biff
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Not sure if this has been posted already. There are a few very interesting points in this article.
Tour puts Bono to the test
KATHY McCABE
November 04, 2006 12:15am
THOUSANDS of U2 fans across the country have waited patiently for the world's biggest band to return to Australia. That wait is over.
The Australian leg of the band's world Vertigo tour has been eight months in the making, following postponement of dates in March.
Bono and his mates, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, are very, very pleased to be back in Australia.
"It is a long way to come to feel this at home. I am surprised that I feel comfortable," Bono said after the whinge about how far Australia was from the rest of the world.
With his short hair and all-black ensemble, U2's frontman looks ready for the physical demands of restarting a tour which was halted to allow The Edge to deal with a relative's illness.
He confesses a back injury put him out of action for a few months and it could take a few gigs before he's "match fit".
"I am not fit, physically. I had a back injury and I put on weight but now I'm back boxing and I think, in all honesty, it will probably happen somewhere in this tour that I'll be match fit. I just hope it's not the day we leave," he says.
Bono and his bandmates keep the pressure on, determined not to become a karaoke machine who can sell out stadiums but whose new studio albums never trouble the upper reaches of the charts.
"If we don't make great albums, the four of us should be put down."
Bono's sense of humour and self-deprecation, and that of his bandmates, has helped them weather the inevitable backlashes along the way.
"Rock music has lost a little bit of the thing that makes it powerful when the air is sucked out of the room because somebody is saying something very private on a public address system and it's a little awkward and there's nervousness because what are they going to say next. And comedians have that power now," he says.
"The rock stars are all too cool. And I don't want to be that, I've gotten a bit too cool.
"I want to be like I was as a kid, I want to stay hot and passionate rather than cool. And that younger man you are referring to had the stupidity and the courage to sing his heart and his head out."
U2 has not been idle while Vertigo was on hold.
There are two new songs which will feature on the U218 Singles compilation to be released here during their tour.
The first is a mindblowing rock duel with Green Day on The Saints Are Coming, a cover of the late 1970s punk hit by Scottish band The Skids.
The bands recorded the song with hitmaker Rick Rubin at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to raise funds for Music Rising, a charity to benefit New Orleans musicians who lost their instruments to Hurricane Katrina.
It already has topped the UK charts on downloads alone and could be one of both bands' biggest hit singles.
The Saints Are Coming is a visceral performance powered by the two drummers and bassist playing together, Billie Joe Armstrong and The Edge trading guitar licks and Bono and Armstrong melding their voices with astonishing ease.
"It's never been done. oddly enough, which is interesting, Two bands like this, two bands having a baby . . . and we're not the chick," he chuckles heartily.
The other new song is Windows In The Skies. With soaring strings and a haunting piano melody. The tune is remarkably different to the stadium rock sound of their recent smash hit album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. It is huge but in a very different way and for a very different reason; Bono is learning to play piano.
"I think that's going to be our biggest song in a long time. It's a psychedelic pop song with 6/8 timing, you never hear that. It's very, very rare," he says.
"I've been taking piano lessons with my kids and every time I took a lesson, I wrote a song. I had eight lessons and I had eight songs.
"They (his bandmates) were all like 'He'll never have any songs this time' and in I bring eight. Whoa! Of course, they have much improved it."
In addition to his musical commitments, Bono continued his Debt AIDS Trade Africa campaign.
"I like the word 'activist' because it's an action word. I don't like the word 'dreamer', even though I exhorted myself and others to dream out loud, to turn it up to 11. In the end, you know, I don't like dreaming," he says.
"People did not just mock but spit in your face when you said to them we can cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries to the world's richest countries.
"We were dreaming out loud and they were laughing out loud. They were wrong."
Equally successful is the (RED) charitable initiative he launched recently in the U.S. which enlists renowned brands, including Giorgio Armani and Apple, to make products that devote part of their revenues to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Bono's brand of ethical shopping has struck paydirt, with most of the products - including phones, iPods, watches and credit cards - selling out within days.
To an extent, U218 Singles is for the newcomers, a retrospective which distils their love songs, their political songs, the songs that 70,000 people will sing at the top of their lungs at every concert they perform in Australia this month.
