U2 New Album: June 1st?

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Image by rchappo2002 via Flickr

Taken from Metro News in Canada, and the radio genius, Alan Cross. If you live in Toronto, or Buffalo, you will know Alan Cross for his "Ongoing History of New Music" series, which in my opinion is one of the best and most incredibly well-written shows in radio history.

Here is what I found on the site:

Songs of Ascent, U2 (June 1?): With the 360 tour set to restart on June 3, U2 may have a new album to work into its set. Those hoping for a shift back to the band’s classic sound after No Line on the Horizon may be in for a disappointment. Bono has been quoted as saying this album features a “marked shift in sound” and is a “reflective, meditative piece of work.”  If the rumoured June 1 release date is correct — no guarantees — we should see a single very soon. But other rumours suggest that we’ll get a single in June with a full album in September.  

Meanwhile, U2 fans can sort through Artificial Horizon (May 14), a collection of remixes of No Line on the Horizon songs created by artists such as Trent Reznor and Hot Chip, the British electronic outfit. There’s also the possibility of a DVD of last year’s YouTube-streamed show in Pasadena on May 21. And did I mention the Achtung Baby deluxe reissue that may hit stores in September?

The Ongoing History Of New Music can be heard on stations across Canada. Read more
at ongoinghistory.com and exploremusic.com

Adam Talks About U2

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Adam Clayton via last.fm

From the amazing people at U2Tourfans.com, comes this article which contains sections that will appear in this month's MOJO magazine. It's a very articulate and interesting conversation with Adam Clayton about No Line On The Horizon and the tour.

I am extremely curious about the 2010 set list, and even though it's not mentioned in the article, I can't help but wonder about what will or won't make it this time around. I did enjoy reading about the chemistry between the band, and how, after all these years, they still make it work.

Here is what I found at U2Tourfans.com:

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SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2010 AT 3:00PM

HE’S THE EVER-URBANE architect of U2’s prowling basslines and, courtesy of Achtung Baby’s sleeve art, the only member of U2 whose “old chap” is in the public domain. But Adam Clayton also has a plausible explanation of No Line On The Horizon’s tortured delivery and that’s not all. Did Brian Eno really throw “the rattle out of the pram”? And what did Bono get Adam for Christmas? In the director’s cut of an interview printed in this month’s MOJO magazine, all will be revealed… Your host: Keith Cameron.

It’s never a smooth process, finishing off a U2 record, and this seems to have been no exception. Was there much chopping and changing down to the wire?
There was sort of an 11th hour scenario, because we got caught up on the running order towards the end, primarily because we’d all come to the conclusion thatHow To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb had suffered by having a compromised running order, and we didn’t want to make the same mistake this time around. So, we pulled White As Snow out of the ‘maybe’ file, and that seemed to balance some of the up-tempo rock tunes. It gave the listener a break.

We had another track called Every Breaking Wave which, if we’d included it, would have made for a very long record. Anyway, we decided that song just hadn’t reached its potential, so, we put it back in the cupboard for the next record (laughs).”

Before Christmas, I heard a track called Winter. Has that become something else?
That was possibly going to be on the record and possibly part of a soundtrack for an upcoming movie and it didn’t make the record but may still be part of that movie soundtrack. [NB since this interview Winter has been confirmed as part of Anton Corbijn’s ‘visual accompaniment’ to No Line On The Horizon, entitled Linear, included in the Deluxe package of the album]

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of material. Could you release another album quite soon?
Well we could, and it’s part of our plan to not leave it too long. Once the tour is up and running there would be no reason why we couldn’t find a week and go into the studio and work on things. It sort of depends on Bono and Edge’s commitments; they’ve got a Spiderman project in the works too (laughs).

So, Spiderman permitting, you could be working on the new album during the next tour?
It would be nice to continue working in the same way. Instead of doing this record in one solid bloc, we sort of did two-week sessions with Brian and Dan, as writing collaborators, and out of those sessions came a lot of really good raw material. But it wasn’t until April of last year that we went into the studio and said, Look, no one gets out of here until it’s finished.

The breaks meant we could come back to things. And, I think that helped everyone. I think it worked really well for Edge from a compositional point of view; he really got to look at how the album hung together and to see what was missing musically. I think it enabled Bono to complete and fully resolve some of the lyrics.

