From

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CT...ub=MontrealHome

 

 

Store owners may seek compensation for losses incurred by U2 show

 

Updated: Mon Jul. 11 2011 12:58:25 PM

 

 

 

MONTREAL — It took weeks to assemble the stage and grandstands for U2's stop in Montreal in their 360° tour, and it will take nearly as long to dismantle the structures.

 

By Monday most of the stage had been taken away and hauled to Toronto for that leg of the tour, but the seating for 80,000 fans is still in place.

 

City officials say the $1 million cost for staging the event, including security, special shuttle buses and extra metro cars, is money well spent.

 

However merchants who were forced to close for Friday and Saturday say as much as they enjoy the music, they don't appreciate the way they've been treated by the city.

Union Lighting and Home is one of several companies that was isolated by the show.

 

Freddie Naimer said he only learned of the street closures after his company sent out flyers for its annual summer sale.

 

"No sooner than our flyers are out we get a notice from the city saying that they are going to be barricading all the streets and the access to our store," said Naimer. "We lost approximately, based on last year's sales and previous week sales, probably about $75,000."

 

Naimer says he has tried repeatedly to contact his city councillors to obtain some sort of compensation for lost business, and that on Monday he will try once again.

 

He says it would have been better of the city to have someone contact store managers, but instead "somebody just came and dropped off a pamphlet or a little leaflet" notifying stores of the street closures.

 

He is also considering joining forces with other affected store owners to sue the city of Montreal.

 

"It's tough out there today and we're trying our best to survive and this doesn't really help," said Naimer.

I wonder if there was a threat of legal action by Mr Edge

 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/r...0,4217261.story

Bono And The Edge Get Hero's Welcome In New York

 

Bono and The Edge, of Irish rock-band U2, arriving at the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York for a taping of 'The Late Show with David Letterman'. The lead-guitarist was first to step out of the duo's car, wearing a smart leather jacket and usual black hat. He proceeded to greet the hundreds of queuing fans, telling his security staff, "I'm just shaking hands".

 

Bono was next to step out of the vehicle, donning his traditional sunglasses and dark jacket. The rocker signed autographs for fans and posed for photographs before entering the historic theatre. U2 recently headlined the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England. New York City, USA - 18.07.2011

 

 

Video here

 

http://www.contactmusic.com/celebrity-vide...ith-david_10649

 

Fans are a bit obsessive for a wrinkly old rock band :blink:

 

 

From

http://www.gigwise.com/news/65063/The-Whos...For-Tax-Evasion

 

 

 

The Who's Roger Daltrey Slams U2 For 'Tax Evasion'

 

And also blasts British tax evaders...

July 17, 2011 by Holly Frith

 

 

The Who's Roger Daltrey has slammed U2 over claims that they are tax evaders.

 

The Irish band were criticised last month as it was claimed that they are avoiding paying tax by basing parts of their business in Holland.

 

"I find it very interesting that people who spout socialism don’t want to pay for a socialist state," Daltrey told The Daily Star.

 

Daltrey also commented on immigrants who don't pay taxes in Britain: ''They don't realise how hard the average man has to work to pay those taxes. I don’t see anybody in the Government with a pair of balls. They’re so spineless. Nobody is in charge and nobody wants to accept responsibility."

 

Meanwhile, U2 guitarist The Edge has reacted angrily to claims that the band are tax evaders.

 

:mellow:

Do U2 spout socialism? :unsure:

 

 

 

Amy Winehouse – a losing gameAmy Winehouse had talent to burn and she sang because she had to. Alexis Petridis remembers an artist whose enormous impact rested on a handful of unforgettable songs

 

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Alexis Petridis guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 July 2011 19.15 BST Article history

Amy Winehouse performing at Shepherd's Bush Empire in May 2007. Photograph: Rune Hellestad/ Rune Hellestad/Corbis

Perhaps the most startling thing about Amy Winehouse's death was how startled people were by it. She was a drug addict whose crack use had, her father claimed, given her emphysema. She was a drinker who, by her own admission, "didn't know when to stop". And, as she frequently pointed out, she "didn't give a f***".

