Pete The Chop

Bono has said that U2 are “delighted and humbled” to be headlining at next year’s Glastonbury Festival over its 40th anniversary weekend.

The band will lead the line-up at the Somerset show on Friday 25 June.

“Everyone in the band is very excited about it,” Bono told the BBC at the launch of an anti-Aids/HIV campaign.

It will be U2’s first festival gig for more than 25 years and will see them make a flying visit to the UK in the middle of a North American tour.

Asked if he would use the festival to promote the campaign, Bono said: “I think it will just be about the music on that day, and that spirit that seems to take over everybody in that sacred ground.”

He added: “We’ll certainly be well-rehearsed, we’ll be coming straight from the tour.”

Red laces

Bono was in central London on Monday to launch the “Lace Up. Save Lives” campaign – a partnership between Nike and the (RED) brand, which was co-founded by the U2 frontman.

He was joined at the launch, just ahead of World Aids Day, by Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and several other international football stars.

The campaign encourages people to buy red laces to help fund AIDS medication and education programmes in Africa.

Next year’s Glastonbury takes place from 25-27 June – during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

No other headliners have yet been confirmed. David Bowie has denied that he will join U2 on the bill, but it is rumoured that stadium rockers Muse could appear.

Tickets for the event sold out shortly after they went on sale last month.

By Tim Masters
Entertainment correspondent, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8387265.stm

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The holiday shopping season is officially here, and if you’re looking for a gift for the U2 fan in your life, may I humbly suggest U2 – A Diary?

I’m the author and, in case you’ve never visited here before, this is the blog that I used to both share and receive information with/from U2 fans all over the world during the writing of U2 – A Diary. The book was published a year ago (November 2008) and has received great feedback. You can click the reviews category to see what people have been saying about the book and learn why I think it’s a great gift for U2 fans.

In a nutshell, U2 – A Diary is the history of U2 as told in a timeline-style format with a couple thousand individual diary entries.

Amazon.com seems to have the best price at just under $20. It’s somewhat more expensive on Barnes & Noble’s web site. But if you prefer Barnes & Noble, you can use coupon B3U9U7U to get 15% off any one item online until December 9th.

If you’re outside the US, you can try Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, or see this old list I made of online stores worldwide that were selling the book. That’s an old post so it may not be perfectly accurate now.

One last note about the online reviews of U2 – A Diary: The poor review on Amazon.com is from a person who was banned from the U2 fan forum I manage, and the mediocre review on Barnes & Noble’s web site is actually for a different book (one that lists and details all of U2’s concert performances specifically).

If you’re new or if you just have questions about the book, feel free to leave a comment. I do reply as often as possible.

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In early September I blogged about a new film about Anton Corbijn.

Shadow Play has been doing the rounds of film festivals (not on general release) and I was lucky enough to see the film at the recent Cork Film Festival.

The festival has been going for over 50 years now, that’s some achievement for a city the size of Cork, and the fact that they show films that one would normally never get to see, is one of the reasons for its success.

I was enthralled with the film, I have always been fascinated by Anton’s work, not just for U2, but all the other bands he has worked with. There is a great cross section of people talking about Anton and the work he has done. Naturally, Bono gives a generous contribution, but there are other in dept contributions from Michael Stipe in particular(a photographer himself), Brandon Flowers, Kurt Cobain, Dave Gahan, New Order as well as Chris Martin, and some of Anton’s contemporaries. The film goes through Anton’s life from where he was born, right up to now.

Throughout the film we are taken through all the various stages of his film about Joy Division, which is called Control from writing, casting, screen tests, right up to shooting, editing and the Cannes premier. But this is all interspersed with interviews with the famous people he has photographed. There are interesting contributions from Helena Christensen and Control actress, Samantha Morton (who also starred in the “Electrical Storm” U2 video).

Bono has several contributions, but the best one is where he does a kind of retake on Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and goes through several photos taken by Anton of the band, himself and family from the early 1980s right up to now. He casts each photo aside, and makes some funny gestures at each one. One great line he says during the film, is when he told Anton years ago, that he wanted him to make him look tall and good looking. “So Anton replied, so you want to look like me!”