Originally we were looking at a deadline of last August but I think by taking a break instead of trying to push through we were able to come back to it and to pull in some new material. For instance, I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight came out of that period and Every Breaking Wave came out of that period, even though the last one didn’t get onto the album. It just made for a really good record and I think, from Larry’s and my own point of view, it gave us a chance to live with the material and to really have an influence on how it was finished.

So I think the breaks stopped us getting snow-blindness. I also think there was a fundamental shift in the band, in that the material became much more internalised. It wasn’t striving to reach out to connect to people; it became much more about inviting people to come in and be part of the experience.

That’s interesting. I would say the last two records broadly fell into the ‘striving to connect’ category…
I think that was the end of a period. When we were coming through the ’90s and we were playing a lot of big outdoor shows, we lost some connection with ourselves because it was about reaching out to those really big places and that was how we probably conceived a lot of that music. All That You Can’t Leave Behind was the beginning of the shift back, as we knew we were playing relatively small places, but they were much more musical experiences. I think it took the last two records for the band to value what we had together, to value our DNA. I think this record capitalizes and makes the most of that experience.

Did Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno’s writing credits make them try harder?
I don’t know about try harder but I think they were happier! [laughs] I think they both bring a phenomenal commitment to a U2 project in very different ways. Danny really does stay in the trenches and is the last one to leave the building. Brian tends to be the first man in in the morning, working on things that will influence the attitude of people, get them thinking in creative and inspired ways.

Long, creative relationships are unusual in rock’n’roll, but the mileage and the knowledge and the understanding from having been around with them for 20 years makes them a pleasure to work with. And they haven’t really changed much. They’re still questioning in the same way.

Who has the final say?
I think it is us. And it’s probably swung more that way. We’ve moved into a way of working where Brian will commit to a two or a three-week period then he goes off and does his other projects. And the same would be true of Danny [Lanois]. But there’ll be other periods when we’re just on our own.

It does come down to us ultimately. It used to infuriate Brian to the point of throwing the rattle out of the pram. Now I think he observes it and I think he has a healthy respect for it. Towards the end of the record, when we were in Olympic [Studios, South West London], he had a commitment to finish the record I haven’t seen in him for a long time. He was there and really fighting for the record. Like a true midwife would be.

How early on were you aware of what kind of album you were making?
I think there was a lot more clarity around this record and I can’t explain why. It just felt like people knew what this record was. Again, from a very personal point of view, it was like that from the beginning. When we first got together and started to play together, the sound that happened, there was a richness to it. The sound seemed to be a product of the time it was being created in. It was very unusual. The complex, sort of North African feel that’s a part of the record was there right from inception.”

Did the environment in Morocco have a marked impact on the finished product?
I think there was a time when it was more dominant. Earlier on in the record there was a time when it was a bit more challenging and questioning in a cultural sense - east and west and the war was a bit more central to the record. And then it seemed to shift again and it became the record that it is now. I think you’re aware that something has happened in the world. The world has changed and this record doesn’t actually stand up and tell you that because you should know it anyway - but it acknowledges that things are different now and there’s a different value system. I don’t know if you’ve read The Road by CormacMcCarthy? That has a very interesting, brooding atmosphere about it, a sense that you know that something has happened but you’re not quite sure what it is. I think this record has that quality.

Does Eno like bass?
[Laughs] He loves it if he’s playing it!

Do you and Eno always see eye to eye musically?
We have a really healthy respect for each other. It’s probably taken a little while to get to that point but quite often we’ll be digging in the same hole. The great thing about Brian is that he acknowledges his limitations and I have learned to acknowledge mine. He’ll sometimes take something I’m doing and I’ll think, ‘Oh shit, he’s playing my bass part again!’ And I have to go and do something else. But the result is always better. And quite often it’ll be the other way around: he’ll say, ‘Why don’t you play this?’ Or he’ll give me a part and then he’ll figure out something else around it. It’s very much a collaborative experience.

The thing that I love about Brian is that he gets so excited that he’s got a group of people to play with. Because a lot of his time is spent on his own. I think that’s probably why he can be a little impatient. By the time he’s worked something up he just wants to get off it and on to something else.

Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am is credited on I’ll Go Crazy… What does he contribute?
Will helped early on in the arranging of the demo ideas in the summer. Then when he came in we recut it and he helped us push it up the hill. The final version is a recut that we did late on when we’d kind of played it in a bit. But he’s a lovely, inspiring man to be around.

