U2: Saving the World One Stadium at a Time

Interesting article appearing in The American Culture

I can’t imagine any other band that could pull off such a spectacle. There was a giant “claw” planted in the middle of the stadium, glowing, flashing, and billowing smoke at various points during the evening; there were massive screens broadcasting footage of Mark Kelly from the International Space Station; plus remote controlled bridges that glided above the audience while the singer and guitarist performed atop them. By all rights, critics ought to have been able to write Spinal Tap across the top and be done with it.

But I’m talking about U2 here, who were doing “big” arena-type shows even back in the days when they were performing to 50 people in smoke-filled Dublin dives. As far as I can tell, they’re incapable of phoning in a performance, which is what makes this outsized 360 Degree tour work. You could say that the exterior trappings have simply caught up with the monster-sized ambitions that were always there.

Thirty-five years into their career, U2 occupy a unique position. The same four musicians who played on their first album Boy are the musicians treading the boards now, and this gives their work a focus and consistency lacking from most other rock bands–which typically tend to be porous with members coming and going. There also seems to be a genuine love and camaraderie in the group; lead singer Bono is capable of every type of posturing you can imagine, but when he wraps his arm around bassist Adam Clayton or shares the mike with guitarist The Edge, the affection is genuine. These are four Dubliners who lived their shared dream and continue to pay homage to the relationships that made that feat possible.

Some of the songs performed at U2′s June 4 show in Seattle–such as “With or Without You” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)”–have probably been trotted out at every single gig since their inception decades ago, but the band does a convincing job of keeping the performances fresh. Perhaps this is due to the group’s tendency to surround the better-known songs with deep album cuts, some of which, in the case of the Seattle show, were quite daring choices for an arena audience: “Miss Sarajevo” (originally recorded with Brian Eno and Pavarotti under the “Passengers’ pseudonym;  “Scarlet”–more an incantation than a song–from the 1981 album October; “Zooropa”–the title track from their underrated 1993 effort; and a smattering of cuts from their recent No Line on the Horizon. The band also seemed determined to rescue the critically maligned “Discotheque” and “Get on Your Boots” from their perceived unfair savaging, something they achieved handily.

This tour is about the best you could ask for from U2. Whether or not they’re at their creative peak, they’re certainly at the height of their abilities as performers. In a perfect world, I would love to see The Edge loosen up and improvise more–he’s certainly capable of it. But as far as what U2 do right here, right now, the 360 Degree Tour is the “toppermost of the poppermost,” as the Beatles used to say.

Now, if you will indulge me for a moment while I turn to the outsized personality of U2′s singer: in the long, obnoxious history of rock-star activism, an exception should be made for Bono, for he is so sincere, works so hard at it, and does his homework so thoroughly that he’s actually managed to have a significant impact on the world. This is a bit of an inconvenient truth for us cynics; it would be so much easier to write off the whole lot of rock do-gooders as coke-addled overgrown children with messianic delusions. But there’s Bono: friends with Nelson Mandela, successful partner to US presidents of both political parties, perpetual fundraiser for the needy and oppressed all over the world.

I mention all this because at the Seattle concert, Bono appeared to take partial credit for the recent release of Aung San Suu Kyi: the long-imprisoned, would-be leader of Burma. This declaration seemed at first to be the height of hubris. But then Aung San Suu Kyi herself appeared on a video feed thanking the U2 fans for helping secure her release by flooding the Burmese government with petitions. U2 had been mentioning her at every performance for the previous few years, focusing all their star power to shine a light on her plight. It’s easy to criticize Bono’s bombastic approach to philanthropy, but its effectiveness can be little in doubt.  I have to admit that the arguments against giving him a Nobel Peace Prize are diminishing each year. Particularly now that the committee has shown a willingness to award it to sitting presidents prior to the completion of their first year in office. Absolutely no disrespect intended to Barack Obama, but Bono has been on the world stage engaging in humanitarian issues for far, far longer than the current President of the United States.

Lest I go too far astray here, I should point out that one can enjoy U2′s music “with or without” buying into its political message. I was first drawn to the band due to The Edge’s innovative and textured guitar work, and all these years later that is still what draws me. U2 have struck a good balance in their music between worldly concerns and the more personal concerns of love, hope, faith, failure and redemption. And more than any other current “supergroup” they deserve their success because they still work for it every single night.

They are, quite simply, the best.