 

It's the kind of story that usually only ends one way, and yet the reaction to her death, my own included, was one of shocked disbelief. Perhaps it's because the chaos of her life had been lived in full public view: it was hardly the first time that an ambulance had been called to her flat because of an overdose, but she'd always somehow survived. Perhaps it's because she had already turned an excess of drink and drugs and emotional devastation into a remarkable album: in the back of your mind lurks the belief that she would somehow do that again, that her talent was such that it couldn't actually be overwhelmed by her excesses, however much horrible evidence there was to the contrary.

 

Or perhaps it's because, despite all the talk of her "rock'n'roll" lifestyle, Amy Winehouse wasn't rock'n'roll. She was a mainstream pop star, stage-school educated and discovered by Simon Fuller of S Club 7 and Pop Idol fame. Her records got played on Radio 2 and tangoed to on Strictly Come Dancing. She was a global superstar who sold millions and millions of albums at a time when album sales were apparently in terminal decline, whose celebrity hadn't waned despite the fact that she hadn't released anything new for five years. At the most cynical level, perhaps her death came as a surprise because people thought that someone, somewhere would do anything to protect their investment and succeed.

 

Almost as startling is how much impact she made with so little music. You can listen to literally everything she recorded in a couple of hours. Her posthumous reputation ultimately rests on even less than that: one 11-track album, and a scattering of covers – The Zutons' Valerie, a reggae take on Sam Cooke's Cupid, a handful of songs made famous by The Specials – all of them released in barely 12 months, between 2006 and 2007.

 

There was a debut album, 2003's Frank, but it was part of a glut of MOR-ish female singer-songwriter albums that appeared in the early noughties: a bit jazzy, a bit neo-soul, a touch of hip-hop about the beats, the songs bolstered by the attentions of writers for hire who had worked with the Sugababes and Kylie Minogue. In truth, it was more interesting than that billing suggested. The voice was obviously there, and even if it hadn't quite found the songs to match it, there was a scabrous wit fuelling the lyrics of f*** Me Pumps or Stronger Than Me. There was a hint of something dark about songs like What Is It About Men? and I Heard Love Is Blind and, indeed, about the way she seemed to deliberately align herself with the late Billie Holiday: she claimed her big influence was Sarah Vaughan but there was no mistaking where some of her vocal tics had been borrowed from.

 

At a time when record companies had begun to surgically deprive mainstream artists of their personality via media training, journalists who met her came back a little startled by how charismatic and funny and candid she was. She told them she didn't particularly care for her debut album, which she claimed she had never bothered to listen to all the way through and didn't even own a copy of. She offered some fairly blunt assessments of her own record company: "I hate them f***ers, man . . . they know they're idiots . . . I have no respect for them whatsoever".

 

She already had a reputation as a handful, a prodigious weed-smoker and drinker who occasionally seemed rather the worse for wear during interviews and onstage. "Shut up! I don't give a f***!" she famously yelled at Bono during an awards ceremony. She wasn't the first person in history to be gripped by an uncontrollable urge to tell the U2 frontman to put a sock in it, but the latter part of her heckle seemed to pertain less to his acceptance speech than herself and have a genuine and slightly troubling ring of truth about it. She clearly wasn't Dido, but Frank was still the kind of album that got advertised in home-furnishing magazines, the implication being that it was the musical equivalent of a scented candle, something that would waft discreetly around the room.

 

Certainly, nothing about it could prepare people for the album she released three years later. She reappeared virtually unrecognisable, emaciated, covered in tattoos, dressed like a cartoon of a 60s girl group vocalist in the throes of a breakdown, complete with a vast, chaotic Ronnie Spectorish beehive that she claimed rose or fell in height according to the bleakness of her mood. If nothing else, her visual overhaul told you she was still not an artist in thrall to the usual record company machinations. She now had the most striking and instantly recognisable image of any pop star of her era. Within a year Karl Lagerfeld was copying it on the catwalk, within two it was being parodied in the spirit-sappingly unfunny Hollywood film Disaster Movie. But no stylist would ever have suggested she look like that.

