In an interview that took place in Ghana during their recent trip there, Bono and Jeffrey Sachs spoke to Guardian Observer editor John Mulholland about the politics and economics of aid.

Bono had this to say when asked what will you be saying to world leaders to try to secure the funding commitments they have made to the Global Fund – and which now look under threat?

It’s really not a time to be a rich rock star talking about poor people, I’ll tell you that, or a film star, or a first lady or a … – there’s just something… it’s like “Why don’t you just piss off back to your chateau” – and so I’m kind of delighted that people keep doing it. Outside the UK, we won’t get much coverage for these issues without famous faces – and without coverage, politicians are less supportive.

Also in the interview Bono spoke in glowing terms about British Prime Minister David Cameron and the British people. This is what he had to say of both:

The reason why David Cameron can be so brave on behalf of the world’s poor and commit to UK aid at 0.7% of national income is because he has a mandate. People in the UK give a shit about this stuff and know a lot about it.

The British people, at a time of real austerity, have decided to stand by their principles and promises to the most vulnerable in far-off places, but they need to know exactly what they are achieving and how much it’s costing.

Bono and Jeffrey Sachs were both asked to respond to the rise in opposition to aid spending and what would they say to its critics. This is what they said. First Bono:

There’s one thing that might help with aid cynics. Because clearly no one likes the culture of dependency. No one’s arguing for it. We’re arguing to end it. I think there’s something a bit funky about aid as it stands right now. The two most important parties involved in the transaction – the taxpayer who’s providing the resources and the person who needs those resources to stay alive or keep their family alive – are the two people who know the least about what’s going on. So that has to change.

Jeffrey Sachs had this to say:

There are good ways to do things and bad ways to do things with aid. Aid works when it’s practical, when it’s focused, when it’s targeted, when it’s an investment, when it is part of a strategy; and aid does not work when it’s money handed over in an envelope to a friendly ally, especially in a war zone or when it’s a payoff for some other diplomatic support. It needs to be seriously managed, professionalised, results-based – and I’m very happy that the Department For International Development (DfID) is really exemplifying that approach right now. What’s the bottom line? What are the results? What are we getting out of it? And it’s being made into a very practical contract, in essence, between donor and recipient.

You can read the interview in full on Guardian.co.uk

http://www.u2.com

Huey Morgan covers Lauren and is joined by Adam Clayton of U2. The band release the 20th Anniversary edtion of their seminal album Achtung Baby next week, and their bassist joins Huey today to tell all about how the most important album of their lives came together.

The broadcast is available for the next 7 days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk

http://www.u2.com

Bono with Adam Clayton, Edge and Larry Mullen in Morocco at the time of Achtung Baby. Photographs: Fred Dufour/AFP/ Getty Images and Anton Corbijn

BRIAN BOYD

‘Achtung Baby’ was the making of U2. As the album is rereleased after 20 years, alongside a film about the band, Bono and
Edge recall the turmoil that surrounded the recording and talk about their future
IT’S WHEN THREE glasses are raised to toast “12-step programmes” that you realise perhaps one too many cocktails has been taken. It’s a bar in Toronto and the caipirinhas were Bono’s idea, with Edge not slow to get his round in. “If we don’t come up with a very good reason to make a new album, we should just f*** off,” says Bono. “Why does anyone need a new U2 album?”

For the first time in their 35-year career the notoriously “faster, stronger, higher” band have put the brakes on and taken a long look in the rear-view mirror. A new film about the band, From the Sky Down , documents how their huge success in the 1980s provoked a bout of self-loathing and almost broke up the band as they struggled to stay true to their vision of a band forged in the white heat of Dublin’s punk/new wave movement.

To mark the 20th-anniversary rerelease of their key Achtung Baby album, U2 had a rush of blood to the head. They decided to open their archives and cede editorial control to the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim to make a film ostensibly about the troubled gestation period of Achtung Baby . The result was something very different.

“Watching From the Sky Down the first time made for painful viewing. I hated it,” says Bono. “U2 never look back. It’s never been what this band is about. Edge will tell you that when we put together our best-of collections he forced me – actually had to physically force me – to listen to them before they went out. I’ve never been interested in what we have done. I’m interested only in what we’re about to do. But I think there comes a time when it actually becomes dysfunctional not to look into the past, and for the Achtung Baby album we made an exception.

“The film is not about us per se. It’s about how bands function – or, in this case, don’t function. But when I saw it first I just saw these four people talking intensely about their music, and, really, does the world need that at this time? Davis didn’t tell us he was going into our past to put a context on what really happened to the band after the success of The Joshua Tree and how bad things were in Berlin when we started to make Achtung Baby . He didn’t tell us because we wouldn’t have agreed. Now that I’ve seen it a few times I realise it is actually about the creative process. Let’s face it, the era of rock music is going to end soon, and if you are interested in rock music and rock bands you’ll be interested in their internal dynamics: what makes a rock band tick, the tribal aspect, the idea of the clan. The irony for me now is that we made Achtung Baby to set fire to our earnestness and now here’s this very earnest film about the making of the album.

“We held back nothing from Davis. We opened up our archives to him and he really had carte blanche. The first time I saw it I was going, ‘Oh no, no, no,’ and I went to him and made a few suggestions as to the changes I wanted. There was no battle of wills. He just didn’t even get into a discussion with me. He didn’t change anything. But I was looking at it, going, ‘Why is this film talking about Cedarwood Road [where he grew up], the Baggot Inn and my grandmother? I thought we were making a film about the Achtung Baby album. What is going on here?’ ”

What is going on in the film is a look at how a band who shared musical DNA with Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire ended up sitting at music’s high table alongside Elton John and Dire Straits – but without the AOR table manners. A generation before Nirvana dragged alt-rock into the musical and media mainstream, this punk-theatric band ended up on the cover of Time magazine, in April 1987, as “Rock’s Hottest Ticket” and selling out arenas around the world.

Disgusted with the idea of being rock idols and disillusioned by their stadium-rock billing, they were at breaking point. “We were carrying Catholic guilt around – the sin of success,” says Bono. “We had emerged from playing with The [Virgin] Prunes and hanging around the Project Arts Centre getting mime lessons from Mannix Flynn. And the context here is that the musical scene we came from had this very Maoist music press. There were certain canon laws: thou shalt not go platinum; thou shalt not play in a stadium or an arena; thou shalt not go to America; thou shalt not be careerist. If you even thought about those things you had committed a sin.”

DESPERATE NOT TO turn into a cigarette-lighter-in-the-air stadium-rock band, U2 boarded the last flight to East Berlin just before Germany reunified, in 1990. It was one of the harshest Berlin winters, their recording studio, Hansa, was a former SS ballroom, their hotel was rubbish and they had no songs. “On a scale of one to 10 we were at a nine for breaking up,” says Bono.

For Edge, U2 were over the moment they walked into Hansa – or, at least, Rattle and Hum U2 were over. “It would have been insanity for us to have stayed in Rattle and Hum mode; that was a wonderful, great little aside, but it was never who we really were,” says the guitarist. “Who we really are is all about the future and innovation. We were getting a bit purist and a bit ‘disciplist’ about roots music, but we needed to become disciples of what is coming next. I arrived in Berlin with drum machines and loops, telling everyone what was happening in Manchester,” he says, referring to the Hacienda nightclub and to The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, among other bands. “I was also big into industrial music, but the producer of the album, Danny Lanois, was going, ‘Okay, this all sounds interesting, but show us where it’s going musically.’ And I couldn’t.”

Things deteriorated rapidly. As Bono has it, while outside they were tearing down the Berlin Wall, U2 were building their own wall inside Hansa. On one side were the so-called traditionalists: Adam, Larry and Lanois; on the other, Bono and Edge were throwing club- culture and dance-rhythm shapes. Bono had always felt aggrieved that whenever a club DJ would play a U2 song, it would empty the dance floor. He wanted to make U2’s music sexy.

“To Danny Lanois, from his perspective, we were kindred spirits to his love of roots music,” says Edge. “He loved the organic feel to our music, the material that was on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree . But no one knew how to make the bits of new material we had into U2 songs. The first two weeks were a nightmare. Everything we tried would just nosedive. It got to the stage where we lost trust in each other . . . and there was a clear dilemma.

“There were options: one was to see whether U2 could absorb new material and make it their own, or whether U2 as a band were inflexible and couldn’t stretch. The other option was to throw out all the material, start again and . . . extend the line-up or bring in other musicians.”

With the band having to take some very hard decisions about continuing to flail around in the studio or just cancelling everything, a deus ex machina arrived in the shape of the discarded second bridge from a song called Sick Puppy (later renamed Mysterious Ways ). That bridge was shaped into the intro for a new song, One . “As soon as One came into that room it stabilised everything,” says Bono. “Everyone just sort of surrendered after we had that. By surrendering, we got over the hump.”

With a song to anchor the album, they returned to Dublin for Christmas and finished off the album in a rented house in Dalkey, in south Co Dublin.

Released in 1991, and hailed as a triumphant reinvention, Achtung Baby sold more than 20 million copies. It remains their most important album, and the resulting tour, Zoo TV, changed how live rock music would be presented and experienced.

It’s dark outside in Toronto now, and an interview that began in sunshine has gone way over time. There’s just one more thing. It may well be an act of lese-majesty, but here goes: one possible interpretation of the film, Bono, is that, without Edge, you’d still be in the Baggot Inn. “Sure,” he says, nodding.

“That’s a lovely thing to say,” says Edge. “But I don’t think that’s true. It’s symbiotic. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without Bono, and I think that’s reciprocal. He makes me great. I help him to be great.”

Before they descend into you’re-my-best-friend territory, we slip away. Bono is saying, “Being in U2 is like being in the priesthood. There’s only one way out. And that’s in a coffin.”

Achtung Baby is rereleased next Friday in five formats, including a remastered CD and a six-CD, four-DVD edition that includes the film From the Sky Down

Bono’s line on the horizon

U2’s most recent album, No Line on the Horizon , was widely perceived as a poor seller. But Bono has a different take. “We’re just about to come to five million sales on No Line on the Horizon , and that, these days, is the equivalent of selling 12 million records,” he says, referring to the pre-Napster and pre-illegal download era.

“You can actually do the figures on that. So when you look at it like that, it has the same sales as All That You Can’t Leave Behind [their hit 2000 album]. That’s despite the fact that No Line doesn’t have a Beautiful Day and doesn’t have a Stuck in a Moment. There’s no pop song on No Line , but it’s still sold that amount. It’s been an amazing success for an album which is quite a complex piece of work and doesn’t have one pop song on it.

“People say Get on Your Boots was the wrong single, but it’s great live. Unfortunately, in the last few weeks of finishing the album, we didn’t have the objectivity. We figured out Get on Your Boots later, when we were on the road, and it became a much better song.

“I think Unknown Caller is a classic, as are Moment of Surrender and the live version of Get on Your Boots .”

Back to the future: ‘The app format brings you back to that world of gatefold sleeves’

Looking back at the trauma of getting Achtung Baby on its legs and having to forge a new sound and identity, Bono says, “It’s actually worse for us now than it was when we went to Berlin.”