Robert Dean Lurie is the author of No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church

http://stkarnick.com/culture/

All about Eve Hewson

Actress Eve Hewson

Eve Hewson lit up the Cannes Film Festival. So can she rival her dad Bono in the star stakes? Patrick Freyne reports


Her father is a world-saving rock-star and her mother is a high-profile activist, but up until recently, nobody knew much about 19-year-old Eve Hewson. The second child of Bono and Ali Hewson has, for most of her life, been kept out of the limelight. But on her 18th birthday last July, Bono brought a suitably embarrassed looking Eve on stage at a U2 show to the strains of the band's song ‘Party Girl' — although there wasn't much evidence of her having partied.


Unlike the children of other Irish rock stars, her life has not been a catalogue of high-profile follies or media intrusion. Instead, Eve went trouble-free from St Andrew's in Blackrock to college in NYU, splitting her time between the family's homes in New York and Dublin.


Then things changed. She had a much-documented, short-lived, relationship with James Lafferty, the American star of One Tree Hill (a programme named after a U2 song), a high-profile film role in the forthcoming This Must be the Place, in which Sean Penn plays an addled rock star, and made a highly publicised appearance at the Cannes film festival.


Irish viewers will have to wait until later in the year to judge her performance in This Must be the Place, but American director Charles Mehling certainly thinks that she has talent.


Although, when he was searching for an Irish actress in New York to star in the music video he was making for The Script, he never imagined that he'd eventually be casting a rock star's daughter.


“We didn't think it would be so hard to find a young Irish actress in New York,” he says.


“And we were at the point of considering an American actor with an Irish accent, which is an abominable idea — there's nothing worse than a fake New York-style Irish accent.”


But then Robbie Ryan, Mehling's Irish director of photography, saw a tiny news story in an Irish paper: “Bono's daughter to star alongside Sean Penn.”


Calls were made, feelers were put out, and before he knew it, Mehling was sitting in a New York café across from Eve Hewson, formerly Memphis Eve Hewson, “a beautiful, classically Irish-looking actress who was coolly enthusiastic about everything — the perfect co-conspirator. She just happened to be Bono's daughter.”


The resulting music video can be found online, as can a lovely 12-minute spin-off film featuring Hewson as a believably homesick economic migrant living anonymously in New York.


Hewson herself is hardly likely to be forced abroad for work, but she has been beavering away at her craft for some time.


As far back as 2005, she and her sister Jordan appeared in Lost and Found, directed by Erica Dunton, and produced, uncredited, by Bono. Indeed, possibly in the interests of deflecting unwanted media attention, Eve and Jordan are listed in the credits as ‘Brenda M Stankard’ and ‘Paddy M Stankard’. But Eve wasn't to remain uncredited for long.


Dunton, herself the daughter of a successful father (respected cameraman Joe Dunton), knew she'd found a star. “I was so impressed that I cast her as a lead in The 27 Club,” she told me.


Filmed two years after Lost and Found, The 27 Club was the tale of a grieving, drug-addled rock-star who goes on a trans-American road trip. Hewson stars as a young Irish hitch-hiker who joins him on the road (she seems to specialise in playing foils for burned-out rockers).


Shot while Eve was still in school, and debuting in Tribeca in April 2008, it was a low-budget, low-profile feature debut, but many were suitably impressed.


“Eve Hewson is a natural beauty inside and out,” says Dunton.


“Her raw talent radiates the moment she's on screen. Her instinctive gift to connect to and take care of her characters is clear in all her performances.


“She is an old soul and she has learned to channel her organic empathy so that I, as the director, get to work with it and the audience, as the emotional viewers, gets to enjoy it. I am very much looking forward to working with her again.”


Hewson seems to have had good fun on the set of that movie (there is a series of YouTube videos featuring her goofing about with her co-stars David Emrich and Joe Anderson).


Then, the same summer, she took part in an acting programme at the New York Film Academy, a well-respected institution that prides itself on tutoring the children of celebrities. Another quirky short film ensued, Jorma's Blind Date, directed by another Film Academy alumnus, Jon Seidemann, and crediting a misspelled Eve Hewston.


And that was as far as Eve Hewson's public profile went until the past year, when she began to be photographed alongside her dashing US boyfriend (that relationship is now at an end), featured in the Sean Penn film and appeared in Charles Mehring's Script video and short film. Back in the summer of 2010, she was juggling both projects in the sweltering New York heat.


“There was no special security or paper work or legal release forms or entourage — it was like working with any young actress,” recalls Mehling. “Maybe it's an Irish thing, but she was really relaxed and disarming. She's reserved, but not guarded.


“She's not spewing with bombastic charisma, but she seems very serious about what she does. She seemed like a New Yorker, she knew the New York vibe very well.


“Her dad was only mentioned a couple of times in passing so I got the sense ."It was neither a sore subject nor a subject that defines her."


www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Red Carpet at Cannes Festival

Spiderman: Clinton`s Seal of Approval

Bono with Coast Guard Machinery Tech Second Class Michael Franco

"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," a musical nearly a decade in the making, opened Tuesday night to an audience including former President Bill Clinton, who gave his stamp of approval to the most expensive production in Broadway history.

"It works," Mr. Clinton said during intermission. "The sets are great, the choreography is great. I love it. The story really hangs together."

Mr. Clinton was seated between his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and U2's Bono, who wrote the show's music with band mate the Edge, and surrounded by a sampling of the opening's celebrity guests, including Jay-Z.

Perhaps predictably for a musical whose opening night was delayed six times, Tuesday's curtain rose nearly an hour later than scheduled. "Obviously, we're a little delayed here at 'Spider-Man,'" an announcer told the audience over the loudspeaker. "I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that."

The tumultuous history of the musical, plagued by ballooning budgets, cast dropouts and numerous accidents, seemed to inspire a sense of relief in producers on opening night.

"We inherited Deepwater Horizon," said producer Jeremiah Harris, referring to the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, "and we had to pull it up and plug all of the holes."

He added, referring to the revisions enacted during the show's hiatus in April and May, after director Julie Taymor was ousted from the musical's helm, "I think we achieved what we thought we could achieve in three-and-a-half weeks. I hope no one leaves unhappy."

The show's driving creative force for around nine years until she was replaced by producers in March, Ms. Taymor decided at the last moment to attend Tuesday's performance.

During the curtain call, she was ushered to the stage by the show's current creative team, including creative consultant Philip William McKinley, and Bono and the Edge.

After thanking his collaborators, Bono gave Ms. Taymor special credit, though perhaps not in the manner she might have preferred. "By the way," he said, "you're looking hot, Julie."

The Edge added that Bono convinced him to sign on to the production by telling him that "it took Elton John three weeks to write the music" for the Lion King, the hit musical that earned Ms. Taymor a Tony Award.

For her part, Ms. Taymor spoke briefly, thanking the musical's cast and crew "that I got to work with for a long time."

Some in the audience displayed their enthusiasm for the evening by scooping up armfuls of the white web that shoots out over the crowd during the second act, and many came prepared to show their Spidey spirit in how they dressed. One man wore a black two-piece suit emblazoned with red spiders; another wore a gray tweed vest with prominent webbing.

Julie Saltman, an assistant to "Spider-Man" producer David Garfinkle, wore a red gown embroidered with black spider webs, and a matching mask, both of which she designed and created.

"All of the hand-beading was done in time for the first [scheduled] opening night," Ms. Saltman said. "I didn't know it was going to be delayed six times."

http://online.wsj.com

Spiderman At Last Premieres

With celebrities and presidents in the audience, "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark" finally premieres in Broadway.
Ousted director Julie Taymor was there, as were celebrities including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Steve Martin, Matt Damon, Cindy Crawford and countless others. President Bill Clinton showed up  and took a seat inside right next to Bono. 


Entertainment Tonight aired this videoclip of the red carpet arrivals, which includes some comments from Bono 





And earlier , Bono and Edge appeared on NBC Nightly News

For pictures of the premiere, here  and here.

www.atu2.com//

Music From 'Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark'

Rolling Stone pusblished a review of the just released soundtrack of "Spider- Man: Turn Off the Dark"

Last Thanksgiving weekend, families across America gathered around the TV to watch 60 Minutes and wonder the same thing: What the hell is up with U2? As Bono and the Edge previewed songs they wrote for the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, your parents probably asked you some tough questions: "Wait, these guys are still famous, right? Didn't they just make an excellent album in 2009? Aren't they in the middle of the highest-grossing tour in the history of showbiz? Why are they doing this?"

But that's the thing about U2: "Why are they doing this?" is their favorite question. They love to try crazy moves nobody would expect, just to see if they can get away with it. Sometimes that means trying to boogie with a single called "Discotheque." Sometimes it means letting the Edge rap. Sometimes it means emerging onstage from a 40-foot rotating lemon. That's always been a key element to U2's greatness: These lads have no fear of looking absurd on an epic scale.