The version I heard before Christmas is almost more over the top than the version on the record…
You’re absolutely right. We did try and take some of the bells and whistles off it and bring it back down to earth. It doffs the cap towards Motown and it’s great to hear the band do a song like that. Unashamedly it’s a pop song and it’s got a pretty good one-two [chuckles]”

Interesting to hear French horns on a U2 record. On at least two songs I think.
Yeah. They’re a lovely mournful sound. Real brass is something that you don’t hear very much and it is a fabulous sound. Those tunes inherently had those brass parts written into them. But we did find a great horn player who came in and embellished them.

It works especially well with the guitar solo on Unknown Caller…
And that is one of Edge’s great guitar solos. Fabulous.

The internal chemistry of the band must shift over time and the process of making a record must be intense. Have you all come out the other side happy?
Erm… [laughs] I think people are more relaxed now. When you have the kind of success that we had early on it brings a kind of responsibility with it. For some of the band, that became a burden that we fought against and wrestled with. But now instead of thinking that the band is limiting we feel it is very free. And we can do things that we can’t do as individuals.

Most of us daydream about being millionaires. Do you ever wonder what you’d do if you woke up andweren’t a millionaire?
Primarily, I don’t identify myself as a millionaire but I am grateful on a regular basis that I don’t have to think about [money] too much. If things changed, I could live within my means. I’d probably find it difficult but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

There’s a lot of talk about the concert business downsizing. Could U2 tour on anything other than a massive scale?
I think it can change, depending on our appetite for big tours or for long tours or the economics of it. But for the tour coming up, I think we want to take on the big places again. It feels right to play the songs in stadiums this time. But I don’t know what songs we’re going to play yet. We’re about to go off and do some promo for TV and when we get back from that we’ll be rehearsing for the tour.

What did Bono get you for Christmas?
[Laughs nervously] Actually, we don’t do Christmas presents any more. It was negotiated a few years back. We tend to pass books around.

Interview by: Keith Cameron

U2: Amsterdam I

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Image via Wikipedia

Hey U2ters! I was unable to tweet the entire U2 show live from Amsterdam tonight, so I relied on my fellow U2ters for help.

Setlist:

Breathe
No Line on The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Mysterious Ways
I Still Haven't Found...
Angel of Harlem
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
The Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy (remix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride
MLK
Walk On
Desmund Tutu Speech
Streets
One

Ultraviolet
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender

Pics & Vids:

Credit to the owner of the pics is given when you click to enlarge:

Thanks to U2gigs for many of the vids!

Snow Patrol Opening for U2:




Video Setlist:

Crowd:



Intro/Breathe:



No Line On The Horizon:


Get On Your Boots:


Magnificent:


Beautiful Day:


Mysterious Ways:


I Still Haven't Found...


Angel of Harlem:


In A Little While:


Unknown Caller:


The Unforgettable Fire:


City Of Blinding Lights:



Vertigo:


I'll Go Crazy:


Sunday Bloody Sunday:


Pride:


MLK/Walk On:


Streets:


One:


Ultraviolet:


With Or Without You:


Moment of Surrender:

U2 in Berlin: 7/18/09

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Image via Wikipedia

According to U2ters on Twitter who were actually at the Berlin show tonight, this was the best U2 show they'd ever seen. Thanks to U2gigs.com for the two videos below. Incredible quality, as always. Show pics below the videos, click to enlarge.

Here's the setlist from Berlin:

Breathe
No Line On The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Mysterious Ways
I Still Haven't Found...
Angel of Harlem (fans played instruments)
Stay (Faraway So Close!)
Unknown Caller
The Unforgettable Fire
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy (Remix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride
MLK
Walk On
Streets
One

Ultraviolet
With Or Without You
Moment Of Surrender

Get audio clips on SalU2, here.

Beautiful Day:


I Still Haven't Found:




Stay:


Angel of Harlem:



Pics from Berlin (click to enlarge)

Here's a cool pic of the crowd leaving after the show had ended:

U2 in Nice: Pics and setlist

Tweet Credit to the owners of the pics are found on the site when you click the pic to enlarge:

1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day
6. Mysterious Ways
7. I Still Haven't Found...
8. Stand By Me
9. Desire (Billie Jean/Don't Stop snippets)
10. Stuck In A Moment
11. Unknown Caller
12. The Unforgettable Fire
13. City of Blinding Lights
14. Vertigo
15. I'll Go Crazy (Remix)
16. Sunday Bloody Sunday
17. Pride
18. MLK
19. Walk On
20. Where The Streets Have No Name
21. One

22. Ultraviolet
23. With Or Without You
24. