mandela to be great. His role in the movement against extreme poverty was critical. He worked for a deeper debt cancellation, for a doubling of international assistance across sub-Saharan Africa, for trade and private investment and transparency to fight corruption. Without his leadership, would the world over the past decade have increased the number of people on AIDS medication to 9.7 million and decreased child deaths by 2.7 million a year? Without Mandela, would Africa be experiencing its best decade of growth and poverty reduction? His indispensability can’t be proved with math and metrics, but I know what I believe …

Mandela would be remembered as a remarkable man just for what happened—and didn’t happen—in South Africa’s transition. But more than anyone, it was he who rebooted the idea of Africa from a continent in chaos to a much more romantic view, one in keeping with the majesty of the landscape and the nobility of even its poorer inhabitants. He was also a hardheaded realist, as his economic policy demonstrated. To him, principles and pragmatism were not foes; they went hand in hand. He was an idealist without -naiveté, a compromiser without being compromised.

Surely the refrain “Africa rising” should be attributed to Madiba—the clan name everyone knows him by. He never doubted that his continent would triumph in the 21st century: “We are not just the peoples with the oldest history,” he told me. “We have the brightest future.” He knew Africa was rich with oil, gas, minerals, land and, above all, people. But he also knew that “because of our colonial past, Africans still don’t quite believe these precious things belong to them.” Laughing, he added, “They can find enough people north of the equator who agree with them.”

He had humor and humility in his bearing, and he was smarter and funnier than the parade of world leaders who flocked to see him. He would bait his guests: “What would a powerful man like you want with an old revolutionary like me?”

He could charm the birds off the trees—and cash right out of wallets. He told me once how Margaret Thatcher had personally donated £20,000 to his foundation. “How did you do that?” I gasped. The Iron Lady, who was famously frugal, kept a tight grip on her purse. “I asked,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask.” Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially and said her donation had nauseated some of his cohorts. “Didn’t she try to squash our movement?” they complained. His response: “Didn’t De Klerk crush our people like flies? And I’m having tea with him next week … He’ll be getting the bill.” (On other occasions, I heard Mandela praise the courage of F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South Africa, who had his own prison to escape: the prejudice of his upbringing. We should not forget his role in this historic drama).

Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.

Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.

He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.

Today, we can.

http://www.u2.com//http://world.time.com

Grammy Hall of Fame 2014 : "The Joshua Tree"

"The Joshua Tree" by U2 is among  among this year's inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Recording Academy has announced. 

Once again, 27 iconic recordings are headed for the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. The class of 2014 includes Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush; U2's barnstorming 1987 LP The Joshua Tree (the most recently released honoree); Run-D.M.C.'s watershed "Walk This Way" team-up with Aerosmith; the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 game-changer "Rapper's Delight"; the Rolling Stones' 1969 hit "Honky Tonk Women"; George Harrison's 1970 triple-album All Things Must Pass; and Gil Scott-Heron's 1970 single "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

The Recording Academy head Neil Portnow said in a statement, "Memorable and inspiring, these recordings are proudly added to our growing catalog — knowing that they have become a part of our musical, social, and cultural history."


The nominations for the 56th annual Grammy Awards will be announced on December 6 at 10 p.m. EST as part of the The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown to Music's Biggest Night telecast airing on CBS. The 56th annual Grammys will be broadcast live on CBS on January 26, 2014 at 8 p.m. EST from L.A.'s Staples Center.


http://www.spin.com
http://www.grammymuseum.org/

Bono and The Edge Talk about "Ordinary Love"

Bono and The Edge talk about "Ordinary Love" at the premiere of "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"





http://thesource.com/

"Ordinay Love" by Rolling Stone

By DAVID FRICKE

U2's return starts like funky church–synth-choir hosanna and the gentle hammering of electric piano – and rolls with steady, compelling restraint. Bono fires a few bolts of falsetto in the chorus, and the Edge's terse guitar break suggests the ring of a wounded church bell. But "Ordinary Love" is about the seeds of dreams, and U2 play it perfectly: down-to-earth, while looking up.

http://www.rollingstone.com

Bono on World AIDS Day and the global fight against the deadly virus.

This week’s Sunday Spotlight gives the stage to U2 frontman Bono, who has been a leader in the global fight against AIDS for more than a decade. Helping “This Week” mark World AIDS Day, Bono sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to talk about the dramatic turnaround in the battle against a virus that has killed more than 25 million worldwide since 1981.
Antiretroviral drugs, once unaffordable to the majority of people affected by HIV/AIDS, are now significantly more accessible.
“They used to cost a fortune, you know, ten grand a year. It’s down to 40 cents a day for one pill,” Bono said. “I remember being in Malawi, in Lilongwe, where there was four to a bed, queuing up to be diagnosed.  But the diagnosis was a death sentence because there was no treatment. They had the medication.  But they couldn’t give it to them.  They couldn’t afford it.”
Bono, who is co-founder of ONE and the (RED) Campaign, said a person’s ability to access antiretroviral drugs was an “accident of where you live.” Unequal accessibility to HIV/AIDS treatment, often exacerbated by political or corporate interests, made Bono “ready to put his life on the line” for the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“It actually really was an assault on my whole idea of equality.  And so the charity bit went out the window for me.  It became a justice issue,” he said. “We can’t have these technologies, simple, cheap and be denying them to others.”
But changes are happening now, he said.  And though Bono recognizes there are still obstacles, he says there is an end in sight.
“There does seem to be the political will. The American people have said that this fight against HIV/AIDS, this tiny, little virus that’s wreaked so much havoc in so many people’s lives…they got it in their sights. They want to see it done.  And that is so inspiring to me,” he said.





This year, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR, a program started by President George W. Bush, which has dedicated billions of dollars to the fight against AIDS.
“We argued with President Bush about setting up PEPFAR,” Bono said. “We thought, ‘Why not just stick with The Global Fund‘, which is the multilateral mechanism.”
But President Bush, Bono said, wanted a uniquely American organization so the government could “keep an eye on it” and do it “properly.”
Political interests are coming together this Tuesday at The Global Fund’s Conference, which the U.S. government is hosting.
“Even though originally Republicans historically supported PEPFAR, and Democrats The Global Fund, that has changed,” Bono said. “This is incredible. This is what happens when people put their ego and political point-scoring away for a bigger purpose and they stop playing politics with the poor.”
These organizations are seeing great results – but Bono’s main concern is complacency.
“There’s a chance of having the first AIDS-free generation by 2015, 2016. We can see it. We could lose that if we lose the political will,” he said. “I would just say to people, ‘Hold on tight to this one.’”
Visit World AIDS Day’s website to learn more about supporting the cause.




http://abcnews.go.com