It's a beautiful Bray for surprise U2 session in wind and rain

 

 

 

http://i40.tinypic.com/11jwzuh.jpg

 

Bono posed for pictures with fans in Bray including a man called Brendan who had gone out for a stroll

 

 

24 OCTOBER 2013

 

Bono and his bandmates caused a stir with a surprise session on the promenade of a windswept and rainy Bray seafront on Tuesday.

 

 

The band were filmed singing their classic 'Desire' before posing for photographs with fans.

 

Their video recording sparked rumours they were trying to snap a possible cover for their new album, due out in April next year.

 

Crowds of onlookers gathered and a few locals, hardly believing their luck, were chosen as extras in the video.

 

One local man called Brendan, who was only out for a stroll, even managed to get a picture with Bono.

 

The band had earlier been spotted emerging from the Bray Head Hotel and Bono spent time greeting fans and posing for photographs.

 

Meanwhile, although a tipple or two is a customary for many a visiting celebrity, Bono might be left wishing he chose differently for Chic's Nile Rodgers this week.

 

He sent a hamper laden with bottles of Guinness and champagne to Rodgers' dressing room at Vicar Street in Dublin before his show. However Rodgers has been teetotal for almost 20 years after beating his addictions.

 

But the king of disco, who is in the middle of an Irish tour, was nevertheless touched by the gesture, tweeting a photograph of the gift and saying: "I came to sound check at Vicar Street Dublin and there was a gift from Bono. Ireland rocks."

 

Irish Independent

Bono's booze hamper for ex-addict

 

 

24 OCTOBER 2013 02:30 PM

 

U2 front man Bono may be feeling a little red faced after gifting a basket full of Guinness and champagne to music maestro and recovering alcoholic Nile Rodgers.

 

 

Nile, whose hits have included We Are Family, I'm Coming Out and Le Freak has steered clear of booze for nearly 20 years.

 

So the hamper, which included a Black Velvet cocktail recipe, was not the most appropriate of gifts.

 

But the singer didn't take offense at Bono's misjudged present. Instead he thanked him.

 

"I came to sound check in Dublin & there was a gift from Bono," he wrote on twitter, adding that he loves Ireland.

 

Rodgers has previously told of how he realised he had a drug and drink problem when at a party at Madonna's house in the mid 1990s.

 

He had been on a three-day bender and began to hear voices in his head. It was then he realised he needed to tackle his drink and drug problem.

 

"It was a resetting of my artistic and moral compass," he has said previously.

 

Nile has a glittering back-catalogue; and has recorded and produced some of the most iconic pop songs ever recorded, including David Bowie's Let's Dance and Madonna's Like a Virgin.

 

Yesterday he performed in Belfast to thousands of disco loving fans. Meanwhile, Bono and the rest of U2 took a break from recording their album to shoot a video in Bray.

 

Crowds gathered round as Bono, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton and the Edge performed an acoustic version of their classic hit Desire.

 

The band are tight-lipped about the release date of the new album but The Edge says they are working hard on it.

 

"We're working away," The Edge told the Herald. "It's going very well. There's no set release date yet. We're getting to the end of the recording phase. We always try and do something different so hopefully it is."

 

hnews@herald.ie

Red Mac Pro to be auctioned off by Bono's charity

 

 

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57609426...-bonos-charity/

Bono and buddies live it up

 

 

27 OCTOBER 2013

 

 

 

My Deep Throat in U2 tells me Bono and the Simon Carmody Community had a small party last weekend in a secret location in Dublin. Where the streets have no name? No – up in Killiney, sillies, on the Friday. Presumably the band were toasting the near-completion of their taxing, if long-awaited, new album.

 

 

Bono's bessy mate, the incomparable Gavin Friday, was very definitely celebrating in relation to his new album, a work-in-progress. He brought the producers into Town Bar & Grill on Kildare Street last Saturday for dinner. They left a little after midnight.

 

The same night acclaimed Irish actor Liam Cunningham was in House on Leeson Street with a group of friends. Rugby pundits Victor Costello and Brent Pope were also in the hip spot that night, as was businessman and former Dragon's Den guru Niall O'Farrell. Down the road on Harcourt Street, Wesley Quirke and his brother Andy – star of RTE's hilarious Damo & Ivor – were in the VIP penthouse lounge of Krystle nightclub.

 

Two nights previously, actor Timothy Dalton was in Belluci's restaurant in Ballsbridge. The former James Bond star was very much not stirred as he dined alone, reading his book.

 

Declan Ganley is always stirred, isn't he? The Libertas founder was with two associates in the Four Seasons dining area on Monday evening. How do I know this? I was sitting opposite him not minding my own business on your behalf, dear reader.

