June 2017 Archives

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By Associated Press/Billboard.com

In a frank and heartfelt speech, U2 bassist Adam Clayton thanked his bandmates of four decades for their support during his treatment and recovery for alcohol abuse years ago, and then joined them for a rollicking rendition of a few hits.

"We have a pact with each other," said Clayton, 57, who was receiving an award from MusiCares, the charity arm of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. "In our band, no one will be a casualty. We all come home, or none of us come home. No one will be left behind. Thank you for honoring that promise, and letting me be in your band."

He ended by quoting lyrics that Bono, U2's frontman, had written when the band was starting out: "If you walk away, walk away, I will follow." At that, his bandmates came out to join him, performing "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," ''Vertigo" and, fittingly, "I Will Follow."

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Photo by © Kyle Gustafson/The Washington Post

By Chris Richards, The Washington Post

No red ballcap, but Bono still wants to make America great again. So he's taken U2 on a tour across our damaged nation to perform "The Joshua Tree," his 1987 love-letter to the home of the brave that remains his band's most enduring document. These are U2's most capacious songs, and despite being filled with the best of intentions, there's still lots of room for everyone to pile on in. "Whoever you voted for, you are welcome here tonight," Bono declared at FedEx Field in Maryland on Tuesday evening. "We will find common ground reaching for higher ground."

That's nice, but the between-banter music didn't feel like too strenuous of a reach. Instead, the band ceremonially delivered its signature blend of grandeur and uplift, hoping to repair the burning bridges of 2017 by transporting its adoring crowd 30 years back to a moment of global optimism, when prosperity was on the rise and the Cold War was drawing to a close. Strangely, U2 won the night the same way that Donald Trump won the presidency: by promising to improve tomorrow by making it feel more like yesterday. (Plus, there must be some morsel of cosmic significance in the fact that Trump first published "The Art of the Deal" in November of '87, a mere eight months after "The Joshua Tree" sprouted.)

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By Bob Allen, Billboard

U2's world tour commemorating the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, the band's Billboard 200 No. 1 album released in March 1987, grossed $62 million from 10 shows during its first four weeks on the road. That multimillion-dollar sales total easily earns the Irish rockers the No. 1 slot on Billboard's weekly ranking of Hot Tours (see list below). With box office results reported by tour promoter Live Nation, the sold ticket count from the first eight stadiums on the schedule reached 519,648. All 10 performances during the opening stretch of The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 were sold out.

The tour kicked off in Vancouver on May 12 with a crowd of 45,436 at BC Place Stadium. Single performances followed at stadiums in Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and Pittsburgh markets as well as two-night stints at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and Chicago's Soldier Field.

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By Keith Spera, The New Orleans Advocate

Twenty years after U2's last full-length concert in New Orleans, the band will bring the elaborate stadium tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of its album "The Joshua Tree" to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome this fall.

Beck will open the show slated for Sept. 14.

New Orleans was not on the initial 33-date itinerary for the "Joshua Tree" trek, nor on the list of additional cities released last week. Live Nation Entertainment, the tour's promoter, announced the New Orleans show on Monday morning.

Following a pre-sale for U2.com subscribers, tickets will go on sale to the general public on Friday at 10 a.m. Standing-room-only, general admission floor tickets are $70 plus taxes and fees. Reserved-seat balcony tickets start at $35 plus fees.

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By Colin Stutz, Billboard

The band will return to North America and hit South America this fall.

U2 is extending its Joshua Tree tour this fall by adding two months of shows in North and South America.

The 30th anniversary celebration of the band's seminal album The Joshua Tree kicked off last month and had previously been announced to run until Aug. 1.

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Massive retrospective features previously unreleased concert recording, remixes, B-sides, outtakes and a book of photography by the Edge

*****

By Kory Grow, Rolling Stone

The Joshua Tree, released in 1987, is U2 at their biggest: 11 sweeping, aching anthems to self-doubt, humanity, hope and America-focused anxiety - all straightforward and pop-savvy enough to propel them from arenas to stadiums. It was the fastest-selling album in U.S. chart history when it topped Billboard in 1987, and currently sits at 10 times platinum, an album so huge that the band is playing the record in its entirety on an arena tour 30 years later. The second retrospective box set (the first appeared in 2007) is a giant, four-CD (or weighty seven-LP) collection that features the pristine-sounding original album, a previously unreleased concert recording from New York, new remixes, B-sides, never-before-released outtakes and a book of photography by the Edge.

The band sound energized and even playful on the Madison Square Garden performance (fans may recognize the gospel-tinged "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" with its Bob Marley outro from 1988's Rattle and Hum). Bono does his best preacher impression on "Bullet the Blue Sky," while the Edge plays soaring, Led Zeppelin-y slide guitar. The ominous meditation on a psycho killer, "Exit," features a snippet of Them's "Gloria," à la Patti Smith. Bono yells, "Fuck it up, Edge" before the solo in "In God's Country," and he calls the "Trip Through Your Wires" "sort of a love song" that he dedicates to himself. It's a brilliant snapshot of the band, even if it omits the cover of the Beatles' "Help" and their own "Bad" and "Spanish Eyes," all played that night. (A concert film of this show, or any other on the original Joshua Tree tour, is the only missing ingredient in the box.)

Taken from the official U2Station.com Facebook page:

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"We didn't know if we could pull off a tour that honors 'The Joshua Tree' without it being nostalgic," the frontman says. "That's an oxymoron"

By Andy Greene, Rolling Stone

Until U2 kicked off their Joshua Tree 2017 Tour at Vancouver's BC Place stadium on May 12th, they honestly weren't sure they had a concept that would work. Here was a show built around an album that came out during the final years of the Ronald Reagan administration by a band that had spent their whole career refusing to cash in on their past. "It's so not us to throw ourselves a birthday party," says Bono. "We didn't know if we could pull off a tour that honors The Joshua Tree without it being nostalgic. That's an oxymoron."

But by the time Bono called into Rolling Stone three shows into the tour he had no doubt the group had a winning formula, one that took The Joshua Tree out of 1987 and firmly planted it in 2017. We spoke to the U2 frontman about how the band got to that place, and where he hopes they go from here.

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