He shrugs off the fact that the band have just recorded the biggest-grossing live tour in the history of popular music and wonders whether U2 can still be relevant. “We can play the big music in big places. But whether we can play the small music, meaning for the small speakers of the radio or clubs, where people are living, remains to be seen,” he says. “I think we have to go to that place again if we’re to survive.

“There are so many U2 albums out there. We need a reason for another one. The whole point of being in U2 is that we’re not here to be an art-house band. Our job, as we see it, is to bring the art house to the mainstream; our job is to puncture the mainstream.”

Earlier, he was using an iPad with the Achtung Baby songs and videos on it. “That’s probably what our new album will look like,” he says. “I’ve been talking about this for the past four years.

“Our last album was the first album to be made available as an app with BlackBerry devices, but it didn’t work: the functionality was not what it could have been. New formats are going to happen. I’m always banging on about this. The app format brings you back to that world of gatefold sleeves, of being able to read lyrics – and [now of] being able to play the album at home on your plasma TV.”

http://www.irishtimes.com

by Bill Werde | October 07, 2011 12:05 EDT

Getty Images

In the past few years, arguably no one has been a more prominent, more outspoken advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, publishers and other rights-holders in the digital age than U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness shepherded four young men (and himself) from the streets of Dublin to the top of the world, including a deal done in Steve Jobs’ Palo Alto, Calif., kitchen in 2004: McGuinness, Bono, Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine and Jobs ate lunch and agreed to a deal to use U2′s “Vertigo” in an iPod TV ad, and for Apple to create a black-and-red U2-branded iPod.

U2 hadn’t previously used its music in advertisements, and-heaven forbid-Apple had never released an iPod that wasn’t white. McGuinness recalled this moment during a keynote speech at the MIDEM Music conference in Cannes in January 2008, while also beseeching Jobs to “bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music.” McGuinness grouped Apple in with a number of other telcos and search companies that had “built multibillion-dollar industries on the backs of our content without paying for it” and urged them to take greater responsibility.

McGuinness caught up with us from his Dublin office, warmly remembering Steve Jobs the man, the music fan and, yes, the tough negotiator.

Billboard: You really had a unique relationship with Steve.

McGuinness: I suppose I wish there were more like him.

What do you mean by that? The sense he cared so much?

He was a music lover. That was very clear. He had an extensive knowledge of music.

How did that come to be known to you?

He played music in his house. It was a musical environment; he knew a lot about artists and record labels . . . He was very generous, grew up listening to music; a very colorful guy. It was in his DNA. He knew extraordinary amounts of information about the way music could get distributed and paid for, particularly. He was kind of unique. Everyone else in the tech world sort of grew out of the Internet. He seemed quite honest to the music industry and artists. Others took a little less interest in getting the artists paid than Steve.

He didn’t solve the problems. The problems are still there. Most music that is consumed over the Internet is not paid for. That hasn’t gone away. There are a lot of geniuses in that world. I always think that if the geniuses of Google, Verizon, AT&T . . . If they had all been as creative as Steve, I think the problem would have been solved by now. The willingness and generosity of spirit that seems strangely absent to me was there, yet he was a tough business guy.

What was he like to deal with in that regard? There was this moment in his kitchen, for example, when the details of the U2 iPod were ironed out. You were there for that, yes?

Yeah. For the first time, we were allowing U2 music to be used in advertising. It was kind of generic for Apple, iPod, iTunes. It was like all their advertising-very elegant, beautiful. Effectively, he was putting a music video onto the TV screen and paying for it on a worldwide basis. There was no payment for that. But we got this massive worldwide exposure for our song. And that was the first . . . alongside that we could have the U2-branded iPod.

How did that idea come to be?

I can’t remember. I think it might have been Bono’s idea. There were a lot of ideas floating around at the time.

For example, there was the idea we might sell a preloaded iPod, with U2′s catalog on it. In fact, what we sold with the black-and-red, U2-branded iPod was unique. It was the first time they did something that wasn’t white. Until then Apple had a design policy, which was white only. The U2 iPod was a success. With it you got a digital coupon that allowed you to download the entire U2 catalog at a discount.

In your role with U2 I’m sure you deal with many different styles of negotiators. How would you characterize Jobs in your business relationship?

He was interested in doing what was right for his company. He had the strongest sense of what everything associated with Apple should look like, whether it was advertising, the store, of the product itself. He and Jonny [Ive, Apple senior VP of industrial design], who we’ve got to know quite well, they had an extraordinary aesthetic that ran through everything they did. Put them in a class of their own compared to all the other consumer electronics manufacturers. There is really no comparison between what they represent aesthetically and what the rest of that industry has come up with.

What details linger with you from Jobs, the person?

[His home] was a very relaxed environment. We were having lunch in his kitchen. His wife and kids were around. It was a family home. I think he still lived there until recently. This is not like a giant Palo Alto mansion; it was a pretty normal home. There was nothing overbearing about it. We did what turned out to be a pretty effective piece of business for all concerned: the label, the artists and for Apple.

I was there for your 2008 address at the annual MIDEM conference in Cannes and you seemed to lump in Apple with other tech companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) as being among those that built these billion-dollar industries on the back of content, if you will. What do you think of his legacy? Was it purely positive?

When Apple proceeded to become the most powerful retailer in the music industry, that power is certainly something that they leveraged. They had no real competitor in the download business [laughs]. Never underestimate the ability of a monopoly to defend itself. What disappoints me about the tech world, the distributors, the Googles and phone companies, I wish they had made it part of their code to protect the sources of content better. They say it has nothing to do with us. They wash their hands of responsibility. But in the years to come I think they will be blamed for not applying their resources and power to those sorts of things.