 

The change in her music was equally arresting. Her words had sharpened into a style that were at turns quietly beautiful – "all I can ever be to you is a darkness that we know" – and earthily funny: "he left no time to regret, kept his dick wet".

 

Initially at least, the single Rehab seemed less personal than witty and topical – a lot of high-profile stars had made a big show of entering The Priory or Clouds – but more noticeable than the lyrics was the music. On one level, it trod a fairly well-worn path – the 60s soul pastiche has been a touchstone in pop for decades – but it didn't feel that way. Producer Mark Ronson's arranging of Winehouse's influences was so brilliantly done that it would change pop music in its wake. Five years on, the charts are still filled with records made in Rehab's image. They're not as good, partly because however straightforward it seemed, the trick Ronson pulled off was remarkable – he managed to make a record that was smart and knowing without seeming dry or academic; instantly familiar without seeming tired – and partly because Rehab was a brilliantly written pop song, something conspicuous by their absence from her debut album.

 

But mostly it's because they're not sung by Amy Winehouse. Released from the affectations of her debut album – the samples of crackling vinyl and bursts of scat singing that thumpingly signposted her jazz heritage – it turned out she could take a bright, commercial pop song and lend it a depth and an edge. She did it on Rehab – even if you thought the song was simply poking fun at the excesses of celebrity culture, rather than detailing an incident from her own life, there was a raw, screw-you defiance about her performance that gave you pause – and she did it again on Ronson's version of Valerie. Winehouse declined to amend the song to accommodate the change in vocalist's gender: the lyrics were pretty vague, and in another female vocalist's hands it might simply have been transformed from a lovelorn lament into a song bewailing the end of a friendship. But Winehouse sang it with a sleazy urgency, a wilfully suggestive crackle absent from the original and at odds with the upbeat, northern soul backing. It suddenly sounded filthy.

 

 

The production and songs on Back To Black were so unfailingly brilliant that it's tempting to think anyone could have had a hit with them; certainly, they've spawned a mini-industry of cover versions, from Prince to Elbow to Wanda Jackson. But it was her voice that made it phenomenal. Even if you had known nothing about Winehouse, even if she hadn't been so candid about her songs' inspiration or chosen to illustrate them with videos that depicted her singing in front of a grave with her name on it, you could have guessed something was up just from listening to her sing Love is a Losing Game, or Tears Dry On Their Own.

 

Plenty of female singers were making records with the jazz and retro soul affectations around the same time as her, and plenty more would afterwards, rushing into the void that had been created by the fact that she was unable to play live or complete another record: there was a public demand for music that sounded like Amy Winehouse, whether or not Amy Winehouse was capable of providing it. But for the most part, they sounded like people trying on a vogueish style, doing something they thought would sell. Winehouse's performances, on the other hand, were so heartfelt they chafed against the knowingness of the arrangements, the clever stylistic references in Back To Black's sound. They made you think of Tony Wilson's assessment of Joy Division: "every other band was onstage because they wanted to be rock stars, this band was onstage because they had no f***ing choice". That wasn't why it was a hit – 10 million people don't go out and buy your album because they think you really mean it, any more than they go out and buy your album because you're in the tabloids thanks to your drug problems – but it explains why Back To Black has maintained its impact, despite five years of ubiquity.

 

A year after its release, she performed at the Mercury prize ceremony. Her personal life had gone haywire in full public view, although much worse was to come. Beforehand, people doubted whether she'd even show up: there seemed to be a general belief that whether they wanted to or not, the judges couldn't give her the award, not least because her parents had recently turned up in the press demanding that people stop buying her records and giving her awards, thus funding her increasingly dissolute lifestyle. But she did turn up and sang Love is a Losing Game. You can find a video of it on YouTube, which is worth doing, not least because it counters all the other videos you can find on YouTube, of her staggering and incapable onstage.

