Another year, another Glastonbury — and another fresh round of what-ifs and maybes for the festival rumour mill.
This year the most-whispered tale involves two of the 2010 festival’s headliners – or, rather, one of the headliners and a band who were supposed to be topping the bill on the Pyramid Stage.
Saturday’s headliners Muse had hinted they were planning something special for their headline slot. On Friday, BBC 6 Music reported that the band might be joined by U2’s guitarist the Edge for their slot.
U2, of course, were supposed to be headlining the festival on Friday night but had to pull out after Bono underwent surgery, leading them to pull a series of dates on their world tour.
Festival organiser Michael Eavis had been asked by the station if the rumours were true, and did not deny the story – though he did not confirm it either.
Whether Matt Bellamy and company are joined by the veteran guitar great, only a time machine or patience will tell. Stay tuned.
360° tour to Australia in December
Bono will be back on stage in a few weeks. This comes directly from Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager. Bono who is 50 had been operated on after becoming temporarily paralysed. By now you know this forced the cancelation of the North American tour as well as the headline slot at Glastonbury.
“He’s making a full recovery. The doctors told me he’s going to be fine. It was serious surgery but we expect him to make a full recovery. He’s pretty fit.” Said Paul during a recent interview.
McGuinness said there was no reason to believe the tour’s massive stage production had anything to do with the singer’s injury.
“Rescheduling the American leg is quite difficult because it is an outdoor show; we can’t do it in the winter because it’s the northern hemisphere.
“So what we’re doing now is trying to seek availability of the buildings that we had already pretty much sold-out, so we’re getting availabilities and routing a coherent tour for next summer in the U.S. and Canada. We’ve nearly done it so I hope we’ll be able to announce that shortly.”
McGuinness insisted the rest of the band hasn’t been enjoying an impromptu holiday while Bono recovers.
Joshua Tree narrowly beats out Achtung Baby
U2 Fans yesterday woke up around the world to the question of the day on Facebook. If you could only have one U2 ablum with you what ablum would that be. Of course we had some differences. War, Best of, How to Build, but for the most part it was neck neck these two ablums. For us we think its Joshua tree. A defining period for all of us.
The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by rock band U2, released on 9 March 1987 on Island Records. Written and recorded in Dublin throughout 1986, it was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. The album is dedicated to lead singer Bono’s assistant, Greg Carroll, who was killed in a motorcycle accident during the album’s recording.
A joshua tree is a real tree that thrives despite the dry environment it lives in. The image - the icon - of life amidst its seeming absence, embodied in the joshua tree, is one that is fully appropriate to U2 - particularly at the end of their first decade. U2, like the joshua tree, stood in stark contrast to its environment: ascetic, prophetic and disarmingly (some would say “naively”, but let the tension stand) sincere. (Their foray into the realm of post-modern sampling, irony and sarcasm was an identity crisis fully in line with where they stood in the 80s: cynicism is frustrated optimism.)
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, the second song, really expresses the kernel of The Joshua Tree; every other song fleshes it out in some way or another. The album is, in the end, about distance: “I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls only to be with you: But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” While one may take this to be an admission of defeat - and distance whispers of despair as much as consummation - doing so is incorrect: “I’m still running,” Bono sings. The song is an expression of hope more than anything.
Faith is a raw and disarmingly rough beauty; it looks within and it looks without. “Bullet the Blue Sky” and “Mothers of the Disappeared” give full expression to U2’s long-time political engagement, while “With or Without You” gives a glimpse into U2’s more tender side. “With or Without You” may very well be the best love song of the 80s. “One Tree Hill”, a deeply personal song about the death of a friend, moves with passion and rugged grace - and, again, with hope: “I’ll see you again when the stars fall from the sky and the moon has turned red over one tree hill.”
The album received critical acclaim, topped the charts in over 20 countries, and sold in record-breaking numbers. According to Rolling Stone, the album increased the band’s stature “from heroes to superstars”. It produced the hit singles “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “With or Without You”, and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. The album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1988. The Joshua Tree is frequently cited as one of the greatest albums in rock history, and it is one of the world’s all-time best-selling albums, selling 25 million copies. In 2007, a remastered version of the album was released to mark the 20th anniversary of its original release.
Seeking inspiration on the eve of German reunification, U2 began recording Achtung Baby in Berlin’s Hansa Studios in October 1990. The sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. After weeks of tension and slow progress, the group made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song “One”. They returned to Dublin in 1991, where the majority of recordings were completed. The album’s title and colourful multi-image sleeve were chosen to confound expectations of U2 and their music.
One of U2’s most successful records, Achtung Baby earned favourable reviews and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, while topping the charts in many other countries. It spawned the hit singles “One”, “Mysterious Ways”, and “The Fly”. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. One of the most acclaimed records of the 1990s, Achtung Baby is regularly featured on lists of the greatest albums of all-time.
'an extraordinary day' -Bono
Did you happen to catch the NY Times this weekend, Bono had a chance to comment on the Saville report. Bono’s Op-Ed points out very directly that a 11 minute report does not clear away the wounds of a life time. Yet this does provide closure for some. What are your thoughts ? Bono holds back no punches to say that this report outlines the causes and the conflict between those that witnessed this event. Event may not be the right word. What we now know is that this was wrong, as if we needed a report to highight that fact. 11 people are dead for what ? Bono’s words below should give you something to think about. Often we brush things under the carpet to avoid conflict. This time its right in your face.
Bono:
ONE of the most extraordinary days in the mottled history of the island of Ireland was witnessed on both sides of the border last Tuesday.
The much-anticipated and costly Saville report … the 12-years-in-the-making inquiry into “Bloody Sunday,” a day never to be forgotten in Irish politics … was finally published.
On that day, Jan. 30, 1972, British soldiers fired on a civil rights march in the majority Catholic area of the Bogside in Derry, killing 14 protesters.
It was a day that caused the conflict between the two communities in Northern Ireland — Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist — to spiral into another dimension: every Irish person conscious on that day has a mental picture of Edward Daly, later the bishop of Derry, holding a blood-stained handkerchief aloft as he valiantly tended to the wounded and the dying.
It was a day when paramilitaries on both sides became the loudest voices in the conflict, a day that saw people queuing to give up on peace … mostly young men but also women who had had enough of empire and would now consider every means necessary — however violent or ugly — to drive it from their corner.
It was a day when my father stopped taking our family across the border to Ulster because, as he said, the “Nordies have lost their marbles.” And we were a Catholic-Protestant household.
Contrast all this with last Tuesday … a bright day on our small rock in the North Atlantic. Clouds that had hung overhead for 38 years were oddly missing … the sharp daylight of justice seemed to chase away the shadows and the stereotypes of the past. No one behaved as expected. The world broke rhyme.
A brand-new British prime minister, still in his wrapping paper, said things no one had imagined he would … could … utter ….
“On behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.”
And there was more ….
“What happened should never ever have happened,” said the new prime minister, David Cameron. “Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces. And for that, on behalf of the government, indeed on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.”
It was inconceivable to many that a Tory prime minister could manage to get these words out of his mouth. It was also inconceivable — before he uttered the carefully minted phrasing — that he would be listened to by a hushed crowd gathered in Guildhall Square in Derry, a place not famous for its love of British leaders of any stripe, and that he would be cheered while speaking on specially erected screens that earlier had been used to relay images from the World Cup.
Thirty-eight years did not disappear in an 11-minute speech — how could they, no matter how eloquent or heartfelt the words? But they changed and morphed, as did David Cameron, who suddenly looked like the leader he believed he would be. From prime minister to statesman.
Joy was the mood in the crowd. A group of women sang “We Shall Overcome.” There was a surprising absence of spleen — this was a community that had been through more than most anyone could understand, showing a restraint no one could imagine. This was a dignified joy, with some well-rehearsed theatrics to underscore the moment.
As well as punching the sky and tearing up the first “Bloody Sunday” inquiry — a whitewash by a judge named Lord Widgery who said the British troops had been provoked — these people were redrawing their own faces from the expected images: from stoic, tight-lipped and vengeful to broad, unpolished, unqualified smiles, unburdened by the bile the world often expects from this geography.
Derry is a community and these Derry people looked like guests at a wedding — formal only for as long as they had to be, careful of their dead but not at all pious. Some began to speak of trials and prosecutions but most wanted to leave that talk for another day.
Figures I had learned to loathe as a self-righteous student of nonviolence in the ’70s and ’80s behaved with a grace that left me embarrassed over my vitriol. For a moment, the other life that Martin McGuinness could have had seemed to appear in his face: a commander of the Irish Republican Army that day in 1972, he looked last week like the fly fisherman he is, not the gunman he became … a school teacher, not a terrorist … a first-class deputy first minister.
Both Mr. McGuinness and Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, seemed deliberately to avoid contentious language and to try to include the dead of other communities in the reverence of the occasion. Though a few on the unionist side complained that the $280 million spent on the inquiry, commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 and led by Lord Saville, a top judge, could have been used to improve Northern Ireland’s schools or investigate unionist losses, they mostly accepted the wording of the report that the deaths were “wrong” and “unjustified”; Protestant clergymen spoke of “healing” and held meetings with families of the victims.
Healing is kind of a corny word but it’s peculiarly appropriate here; wounds don’t easily heal if they are not out in the open. The Saville report brought openness — clarity — because at its core, it accorded all the people involved in the calamity their proper role.
The lost lives rose up from being statistics in documents in the Foreign Office to live once again. On the television news, we saw them … the exact time, the place, the commonplace things they were doing … William Nash, age 19, shot in the chest at close range, his father wounded trying to reach him … William McKinney, age 26, shot in the back while tending the wounded … Jim Wray, age 22, shot twice, the second round fired into his back while he was lying on the ground outside his grandparents’ house. We saw their faces in old photographs, smiles from 38 years ago … the ordinary details of their ordinary and, as Lord Saville repeatedly pointed out, entirely innocent lives.
It’s not just the Devil who’s in the details … God, it turns out, is in there too. Daylight …
Even the soldiers seemed to want the truth to be out. In the new report, some contradicted statements they had been ordered to make for the Widgery report.
