'We started to be those earnest, po-faced men...'

 Davis Guggenheim's film From The Sky Down begins airing around the world and U2.com  has published an interview with the director.

UK and Irish TV viewers get to see the documentary this evening but right now our subscribers can catch some advance clips and and our interview with Director Davis Guggenheim. 



www.u2.com

Bono on the Global Irish Economic Forum

Bono participates in the Global Irish Economic Forum ; among other personalities there was Bill Clinton and Gabriel Byrne.

Bono says there is a bunch of economic giants out there who'd be ready to be there for Ireland.He also says Ireland was an awful place in the 1970s. He says now he can't imagine not raising a family in Ireland.


In the Global Irish Economic Forum website you can see Bono talking about it.

http://www.rte.ie

Bono and Edge in "A Decade of Difference"

The concert will honour 10 years of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and feature a variety of performers, including Lady Gaga and Usher, in addition to Bono and The Edge.
Live at the Hollywood Bowl, October 15th 



Tickets onsale to the general public at www.ticketmaster.com.




www.clintonconcert.com // www.clintonfoundation.org/

Archbishop Tutu's Birthday Celebration

Here is a video of the performance of Bono singing  "I Still Haven´t Found What I´m Looking For" , for Archbishop Tutu.



allAfrica.com

'From The Sky Down' This Sunday

On Sunday, TV viewers in the UK and Ireland are first to see From The Sky Down, Davis Guggenheim's documentary about the making of Achtung Baby.

Twenty years on the film  'traces the album's genesis using animation and previously unseen footage from Berlin and Dublin alongside interviews with the band as they reflect on what was a key chapter in their career.
'In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable. ' says Guggenheim. 'U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction... this band has endured and thrived. From The Sky Down asks the question why.'

BBC1 broadcast details/ timings.

Broadcasts are also coming up in the next few weeks through: Showtime in the US; Superchannel in Canada; ABC in Australia;  Multishow in Brazil;  Wow Wow in Japan; Sky in Italy and NTR in Holland. (Check local listings for confirmed dates and times.)

If you're watching in the UK and Ireland on Sunday and planning to tweet about the documentary, use the hashtag #theskydown.


www.u2.com

Bono on Steve Jobs' Rock and Roll Spirit

Bono and Steve Jobs announce the release of the U2 Special Edition iPod.
(Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Exclusive Q&A for Rolling Stone Magazine.ByBRIAN HIATT

"Sandal-wearing, anarchic music-lovers from California invented the 21st century," says the U2 frontman.

Steve Jobs came out of a Sixties rock and roll ethos, which is fascinating.
That's the big story. If you asked in the Eighties, "Who is going to invent the 21st century," you'd probably have thought the Japanese or maybe the British or the Germans. No, it was sandal-wearing, anarchic music-lovers from California. And that is fucking great.

In the Sixties, bands from the Bay Area felt they were going to change the world, but they didn't. They changed my world, they changed your world, but they didn't change the world. Before that happened, they disappeared, like so many of us do, up their own rectum – drugs and the vicissitudes took their toll.

However, the next generation really did change the world. The people who invented the 21st century had their consciousness shaped by music and by powerful rock and roll music, and it's not just Steve Jobs, it was Paul Allen, it was lots of people. I once put this to Bill Gates, I said, "I know you probably didn't listen to Jimi Hendrix," and Bill protested, "Are you kidding me, in all my time with Paul Allen, how could I have not been shaped by Jimi Hendrix? That's all we heard 10 hours a day."

It's remarkable what's come out of Haight-Ashbury. The children of the Sixties are seriously changing the world. Steve Jobs is right up there, he is, in many ways, the Bob Dylan of machines, he's the Elvis of the kind of hardware-software dialectic. He's a creature of quite progressive thinking, and his reverence for shape and sound and contour and creativity did not come from the boardroom.

Does the Elvis analogy really hold up?