 

What's striking is how unshowy it all seems, the exact opposite of the vocal gymnastics and expressive hand-gestures that The X Factor propagates as the apotheosis of great live performance, nothing to do with the spectacle of a big rock show. She just stands there and sings. The audience – cynical, drunk, music industry types – fall eerily quiet: she's silenced them with her talent alone. It tells you more about why Amy Winehouse was famous than any amount of tabloid headlines or terrible cameraphone footage of her drunk and lost at gigs she shouldn't have been performing in the first place. It was because she had talent to burn, not because she burnt it.

 

The playlist by Tim Jonze

Back To Black

 

Minor chord Motown pianos make this as dramatic as any Bond theme. Yet for all its stylishness, the opening line assured us we were not in the company of Dame Shirley Bassey. But it's the lyric "You go back to her, and I go back to black" that told of a struggle the singer was never able to overcome.

 

 

Love Is A Losing Game

 

Her most heartbreaking moment, and telling that Winehouse's chosen metaphor for love was a pastime that could be addictive and destructive. Over a solitary electric guitar and subtle drums, her voice takes centre stage to sets out her resigned viewpoint that, as with gambling, you can only love for so long before ending up the loser.

 

 

F*** Me Pumps

 

A single from Winehouse's debut album, F*** Me Pumps is both witty and vicious – an attack on gold-digging women that, with its references to breast implants and getting "caned", let the world know this wasn't your average stage school jazz singer.

 

 

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

 

One of Winehouse's jazz and soul covers, this works as a flipside to F*** Me Pumps – in Goffin and King's song, the girl who had a one night stand isn't money-grabbing and foolish but hurt and confused.

 

 

Valerie

 

Mark Ronson redesigned the Zutons' original for the dancefloor on his Versions album, adding a Supremesesque rhythm and letting Amy's voice skip up and down it.

 

 

Rehab

 

Jumped on by the celebrity press, yet, as the line "There's nothing you can teach me/That I can't learn from Mr Hathaway" shows, this was really a song about salvation through music, something she was sadly unable to fully do.

 

A documentary about rock band U2 will open this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

 

 

The festival also features the world premieres of films by Luc Besson, Terence Davies, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Winterbottom.

 

Davis Guggenheim's From The Sky Down, which charts the release of U2's Achtung Baby in 1991, is the first documentary to open the festival.

 

The gala, opening on 8 September, is a key event ahead of the Oscars.

 

Last year Toronto's top audience prize went to The King's Speech which went on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

 

Among the world premieres are Luc Besson's The Lady, which tells the story of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris. The film stars Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis.

 

Thewlis also appears alongside Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave in Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, which premieres in Toronto.

 

Set in Elizabethan England, the film speculates that William Shakespeare may not have been the true author of his plays.

 

Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea will also be unveiled, starring Rachel Weisz as a wife who walks out on her High Court judge husband (Simon Russell Beale) to be with her lover, a young ex-RAF pilot played by Tom Hiddleston.

 

Festival-goers will also get a first look at The Descendants, starring George Clooney and Lasse Hallstrom's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, starring Ewan McGregor, and Michael Winterbottom's Trishna.

 

Based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Trishna is set in contemporary India and tells the tragic love story between the son of a wealthy businessman and the daughter of a rickshaw driver.

 

The film stars Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed.

 

Francis Ford Coppola - the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now - will premiere Twixt, a murder mystery with Val Kilmer.

 

Of his opening U2 documentary, Guggenheim said: "In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable.

 

"U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction, this band has endured and thrived. The movie From The Sky Down asks the question why."

 

Guggenheim won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary on climate change featuring former US vice-president Al Gore.

 

A second rock documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty by director Cameron Crowe, will also have its world premiere at the 10-day festival, which was founded in 1976.

 

 

 

Source...BBC News

'Men can't do pop any more'Ever since the arrival of Amy and Lily, female artists have been taking over the charts. Now, with the country's top five albums all by women, it appears their mission is accomplished

 

 

Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen helped to lay the path that so many other female artists have followed.

A curious symmetry took over the British album charts this weekend. In at the top was Amy Winehouse, followed by Adele, then Beyoncé, then Adele's other album, and then, at No 5, Amy's other album too.

