Bono performs at the 2008 MTV Video Awards
SAITAMA, JAPAN - Bono of U2 performs during MTV Video Music Awards Japan 2008 at Saitama Super Arena on May 31, 2008 in Saitama, Japan. - Tiscali.News
More images in the Bono gallery >>
Pete The Chop
U2 News Aggregator
The Edge Hosts Icons of Music II Auction to Benefit Music Rising at Hard Rock Cafe New York
NEW YORK, May 28 /PRNewswire/ — WHO: U2’s The Edge to host with special performance by Aaron Neville and appearances by Les Paul, Tiki Barber, Christy Turlington, Petra Nemcova, Joan Jett, “Cry-Baby” Broadway star James Snyder, Earl Slick, Jody Porter of Fountains of Wayne, writer May Pang, Donna Karan, legendary producer and Music Rising co-founder Bob Ezrin and many more. Jim Kerr will emcee the auction.Lisa Loeb will be hosting the Auction Network show live from the red carpet.
WHAT: U2’s The Edge, will host the star-studded Icons of Music II Auction at Hard Rock Cafe New York to benefit Music Rising, a campaign founded in 2005 to support musicians, students and parishioners of the Gulf Coast Region affected by the hurricanes.
Music Rising has since aided over 2,700 professional musicians and nearly 50,000 students and parishioners and will soon launch Phase III of the campaign. The event will be conducted by world renowned Julien’s Auctions (http://www.juliensauctions.com).
The exclusive event will include a performance by legendary musician Aaron Neville and a star-studded red carpet. Auction Network, the first 24/7, multimedia network solely dedicated to auctions, will conduct a live webcast in real-time streaming video of The Icons of Music Auction II hosted by Lisa Loeb.
For more information about how to register to bid, etc. please visit http://www.juliensauctions.com or call (310) 816-1818. For tickets, visit http://www.ticketmaster.com.
WHERE: Hard Rock Cafe New York 1501 Broadway New York, NY 10036 WHEN: 5:30 PM Media Check-In 6:00 PM Red Carpet 6:30 PM Performance 7:00 PM Auction About Music Rising Music Rising, a campaign launched in 2005 to replace musical instruments lost or destroyed by hurricanes in the Gulf Region.
It has since launched a second phase dedicated to the aid of schools and churches. Music Rising was formed by U2’s The Edge, legendary producer Bob Ezrin, Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. Partners of the campaign represent the most diverse partnership in the entertainment industry and include MusiCares, Guitar Center, Musician’s Friend, Live Nation, Kennedy/Marshall, Ticketmaster, Hard Rock International, VH-1, MTV, Real Networks, ABC News Now, The NFL, Rolling Stone, Mr. Hollands Opus, Juliens Auctions, ACT and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.
Music Rising is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 HALO Award for Cause Marketing and the 2006 Billboard Humanitarian Award, the 2008 PRISM Award and has been recognized around the world by various media organizations. Music Rising is administered by the Gibson Foundation. For more information go to http://www.musicrising.org and http://www.gibsonfoundation.org.
U2’s Bono Presented with Honorary Doctorate
Frontman for Irish rock band U2, Bono, now holds an honorary doctorate in law thanks to Keio University. The Japanese educational institution presented the rock singer with the Doctor of Law Degree this past Tuesday in a ceremony where Bono also gave a lecture that encouraged students to show their support for the state of Africa at the G8 summit that is being held in July this year. This international forum, which is made up of the Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, British and American governments, is arranged on a yearly basis to discuss world issues.
NME reported that Keio University believes that Bono’s work in raising awareness and promoting research about AIDS and stopping poverty in Africa deems him worthy of the honorary degree. Bono is in the Asian country so that he will be present at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, which is to take place shortly.
As for Bono’s musical endeavours, U2’s last studio effort came out in 2004. It was the group’s eleventh album named How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb. The band is preparing a new album, which is being readied for release this October.
Writer: Stephanie Ng Wan
Bush, Bono, Brown call for Africa action
FAMOUS names ranging from rock star Bono to US President George W Bush called for action to fight poverty in Africa in a special edition today of one of Japan’s major newspapers.
Bono, visiting Japan for a major Africa development summit that closed yesterday, teamed up with fellow musician-activist Bob Geldof as guest editors of a supplement to the Asahi Shimbun, an influential liberal daily.
