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ONE love, blood, life
U2's midlife crisis
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
It will be difficult to miss the presence of U2 Sunday night at the Grammy Awards. There will be Bono singing the Beatles' "Across the Universe" with an all-star cast, and the band cranking out a presumably live version of its thrice-nominated single "Vertigo."
It wasn't always so. A decade ago, U2 couldn't be bothered with the Grammys, or any other kind of promotional event that smacked of salesmanship. In 1993, U2 turned down an offer to perform at the Grammys, and the Edge and Bono didn't even bother to show up for the ceremony when "Achtung Baby" was nominated for album of the year (eventually losing out to Eric Clapton's "Unplugged"). The band didn't appear on television talk shows or Super Bowl halftimes to hype their albums, and they steered clear of corporate tie-ins, refusing to license their music for television commercials.
Now, U2 appears on "Saturday Night Live," shows up at the opening of former President Bill Clinton's library and rolls through Manhattan in a flatbed truck blasting a song, all in the name of promoting its latest album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (Interscope).
Most incongruously, in the weeks before the album was released last November, U2 struck a deal with Apple to star in a commercial for the computer manufacturer's portable music player, the iPod. In addition, Apple released a special-edition iPod that enabled buyers to purchase (for $99.99, after cashing in a $50 coupon) the band's entire catalog, plus bonus tracks. The band, which once prided itself on creating an enigmatic visual presence, thanks primarily to the work of their collaborator Anton Corbijn, had suddenly become an advertising coup for one of the world's most visible corporations.
"Bono said for so long he wasn't going to let the corporate monster swallow him, but he's in the belly of the beast now," says one disappointed fan, Donna McClain, 34, a Los Angeles schoolteacher who has attended 83 U2 shows since 1983. "You watch the Super Bowl, and U2's music is playing. You turn on the TV, and they're an iPod ad. It wasn't what they stood for when they came out. It seemed like their music meant something, it had more heart behind it. Now it's just another product."
It's all about survival in a short-attention-span industry, says Jimmy Iovine, chairman of U2's label, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, and producer of some of the band's landmark '80s recordings. U2's members are in their 40s and the band has been in existence for 25 years, a veritable dinosaur that is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. Yet the majority of the record-buying public is under age 25, most too young to remember U2 classics such as "The Joshua Tree" or "Achtung Baby." Like any band that hits rock 'n' roll middle age, U2 is grappling with the question of how to stay relevant in an industry that caters to youth.
"When we were kids, doing a TV ad, appearing on the Super Bowl halftime or singing at the Grammys would be a bad move for credibility, but not anymore," says Iovine, who adds that the band turned down three $20 million TV ad offers from other corporations before agreeing to the Apple deal because it "fit what they wanted to do aesthetically." He insists that the band received no money for the ad, which essentially served as a commercial for the new album while associating it with a "cool product that's a mainline right to a younger audience."
To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.chicagotribune.com/featu...y?coll=chi-leisurearts-hed&ctrack=3&cset=true
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
It will be difficult to miss the presence of U2 Sunday night at the Grammy Awards. There will be Bono singing the Beatles' "Across the Universe" with an all-star cast, and the band cranking out a presumably live version of its thrice-nominated single "Vertigo."
It wasn't always so. A decade ago, U2 couldn't be bothered with the Grammys, or any other kind of promotional event that smacked of salesmanship. In 1993, U2 turned down an offer to perform at the Grammys, and the Edge and Bono didn't even bother to show up for the ceremony when "Achtung Baby" was nominated for album of the year (eventually losing out to Eric Clapton's "Unplugged"). The band didn't appear on television talk shows or Super Bowl halftimes to hype their albums, and they steered clear of corporate tie-ins, refusing to license their music for television commercials.
Now, U2 appears on "Saturday Night Live," shows up at the opening of former President Bill Clinton's library and rolls through Manhattan in a flatbed truck blasting a song, all in the name of promoting its latest album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (Interscope).
Most incongruously, in the weeks before the album was released last November, U2 struck a deal with Apple to star in a commercial for the computer manufacturer's portable music player, the iPod. In addition, Apple released a special-edition iPod that enabled buyers to purchase (for $99.99, after cashing in a $50 coupon) the band's entire catalog, plus bonus tracks. The band, which once prided itself on creating an enigmatic visual presence, thanks primarily to the work of their collaborator Anton Corbijn, had suddenly become an advertising coup for one of the world's most visible corporations.
"Bono said for so long he wasn't going to let the corporate monster swallow him, but he's in the belly of the beast now," says one disappointed fan, Donna McClain, 34, a Los Angeles schoolteacher who has attended 83 U2 shows since 1983. "You watch the Super Bowl, and U2's music is playing. You turn on the TV, and they're an iPod ad. It wasn't what they stood for when they came out. It seemed like their music meant something, it had more heart behind it. Now it's just another product."
It's all about survival in a short-attention-span industry, says Jimmy Iovine, chairman of U2's label, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, and producer of some of the band's landmark '80s recordings. U2's members are in their 40s and the band has been in existence for 25 years, a veritable dinosaur that is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. Yet the majority of the record-buying public is under age 25, most too young to remember U2 classics such as "The Joshua Tree" or "Achtung Baby." Like any band that hits rock 'n' roll middle age, U2 is grappling with the question of how to stay relevant in an industry that caters to youth.
"When we were kids, doing a TV ad, appearing on the Super Bowl halftime or singing at the Grammys would be a bad move for credibility, but not anymore," says Iovine, who adds that the band turned down three $20 million TV ad offers from other corporations before agreeing to the Apple deal because it "fit what they wanted to do aesthetically." He insists that the band received no money for the ad, which essentially served as a commercial for the new album while associating it with a "cool product that's a mainline right to a younger audience."
To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.chicagotribune.com/featu...y?coll=chi-leisurearts-hed&ctrack=3&cset=true