 

Of course, Winehouse's chart reappearance was due to a surge of interest after her death. Yet still, that's a rather amazing bunch of records made by three female solo artists; two of them British and all three under the age of 30. As my friend, a music industry executive of some 20 years' standing, said when he saw the figures on Sunday: "Men haven't got a clue how to do pop any more."

 

Women have been taking over British pop for some time. Lily Allen's already had enough years in the game to have gone into semi-retirement, settling in the Cotswolds and entering cake-baking competitions. Amy Winehouse died horribly young, but her debut album, Frank, was released a full eight years ago. Their descendants, such as Jessie J, Florence, La Roux, Laura Marling, the CocknBullKid – and of course Adele – are already with us. Not to say that these women are any less idiosyncratic than Amy and Lily, and certainly not to bundle them into some imaginary musical genre called "female". It's just undeniable that the music industry has become more receptive to them, with artists such as Jessie J and Florence getting a heftier promotional push now than they would have done a decade ago.

 

Of course, the industry is trying to sell us British boys too. Plan B had the biggest-selling album by a male solo artist in 2010; Example has become such a huge star that Nando's has given him a special card with free food for life. (It is a truth universally acknowledged that all male London pop stars are obsessed with eating at Nando's. All of them.) Tinie Tempah grew up in south London's Aylesbury estate, considered the most notorious in Britain, and is now Prince Harry's favourite pop star, mingling with the royals at polo matches. Tinchy Stryder wrote a song called Number One that took him to No 1 (though what has made him rich is his Star In the Hood range of T-shirts). Calvin Harris has spent a good few years topping the charts; Paolo Nutini has gone from a cute pop boy to a critically acclaimed artist. But would you really recognise any of these blokes if they stood next to you in Tesco? And will any of them ever get as big as Robbie Williams did, when everybody knew his face and could sing along to his songs on the radio? Where is the household name, the Will Young, or Craig David, or Jarvis Cocker?

 

Bands are still going strong – indeed, it's perhaps ironic to ask for another Robbie Williams when the current fastest-selling tickets are for Take That. Mumford and Sons have cracked America; Coldplay and U2 remain death-proof. A new band, Brother, now renamed Viva Brother after a copyright issue, have made a safe enough album that might well sell a few copies. Some very promising chaps called Spector have just been signed to Polydor. As for solo personalities who dare to really stand out? Forget about it.

 

It has to be said, there's a lot of male capitulation about, and not just in the charts. The New York Times has just described Obama's economic compromise as surrender. Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems appear to surrender constantly to Cameron's Tories, but then Cameron makes endless U-turns himself, while Ed Miliband seems still to be working out if he will stand for something or fall for anything. Now all of them admit that they have been surrendering to Rupert Murdoch the whole time, while he in turn faces a surrender all of his own. Boris Johnson has announced that one solution to this whole crisis is to appoint a female chief of police.

 

Meanwhile Dominique Strauss-Kahn, having been accused of the abuse of women, has lost his job to one, and bookshops are selling out of Caitlin Moran's new guidebook for the 21st-century feminist, How to Be a Woman. She claims that the time for outspoken females is now – and nowhere is this more apparent than in pop music.

 

Because the thing about these top five albums is that they were all made by women with a bloody-minded determination, and bigger balls than their male counterparts. Beyoncé is the only big pop star I can think of who is heterosexual, married, mainstream – and yet brings most of her songs back to gender bending. She sings about what she would do if she were a boy, about how a diva is a female version of a hustler. About all the single ladies, all the independent women. Watch the video from her recent hit Girls (Run the World) and you'll see a new world order where a female army defeat armed military men solely with African dance, with their powerful thighs, their steel, their menace.

