U2 Reschedules Dates

Irish rock band U2 have rescheduled the dates for the North American leg of their 360 tour for Spring/Summer 2011 with all tickets valid for the new performance dates, their concert promoter said Tuesday.

The North American leg will kick off on May 21 next year at Invesco Field in Denver and end on July 23, 2011 in Minneapolis, music concert company Live Nation Entertainment said. The 2010 European tour will begin on time on August 6, 2010 in Turin.

The North American tour dates were canceled and U2 missed a date with Glastonbury music festival after frontman Bono underwent emergency surgery on his back in May.

“Following Bono’s recovery from recent back surgery, U2 are now readying themselves for the opening of their European Tour,” Live Nation said in a statement.

It said band members Adam, Larry, Edge and Bono have filmed a message for everyone at Web site u2.com on the eve of their return to say: “Thank you for standing by us.”

We’re delighted the dates are rescheduled and in all the same venues we originally planned to play,” he said in the statement. “Above all we want to thank the U2 fans for bearing with us. They’re the best and the band wants to get back to where they belong, surrounded by their audience.”

With hits like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Where the Streets Have No Name,” U2 are one of the world’s biggest bands and have sold over 150 million records, according to unofficial estimates.

The 50-year-old singer’s injury was a blow to the band and the millions of fans who were hoping to see U2 this year on the second leg of their world U2 360 Tour.

It was also expected to hit music concert company Live Nation, which signed a 12-year deal to handle merchandising, digital and branding rights as well as touring.

The 2009 part of the tour helped the band earn $109 million last year, according to music journal Billboard.

U2 manager Paul McGuinness also thanked the band’s fans for their ongoing support.



U2 North American Dates 2011

Posting Update Shorty

U2 Offical Tour Announcement Coming

We could not believe the news when we heard this earlier this morning. U2 will officially announce dates for Australian leg in August. 

Melbourne’s Hot Breakfast show had got the story from Nui Te Koha who broke the news.

“U2 are about to announce their Australian tour for 2011,” said Nui. “This announcement will roll out in August.

The Live Nation production crew has already setup office in OZ so that that can announce the tour in August. All bets on the tour coming summer or early 2011. 

Now this puts the question in some minds that the delayed North American tour should return sometime in June 2011. This part of the story should be considered rumor until we can get the facts from Live Nation. Which to this date has remained silent on any communication with U2 Fans. Most tend to be harsh on Live Nation simply because they feel that they are owed an answer about their tickets.

However what most people seem to miss is that a tour this size requires a stadium but thats not the only part, crew, trucks and planes all have to be available and pre-booked. This was going to take some time. So if we hear something about the delayed North American tour next month, our hats off to Live Nation. 

Bono, Live Aid 25

To mark the 25th anniversary of Live Aid, take a listen to this  landmark two-part documentary telling the story of the 1985 event staged to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

The documentary will look at how the gig came about, what happened on the day, both on-stage and back-stage, and its lasting legacy and will feature exclusive interviews from members of the original Live Aid line up including Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting, Mark Knopfler, Elton John, Brian May, Roger Taylor, Paul McCartney, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Chrissie Hynde, Bryan Adams, Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Gary Kemp, Tony Hadley, Paul Young, Elvis Costello and Billy Connolly amongst others who will all recount their memories of the history-making event.

Download the podcasts

You can download a series of Live Aid 25 podcasts, for free, with Absolute Radio podcasts.

Bono double offers to resume tour

NOT THE REAL BONOBono’s living breathing double Pavel Sfera (pictured above) has been so successful at it that he once duped the girlfriend of a Miami businessman who paid him $2,500 to have dinner with him and his girlfriend without ever telling her he wasn’t the real Bono.

Check out how much Sfera looks like the real thing at http://www.bonodouble.com/index1.html

The incident is revealed by author Mark Joseph on his site Bullypulpit.com

He says he first met Pavel Sfera, “when he spoofed an encounter between Bono and my artist, Molly Jenson when her debut album was released last year.. Pavel was so good that we had people coming up to us while we were shooting on a Beverly Hills sidewalk thinking he was the real deal.”

Sfera is now making an offer via Joseph to Bono and U2— to front for Bono while he is injured and have the U2 tour resume.

So the world’s foremost Bono-Double, is making an offer that the real Bono may just want to take him up on:

Since Bono is laid up he says he can make real money for the band.

Don’t think Bono and the boys will be much amused.

Edward Jedward brands Bono "unprofessional"

Edward Grimes, the Edward half of Jedward, has called Bono “unprofessional” for forcing U2 to cancel tour dates in order for him to complete a programme of rehabilitation after undergoing emergency back surgery in May. Well, kind of. Grimes was speaking to The Sun about his previously reported on-stage accident at Sunday’s T4 On The Beach, which left him with torn knee ligaments.