The main theme throughout this film, is taking that shot. How does Anton do it? It seems, he has the talent of putting people at their complete ease, and trusting him. It’s a lot easier said, than done.

More details on the film here.

This is a post from the @U2 blog.

Shadow Play : The Making of Anton Corbijn

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Bono reached out to Sarah Palin when she was running for Vice President and briefed her on his worldwide agenda, Palin has revealed.

The call came at the height of the presidential campaign in 2008, when Palin was under fire for her lack of international experience.

In her new book, “Going Rogue,” the former Vice Presidential candidate says Bono was one of several leading personalities she spoke and met with when she became a national figure.

Others included actor Warren Beatty, singer Hank Williams Jr., former football coach Mike Ditka and actor Robert Duvall.

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This satirical piece recently appeared in the Huffington Post:

An expert commission of African leaders today announced their plan for comprehensive reform of music band U2. Saying that U2’s rock had lost touch with its African roots, the commission called for urgent measures to halt U2’s slide towards impending crisis.

“Our youth today are imperiled by low quality music,” said Commission chairman Nelson Mandela. “We will be lending African musicians to U2 to try to refurbish their sound to satisfy the urgent and growing needs for diversionary entertainment at a time of crisis in the global music and financial sectors.”

Concerns about U2 have been growing in Africa for a while. One Western aid blogger testified to the Commission that his teenage kids found U2’s music “cheesy.” The Mandela Commission proposed that U2 follow a series of steps to recover its Edge:

1) Hire African consultants to analyze U2’s “poverty of music trap”

2) Prepare a Band-owned and Commission-approved Comprehensive U2 Reform Strategy Design (CURSD)

3) Undertake a rehabilitation tour of African capitals to field-test and ground-truth proposed reforms

4) Subject all songs to randomized experiments in which the effect on wellbeing of control and treatment groups is rigorously assessed.

Mandela expressed optimism that the Commission’s report and proposed reforms had come in time to stave off terminal crisis in U2, and restore its effectiveness in the ’80s arena rock field.

This is a post from the @U2 blog.

African leaders advise Bono on reform of U2

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Here we are, blogging about Steve Lillywhite again. Last week it was about his radio show, and this week it’s about a lengthy interview on The Daily Swarm with a fair amount of U2 content.

Rather than try to put together some coherent summary, let me just rapid-fire a couple of my favorite quotes that Lillywhite gives:

“You work with U2 and there doesn’t seem like there’s any budget whatsoever. You work with other people and it’s different.”

“Eno and Lanois do a great job of getting it all prepped and then I come in. I think it has a lot to do with the band seeing me and they’re going, ‘Oh, Steve’s here. We’d better get to work.’”

“[Eno's] not really a fan of the band, so his job is to bring something that is not U2 to it. And my job is to bring it back to some form of U2.”

That’s a taster. Whole interview is good. Don’t read it just for the U2 stuff. He’s a smart guy.

This is a post from the @U2 blog.

Steve Lillywhite on Producing U2

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The shortlist for Academy Award contenders in the Documentary Feature category has been announced and Davis Guggenheim’s guitar-friendly film It Might Get Loud, which featured The Edge, did not make the cut.

Absent also from the list of 15 qualifying movies was Anvil! The Story of Anvil, another music documentary that received wide critical acclaim. To see the final 15, click here.

The good news is that fans who missed Loud in the theaters will get the opportunity to buy it soon. It becomes available on DVD and Blu-Ray Dec. 22.

This is a post from the @U2 blog.

Oscars Snub Guitar Doc

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Wouldn’t it be cool if you found out that your substitute teacher was Mr. Bono? The National Education Association’s third annual poll found that Bono was at the head of the class when it comes to who people would like to have as a substitute teacher.

The NEA has asked Bono to serve as a teacher in a public school for a day.

Others who made the grade were CBS Nightly News anchor Katie Couric, Nelson Mandela, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

While Bono would make a great teacher in the areas of Social Studies, English, Music, or Art, I’d love to see him in a Math class teaching counting…”1, 2, 3, 14…seriously…that’s how it goes.”

This is a post from the @U2 blog.

Subbing In

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