It is easily forgotten that the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland ostensibly to protect the Catholic minority.
How quickly things can change.
In just a couple of years, the scenes of soldiers playing soccer with local youths or sharing ice creams and flirting with the colleens had been replaced by slammed doors on house-to-house raids … the protectors had become the enemy … it was that quick in Derry.
In fact, it can be that quick everywhere. If there are any lessons for the world from this piece of Irish history … for Baghdad … for Kandahar … it’s this: things are quick to change for the worse and slow to change for the better, but they can. They really can. It takes years of false starts, heartbreaks and backslides and, most tragically, more killings. But visionaries and risk-takers and, let’s just say it, heroes on all sides can bring us back to the point where change becomes not only possible again, but inevitable.
U2 is in a studio in Dublin, playing its new song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” to the record company. The melody is a good one but the lyric is, in hindsight, an inarticulate speech of the heart. It’s a small song that tries but fails to contrast big ideas … atonement with forgiveness … “Bloody Sunday” with Easter Sunday. The song will be sung wherever there are rock fans with mullets and rage, from Sarajevo to Tehran. Over time, the lyric will change and grow. But here, with the Cockneyed record company boss at the song’s birth, the maternity ward goes quiet when the man announces that the baby is “a hit”… with one caveat: “Drop the ‘bloody.’ ‘Bloody’ won’t bloody work on the radio.”
"I wanted Dad to say he loved me"
This song was written for Bono’s father. U2 performed it at his funeral in 2001.
Orginaly Titled “Tough”
Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own
Tough, you think you’ve got the stuff
You’re telling me and anyone
You’re hard enough
You don’t have to put up a fight
You don’t have to always be right
Let me take some of the punches
For you tonight
Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don’t have to go it alone
And it’s you when I look in the mirror
And it’s you when I don’t pick up the phone
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
We fight all the time
You and I
That’s alright, we’re the same soul
I don’t need, I don’t need to hear you say
That if we weren’t so alike
You’d like me a whole lot more
Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don’t have to go it alone
And it’s you when I look in the mirror
And it’s you when I don’t pick up the phone
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
I know that we don’t talk
I’m sick of it all
Can you hear me when I sing?
You’re the reason I sing
You’re the reason why the opera is in me
Where are we now?
Still gotta let you know
A house still does not make a home
Don’t leave me here alone
And it’s you when I look in the mirror
And it’s you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
Sometimes you can’t make it
Best you can do is to fake it
Sometimes you can’t make it on your own
All lyrics written by Bono, all music composed by U2.
U2 360 North America Tour Spring 2011?
We heard this before however no offical word has broken as of yet as to when Bono and the boys will be heading back to America. We carefully avoid spreading rumors. However watch this video and listen to hear if you hear what we heard. Yup we heard “North America in the spring” Could it be true ? Also we heard that some news of the tour would be coming out very soon.
This video was an interview with Active Aero Group which is a charter service and cargo company based out of Willow Run Airport. They have the plane all painted and ready to go. Notice the different name of the plane. We have found three different names of planes that will be used.
U2 Fans Are You Ready ?
Enter to win. Easy - Post your comments and Photos to the show you attended or why you love U2 on Facebook/U2TOURFANS, selections will be made in random different hours of the day. If you attended a show last year tell us about it. If your planning to attend a show this year tell us about. Post a photo and share your comments.
Win a U2 - 360° AT THE ROSE BOWL
U2 360° At The Rose Bowl was the penultimate gig of last year’s U2360° Tour in support of their Grammy nominated album No Line on The Horizon.
The Rose Bowl performance was the band’s biggest show of 2009 and U2’s biggest ever US show, with a live audience in excess of 97,000.
U2 - 360° AT THE ROSE BOWL [Super Deluxe Edition]
POST YOUR COMMENTS ON FACEBOOK/U2TOURFANS
The show was also streamed across seven continents via YouTube. The first ever live streaming of a full-length stadium concert, U2360° at the Rose Bowl had over 10 million views on the channel in one week.
Enter to win. Easy - Post your comments and Photos to the show you attended or why you love U2 on Facebook/U2TOURFANS, selections will be made in random different hours of the day. If you attended a show last year tell us about it. If your planning to attend a show this year tell us about. Post a photo and share your comments.
Shot entirely in HD, the concert was filmed with 27 cameras and directed by Tom Krueger who had previously worked on U23D, the first live action 3D concert movie taken from U2’s Vertigo Tour.
Available in standard and 2-disc deluxe DVD formats (see below), U2360° At The Rose Bowl will also be U2’s first concert available in Blu-ray. The deluxe formats and the Blu-ray will feature a new documentary called Squaring the Circle: Creating U2360° with new interviews from U2, Paul McGuinness and the team behind the touring production.
Enter to win. Easy - Post your comments and Photos to the show you attended or why you love U2 on Facebook/U2TOURFANS, selections will be made in random different hours of the day. If you attended a show last year tell us about it. If your planning to attend a show this year tell us about. Post a photo and share your comments.