There have been studies saying that, for example, for every 40-gig iPod, a person spent money on only 16 or 17 tracks. But you get the sense that they weren’t walking around with a 40-gig iPod with only 16 or 17 songs on it.
[Laughs] The stats are pretty clear. If you look into the future, not everyone is happy with this, but the iTunes payment system is basically the way in which the content industries will collect their income in the future, perhaps literally. It doesn’t have a strong competitor at the moment. If it does move into the cloud, perhaps Spotify has a good lead on the space Apple might be moving into. I would expect that in the years to come, the model will change so that the very concept of owning a piece of content will become irrelevant.

People will have ubiquitous access to content: movies, music, newspapers, magazines, and those payments will be made through iTunes or another equivalent. We will eventually reach a point where the gatekeepers, the pipe owners, the phone companies, the ISPs will collect that money and distribute it fairly.

What about the role Apple has played there?

Apple has absolutely played a role in helping to socialize that notion. Going back a few years, once the mobile phone became a status symbol, very quickly there became one in the hand of every adult and child in the country. Nowadays when someone gets their phone bill, and it says you’ve made a call to Australia, for example, no one seriously thinks there’s any corruption in that process. They believe what it says on their account statement. It is obviously possible to develop the algorithms that identify those calls, which traffic and charge appropriately for it. I wish the same level of ingenuity were applied to collecting music and other content.

I think your concern is very commendable. It would be very easy for you and U2 to not be as preoccupied with this. I’m sure it’s money out of your pocket, but your pockets have a lot of money, and other artists don’t have what you have. I think your advocacy will continue to benefit them.

I think everyone’s entitled to get paid for what they do. The history of the music industry is littered with stories of victims who were songwriters or recording artists. Musicians have never been very powerful in that respect. I think in the digital age, it is absolutely clear that it is possible to track every micro transaction, every song, every pair of ears that listens to a song, every eyeball that watches a movie, if you really want to. And then you can collect the money and give it to the rightful recipients.

http://www.billboard.com

Published: Saturday, July 09, 2011

By GARY PULEO
Times Herald Staff

Bono of the rock group U2 performs Friday, July 8, 2011 in Montreal, Canada. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Paul Chiasson)

WORCESTER — As U2’s debut album was taking the U.S. by surprise, the unknown Irish rock band’s potential was becoming rapidly clear to a small but savvy group of people.

Popular radio personality Cyndy Drue was one of them.

Back in March, 1981, Drue (now with Classic Rock 102.9 WMGK) had a monthly show on KYW-TV in Philadelphia called “The Rock ‘n Roll Show,” which she decided was the perfect venue to air a 10-minute interview with U2’s promising front man Bono.

It’s now 30 years since the group made the leap from the tiny Bijou Cafe on Lombard Street — where it was headlining on that maiden journey to America — to the stage of Lincoln Financial Field, its home for three or four hours next Thursday night.

Drue’s historic, rare interview with a young, soft-spoken Bono — whose glam-rock haircut might have led some viewers to confuse him with one of the guys from Duran Duran — will be shown again for the first time in 30 years on Larry Kane’s “Voice of Reason” show 9:30 p.m., July 10, on The Comcast Network.

“I was sitting on this interview all these years, and now they’re playing at ‘the Linc’ on Thursday night and are probably the biggest band in the world,” Drue said. “I just felt like I should bring it back and show what Bono looked like the first time he came to Philadelphia. It’s also the first time he was interviewed on American television.”

U2 — besides lead singer/guitarist Bono, the band includes guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. — was touring the U.S. in the spring of ‘81 in support of its debut album, “Boy,” which Drue liked enough to christen the foursome “New Artist of the Month” for a regular segment on her show.

Other picks that year were Split Enz and Robin Lane & the Chartbusters

“I would pick some new act that I thought was good and show their video, and they were all unknown bands,” she recalled. “I picked U2 because I really liked their album and had read a lot of favorable press coming from England about them.” Continued…

http://timesherald.com

‘I’m sure the next time we go out it will be quite different,’ says the Edge

Last month, Rolling Stone Senior Writer Brian Hiatt traveled to Denver to catch up with U2 as they kicked off the final leg of their 360 Tour.  He chatted with the Edge and Adam Clayton about the epic two-year tour, the difficult birth of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and where exactly U2 goes from here. (For more, read our full account of U2's time on the road from the most recent issue of Rolling Stone.)

You seemed pretty happy out there tonight.

Adam Clayton: I definitely got to a point where I realize how unusual it is to be able to play large, sold-out shows 30 years into a rock and roll career. I don't take it for granted. 

There's still a substantial number of No Line On The Horizon songs in the setlist, but at this point it doesn't feel like the No Line tour necessarily.

Yeah. It is unfortunate. We would like to be playing more of the material from the album. It got great reviews. There's great material on the record, but there's no point banging away songs to people who don't get it. It didn't catch fire. It's old news now. The single didn't work, and when the single doesn't work people don't have a way into the record. 

Photos: U2 Comes Full Circle as 360 Degree Tour Launches in Barcelona

The tour was supposed to be long over by now. None of this was planned.

There was nothing we could do about the timing of the tour. What happened to Bono was a fairly serious injury. At the time, it wasn't like he could have gone on and had it treated later. He had to be operated on, and that was exactly a year ago. That set the die, and we worked on material in the down time, but we haven't had time to go back to that material and complete it. That's why we don't think we're going to have a record this year, because when we work everything backwards from when this tour finishes, you need to finish a record by September for a release, and we don't do that. 

It must have been a relief to just say, “next year.” When did that decision get made?

We did some work on it in January. It was great progress. We worked with Danger Mouse in New York. After that, we had to have a bit of a meeting and look at the schedule for the rest of the year and see if we could pick up any extra time to work on it. We just realized that we couldn't. To be honest, everyone was a bit gutted, because I think it would have been great to have got to the end of this year and have a new record out. It's not my favorite decision to put it back, but it was the only sensible decision. 

