Yes we are looking for those of you that will be attending any U2 concert around the world starting this month. If your one of them. Drop us a note we would like to capture your story, photos and comments of the event.
Part II
Author Matt McGee reveals how he compiled the book in this interview and shares some of his findings from “U2 — A Diary.”
You assembled much of the material for this book through your blog, with fans helping out with research and information and photos. When you established the blog, did you envision a book would come out of it?
What were some things you learned from their input that you didn’t know about the band before beginning this project?
There are some key stories in the band’s history that you tackle in this book. Let’s take on a couple of them. What happened during Bono’s visit to Central America in 1986 that helped shape The Joshua Tree?
But, to me, what’s really interesting about it is the timing. I didn’t know that Bono and [his wife] Ali arrived in Central America immediately after spending several days in New Zealand at the funeral of Greg Carroll, Bono’s personal assistant, who had died in a motorcycle accident in Dublin. His death had devastated the whole U2 organization, but especially Bono and Ali — they were very close to Carroll. So, with that in mind, you get a better sense of the mental and emotional state they were in when they arrived in Central America and spent almost two weeks there.
What did you find was the major reason for the difficulty U2 had in recording the Pop album?
What did you find out with regard to the creation of Zoo TV?
You go all the way back to the 1950s Dublin when Bono’s parents were married. What did you find out about his home life?
As far as your research goes, when was it that U2 realized they were going to be big? What were there ambitions starting out?
How has U2 been able to stay together for so long?
Do they work in much the same way they did when they began, or has their celebrity caused changes in how they interact in the studio or on the road?
Why did you choose to use a diary format for the book?
Part I
An epic, shoot-for-the-moon band like U2 — with a lead singer who actually believes that rock ’n’ roll can, if not save the world, then at least change it for the better — deserves a book as dense with detail and insight as Matt McGee’s.
Picking up the story in 1950, when Bono’s parents, Bob Hewson and Iris Rankin, get married, “U2 — A Diary” follows the band from its humble beginnings — including the talent contest the band won even though Doves guitarist Fran Kennedy remembers being “... dumbfounded when they won, because truly, they were awful” — all the way through its ascendance to rock royalty.
No stone is unturned here, as McGee, through his painstaking research — conducted through a blog he set up that allowed fans and others to help him nail down the facts — digs out the truth behind just about every U2-related story ever told. It tells the inside story of U2’s connections to an Evangelical Christian group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It reveals much about a trip Bono made to Central America and the impact events in his life around that time had on the making of The Joshua Tree.
And that’s just a small taste of what lies in store for anyone who picks up “U2 — A Diary.” The timeline McGee sets up and the way he strings together quotes from U2 insiders makes for an easy, compelling read, and the book is full of superb black-and-white images — some of them rarely seen before — that only serve to enhance McGee’s exhaustive history of a band that still matters.
Calling all Christians - Reprise
Die-hard U2 fans finally have their wish, after waiting five long years since the release of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. U2’s new album, No Line on the Horizon, is a carefully crafted series of songs about being lost, finding the self in God, becoming disoriented and lost again, and becoming re-oriented to God and the world. Musically, the album continues the U2 tradition of vigorous rock tunes, complete with the classic guitar riffs, but with the addition of Middle Eastern overtones in several songs, giving homage to the band’s time recording in the unusual location of Fez, Morocco.
As usual, U2’s lyrics give a combination of scathing critique and encouraging hope to the Western world. More particularly, the band’s political and religious exhortations are addressed to the USA and, it could be argued, equally to the Christian church.
The title track and first song, “No Line on the Horizon,” begins the album’s journey with a feeling of disorientation or lostness, with no distinguishing marks to provide perspective in modern life. This track is followed up with “Magnificent,” whose driving beat, proliferation of biblical imagery and confident, soaring expression of purpose under God – the Magnificent – make it the album’s closest facsimile to a gospel song and reminiscent of their 1987 hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” U2 lead singer Bono sings to God, “I was born to be with you in this space and time.” Yet this song is not a blithely upbeat denial of the very real disorientation we all feel in our personal lives in the modern world. He continues, “After that and ever after I haven’t had a clue.” This combination of honest confusion and hope in God is what attracts many to U2.
