Pittsburgh ! The End of U2 World Tour
After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, sources say U2 has decided to end their two-year world tour “360” in Pittsburgh.
The venue – Heinz Field on the North Shore.
Heinz Field had been trying to book U2 all along, but until recently the band had no plans of playing here, deciding to end its tour in Minneapolis on July 23, 2011.
But Pittsburgh had a powerful ally – U.S. Ambassador to Ireland and former Steelers chairman Dan Rooney.
Sources say it was Rooney’s influence that convinced the band to add one more date to the tour and play in Pittsburgh.
Ambassador Rooney flew back from Ireland Wednesday for the Steelers opener, but through a spokesman declined to comment on U2 and the concert negotiations.
Dan Rooney is a fan of U2, has attended their concerts and sources say the band is coming to Pittsburgh at his behest after making a personal appeal to the band’s management.
Barring any last-minute snag, an official announcement on the Heinz Field show will be made in the next few weeks with tickets going on sale for a concert scheduled for July 26, 2011.
The Band, The Music, The Fans
Bono, while getting ready for the resumption of the band’s mammoth 360 tour back in May, “suffered severe compression of the sciatic nerve”, as the German doctor who eventually rebuilt the 50-year-old explained.
The singer would require surgery, and extensive rehabilitation. The band would have to shelve the American leg of the tour and look to start again in Europe in August.
Prince Frederik was in the house yesterday. Tonight it’s supermodel Helena Christensen passing for Danish royalty.
The double-header is clearly a test for Bono’s fitness - on stage he milks the audience of every last drop of energy to make it through the show.Pre-show, Mullen says he’s surprised the frontman hadn’t done himself a serious injury a lot earlier in the band’s career.
“He’s fallen off the stage. He trips over on a regular basis and gets straight back up, never a problem. So I’m surprised… he normally bounces!”
The Edge is less likely to make wisecracks about Bono’s bung back. For the guitarist, it’s been more an existential crisis.
“We’re a band that play hail, rain or shine and no matter what’s going on physically, if somebody’s ill, got the flu, we just play. So it was a shock to me when we finally had to admit that actually we can’t perform,” he says. “Bono famously on the Joshua Tree tour fell and separated his shoulder, which is a serious injury and puts most, say, professional football players out of action for six months, yet he got strapped up and went on and we did every single show on that tour.
“So this was the first time that we went, ‘Oh wow, we’re actually not superhuman’. There is actually a human frailty involved in the band. We had to take that on board.
What about The Edge’s vital bits - any RSI setting in?
“No, not that I don’t have the odd ache or pain, but nothing that’s that worrisome. This was just kind of a freak thing that occurred.”
“I’m not sure,” Mullen says, returning to Bono’s propensity for falling over. “I mean he’s totally abused himself over the years. When I thought about it, the amount of jumping off stages, the physical risks…”
“Much more in the early days too,” Edge agrees. “Early on, we took it for granted that Bono would by the end of the show be scaling the scaffolding, and on numerous occasions he scared the life out of not so much us - because we had this bizarre, unfounded confidence that he would be fine - but our touring personnel would be just quaking in their shoes.
“I think part of the reason Bono’s never hurt himself during a show is the amount of adrenalin going through the system and he’s lost in the music so much that he’s got this resilience that no normal person would have.”
For all its magnificent runways, spider-like legs and that eye-melting, 43m-deep cylindrical television screen, for the band, the 360 playing surface is actually so small that if Bono is to fall over, he’d most likely trip on one of his bandmates. (Or perhaps he’d be momentarily blinded by the reflection off bassist Adam Clayton’s silver pants.)
The small stage area makes The Edge feel exposed - “We’re really out there in a way we’ve never been before.”
Mullen describes the stage as: “Actually quite intimate. It’s just with the other stuff around it, it looks a lot more intimidating than it actually is.
“It’s an amazing place to play. There’s a real connection with your audience that it’s hard to find in a stadium. It’s certainly the best stage I’ve ever played on. And I’m not that a—-d either way, you know, like I get on, I’ll do my job, I’ll do what I have to do. But it’s nice to be on a stage where you feel, ‘Ooh, this is really something’.”
“Sometimes hitting things for 30 years takes its toll, so the various grimaces on the face may not necessarily be to do with my dislike of what I’m doing, it might be that I’ve basically just pulled the other leg out,” the 48-year-old says with a wry smile.
“No, I like it, it’s a strange sensation. I’ve never done it before, not like that. I’ve done it being in the middle and then just running back up, but actually having to walk around and perform to people is different.