The big lesson for capitalism is that Steve, deep down, did not believe the consumer was right. Deep down, he believed that he was right. And that the consumer would respect a strong aesthetic point of view, even if it wasn't what they were asking for. He believed that deep down, if he served what was right and what was great, then he would serve the Apple shareholder, and if he chased what they wanted, he would let them down.

I really respect people who are involved in business who have an artist's eye and ear. There are very few. Steve was a very, very tough and tenacious guardian of the Apple brand, but the thing that endeared him to artists was his insistence that things had to be beautiful. He wasn't going to make ugly things that made profits.

What's the essence of his legacy?
This dude, my friend, and I'm proud to say, my colleague – he changed music, he changed film, he changed the personal computer. It's a wonderful encouragement to people who want to think differently, that's where artists connect with him. The picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking out, that's actually the very heart of the brand, and that's the punk rock piece, the attitude, and the anarchic mind that dreamt up the 21st century. That's a real encouragement for people who didn't go to an Ivy League school, who don't know how to use a knife and fork, who don't have the right accent. That anarchic West Coast "fuck off" attitude actually rules the 21st century. That's what's happening on the streets of Cairo, that's what's happening in North Africa – received wisdom is being balked at. A gnarly, singular point of view, like Steve Jobs, feels like a lighthouse spinning: When you're in the fog, you just go, "I'll go over there."

How did U2's association with Steve Jobs and Apple begin?
Steve was trying to sort out one of the fundamental questions of the age: is there any value to a musician's work? He thought that with iTunes, he could make it easier for people who wanted to respect intellectual copyright. So we had the idea to offer "Vertigo" for an iPod commercial, and we went out to see Steve at his house in Palo Alto and he was like, "What? You guys want to give me a song for a commercial? Wow, that's great, that's amazing." Then we said we wanted to be in the commercial, and he said "Maybe, yeah, I don't see why not."

Paul McGuinness Reflects on Steve Jobs' Passing

Billboard intrviewed Paul McGuinness on Steve Jobs´relation with U2 and himself...


In the past few years, arguably no one has been a more prominent, more outspoken advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, publishers and other rights-holders in the digital age than U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness shepherded four young men (and himself) from the streets of Dublin to the top of the world, including a deal done in Steve Jobs' Palo Alto, Calif., kitchen in 2004: McGuinness, Bono, Interscope's Jimmy Iovine and Jobs ate lunch and agreed to a deal to use U2's "Vertigo" in an iPod TV ad, and for Apple to create a black-and-red U2-branded iPod.
U2 hadn't previously used its music in advertisements, and-heaven forbid-Apple had never released an iPod that wasn't white. McGuinness recalled this moment during a keynote speech at the MIDEM Music conference in Cannes in January 2008, while also beseeching Jobs to "bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music." McGuinness grouped Apple in with a number of other telcos and search companies that had "built multibillion-dollar industries on the backs of our content without paying for it" and urged them to take greater responsibility.

McGuinness caught up with us from his Dublin office, warmly remembering Steve Jobs the man, the music fan and, yes, the tough negotiator.

Billboard: You really had a unique relationship with Steve.

McGuinness: I suppose I wish there were more like him.

What do you mean by that? The sense he cared so much?

He was a music lover. That was very clear. He had an extensive knowledge of music.

How did that come to be known to you?

He played music in his house. It was a musical environment; he knew a lot about artists and record labels . . . He was very generous, grew up listening to music; a very colorful guy. It was in his DNA. He knew extraordinary amounts of information about the way music could get distributed and paid for, particularly. He was kind of unique. Everyone else in the tech world sort of grew out of the Internet. He seemed quite honest to the music industry and artists. Others took a little less interest in getting the artists paid than Steve.

He didn't solve the problems. The problems are still there. Most music that is consumed over the Internet is not paid for. That hasn't gone away. There are a lot of geniuses in that world. I always think that if the geniuses of Google, Verizon, AT&T . . . If they had all been as creative as Steve, I think the problem would have been solved by now. The willingness and generosity of spirit that seems strangely absent to me was there, yet he was a tough business guy.