 

 

Irish Independent

I stayed in Bray on holiday a few years back. I had a great time. Although I nearly killed a dog. :(

From

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/mu...e-29705268.html

 

 

Christy has a dig at U2 over tax avoidance

 

Arthur’s Day not going down too well with Christy Moore.

Christy Moore has taken aim at U2's tax avoidance.

LUKE BYRNE – 28 OCTOBER 2013

 

 

http://cdn1.independent.ie/regionals/wexfordpeople/news/article29605526.ece/ALTERNATES/h342/NWS_20130924_New_068_29034159_I1.JPG

ICONIC folk singer Christy Moore has taken aim at U2's notorious tax avoidance.

 

 

Moore is set to release a new compilation album and has reworked some of the lyrics of Lisdoonvarna, one of his best known songs, to raise the issue.

 

Despite singer Bono's campaigns advocating increased international aid for Africa, U2 decided to send offshore a share of its profits to the Netherlands to avoid tax.

 

Earlier this year, Moore caused a stir when he wrote a song criticising Arthur's Day, calling it an "alcoholiday".

 

Now he has had a sly dig at U2 for the wealthy group's 2006 tax decision which Bono has defended as "in total harmony" with the Irish Government's philosophy.

 

Versions of Lisdoonvarna, which was written about the festival in Co Clare, have always contained a reference to Adam, Bono, Larry and The Edge.

 

The following line was usually about the group having their photo taken - but the singer has now replaced it with a cheeky jibe.

 

 

"Heading for the Hague to park the wedge," the crooner has sung about the four band mates in the new version of the song.

 

The version will appear on the triple CD album Where I Come From, which has been scheduled for release next Friday.

 

However despite the change, Moore has said that he likes the musicians as people and would like to work with them again.

 

He also revealed that he rarely sees Bono and the group and lives a private life, trying to avoid celebrity.

 

"I never see them and they'd never see me, you know?," he told the Sunday Independent.

From

 

http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/10/30/...-frontman-bono/

 

 

 

U2 frontman Bono helped convince Facebook to pick Dublin for its European HQ

By Martin Bryant, Wednesday, 30 Oct '13, 11:51pm

 

One thing that comes up frequently whenever you talk to people in Ireland is the level of influence that U2 frontman Bono has. Indeed, it turns out that he played a pivotal role in Facebook choosing the country’s capital city as its HQ for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

 

Today at an event organised by IDA Ireland to coincide with the Dublin Web Summit, Facebook’s Director of User Operations for EMEA, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, Sonia Flynn discussed the story behind the company choosing Dublin. Apparently COO Sheryl Sandberg had Switzerland at the top of her list but her friend (and Facebook investor through his Elevation Partners fund between 2010 and 2013), Bono, persuaded her to consider Dublin.

 

Of course, a generous (and now partially under threat) taxation system helped alongside other factors, but according to Flynn, Facebook would probably have been in Switzerland instead of Dublin if it hadn’t have been for the intervention of the pop star.

I checked today's U2 news. There is none. -_-

U2's Magic & Loss

 

 

U2 have paid tribute to the great Lou Reed, who died, aged 71, earlier this week. The singer, guitarist and co-founder of The Velvet Underground was a hugely significant figure in the development of rock music, not least for U2 who've often talked of how they were influenced by his songwriting.

 

In 'U2 By U2' Larry recalled how the band used to cover Sweet Jane at some of their first gigs and Bono has described the influence on him, as a young teenager, of the Velvet's 1972 album Transformer. Lou Reed himself first became aware of that influence through Live Aid in 1985, when the band's extended version of Bad included snatches of Satellite of Love and Walk on the Wild Side.

 

It was not long after, in 1986, that the band got to know Lou Reed when they performed together on Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope tour, travelling with artists like Peter Gabriel, The Neville Brothers and Joan Baez. Bono remembers how Lou would 'talk guitar sounds with Edge, motorcycle sounds with Larry and James Joyce with me.'

 

It was a friendship that was to endure. A few years later, on the ZOO TV Tour in 1992, Lou joined U2 on stage at Giants Stadium to duet on Satellite of Love (see above).

 

The song went on to find a unique place on the tour, Bono duetting each night with a pre-recorded image of Lou Reed on video.

 

When One was first released in 1992, it was coupled with Satellite Of Love and a year later, when The Velvet Undergound reformed, they joined the band on ZOO TV for several dates. As Bono recalls, 'U2 were beyond ourselves with delight when The Velvet Underground reformed to play some select dates in the early 90's, including some with us. Pale Blue Eyes is perfection in pop.'