Paul McGuinness said that the idea of having a new album out was sacrificed at the altar of Spider-Man.

Well, I think there may have been an element of that. At the time when we made the decision not to do the record, we didn't know what was happening with Spider-Man. It only subsequently turned out that Spider-Man was in difficulty and Edge and Bono had to put a lot more time into it. 

You have credit on a couple of the songs.

I think we do. I haven't followed it too closely.

Have you teased them about it or do you just let it be?

They're my songwriting and musical partners. They're entitled to do what they like, and I hope it goes well for them, and I support them wholeheartedly in it.

It must be frustrating if it prevented an album.

It's not the best situation to happen, but we stick together and we get through it. We'll get through it. There's no other option. 

You had 'Songs of Ascent,' the RedOne record and at some point there was talk of putting out the Spider-Man songs as a U2 record – so there's these all these phantom albums. It's unusual for you guys.

I think that's a good thing, conceptually, for Bono to focus on, because as a writer he needs to have these scenarios going on – but my view tends to be, when the record is finished, we'll know what it is. 

So in your mind it wasn't all these different records. You were working on music, and once you figured out what was best . . .

Exactly. I know that the Songs of Ascent material is there.

It would be strange to release it now, right?

I'm not convinced that it would be the next thing to do. The work we did with RedOne was very, very exciting. But again, I'm not sure it was the essence of what U2 is good at, and U2 is very elastic, we can do many different things, but I think we have to get down to the essence of the band. I think that's what people like about us, and we have to do what we do best and we have to focus on that, and the work we did with Danger Mouse came closest to that. And we're curious. We want to be in the clubs and make pop music as well as the thing U2 does, and we did that thing with RedOne, but in the end, it doesn't feel like the right fit.

Are you going to take full-on time off once this tour is over?

We're saying we'll take both August and September off. And October and November we'll start thinking about material. But we probably won't get a whole lot done. I'd say we'll start in earnest in February. 

How do you feel about the future of the band in general?

You can't make assumptions when you're dealing with health issues. We're getting to a point where there are health issues. 

It's a hard, grueling life – although it may not seem it. And you really have to be very focused and very determined to keep yourself in the kind of shape you need to be in to do that. I imagine everyone will get away from this tour and get a bit of breathing space, then in two or three years time, they'll be able to do it again. You have the same set of questions: “Do you want to play in a stadium?” “No, we don't want to play in a stadium.” “Do you want to play in an arena?” “Yeah, we like playing in arenas.” “But if you play in arenas, it will take you this long to get around the world, if you play in stadiums, you can do it over a couple of summers,” and the debate will start.

Is it possible you'd put out a record and not do an insane world tour?

Obviously, when we release the record, we'll do a tour. I'm just pretty pedantic about doing it each step at a time, and as far as I'm concerned, there isn't a record until it's in the shops, and there isn't a tour until the record is out.

I don't think we'd want to do another stadium tour, but I don't know. If the record caught fire in a certain way, then we would. So we have to work these things out. I do like arena tours – they're much, much easier. 

Can you imagine you guys still doing this in 20 years?

I think it's unlikely, but, you know . . .

Is 10 years easier?

Yeah, I can imagine 10. But never say never, you don't know. I think rock & roll would become exponentially, considerably more difficult to perform past about 65. The type of music that Leonard Cohen is performing now, he seems to be able to do. Whether a rock & roll band could work at that level, maybe the Stones . . .

You have a couple more months of the 360 tour left. What is the mission statement for the remaining dates?

The Edge: We'd like to finish the show. We'd like to get it to the place that we want it to be. The final one or two shows, I'm sure, is where we'll fully realize the 360 Tour. I think Dylan wrote, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” This show is still being born, even if it's two years in.

Adam was saying that you're at the point where it's impossible to imagine the next tour. He can't wrap his mind around starting another one.

I say it will be a while before anyone wants to think about it, but I'm sure the next time we go out, it will be quite different. That, I'm pretty confident about, but what that might be, there really is no clue at this point.

Not that long ago you let go of the idea of getting out an album before this set of dates.

Yeah. I think we all understand that we'd probably have to tour another album, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of early next year, but thinking practically, I imagine that Bono's right – probably next fall.

I saw a bunch of shows early on in the tour, but this show feels like a whole new thing.

It's changed quite a bit since the first show, and I think there's a whole bunch of new songs we're playing, and that's the way it always goes with us. The minute a show actually gets to a place where it's reached a peak, it's like we immediately want to start planning for something new, because we just get bored. It just gets stale so quickly for us that we can't really let it become static.

How has it been to work in the face of of the negativity surrounding the Spider-Man musical?

I don't really care that much about the negative media. In this instance, we were the junior partners and composers, but not the director and not the producer. We really didn't have that much significant input or control over the way things went. But we did realize there were problems. The show was actually a good show, it just wasn't great. It didn't quite work as a story. Some aspects of it were amazing. Some journalists called it one of the worst Broadway shows ever, and I think that's complete nonsense. But was it where it needed to be? No, it wasn't. So I didn't have any complaints with the bad reviews. I was furious, mind you, that they all showed up virtually the same day. That raised a few eyebrows. 

http://www.rollingstone.com

Tour director Craig Evans takes us inside plans for the megaband’s June stop in Baltimore

Irish band U2 performs during their first concert at Azteca stadium in Mexico City May 11, 2011. (Henry Romero, Reuters / May 12, 2011)

By Erik Maza, The Baltimore Sun

U2′s June 22 concert at M&T Bank Stadium is inarguably the biggest show Baltimore will have all year. The superlative applies not only because no other headliner approaches the band’s supernova-sized star power, but also literally: The show, part of the band’s 360 tour, is of unprecedented size and scope. Its centerpiece is a circular, four-legged stage that can support nearly 200 tons and allows for the namesake 360-degree view. It carries a video screen that, when open, is 14,000 square feet. The production is so intimidatingly large it requires hundreds of staffers to work over several days to build and then dismantle the stage. Craig Evans, the tour director, says the tour, already the most financially remunerative of all time, has altered the way stadium concerts are presented.