“You start to realise how crap you are at playing those drums when you’re standing in front of that many people - ‘S—-, I’m really bad at this, I better go home and practise!’ “
Though none of the new songs have been hits to rival those they rub shoulders with in the set-list (think Mysterious Ways, Elevation, New Year’s Day, With or Without You), they really catch fire in the live show.
No Line on the Horizon has sold more than five million copies in a year and a half - that’s a disappointing result in U2 land. When Hit raises this lack of commercial success, Mullen, who had entered the room carrying his dinner (chicken and vegetables, in case you were wondering) drops his cutlery on his plate and makes to storm off.
“I won’t have it!”
A lesser band probably wouldn’t be cracking jokes. U2, however, are well in touch with the reality of the music business, and their place in it. The reception to the album hasn’t knocked their confidence.
“It’s reinforced that point that to puncture public consciousness right now for any music release is hard. So you’ve either gotta have some kind of platform, some massive thing strapped to your song, or it’s just gotta be such an absolute out-and-out smash hit that it does all the work for you… and I don’t think we had either of those.”
Will the next U2 release be a traditional album?
“We’re open,” Edge says.
“We’re open to whatever the music directs us to do. We feel a little frustrated that we’re constrained by this CD format when there are all these powerful opportunities to allow the work to get out there on the internet that we’re not fully making use of. But it comes down to some very fundamental questions of what’s best for the music, and we have record deals, we have publishing deals, we have to think about those agreements, and also how we’re gonna get paid,” he laughs.
“Nothing’s presented itself yet that says ‘This is it’, but I can only assume that very shortly there’ll be some very exciting new things to do in terms of the way music can be distributed using the internet and we’ll be right on it when they present themselves.”
Mullen believes the industry needs a “silver bullet” that will change everything, especially for fledgling artists.
“It doesn’t affect us, it’s too late for us, but it affects a lot of other people,” he says.
“Did the music business need a kick up the a—-? Yeah, course it did. Did prices need to change? Yes of course. Are people entitled? Of course they are. But people are not entitled to have music for free. The drummer in Blur is part of this organisation to make it that everybody basically should be able to download music for free.
“It’s an issue that’s going to come to a head over the next couple of years and hopefully somebody will find that thing and we will jump on the back of it… or maybe be on the front of it, which I’d prefer to be.”
If some teenage wannabe approached Mullen on the street, would the veteran warn him off a career in music?
“I wouldn’t warn them off, but I think they’d want to go into it with both eyes open.”
Talking to Mullen and The Edge, you get the feeling U2 will carry on regardless. The Irishmen are perpetually driven forward by a sense of discovery.
“We still get excited about being able to get into a room and actually make a piece of music that doesn’t sound really crap,” Mullen says.
“Because none of us are… I mean Edge is probably pretty good, but the rest of us… I mean, we’re all good, we’re very good at being U2.”
“And the great thing is that’s all we have to be good at,” The Edge grins.
“Thankfully, because that’s probably all we are capable of being good at.”
U2 Returning to South Africa
U2 are believed to be returning to South Africa for two shows in February, EntertainmentAfrica.com has learned from a reliable source in the UK.
The Irish supergroup, currently on their 360 Degree Tour, are reportedly set to play stadium shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg - marking the first time the full band have performed in the country since 1998.
The official SA tour announcement is anticipated later in September. In the interim, the local branch of U2’s record company, Universal, has issued a statement saying that the tour “is not confirmed”.
The concert spectacle features a 360-degree stage - allowing the audience to sit on all sides - which makes use of a four-legged 50-metre tall structure called “The Claw”. Holding the record as the largest concert stage structure it holds the speaker system and a cylindrical video screen that hovers above the band, or can be lowered to behind the four performers.
U2 have been out on the road since June 2009 in support of their most recent album, ‘No Line On The Horizon’. They resumed their global tour in Turin, Italy on 6 August following emergency surgery on singer Bono’s back, which forced them to miss a headline performance at the Glastonbury Festival in England and postpone a series of North American dates.
The band last performed in South Africa on their Popmart tour 12 years ago with the typically over the top staging featuring a giant mirrorball lemon, a 30-metre golden arch, and a 3.8m olive on a 30-metre cocktail stick. Bono and guitarist The Edge performed at the 46664 concert in Cape Town in 2003.
U2 Considered Earth Destroyers
U2 traveled a total of 49904 km to give 35 shows, with an average of 1425 km traveled per show. That’s about 3707 pounds of CO2 per show.