Tour puts Bono to the test
KATHY McCABE
November 04, 2006 12:15am
THOUSANDS of U2 fans across the country have waited patiently for the world's biggest band to return to Australia. That wait is over.
The Australian leg of the band's world Vertigo tour has been eight months in the making, following postponement of dates in March.
Bono and his mates, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, are very, very pleased to be back in Australia.
"It is a long way to come to feel this at home. I am surprised that I feel comfortable," Bono said after the whinge about how far Australia was from the rest of the world.
With his short hair and all-black ensemble, U2's frontman looks ready for the physical demands of restarting a tour which was halted to allow The Edge to deal with a relative's illness.
He confesses a back injury put him out of action for a few months and it could take a few gigs before he's "match fit".
"I am not fit, physically. I had a back injury and I put on weight but now I'm back boxing and I think, in all honesty, it will probably happen somewhere in this tour that I'll be match fit. I just hope it's not the day we leave," he says.
Bono and his bandmates keep the pressure on, determined not to become a karaoke machine who can sell out stadiums but whose new studio albums never trouble the upper reaches of the charts.
"If we don't make great albums, the four of us should be put down."
Bono's sense of humour and self-deprecation, and that of his bandmates, has helped them weather the inevitable backlashes along the way.
"Rock music has lost a little bit of the thing that makes it powerful when the air is sucked out of the room because somebody is saying something very private on a public address system and it's a little awkward and there's nervousness because what are they going to say next. And comedians have that power now," he says.
"The rock stars are all too cool. And I don't want to be that, I've gotten a bit too cool.
"I want to be like I was as a kid, I want to stay hot and passionate rather than cool. And that younger man you are referring to had the stupidity and the courage to sing his heart and his head out."
U2 has not been idle while Vertigo was on hold.
There are two new songs which will feature on the U218 Singles compilation to be released here during their tour.
The first is a mindblowing rock duel with Green Day on The Saints Are Coming, a cover of the late 1970s punk hit by Scottish band The Skids.
The bands recorded the song with hitmaker Rick Rubin at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to raise funds for Music Rising, a charity to benefit New Orleans musicians who lost their instruments to Hurricane Katrina.
It already has topped the UK charts on downloads alone and could be one of both bands' biggest hit singles.
The Saints Are Coming is a visceral performance powered by the two drummers and bassist playing together, Billie Joe Armstrong and The Edge trading guitar licks and Bono and Armstrong melding their voices with astonishing ease.
"It's never been done. oddly enough, which is interesting, Two bands like this, two bands having a baby . . . and we're not the chick," he chuckles heartily.
The other new song is Windows In The Skies. With soaring strings and a haunting piano melody. The tune is remarkably different to the stadium rock sound of their recent smash hit album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. It is huge but in a very different way and for a very different reason; Bono is learning to play piano.
"I think that's going to be our biggest song in a long time. It's a psychedelic pop song with 6/8 timing, you never hear that. It's very, very rare," he says.
"I've been taking piano lessons with my kids and every time I took a lesson, I wrote a song. I had eight lessons and I had eight songs.
"They (his bandmates) were all like 'He'll never have any songs this time' and in I bring eight. Whoa! Of course, they have much improved it."
In addition to his musical commitments, Bono continued his Debt AIDS Trade Africa campaign.
"I like the word 'activist' because it's an action word. I don't like the word 'dreamer', even though I exhorted myself and others to dream out loud, to turn it up to 11. In the end, you know, I don't like dreaming," he says.
"People did not just mock but spit in your face when you said to them we can cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries to the world's richest countries.
"We were dreaming out loud and they were laughing out loud. They were wrong."
Equally successful is the (RED) charitable initiative he launched recently in the U.S. which enlists renowned brands, including Giorgio Armani and Apple, to make products that devote part of their revenues to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Bono's brand of ethical shopping has struck paydirt, with most of the products - including phones, iPods, watches and credit cards - selling out within days.
To an extent, U218 Singles is for the newcomers, a retrospective which distils their love songs, their political songs, the songs that 70,000 people will sing at the top of their lungs at every concert they perform in Australia this month.