Mr Bush wrote that the July 7-9 summit of the Group of Eight major industrial powers, to be held in Japan, needed to take concrete action to tackle AIDS and other scourges afflicting Africa.
“My message to my fellow leaders will be that our past promises are just empty words unless we provide meaningful follow-through,” Mr Bush wrote.
“And if we do, we can continue to help save lives and spread hope across the continent of Africa.”
Mr Bush said the US was doubling aid to Africa by 2010 and highlighted a $US15 billion ($A15.7 billion) AIDS relief fund launched in 2003.
“These efforts rarely make headlines in the United States. But when you go to Africa, the difference we are making is visible,” he said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in the same newspaper, called for the G8 summit to commit money to expand education in Africa.
“The world cannot make a better investment than in the education of its children,” Brown said.
Bono urged Japan to use the G8 summit to push forward the goal of halving extreme poverty in the world by 2015.
The U2 frontman praised Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s pledge to double Japanese aid to Africa but regretted that Tokyo’s overall foreign assistance has been declining.
Highlighting Japan’s past aid across Asia, Bono appealed to the Japanese public to care more about Africa - and pointed to the growing rivalry with China, which has been making inroads into Africa.
Japan’s efforts “were critical in creating the Asian tigers and I am wondering if the same strategies applied to Africa might have similar results,” Bono said.
“Forget moral imperative for a moment,” Bono said.
“The Japanese I know do not like the fact that China is leaving them behind in Africa,” Bono wrote.
“They want to show the world what Japan stands for.”
- Adelaide Now
Music Rising Auction Preview
(Early jacket worn by Edge that’s being offered at auction on Saturday).
CBS’s The Early Show featured Saturday’s Music Rising “Icons of Music” auction this morning. They also listed some of the estimated prices items will go for.
Here are some of the items The Early Show featured:
Bono Stage-Worn Bullet Leather Jacket From the 2005 Vertigo [...]
Scattered Thoughts: A Nice Congregation
Daniel Lanois’ May 28 appearance on the RTE television show The View is online and available to watch [click here for video]. The half hour conversation is about Daniel and not about U2, though host John Kelly does make an effort to get some U2 info out of Lanois, particularly about 20 minutes in.
Lanois pretty [...]
Beach Clip minus the beach – new audio
This is audio was posted on the Interference forum, it’s being posted to quench some thirst for new U2. Turn it up, and listen close.
3:00 + minutes - 5/17/2008 - Dublin, Ireland
U2 MANAGER HURT IN HORRIFIC HORSE FALL
Irish rockers U2’s longtime manager PAUL MCGUINESS narrowly escaped paralysis recently after he was involved in a horrific horse riding accident.
The music mogul, who also manages the careers of singer PJ Harvey and New York rockers The Rapture, had to be taken to hospital after being thrown from a horse while riding near his estate in County Wicklow, Ireland.
A source tells Ireland’s Sunday World newspaper, “It was a pretty bad fall and Paul broke his collarbone. He was rushed to hospital and was in absolute agony.
“He’s still getting over it and knows he has had a lucky escape.”
- Contact Music
Bono urges Japan to lead African development
TOKYO, Japan — In his first lecture as “Dr. Bono,” the rock superstar, social activist and freshly minted intellectual on Tuesday urged Japan to double its aid to Africa by 2012 and recapture its position as the global leader in overseas development.
Although Japan gave the most overseas aid in the early 1990s, its generosity has steadily fallen since then, the U2 frontman told students at Tokyo’s prestigious Keio University, where he received an honorary doctorate of law earlier in the day.
“The world is watching Japan as the G8 (summit) approaches, and it’s not good news,” he said. The summit is scheduled to take place in Hokkaido, northern Japan, in July. Japan’s net official development assistance in 2007 was US$7.7 billion, down 30 per cent from the previous year and dropping the country to fifth place among foreign aid donors, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Bono, in Japan this week for the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, called it a “monumental error” to ignore Africa or write the continent off as a lost cause. Japan’s development model for Southeast Asia led to the emergence of the so-called ’Asian tigers’ and could prove similarly successful in Africa, he said. “I believe in this country,” he said to an auditorium of nearly 900 students.
“The world needs your involvement.” Bono said his interest in Africa extends back to the Live Aid concert in 1985. Since then, he has become one of the most effective, though sometimes controversial, crusaders against poverty and AIDS in Africa.