Q: This is not your first tour with the band. How does 360 compare to PopMart or even the most recent tour, Vertigo?

It’s a lot more ambitious. It has set a standard of size and complexity that the industry has never seen before. I say that, having toured with the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi and a bunch of others. It has done everything in such a custom level that no one had ever considered taking because what it makes you do is commit to selling 360 shows. And there’s not many bands that could do that. Given U2′s history, it was a reasonable gamble and risk.
Q: Explain what the name of the tour refers to.

The show allows the viewers an unobstructed view of all corners of the stadium. 360 refers to the fan experience and also to the band’s view of the audience. They can see fans in all directions. In a normal stadium system, the band just looks forward. This one is a consistent, full 360-degree view.

Q:When the show was conceived, what was the overriding goal? To break records?

The first was conceived at the final show of the Vertigo tour, [in 2006] in Honolulu. Bono and [tour designer] Willie Williams were walking out the stadium, and Bono said, “Is there anyway we could play to the entire stadium?” The answer was yes, but it was a matter of making it happen.

Q: How big is the show, and how long does it take to set up?

It’s its own city in a manner. We have three stages, and we leapfrog them [from city to city] to keep up with the schedule. I don’t use the word ambitious often, and I don’t use it lightly because I don’t know that anyone has been this ambitious. But to take a stadium show that normally seats 55,000 and make it for 88,000 takes a lot of work. You have a day to set up a flooring system. The steel systems [for the stage] take three days to set up. One day of production — installing sound, video, lights and stage. One day for show day — sound checks, etc. And two days to take it all down and out. It’s a total duration of eight days.

Q: The show was scheduled to come to Baltimore last year, but it eventually fell through. Was there something that made it happen at M&T this year?

The original tour contained 16 shows. There were a couple of markets that had huge demands and didn’t fit into the schedule. Baltimore was one of them. We really wanted to come back. We’re traveling from Anaheim to Baltimore. It was quite a jump to make it happen. But the response has been tremendous. In Baltimore, we’ll end up playing to about 70,000 people.

erik.maza@baltsun.com

twitter.com/midnightsunblog

http://www.baltimoresun.com

The drummer jokes that his acting debut in “Man on a Train” is not “a threat to the day job.”

Getty

The Hollywood Reporter: Had you been interested in getting involved with filmmaking for a while? How did that originate?

Larry Mullen, Jr.: Filmmaking never really crossed my mind. My involvement in the process came about by accident over a social drink with writer/director Mary McGuckian, whom I've known for years. After deciding to try and acquire the rights to re-make the movie, it turned out to be way more complicated than anticipated. Eventually everything fell into place. I enjoyed that process. It’s an independently financed project. It was shot in only 17 days – in Orangetown, a small suburb outside Toronto. Stefan Von Bjorn, our director of photography, makes it look expensive. Becoming a producer felt natural – unlike the acting funnily enough.

THR: How did this particular project get on your radar, and what about it persuaded you to produce it?

Mullen: After a brief conversation about my interest in doing a cameo or something left-field and independent, Mary gave me a copy of the original movie. As far as Mary was concerned, if we were to make the film, I would have to get involved in producing it – and consider playing “The Man” – or nothing. Looking back now I can’t help wondering should I have stuck to the day job.

THR: How did you find the acting part of it? Have you taken classes? Who was helpful in that effort?

Mullen: Well, sadly, it doesn't come naturally. I took some classes in Dublin some years ago, turns out I'm a little more self-conscious than I care to admit. “I keep on getting in my own way.” Mary sent me several tasks. She gave me a binder with a long questionnaire to help me build the character. She also broke down the script scene by scene to help me learn what felt like a new language to me. Over a couple of months I invented my character and attempted to build him into the relevant scenes. Originally, I only wanted a walk-on part. Talk about diving in at the deep end.

THR: Is there any extra anxiety attached to this movie coming out, since you’ve been so successful in another art-form? People often reflexively show skepticism toward an artist trying to make a go in another medium. Is this something you’re aware of/worried about?

Mullen: Of course. I have had an amazing career for a man who hits things for a living. I understand some people being skeptical – I'm not an actor. I’ve no plans to change careers, however I'm enjoying experimenting on myself. Why not?

THR: Have the other guys in the band seen the film? What’s been their response to your moving in this direction?

Mullen: No, they haven’t. This whole project has been under the radar for over a year. I doubt if they see my attempt at acting as a threat to the day job.

THR: What do you hope to do moving forward in terms of filmmaking? Are there other projects you would like to pursue? What are they?

Mullen: Despite being a novice, I found the whole process hugely liberating. I would definitely love to do more – just waiting for the next project – anyone?

THR: Are you going to Cannes? Have you been before? What has your experience been there?

Mullen: I was in Cannes two years ago at our U23D movie premiere. I love the French. I won't make it this year because of my touring commitments. I’m disappointed – they really know how to do film festivals over there.

THR: What are a few of your favorite recent films?