 

Adele got signed in her teens and promptly began to argue with her record label about the pricing structure of her singles, because she had been reading the business magazine Music Week since studying at the Brit school and knew all about sales margins. In a climate where every artist has to play music festivals, she refused point blank, knowing full well how much this was expected of her. She cancelled a big US tour at a time when experts warned this was the kiss of death to any chance of American success – yet she became huge there regardless. It may seem odd to talk about Amy Winehouse's independence in the wake of a death that has been linked to dependence, but she wrote and performed songs like nobody else, all sex and poetry and pain and fire and dirt. She, too, refused to do as she was told. While this aspect of her personality may have been the undoing of her in the end, it was that same fire that made people want to buy her records. And then there's Lady Gaga, another huge seller in this country, who investigates her own ugliness and brokenness as much as beauty, putting wheelchairs in videos and meat, literally, on her bones.

 

What all these female stars have in common, aside from their talent and their big personalities, is a deep awareness of the business side of the industry. They know all the rules inside out. It's just that they choose when to break them.

 

So is this shift towards the female just cyclical, or something more permanent? The fact is that these top women have raised the bar so high that the usual pop fare from both males and females now struggles to cut it. Sophie Ellis-Bextor could have been interesting but she rose up just too soon, when you could still get away with writing nonsensy lyrics and not showing much of your soul. She did seem idiosyncratic and radical, but it was only in comparison to Kylie, who released fabulously catchy hits, written by other people, that told us nothing. Sweet and lovely Leona Lewis has entered the Sunday Times Rich List off the back of her hits, but right now, it's the altogether less respectable X-Factor graduate Cher Lloyd getting the attention.

 

In fact, a male star would be welcomed, if he had big songs, a big presence, and a big heart that was open enough and genuine enough and contradictory enough for us to roll around in. Chaps, it's over to you.

 

 

Guardian UK

MATT DAMON TO GIVE ALL HIS MONEY TO GOVERNMENT

 

 

 

HOLLYWOOD – In what could be a new celebrity trend, Matt Damon, announced he will give all his future earnings to the U.S. government.

Matt Damon believes that the rich are not taxed enough. He believes that the tax rate on wealthy Americans should be at least 80%. “England has the right idea, the wealthy should give almost all of their money to the government, so that wealth is spread around.”

 

Damon has come under fire from some on the right wing, but Damon has put his money where his mouth is. “I am going to give 100% of my future earnings on all money I make from every source, to the government. I trust the government to use the money in better was than I could.

 

 

 

Damon is reportedly worth over $200 million. He will hold on to that money – and vows to keep most of it in bank accounts in Switzerland, but anything that he earns from now on will go to the government.

 

Democratic leaders applauded Damon’s “contribution” and urged all Americans who make over $250,00 a year to donate any money they make over that amount to the U.S. Government. “If Americans gave 100% of their salaries – over $250,000 – to the government – we could wipe out our debt in ten years,” said Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi.

 

Pelosi, however, will not be donating any money to the government. “I have too many grandchildren. They all need money for college.”

 

Damon has asked Bono of U2 to join him in “donating” to his country. Bono is currently “hiding” most of his money outside of Ireland and has come under fire from Irish citizens for doing so. “Bono could make a $2 billion gift to Ireland tomorrow, and I think he should. :lol: Governments help people, we need to support them, ” Damon said. So cmo'n Bono ..'Give us the money'

 

 

 

Weeklyworldnews.com

I already give all my earnings to the govt. It seems that way anyway <_< <_< <_<

 

S'pose when you have 200 million dollars stashed in Swiss bank accounts it's not much of a hardship :lol:

oh dear, now this is worrying :lol: Bono wearing nail polish, click link to see pics:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/artic...varnishing.html

Oh for goodness sake! I've seen it all now :lol:

 

 

 

:puke2:

 

 

PS I just knew they'd all pop up in the Cote d'Azur now that the tour is over

All that money & he still has fat feet <_<

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

 

 

U2's THE EDGE CELEBRATES 50TH

 

http://i51.tinypic.com/302xttt.jpg

 

 

U2 rocker The Edge has plenty of reason to celebrate - he turns the big 50 today.

 

The Irish band recently wrapped up its mammoth 360 Tour and marked the end of the 25-month trek with an all night boozing session at New York hotspot The Spotted Pig last weekend.

