October 2011 Archives

by Jonathan Wayne, U2Station.com

Rock bands and rock n' roll stars all have one thing in common: an inflated ego. After all, how could one band not feel envy for another band who broke through and made it to the "Top of the Pops"? Success and failure is part of life when you're trying to be on top of the world. So do yourself a favor and check out the new hillarious trailer below for the upcoming film "Killing Bono", set to be released on November 4 in New York City (and November 11 in Los Angeles and elsewhere).

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD - Bono and The Edge are enjoying vodka martinis at the inveterate Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrated time capsule of bygone Hollywood and the former haunt of Charlie Chaplin, Raymond Chandler and Rudolph Valentino. The dark booth seems a fitting spot for the singer and guitarist to ponder U2's newest project: a dusky catalog jewel.

Reissuing 1991's Achtung Baby with a new companion documentary wasn't an easy decision for a forward-looking band averse to rearview glances, says Edge, 50. "How big a deal do we make of an anniversary when we're in the middle of what we're doing now? We had a hard time figuring that out. We're not a heritage act. We're still very active. But this record was so pivotal that we felt it was OK to revisit it."

Bono: 'We'd be very pleased to end on 'No Line on the Horizon''

By Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone

Ask Bono a tough question and you might get a tougher answer. U2 are about to release their most expansive reissue project yet, for 1991's Achtung Baby - the album where they traded in earnest uplift for funk, noise, sex, irony and self-doubt. So how does this lavish look back square with the band's old lyric "You glorify the past when the future dries up"?

"I'm not so sure the future hasn't dried up," says Bono, who's been irritating his bandmates lately by publicly questioning U2's relevance - despite the fact that they just finished the highest-grossing tour of all time. "The band are like, 'Will you shut up about being irrelevant?'" he says. But Bono can't help himself - even though U2 have been in and out of the studio with various producers recently, he raises the possibility that the band may have released its final album. "We'd be very pleased to end on No Line on the Horizon," he says, before acknowledging the unlikelihood of that scenario: "I doubt that."

'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.

Brian Boyd, Irish Times

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.

During the performance in Seattle, a clip of the concert shows frontman Bono dedicating "Beautiful Day" to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head when she was attacked in Tucson.

The CD will include

1. Nine Inch Nails - Zoo Station
2. U2 (Jacques Lu Cont Mix) - Even Better Than The Real Thing
3. Damien Rice - One
4. Patti Smith - Until The End Of The World
5. Garbage - Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
6. Depeche Mode - So Cruel
7. Snow Patrol - Mysterious Ways
8. The Fray - Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World
9. Gavin Friday - The Fly
10. The Killers - Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
11. Glasvegas - Acrobat
12. Jack White - Love Is Blindness

Here is an old cover by Bush 'Wild Horses', I figured it worked since his band is making a come back....enjoy

PSSS I know it's been a while since I've posted friends, I've just been very busy in the local band scene, I will try to keep in touch.
shaka laka,
ang

By Marc Hogan, Spin

Jack White knew what he was doing when he took on "Love Is Blindness" as part of Q Magazine's 20th-anniversary tribute to U2's soon-to-be-reissued Achtung Baby. While the Irish arena rockers are probably best known for their windswept anthems, the Achtung Baby finale isn't too far from White's tastes in its original version: There's a "The House of the Rising Sun"-like chord progression, peals of organ, streaks of guitar fuzz, and a particularly emotion-wracked Bono vocal.

For this cover, the White Stripes frontman goes back to the song's down-and-dirty blues-rock heritage, howling the pained lyrics as if he were on a lost Nuggets cut. Even better than the real thing? Have a listen to the BBC Radio 2-premiered track below -- and forever banish that OMG-WTF Insane Clown Posse collabo from your brain cells (via Interference as first pointed out by Consequence of Sound).

Jack White, "Love Is Blindness" (U2 Cover)

by Bill Werde, Billboard

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.