October 2010 Archives

Three-song release part of Black Friday push

By Christopher Morris, Variety

U2 will issue a limited edition three-track live EP, "Wide Awake in Europe," including a previously unreleased song, as an exclusive item for independent record stores on Nov. 26.

Top-selling Irish band's piece will be the key title for "Back to Black Friday," an indie retail event mounted by the organizers of the annual Record Store Day. Nearly 1,400 stores participated in RSD in April this year.

Promotion is designed to build traffic at indie outlets on the Friday following Thanksgiving, the day Christmas shoppers typically crowd mass merchants and mall chain stores.

by Ray Waddell, Billboard

After announcing additional dates in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico City and South Africa, Billboard.biz confirms that U2 will take its record-breaking 360 tour to Nashville's Vanderbilt Stadium on July 2 of next year, the band's first trip to the market in more than 29 years.

By the time the tour returns to North America, it will have been seen by well over 4 million fans and is marching toward becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time. A press conference is announcing the Nashville show today.

Band has already recorded 12 songs with the producer.

By Gil Kaufman, MTV

Over the past six years, producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton has compiled one of the most impressive lists of collaborators in recent music history. From Gorillaz to the Black Keys and Beck to his bands with Cee-Lo (Gnarls Barkley), the Shins' James Mercer (Broken Bells) and members of Blur and the Clash (The Good, the Bad & the Queen), Danger has dipped his toes in a wide and impressive variety of creative pools.

But, as cool as that résumé is, for his latest trick the onetime mash-up master has landed one of the premier gigs in all of music. According to Bono, Danger has produced songs for the upcoming album from the Irish rock gods, which the frontman told The Age is slated for release early next year.

"We have about 12 songs with him," Bono said of the tentatively titled Songs of Ascent, just one of three albums the group is working on. "At the moment, that looks like the album we will put out next, because it's just happening so easily." While Bono did not reveal much about how those songs came together or what they will sound like, he did say the group is also working on a "club" record that will feature tracks created with Lady Gaga collaborator RedOne, as well as will.i.am and David Guetta.

U2 will have a new album out early in the new year, the band's manager Paul McGuinness has said. McGuinness said the band has already debuted several of the songs live, including "Mercy," "Every Breaking Wave," and "Boys Fall from the Sky." The album has been provisionally titled Songs of Ascent.

"I would expect a new U2 album sooner than anybody thinks. I would guess early 2011 before the next leg of the American tour which starts in May," he said.

McGuinness defended sales figures for U2's last album No Line on the Horizon, which he said had held up "remarkably well" despite the perception that the record had been a flop.

It sold "roughly" five million copies, while its 2004 predecessor How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb had sold twice that number.

Story by Tara Hall, SoundSpike Contributor

With an extensive European run newly complete, U2 has firmed up the final stop on the band's rescheduled 360 tour, which will canvas major U.S. and Canadian markets next summer.

Tickets for the newly announced July 26 tour finale at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field go on sale Monday (10/18) via Ticketmaster, though subscribers to the band's website can enter a special advance presale beginning Thursday (10/14) and running through Saturday (10/16).

The next leg of the stadium rockers' North American trek kicks off May 21 in Denver, followed by another 18 shows in 14 cities. The full schedule, including international dates in Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, is shown at right.

Hot Press

U2 producer Steve Lillywhite has accused The Irish Times of misquoting him, in the headline on an article which appeared in the run-up to his appearance at The Music Show.

The news story was headlined "Producer admits last U2 album was a failure" -- but the man who produced Boy, October and War, and later co-produced both How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and No Line On The Horizon for the band, with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, insists that this is not what he said.

"I never called U2 a failure," he told the audience at the panel 'Are Producers The Real Stars?,' where he appeared alongside Van Morrison and Waterboys producer Mick Glossop and Julie Feeney.

"It was said that I said No Line On The Horizon was a failure. That is a complete misquote, I never said the word 'failure' to that journalist."

Ronan McGreevy, Irish Times

LEGENDARY U2 producer Steve Lillywhite has said the band's latest album No Line on the Horizon did not achieve what it set out to achieve and its relative failure had affected them.

The album, released last year, sold a fraction of its predecessors and received mostly lukewarm reviews though it did get a five-star rating in Rolling Stone magazine. Lillywhite, who was its co-producer along with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, said No Line on the Horizon lacked a big song and the North African ambience that it tried to recreate did not work.

"At the end of the day, the public are always right especially when you have a platform as big as U2," he said. "Of course it affects them . They are only human. They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations.

"It's a pity because the whole idea of Morocco as a big idea was great. When the big idea for U2 is good, that is when they succeed the most, but I don't think the spirit of what they set out to achieve was translated. Something happened that meant it did not come across on the record."