Mullen: Winter's Bone. Waiting for "Superman." Lebanon. Restrepo.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

* Posted on May 4th 2011 1:00PM by Pat Pemberton

Bruce Glikas, FilmMagic

Even then, his band — also featuring his brother Zane on guitar — was signed to Interscope Records, which also happens to be U2′s label. Still, they were an unknown act until Reeve was cast as Peter Parker and managed to get his band roles in the production as well. As he prepares for the musical’s projected June 14 opening, Carney spoke to Spinner about the show and his band during a rehearsal break.

Where was Carney at before ‘Spider-Man?’

We were just touring in our van. Eventually, right before we moved on to ‘Spider-Man,’ we got into our first bus. We were sharing it with another band, and that was really fun.

We’ve been consistently growing our fan base, but it wasn’t very big. It was clubs. And then after being involved in ‘Spider-Man,’ for instance, we played on Valentine’s Day and sold out the Bowery Ballroom here in New York, which we never could have done.

Obviously, this is a huge boost for you guys, with the band getting into the show, too. Did you lobby for that?

Yeah, I took Julie Taymor to dinner one night, and I brought up the idea, and she said, “That’s a fabulous idea.”

Carney’s ‘Love Me Chase Me’ Video

She basically discovered you at a gig. How did that happen?

We were playing the Mercury Lounge [in New York] two and a half years ago. We were coming out of Tennessee from Bonnaroo and she came to the gig because my friend, T.V. Carpio, — who actually plays the female villain, Arachne, in the show ‘Spider-Man’ — introduced me to Julie. When Julie came to see us play, she ended up thinking I’d be a good fit for her film, ‘The Tempest,’ and she ended up casting me. From there, she thought that I might be able to handle this role, which is very different.

I never thought I’d be acting. It’s very accidental for me.

All of the sudden you’re auditioning for Bono and the Edge. What did you do for them in that initial audition?

I was just there to sing a song. They needed a singer, last-minute, to present their songs for some investors. At that point, I actually thought, “Theater isn’t really my thing,” because I’d never done it. I figured I’m helping them out.

I just wanted to meet Bono and the Edge, really. Once they heard me sing, I guess they thought, “Wow, we should really have this guy audition for the show.”

Then there were a few months of auditions, right?

Yeah. I was going back and forth for three months. It was a long waiting game.

Were you going back for more things, like swinging on ropes?

Yeah, it was some of that, singing, acting. I’d have to sing different songs each time. I had to sing for Marvel and all the producers. The hardest people to get by were actually Marvel. I think Bono and Julie and Edge liked me pretty immediately, but it was hard to convince people who were trying to make sure their brand is expressed in the way they want it to be.

Obviously, the things people have read about is the injuries the cast has suffered. What’s been the scariest moment for you?

It’s always mildly unnerving when you’re hanging upside down 70 feet in the air. I’m getting used to it, sort of — most of the flying I do is really fun. I don’t even think about it because there’s so much involved. But the times you have to stop and wait in the air, it’s like being on the top of the mountain and hearing the wind. The silence with the wind is a little bit crazy. When you have to stop and actually think about what you’re doing, that’s when it becomes scary.

When you’re hanging up in the air, what thoughts go through your head?

I’ve got to make sure I’m focused on the right things and have faith that everything will be OK or that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

Your family has an entertainment background.

I didn’t even know this until recently, but I’m like a third generation Broadway entertainer. My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician. But my dad was in a show in the ’70s called ‘Elvis Lives,’ and my mom was a costume designer in ‘Torch Song Trilogy.’ And my great-uncle — I don’t remember what show he was in — he was a guy named Art Carney [of 'The Honeymooners' fame]. I think he won a Tony for something [he was nominated in 1969 for 'Lovers'].

Didn’t you perform with Michael Jackson at some point?

Yeah, I sang on his ‘HIStory’ album. My dad, being a jingle writer, and my mom, being a jingle singer, they hooked me up with some people when I was a kid that worked with children’s jingle singing groups. I used to sing jingles as a kid. Somehow the leader of this session got the call to do the Michael Jackson record. She called me and a few other kids.

While you were doing that, were you into Spider-Man?

Yeah, but only from the comic book perspective, in terms of artistry. When I was 5, 6, 7, all the way up to 10 or 11, I wanted to be an artist, like a sketch artist/cartoonist sort of thing. I used to look at the Spider-Man comic books and copy images.

After all these performances you’re doing for the musical, is Carney’s stage presence going to become more theatrical?

Maybe I’m more comfortable in my body than I was before becoming Spider-Man in the show.

I’m really excited about our gig with U2. We’re opening for them in July. That will be great because we’ve never played on a stage that big — for 80,000 people. That’ll be probably the best practice in stagecraft.

Last June you guys were super busy — like 23 gigs. You were doing nightly gigs almost.

Having the stamina, playing night after night on the road, living in a van — that definitely helped ease the learning curve for me in becoming an entertainer on Broadway.

Have you had a chance to perform with Bono and the Edge?

Not publicly. We’ve definitely sat in room together and traded lines, singing songs and trying to figure the best way to sing them.

Where are you at in your mindset, going into the most expensive Broadway show ever?

Well, I don’t think I’m very nervous because we’ve had so many false openings. Maybe that’s the good thing about postponing — at this point I’m not even nervous any more.

Reeve Carney Performs ‘Boy Falls From the Sky’

http://www.spinner.com

The artist and producer’s unorthodox ideas have helped make him the world’s most famous musical outsider
By Alexander Varty, January 6, 2011

Whenever Brian Eno thinks about heading into the studio with Bono yet again, he sheds a tear, but then the thought of payday cheers him up considerably.

On the line from his London studio, Brian Eno is telling a joke. In fact, he’s working a variant on the old “three men walk into a bar” routine, but with a distinctly Suffolk spin.