The Irish rocker and Nobel Peace Prize nominee is scheduled to speak at the African development conference Thursday and meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda later this week. Michitake Watanabe, a first-year graduate student at Keio, said Bono’s words opened his eyes to issues he had never considered.
“He is an amazing person,” said Watanabe, who admitted he isn’t a fan of Bono’s music. “It’s really incredible that he doesn’t seem to be confined by traditional frameworks like race or religion.”
- ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bono joins tree-planting drive
Bono the gardener?
Bono hams it up with a shovel on Tuesday while planting a tree as part of the Tokyo metropolitan government’s “Green Island” project at Odaiba, part of a sprawling man-made island in Tokyo Bay.
(ITN - Tuesday, May 27 02:05 pm) U2 singer Bono has taken part in a tree-planting project with schoolchildren in Tokyo. The rocker, who’s known for his humanitarian and philanthropic work, led the event which is part of the city’s environmental initiatives project.
He encouraged the attendees to become more environmentally friendly, saying: “I do believe that politicians like Governor Ishihara need to hear from you that this is important to you. It’s your money that they are spending. “That is what I’ll be doing over the week as well as planting this tree today. Finding out how much support there are for these issues of environment and extreme poverty.”
Nearly 100 children sang together with the legendary rock singer at The Sea Forest where a total of 480,000 trees are due to be planted, creating an 88 hectare forest floating off Tokyo bay. The city hopes the forest when completed in 2016 will help cool the city down during the hot summer months.
Bono also plans to attend the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, where he will be among 43 leaders of African nations to discuss poverty, conflict, the food crisis and disease in the continent.
“Walk On” Subject Detained Further
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was the inspiration for the U2 song “Walk On” has unfortunately had her house arrest status extended for what could be up to a year by the Burmese government.
Read the full story at CNN here.
I can’t help but wonder when this world will turn right-side up…
Comparison Gigging
From time to time, I indulge in the guilty pleasure of going to gigs by artists other than U2. I know, seems like I’m cheating on Hitman and Sparky, but heck - they don’t tour as much as this fan would like.
Sunday night, my husband and I went to the Mohegan Sun casino in lovely [...]
Bono-themed Celebrity Says
My husband stumbled on this while looking for something good on TV this evening…
May 30 @ 2 p.m.: TV Guide Network - Celebrity Says (Questions focus on Bono)
Comcast OnDemand is offering a Daniel Lanois interview until May 27:
Daniel Lanois, the producer behind such iconic albums as U2’s JOSHUA TREE, Peter Gabriel’s SO, etc., sits down [...]
U2 show still echoes at Red Rocks
U2’s now-legendary Red Rocks show on June 5, 1983, had all the makings for a classic disaster.
The weather bordered on sleet and rain all day — hardly idyllic conditions for a video shoot that included countless cameras and three giant torches sitting atop the rocks.The promoters were in California until the afternoon of the show, and when they flew into a blustery Stapleton Airport, they called the mountain amphitheater’s backstage to see where the show had been moved.
But the band wasn’t about to move the concert.
“I asked them why they didn’t call me, and the people said, ‘The band wouldn’t let us, because they knew you’d want to move the show,’ ” retired promoter Barry Fey remembered.
“Then Paul McGuinness, their manager, got on the phone, and then Bono got on the phone, and then Chuck (Morris) and I headed home to change out of our sunny California gear into something much heavier before heading up to Red Rocks.”
As fans, local and abroad, mark the 25th anniversary of the legendary show — captured dramatically on video and record under the title “Under the Blood Red Sky” — record companies will also use the occasion as their opportunity to remaster the music on a CD (with a bonus disc), due in stores June 24, and finally release the remarkable performance on DVD, due in August.
The video, a venture among the band, their label and Feyline Concerts, captures the enduring image of U2’s early years. It was played heavily on MTV, and it’s been credited as the single piece of media that solidified U2’s reputation as an epic live band — and Red Rocks’ status as the world’s premiere outdoor amphitheater.
It was no accident that U2 chose Red Rocks as the location for their live video experiment, an outing that cost the band their life savings, they said at the time.
In the summer of 1981, U2 played two shows in Colorado, at Fort Collins’ Lincoln Center and Denver’s Rainbow Music Hall. The day after the Rainbow show, promoter Morris, working with Fey at the time, loaded the band in his Jeep for a field trip.