Everything about the stage production of Spider-Man has been tinged with mythic disaster, from the $65 million budget to the way it poses the biggest health threat to arachnids since Raid. But if you're hoping for train wrecks on the soundtrack, you'll be disappointed, because Bono and the Edge know their songwriting, even as they tone it down for the ill-fitting medium of the Broadway show tune. For the most part, the songs come off as slightly vague sketches for U2 songs. The theater-trained singers sound stiff when they try Bono-worthy emoting. Reeve Carney, in the role of Peter Parker, has some passable growls in "Boy Falls From the Sky," but he keeps reminding you of who he isn't.Bono and the Edge appear on "Picture This" and "Rise Above 1," which unsurprisingly are the best tracks here by a mile. The distant third-place honors go to "A Freak Like Me Needs Company," a theme for the Green Goblin. It has the album's only moments of humor, making a camp joke out of the show's backstory: "If you're looking for a night out on the town, you just found me/I'm a 65-million-dollar circus tragedy."

Eve

Several moments on Spider-Man — the chorus of "Rise Above 1," the guitar figure of "Bouncing Off the Walls" — remind you of U2. Sometimes they remind you of a U2 song you already love, as in the gorgeous coda to "Picture This," which revamps "The Three Sunrises" from Wide Awake in America. But there aren't any emotional climaxes — and those are what really make a U2 song.

Listen to "Picture This":

No matter what happens with Spider-Man, it can't hurt U2 — even though this gamble makes that giant-lemon tour look like a play-it-safe move. Hell, they could have banked easier money doing Achtung Baby: The Musical, with giant puppets bouncing around to "The Fly." But U2 never seem satisfied taking the easy way, do they? And that's why we love them.

 ROB SHEFFIELD

www.rollingstone.com

Tonys: Bono, The Edge Joke About 'Spider-Man' Delays

U2's Bono and The Edge have a comedic as well as musical rapport.

The pair, who wrote the songs for the long-delayed and accident-prone "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," took the stage at the 65th Annual Tony Awards to acknowledge the many delays for the show, set to open Tuesday. Opening night has been repeatedly rescheduled.

 "We used to be famous for being in U2," Bono joked. He added: "When I saw the Tony Awards on our schedule, I just kind of assumed that we'd been nominated."

Explained The Edge: "It appears that we missed the deadline."

"A few of them," said Bono.

"In rock and roll," The Edge explained, "deadlines are just the lie your manager tells you to get you back on the bus."

He later added: "The truth is that we were ready back in February but we just wanted to keep the excitement level up at the New York Post."

Later Bono praised Broadway's creators for how hard they work, saying he was humbled by their efforts.

"This humble thing really works for you, man," The Edge said.

The pair then thanked the audience for its patience, and introduced a song from the show.

www.thewrap.com

The Edge Reveals U2's Future Plans

Second part of Rolling Stone interview, now it`s Edge`s time:

You have a couple more months of the 360 tour left. What is the mission statement for the remaining dates?

The Edge: We'd like to finish the show. We'd like to get it to the place that we want it to be. The final one or two shows, I'm sure, is where we'll fully realize the 360 Tour. I think Dylan wrote, "He not busy being born is busy dying." This show is still being born, even if it's two years in.

Adam was saying that you're at the point where it's impossible to imagine the next tour. He can't wrap his mind around starting another one.

I say it will be a while before anyone wants to think about it, but I'm sure the next time we go out, it will be quite different. That, I'm pretty confident about, but what that might be, there really is no clue at this point.

Not that long ago you let go of the idea of getting out an album before this set of dates.

Yeah. I think we all understand that we'd probably have to tour another album, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of early next year, but thinking practically, I imagine that Bono's right – probably next fall.

I saw a bunch of shows early on in the tour, but this show feels like a whole new thing.

It's changed quite a bit since the first show, and I think there's a whole bunch of new songs we're playing, and that's the way it always goes with us. The minute a show actually gets to a place where it's reached a peak, it's like we immediately want to start planning for something new, because we just get bored. It just gets stale so quickly for us that we can't really let it become static.

How has it been to work in the face of of the negativity surrounding the Spider-Man musical?

I don't really care that much about the negative media. In this instance, we were the junior partners and composers, but not the director and not the producer. We really didn't have that much significant input or control over the way things went. But we did realize there were problems. The show was actually a good show, it just wasn't great. It didn't quite work as a story. Some aspects of it were amazing. Some journalists called it one of the worst Broadway shows ever, and I think that's complete nonsense. But was it where it needed to be? No, it wasn't. So I didn't have any complaints with the bad reviews. I was furious, mind you, that they all showed up virtually the same day. That raised a few eyebrows. 

www.rollingstone.com