“Three old guys are sitting in the pub on a Sunday night, and some cattle pass by outside,” says the amiable producer, slipping easily into a broad East Anglian accent. “And one of them says, after about 15 minutes, ‘That’s old Bob’s cows, innit?’ About 20 minutes later the second man says ‘No, that ain’t Bob’s, that’s Dave’s.’ And about 20 minutes after that, the third one says ‘Well, if you two are going to fucking argue all night, I’m goin’ home.’

“That’s actually quite close to reality,” Eno adds, laughing. And while it might seem strange that this stylish and sophisticated innovator is quietly cracking himself up with quips about geezers and cattle, it’s a sign that there’s even more to his complex talent than might immediately be apparent. First off, he’s got a sense of humour. And secondly, while he might seem to be the consummate urbanite, he’s actually rooted in the estuarial landscape of Suffolk, an agricultural region just over 100 kilometres northeast of his present home.

“There’s sort of a theory in England that people from Suffolk are very melancholy—and I think it’s true, in a way,” he says. “They’re quite reflective, taciturn people, in general. There’s a sort of feeling in Suffolk that a) you don’t show feelings too much, and b) you deal with them internally.

“I don’t know if you know Suffolk at all: it’s a beautiful landscape, but it is quite melancholy,” he continues. “I love it, but I like the experience of melancholy, I think. I don’t equate it with sadness. I think it’s a way of thinking about things; it’s a feeling of ‘Things could have been otherwise, and let’s revel in the sense of imagining what else could have been.’ ”

Eno doesn’t quite come out and say it, but one senses that Suffolk is all over his most recent release, the moody and sublime Small Craft on a Milk Sea. From the flat fen landscape and low maritime clouds that decorate its sepia-toned cover to the brooding musical strata within, the new album suggests that Eno, his fellow keyboardist Jon Hopkins, and guitarist Leo Abrahams often find themselves contemplating desolate, wintry shores.

In + out

Brian Eno sounds off on the things enquiring minds want to know.

On his Illustrated Talk: “I’m not doing a concert. I’m just really standing there and talking. I usually work with an overhead projector, so that I can make drawings or show things as I go along. And I semi-improvise the talk, although I do spend quite a lot of time beforehand thinking about the subject matter, and then I have a sort of route map. I know where I’m going to start, and what sort of things I might touch on on the way through. But I don’t always know where I’m going to end, which does lead to complaints occasionally, because they sometimes go on for a long time.”

On the difference between structured improvisation and composition: “I use the analogy of architecture and gardening. Traditionally, an architect has to specify, in precise detail, every aspect of the building. You don’t want the construction workers improvising as they put up steel joists and so on, so you essentially specify everything, sometimes down to the door handles. What a gardener does is they plant seeds, and they know that nature never produces the same flower twice. So they know that they’re going to be in a constant negotiation with the thing as it starts to develop, and that it’s constantly going to be different. And a good gardener is constantly improvising to make a good compromise between what nature wants to do and what he wants to do. So I think I’m more gardening than architecting.”

On his rural upbringing: “Like everybody who grows up in the country, I couldn’t wait to get out. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my bucolic childhood, as soon as I was able to I moved to London. And it was only after a few years of living in the city that I started to realize what it was I’d found in the country and what a reserve that had given me. I can sort of go back to it in my head when I want to.”

But there are other, more explicit strategies at play. Like Eno’s recent live performances in Australia and the U.K., most of the record is improvised—made without reference to conventional song structures, but guided, in part, by a degree of musical role-playing.

“When I improvise with other musicians, I sometimes try to set up little thought-experiments that we work within,” he explains. “For example, recently I did these shows where I said ‘What we’re going to imagine is that we’re professors at a university in the year 2060, and we’re giving a seminar about the lost music of the 21st century.’ The thesis is that there has been some kind of atomic or electromagnetic catastrophe, and much of the music from the years 2010 to 2030 got lost, because it was only stored digitally and it all got erased.

“This is not a totally impossible scenario, by the way,” Eno continues. “So all that remains of that music is people’s description of it. So what I then do is make a description of this music—how it was done; what it was done for; what kind of people went to see it—everything except what it sounded like. So the improvisation is trying to create music that fits that description. It’s really a lot of fun, actually. And it kind of gives you enough structure that what you’re doing isn’t completely random and arbitrary.”

Conceptual procedures have been a part of Eno’s practice since even before his glittering debut, in 1971, as Roxy Music’s synth player and secret sonic weapon. (For the band’s first few shows he worked at the mixing desk rather than on-stage, but not without donning full glam-rock drag.) This he credits to his art-school training, which introduced him to such key figures as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the relatively little-known composer Cornelius Cardew, whose anti-elitist tendencies and use of graphic scores proved particularly influential.

“Obviously, I came out of a sort of fine-art background, but at a time when the sonic arts, music and so on, were very, very important in the art-school world,” says Eno, who maintains a parallel career as a creator of visual installations and computer-based generative art. “So the idea of processes and games and strategies and scores was with me from the beginning, in the painting I was doing, and in the music that I subsequently started doing.

“I still think that those are very, very useful ways of pushing yourself into new areas that taste probably wouldn’t take you to,” he continues. “The thing about games and strategies is that they push you beyond your aesthetic limits, in a way. Once you’re there, you might find that you don’t like it at all, but you might also go ‘Oh my gosh:I never thought of doing this before!’ ”

Perhaps most remarkably, Eno’s playful strategies, contemplative nature, and wide-ranging imagination have allowed him the luxury of existing in two places at once: on the fringe of the music industry, and at its centre. As the 25 million people who have purchased U2’s Eno-produced The Joshua Tree will testify, his ideas might be outré, but they work.

Brian Eno presents An Illustrated Talk at the Vogue Theatre on Monday (January 10).

http://www.straight.com