“I took them up to Red Rocks so they could see it,” Morris said. “I told them they were going to play there some day. But their second record wasn’t doing that well, even though it got great reviews, and they weren’t so sure. But I was. I drove them to the top. We walked down to the stage, and they were, like, ‘Oh my God, this is the greatest place we’ve ever seen.’ “
Years later, McGuinness was sitting in Fey’s office, setting up a partnership with the band, the promoter and the label, Island Records, to shoot a live video at Red Rocks. Everybody was happy.
Until the morning of the show, when the weather was so foul. A group of 15 or 20 hard-core fans sat in the front rows at Red Rocks under their ponchos, and around 10 or 11 a.m., Bono found his way to the catering room backstage, where he met Nancy May, who was running errands for Fey at the time.
“(Bono) was suddenly in the food room, and he said, ‘It’s really cold out there. Can we get these people some coffee and tea?’ I said sure, and we made it up, and then Bono went out and served the fans some coffee and tea. He was out there chatting over tea with 10 or 20 people, and we were like, ‘Wow.’ I’d never seen a rock star do that in all those years.”
The day progressed, and the weather worsened. Morris and Fey arrived, and Bono called a Denver radio station, telling his fans that the Red Rocks show would go on — but there would also be another indoor show the following night at the CU Field House in Boulder for those who didn’t want to brave the elements.
And after a short introduction from Fey, the show was on. Red Rocks, which holds nearly 10,000 people, was about half-full with 4,400 in attendance. The venue has never looked more mystical, alluring. Red Rocks was ready for its close-up.
“For years, when I told people in L.A. that I worked at Red Rocks, people would always say, ‘Did you see the U2 video?’ ” said May, now a production manager for the Denver Performing Arts Center. “When I went to Los Angeles to work for Dick Clark, everybody knew that video. And everybody knew Red Rocks because of that video.”
Looking back at the 25-year-old footage, it’s amazing how powerful it remains. The band couldn’t have purchased those kinds of special effects: The sleety mist softened all the edges, and the steam coming out of Bono’s mouth with each word gave the footage an otherworldly feel.
And they were just kids. The Edge still had hair, and you could hear his towering backup vocals waver as he nervously looked down at his guitar. Alternating between a little girl’s skip and a soldier’s march, Bono had never looked stronger. “This song is not a rebel song,” he said at one point, wearing a sleeveless shirt and looking like an ’80s movie star. “This song is ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday.’ ” The band’s 6-minute take on their beloved anthem was capped with Bono planting a white flag of truce in the crowd, and it’s one of the most iconic moments in rock history. And it was a Sunday.
“One person remarked that it was a religious experience, and it was,” said Greg Wigler, one of three professional photographers at the show. “The show was way beyond anything I’d seen before.”
Fans agreed. “Under a Blood Red Sky” is the all-time best-selling recording in the U.K. Fey jokes that he recouped his investment very quickly.
“But had it been another 78 degree day, it would have been just another concert,” Fey said. “Instead it was an amazing concert. You knew you were seeing some kind of history. I stood alone at the side of the stage, and my feet were locked. I couldn’t go anywhere.”
Morris calls it “one of my finest hours of promoting.”
“The way Bono played with the crowd, getting all into the audience, and the way the fire looked up on the sides with the rain coming down, and everyone was freezing, but they couldn’t care less. In my long career, nothing has come close to that.”
A popular rumor every other summer is that U2 is coming back to Red Rocks. But for 25 years now, that’s been nothing but a rumor.
“I can’t speak for the band on something like that,” Morris said. “Would I love it? Absolutely.”
Added Fey: “I asked them many years ago, ‘You wanna give Red Rocks another try?’ They said, ‘Absolutely not.’ And you can’t blame them. They couldn’t do anything that would be comparable to that. This is the 25th year, and I asked them if they wanted to do it again. But you can’t duplicate that. You’d be foolish to try and duplicate that. It would be like going to Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and saying, ‘Hey, let’s shoot “Casablanca” over again.’ “
By Ricardo Baca, Denver Post Pop Music Critic
Bill Carter and His New Book
Tonight I was fortunate enough to attend a book reading/signing with Miss Sarajevo director Bill Carter.
U2 fans will remember him as the guy who organized the satellite link-ups from the Bosnian War to the Zoo TV tour, and the author of Fools Rush In, which recounts that part of his life.
His new book, Red Summer, [...]