 

But the party doesn't stop there for the guitar great - The Edge will no doubt be raising a toast once more as he rocks into his 50th year.

 

And to mark the milestone, WENN has dug deep to find 10 fascinating facts about the man born David Howell Evans.

 

Happy Birthday, The Edge!

 

- He was born in England, his family is Welsh, and he was raised in Ireland.

 

- He originally joined the rock group with his brother Dik Evans, but his sibling quit the band weeks before they launched themselves as U2 in 1978.

 

- He split from his first wife, Aislinn O'Sullivan, in 1990, after seven years of marriage, but was unable to get divorced until 1996 - a year after it was legalised in Ireland.

 

- The musician takes 45 different kinds of guitars on tour with him out of his collection of 200.

 

- Outside of U2, he has worked with artists as varied as country legend Johnny Cash, Tina Turner, Rolling Stone's Ronnie Wood and blues icon B. B. King.

 

- The Edge and his bandmate Bono wrote the music and lyrics to the much-maligned musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark - the most expensive show on Broadway, costing a reported $75 million by the time it officially launched in June.

 

- A keen philanthropist, he is the co-founder of Music Rising, a charity set up in 2005 to replace musical instruments lost in Hurricane Katrina to benefit members of the local community in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

- He and Bono teamed up with rap superstar Jay-Z and R&B singer Rihanna in January, 2010 to record the Haiti charity single Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour) to raise funds for the earthquake relief effort.

 

- He featured on his own stamp in Ireland in 2002 as part of a special U2 collection.

 

- The Edge is a father of five - he has three grown-up daughters with his first wife, Hollie, Arran and Blue Angel, and two kids, girl Sian, born in 1997, and son Levi, born in 1999, with his second wife, dance choreographer Morleigh Steinberg.

 

 

 

Source...Torontosun.com

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

 

& all that money won't make him taller either -_-

Mr Edge is 50? :o

 

 

I feel old :(

From

http://popdash.com/news/6327/jedward-want-...aborate-with-u2

 

 

Jedward Want To Collaborate With U2

 

 

That would be a right Irish combination...

 

 

Jedward have revealed that they have their sights set on a collaboration with Irish rockers U2.

 

The twins, who competed for Ireland in this years Eurovision Song Contest, posted a video on YouTube expressing their respect for the Irish band and the possibility of a collaboration.

 

Edward Grimes said: ''U2 totally stands for me and John."

 

John added: "U2 are totally awesome. We want to do a duet with you, OK? It would be totally cool. It would be Jedward featuring U2."

 

Charlie Sheen and Irish pop duo Jedward are amongst the names being linked to the forthcoming series of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK.

From

http://www.usmagazine.com/moviestvmusic/ne...campaign-201198

 

 

Beyonce, Madonna, and U2 Band Together For Internet Campaign

 

Tuesday – August 09, 2011 – 3:37pm

 

 

A big cause brings out the big guns!

 

Madonna, Justin Bieber, Rihanna and 150 other major stars have all come together to bring awareness to the devastating food crisis in East Africa. They've all agreed to post a short film -- set to the 1973 Bob Marley & The Wailers song "High Tide Or Low Tide" -- on their Facebook and Twitter pages with the hopes of reaching one billion people.

 

Also joining in? Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Kanye West, Jay-Z, The Rolling Stones, Jennifer Lopez, Muse, Coldplay and Sting. All of them wanted to get the word out about the emergency response to the major food and water shortage in Somalia and East Africa, where over 10 million people have been affected.

 

Aside from being seen on these stars' social networking pages, the song and film can also be downloaded through iTunes, from www.imgonnabeyourfriend.org, or via Bob Marley's Facebook page, for $1.29. The Facebook page will also feature click-through links for direct donations to Save the Children's East Africa appeal.

 

Says Marley's widow Rita: "Not one child should be denied food nor water. Not one child should suffer. Along with Save the Children, we must stand up together as friends to put a stop to this, to feed our children and to save their lives."

 

Bono gives an interview about Somalia here

 

 

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/u2s-bono-on-som...s-are-man-made/