(Sept. 7) — Justin Bieber’s place in the musical canon may be a matter of debate, but from an environmental standpoint, at least, he’s on the side of the angels.
Bieber is one of a number of artists — along with Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and the Georgia indie-pop band Of Montreal — to be designated an “Earth Saver” by a new app that measures a touring act’s carbon footprint.
The app, Earth Destroyers, calculates how many pounds of carbon dioxide an artist produces by touring. Using data from the tracking site Bandsintown, artists are classified as either good or bad for the planet depending on how far they travel between shows in a given window of time.
Sometimes the results can be surprising — like when U2, whose front man Bono is well known for his philanthropic and humanitarian work, turns out to be an “Earth Destroyer” at 3,707 pounds of CO2 per show.
The app is the brainchild of Paul Lamere, a director of developers for the Massachusetts music-software company The Echo Nest. Lamere created Earth Destroyers during the most recent Music Hack Day, an event held every couple of months where developers try to create new pieces of music-organization technology in a single weekend.
Reached for comment, Lamere cautioned that the methodology Earth Destroyers uses means its conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt. Specifically, he said, “I would not put a whole lot of stock into that CO2 per show [number] being accurate.”
The figure, Lamere explained to Surge Desk, was calculated based on an estimate of how much carbon dioxide a band would produce by flying to every stop on its tour. But a lot of artists travel by bus, and in their cases the numbers won’t reflect reality very closely.
Istanbul was rocked U2
Sunday evening in Istanbul, an unsusal night for a live event. The boys gave an unforgettable concert. Approximately 50 thousand spectators filled the stadium, despite the rain. There was some word that the concert may be canceled due to rain, however no offical word had ever been suggested. The world’s biggest stage and rock band was ready to shake the ground.
Bono went on stage and making the victory sign. Rock fans filled the stadium when you see the enthusiasm of “Why we so late?”. There was a great audience. Beautiful Day U2 concert began with the track. The scene resembles a spider under her husband Bill and his team dominated the entire audience. Concerts throughout the audience, always stood. Approximately 50 thousand people filled the stadium.
In a few generations that followed was a concert. U2 came to Istanbul for the first time, sang the songs became classics.
Did you know this ?
- U2 fans from around noon to come to the Olympic Stadium began.
- City had put additional buses, but long kuyuklar occurred in Taksim.
- Due to Traffic Ataturk Olympic Stadium was not easy to get to the stadium.
- 9:00 p.m. at the concert will begin approximately one hour delay announcements began.
- U2 hit the stage when the stadium was half empty, but later in the minutes full.
- Black Market items umbrellas and raincoats.
- Pirates ready to record and sell U2 Concert DVD’s and Audio
- Concert was the color, combo variety of different country flags were displayed.
- ‘Prayer room’ because of Ramadan has seen a lot of interest.
Young and Old Turks Love U2
The boys spent three days in Istanbul, talked the bridge Bosphorus and played to the a crowd of 70,000 screaming fans. The setlist a little different from the last three shows and we expect to be posting videos over the next few days.
Bono did meet witht he PM at Dolmasbahce Palce. The band greeted their fans that greeted them at their arrival with song and flowers.
U2 members, fans show love for their allocated among the vehicles went to the hotel from the airport will remain separated.
U2, Live Nation up by the Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation in collaboration with the contribution of the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency held on September 6 concert at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium will meet with Turkish fans.
Russia’s fondness for rock music, known as the August 25 President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi with Bono had come together.
U2 frontman Bono before the concert will be famous, in an interview to Arman Ayşwe greatest desire to combine the two continents of the Bosphorus Bridge that had indicated that stride. ,
Speaking recently in a television program, Secretary General of the Istanbul 2010 ECOC Agency Yılmaz Kurt, Bono’s Bosphorus Bridge and the State Minister of State Minister Hayati Yazıcı Bagis said he would play with. What time in history to walk which is stored as state secret.
The countdown has begun!
360 Tour has arrived in Istanbul for a concert. U2 fans eagerly waiting for, Turkey’s largest stadium concerts for the final preparations continue.
U2 Arrives in Turkey
U2 fans in Turkey where treated to a special from Bono and The Edge. A large crowd welcomed the boys to town as they landed in Atatürk International Airport. The band did not just sign autographs. The Edge started playing his acoustic guitar and performed Desire with Bono.
360 ° Tour U2, 6 September, up by Live Nation and İKSV in collaboration with the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency’s contribution to the Istanbul Ataturk Olympic Stadium!
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