He told the tabloid: “I was crying like a baby in the ambulance, thinking I’ve got to do a tour in Ireland and promote the album. Jedward is a professional band. We have to go on for our fans. We don’t want to be like U2 - we’ll carry on even if I have to go on stage on crutches. We should do a hospital scene as part of the tour. That might work”.

He added that he refused pain relief at the hospital for fear of becoming a junkie: “The doctor wanted to give me morphine but I’m like, ‘No, I’m not a druggie’. We don’t do bad stuff. I had oxygen, gas and air and it made me feel really weird”.

You might think he was tough to cope with all that pain but, to be fair, this isn’t the worst injury Edward has ever suffered:

Humm U2 Fans did you have a comment to make ? Maybe you would want to post it to 

twitter.com/planetjedward/

U2's view of an Afghanistan Soldier

Bono’s hymn to a soldier dying in Afghanistan is unadorned, evocative and suggestive. And you don’t even have to know what it’s about to feel its quiet power or sense its sadness.

“There are a couple of songs from the point of view of an active soldier in Afghanistan,” Bono said back in June 2008, at the group’s Hanover Quay studio in Dublin, during a break in recording, “and one of them, White As Snow, lasts the length of time it takes him to die”.

Of all the character songs on the album, White As Snow is the most moving. Much of this is to do with its sense of quietude – not a mood one normally associates with U2. The song is almost ambient in its musical pulse, suggesting the presence of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and Bono’s voice sounds markedly different here, more restrained, more plaintive, the emotion suggested rather than strained for.

The song’s melody is based on an old hymn, Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel, that, according to The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, was composed by “an unknown author, circa 1100”. (Surprisingly, the original has been faithfully covered by both Sufjan Stevens and Belle & Sebastian and, less surprisingly, by Enya and 2006’s BBC Young Chorister of the Year, William Dutton).

The idea of a song based on the dying thoughts of a soldier initially came to Bono after he read William Golding’s ambitious novel, Pincher Martin, which is told from the point of view of a British sailor who appears to have survived the torpedoing of his ship. As he approaches death, his thoughts roam back over his life, and the moral choices he made or avoided. (The novel’s denouement, though, suggests that the soldier died at the moment his ship went down and that the preceding narrative recounts his soul’s struggle to stay in the material world.)

After watching Sam Mendes’s film, Jarhead, Bono decided the song should evoke the thoughts of a soldier dying from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Intriguingly, you don’t really need to know the context for the song to work. It stands alone. Initially, I had assumed it was sung in the voice of a young Middle Eastern man who had been driven into exile, but there you go.

“We were going to start White As Snow with an explosion,” recalled Bono. “An early version had this industrial noise that sounded like the aftermath of a bomb.” Now, that would have been one way of getting around the problem of context. It may have worked, too, but the song is fine the way it is, unadorned, evocative, suggestive. You don’t have to know what it’s about to feel its quiet power or sense its sadness. “It’s kind of pastoral,” said Bono.

It bodes well for the album that will follow No Line On the Horizon, which has, he says, “the idea of pilgrimage at its centre”, and is made up of the “quieter, more meditative songs” that did not make it on to this one. “Intimacy is the new punk rock,” Bono added, laughing. But is it the new stadium rock?

Adam read your bank statements

Adam Clayton /Dave Long 2010 /U2TOURFANSSurely we do not want you to end up a poor old rocker ! Gosh this is so often the truth wiht artists. Hope fully Adam can resolve this and get back to focusing on the music.

Adam is attempting to sue Bank of Ireland Private Banking Ltd and Gaby Smyth Co, chartered accountants, because he feels they should have notified him that over $5 million went missing from his account over five years.

However, he “couldn’t be bothered” to read his own bank statements, the Commercial Court in Dublin was told yesterday. The Court was told that Clayton felt that bank should have notified him, telling him that his bank account was hemorrhaging money.

The Court also said that Clayton was “putting the cart before the horse” in taking a case against the bank as the separate action against his former assistant, Ms Hawkins, has not been heard. In September 2008 Ms Hawkin’s admitted to skimming about $18,800 but the bank was never notified about this.

Paul Sreenan, Clayton’s lawyer said that his client was suing for a failing to complete the duties owed by bankers to their clients. In October 2009 Clayton was notified that there was some unusual activity in his accounts. His lawyer claims that had he known earlier he might have lost less money.

Though his assistant has admitted to taking $18,800 Clayton believes the figure to total over $5 million. He is suing the two companies for over $11 million for negligence and breach of contract.

Though Justice Peter Kelly refused his application to fast-track the case to the Commercial Court the case will instead go ahead in the High Court.