 

'Transformation is at the heart of Lou Reed’s best work,' he adds. 'People’s ability or inability to transform. We know that turning pain into beauty is the mark of a great artist and we understand defiance is at the heart of romance, but we're mystified by how Lou Reed’s songs are so airborne. Helium filled metal balloons, never weighed down by their subject matter, humour always around the corner from vitriol. Magic and Loss indeed.'

 

 

 

U2hellas.ie

Bono Remembers Lou Reed's 'Perfect Noise'

 

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November 6, 2013 12:00 pm

 

 

Rolling Stone pays tribute to Lou Reed, the outsider who changed the course of rock & roll, on the cover of our new issue. In an exclusive essay for RS, Bono reflects on Reed's deadpan humor and eternal music.

 

Remember Lou Reed with 20 of his essential tracks

 

The world is noisier today, but not the kind of noise you want to turn up. The world of words is a little quiet and a good bit dumber, the world of music just not as sharp.

 

Lou Reed made music out of noise. The noise of the city. Big trucks clattering over potholes; the heavy breathing of subways, the rumble in the ground; the white noise of Wall Street; the pink noise of the old Times Square. The winking neon of downtown, its massage and tattoo parlors, its bars and diners, the whores and hoardings that make up the life of the big city.

 

New York City was to Lou Reed what Dublin was to James Joyce, the complete universe of his writing. He didn't need to stray out of it for material, there was more than enough there for his love and his hate songs. From Metal Machine Music to Coney Island Baby, from his work in the Velvet Underground to his work with Metallica, the city that he devoted his life to was his muse more than any other. Until Laurie Anderson came into his life 20 years ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that Lou had no other love than the noise of New York City. If he thought people could be stupid, he thought New Yorkers were the smartest of them.

 

We first hooked up on the Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope tour in 1986. He would talk guitar sounds with Edge, motorcycle sounds with Larry, James Joyce with me and – maybe I'm remembering this wrong – relationships with Adam. On one occasion, in perfect Lou drawl, he described how annoyed he was for agreeing to lend one of his motorcycles to his girlfriend. She had a small accident, damaging the lowrider in ways that clearly upset him. I asked him how his girlfriend was after the accident. He looked at me dryly and said, "Bono, you can replace the girlfriend."

 

His deadpan humor was easily misunderstood as rudeness, and Lou delighted in that misunderstanding. For the purposes of the hotel register, his pseudonym at the time was Raymond Chandler. I asked him what he liked about the noir genius of the detective story. "Biting humor and succinctness," he replied. I asked him for an example: "'That blonde is about as beautiful as a split lip.' It doesn't get better than that." He laughed loudly.

 

Lou exemplified the idea of art as the discovery of beauty in unexpected places. One of his most famous songs, "Perfect Day," is made even more perfect by being about a heroin addict walking through the park in the warm sun, completely separate from the problems that brought him his addiction. It's been sung by all manner of earnest voices, including mine and children's choirs, since it was written in 1972. It never fails to give me some kind of extra ache as they sing the last line, "You're going to reap just what you sow," oblivious of the icy chill suggested.

 

Transformer was the album that turned me on when it was released in 1972. Myself and my best friend Guggi would sit for hours listening to these street stories, thinking we knew what it was to walk on the wild side. We were 12 and 13.

 

Transformation is at the heart of Lou Reed's best work: people's ability or inability to transform. We know that turning pain into beauty is the mark of a great artist and we understand defiance is at the heart of romance, but we are mystified by how Lou Reed's songs are so airborne. Helium-filled metal balloons, never weighed down by their subject matter, humor always around the corner from vitriol. Magic and loss, indeed. Lou Reed was an alchemist, turning base metals into gold, heavy metal into songs as disciplined as if they came from the Brill Building – which they did, because that is the world where Lou got his start.

 

Lou was born out of two influences that can't be underestimated. One: the talents of his bandmates in the Velvet Underground, who then influenced pretty much every group that had a foot in the Seventies. (Witness our own "Running to Stand Still" for red-handed proof.) U2 were beyond ourselves with delight when the Velvets re-formed to play some select dates in the early Nineties, including some with us. "Pale Blue Eyes" is perfection in pop.

 

Two: the short-story writer Delmore Schwartz. Lou would return to this subject a few times with me and got me to read In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. (I did and they do.) He also got me a collection of essays, The Ego Is Always at the Wheel. (It is and I know.) I got him a collection of Seamus Heaney poems a couple of months back. Our last conversation was a simple thanks.

 

The music is eternal. It will keep being made even without him. It was wonderful to see Lou reunited with Bob Ezrin on their Berlin: Live shows in 2006, and to know that his beloved neighbor Julian Schnabel was set-designing and filming. I think it was originally meant to be rock opera for stage rather than screen. Maybe that will happen now, as the world digests how serious a loss we've just sustained.

 

It's too easy to think of Lou Reed as a wild creature who put songs about heroin in the pop charts, like some decadent lounge lizard from the Andy Warhol Factory. This couldn't have been further from the truth. He was thoughtful, meditative and extremely disciplined. Before the hepatitis that he caught as a drug user returned, Lou was in top physical condition. Tai chi was what he credited for his lithe physicality and clear complexion. This is how I will remember him, a still figure in the eye of a metallic hurricane, an artist pulling strange shapes out of the formless void that is pop culture, a songwriter pulling melodies out of the dissonance of what Yeats called "this filthy modern tide" and, yes, pop's truly great poker face – with so much comedy dancing around those piercing eyes. The universe is not laughing today.

 

This story is from the November 21st, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

 

rollingstone.com

 

 

 

U2 front man Bono stands to make millions when Forbes is sold

 

November 18, 2013, 1:23 PM

 

 

 

Forbes Media LLC is for sale for the first time in the magazine’s 96-year history, and a private-equity firm whose partners include U2 lead singer Bono could make millions from a potential deal.

 

Seven years ago, private-equity firm Elevation Partners, backed in part by Bono, took a 45% stake in the struggling financial-media notable, according to Fortune. Forbes Media publishes Forbes magazine, the U.S.’s third largest business magazine with a circulation of 933,000, and has recently been shifting its focus to digital publishing. The Forbes family controls the majority stake.

 

If Forbes is sold, the preferred-shares structure of the $264 million investment back in 2006 means Elevation would be paid back first and receive a majority of the proceeds, the report says.

 

Forbes said Friday it was exploring a sale after receiving signals of interest from propective buyers, according to a letter sent to employees by Forbes Media CEO Mike Perlis. “The frequency and serious nature of these overtures have brought us to a decision point,” Perlis wrote. “We have hired Deutsche Bank to represent us, and we expect interest from numerous suitors.”

 

Forbes is expecting to sell for about $400 million, according to Bloomberg News. The Forbes family turned down a $400 million buyout offer from Conde Nast in 2004, the report said.

 

market.com

Watch Bono and the Edge perform ‘Get Lucky’ by Daft Punk — with help from Nile Rodgers — last night in NYC :lol:

 

 

 

 

 

Last night’s Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s (RED) Auction at Sotheby’s helped raise nearly $13 million — anyone up for a half-mil on solid rose gold Apple earpods? — so clearly everyone was in a partying mood for the duration of the evening

 

At one point, Bono and the Edge of U2 were found on stage jamming out to Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” with the song’s co-writer, Nile Rodgers, on bass duties. Note: the person who took the video, Michael Blatter, says on YouTube that the performance was during an afterparty, while U2 fan site atu2.com, claims it was a pre-auction gig. We’re not sure when it was, but it happened and that’s all that matters.

 

More according to atu2.com:

 

The money will benefit the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa.

 

But let’s talk about the music stuff. Before the auction began, Bono and The Edge took part in a jam session of sorts, performing a cover of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” with Angelique Kidjo, Nile Rodgers and his band, Chic. (See video 1 and video 2 on Instagram.)

 

Then, during the auction itself, Bono and Chris Martin did a couple of songs on a piano that was being auctioned. With Martin on the piano bench and Bono standing behind, the pair sung a cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” (video) and then did U2′s “Beautiful Day.”

 

vanyaland.com

Edited November 25, 201311 yr by Sydney

That 'Get Lucky' performance was errrrr..... :unsure: interesting.

 

 

:blink:

'Full Circle'

 

http://www.u2.com/news/title/full-circle

I like Adam's coat :P

From

 

http://www.ilikemusic.com/node/3063

 

 

U2 have country’s most popular anthem

 

 

Thu, 2013-11-28 12:26

 

Britain has voted U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ as the country’s most popular anthem from a long list of both recently popular and traditional anthems put together by music industry expert, author and DJ, Stuart Maconie.

 

When asked the nation was asked to choose the song that makes them the happiest U2’s Beautiful Day came out top with 36 per cent of the vote. It was followed by The Beatles’ Hey Jude with 28% and Hubert Parry’s Jerusalem with 22% which reflects the diversity of tunes that reach anthem status.

 

The research also shows that Britain is a nation of happiness and inspiration seekers when it comes to music with a whopping nine out of ten people (95 per cent) boldly claiming that tunes have the power to evoke happy memories. Music’s ability to rouse and move also scored similarly highly with 93 per cent of people regarding their favourite song as inspiring.

 

The research, conducted on behalf of cruise company Royal Caribbean International, also found that we are a nation of passionate music lovers with three-quarters of people (74 per cent) stating that music is important to them. People also agreed that music enhanced memories with over a third (31 per cent) re-living their favourite holiday memories on cue to a particular track.