The next two tracks address God’s call to us but in modern idiom, using technological metaphors. “Moment of Surrender” speaks of a moment of clarity and surrender when one goes down on one’s knees and recognizes “vision over visibility” or, in other words, invisible faith over what is physically seen. Love, often used as a placeholder for God, appears in this song and throughout the album. “Unknown Caller” uses the metaphors of computer and telephone to instruct hearers who are “lost” to listen to God: “cease to speak that I may speak. Shush now.” Both songs employ organ music interludes to allow hearers time to ponder, as if in church after an altar call.
Now that the listener has been called by God and had the chance to be made right with him, the album invites participation in the political and religious realities of the world. “Get on Your Boots” and “Stand Up Comedy” are particularly pointed injunctions for Westerners, Americans and the Church to get ready and begin engaging in the world. If there was any doubt about equating the oft-mentioned “love” with God, it is made explicit in “Stand Up Comedy,” which says baldly, “God is love.”
Those who remain unsure of U2’s Christian content will appreciate “White as Snow.” Sharing its melody with “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” the song is a haunting retelling of the Advent hymn in U2’s vernacular. Bono sings of the great longing for the lamb as white as snow, who brings forgiveness to all – both Westerners and their current arch-enemies, the people of the Middle East, from places like Fez.
These “enemies” are considered thoughtfully in many tracks. The album leaves the listener with this poignant thought: “Choose your enemies carefully…Gonna last with you longer than your friend.”
No Line on the Horizon is satisfying musically for its fusion of rock and Middle Eastern melodies, and lyrically for its astute observations and insistence that political and religious inertia can be overcome. U2’s answer is God. May listeners come to the same conclusion.
Medium Please
Let’s be honest: many of us purchased our U2.com membership with a singular purpose-priority access to the presale code required to get tickets for the band’s 2009 world tour. While the double album of rough drafts called Medium, Rare, and Remastered provides a critical ingredient to any completist cornucopia, for others, the plastic prize (recent released exclusively to fan club members) might serve as a mere memento to comfort and console those hardcores suffering with consumer guilt and additional debt after splurging on seats (or GA access) to multiple shows.
As other fans have already noted, these twenty tracks are hardly rare, since many have circulated on the Interwebs for years. More a random audio collage than a coherent album, it’s challenging to digest it in the way we might devour the band’s studio records. Still, there’s something enduring and endearing about this back catalog of alternate versions that connects with U2’s ultimate vision “to be a band” in the grandest sense of collective greatness, etching its illuminated audio files into the earbuds of popular consciousness.
Folks fond of hindsight might enjoy a game of “what if” when examining the jewels “Always” and “Native Son.” To be forever treasured and debated by the nerdy scholars of Dublin’s most esteemed artistic export, the latter drafts of these sketches ended up as massive hits and stadium anthems. Lyrically, “Beautiful Day” boasts better poetry than the unformed yet uniquely attractive “Always.” Even still and thanks to the Edge, the epic outtake evokes the same shimmering glory of its elder brother.
With “Native Son,” however, the more poignant and passionate words were relegated to the vault while the ferocious frivolity of “Vertigo” found its home on the FM airwaves. When Bono sears our ears with the scorching statements that “my enemy became my country” or that “it’s so hard for a native son to be free,” he returns us to the more defiantly politicized phases of his vocal proclamations found on War, Unforgettable Fire, and Joshua Tree. As a hit single, “Vertigo” better fits the fortysomething Bono and his dangerously delicate blend of corporate realpolitik and compassionate campaigns; yet again, those of us also in middle age and reared on the white-flag brandishing Bono can identify with acute longing with the singer of “Native Son.” In a similar vein dating all the way back to the beginning, “Saturday Night” (which opens the second disc) is a different version of “Fire” from October.
Under did you know ?
Those are latitude and longitude information which give the location of various cities on the globe. For example on the center foldout of the programme, "53.3333N / 06.2500W" is Dublin, "51.4833N / 00.0000W" is London, "42.3500N / 71.0500W" is Boston, and "40.7166N / 74.0000W" is New York City. Most of the co-ordinates matched up with cities that U2 would play on the Elevation tour.
U2 to support MS
U2 will this week support the first global awareness campaign to spotlight multiple sclerosis (MS).
World MS Day, on Wednesday, will involve more than 160 events in 51 countries.
U2 have contributed their song Beautiful Day, which will feature on a global campaign film highlighting different aspects of MS. Meanwhile, eight people will climb six of Ireland's mountains in 72 hours.
The aim is to highlight the plight of people with the disease, raise money for patient charities and research funding, forge links between MS organizations, and urge action from politicians.
Sweet Music to my ears http://ping.fm/2ZvfM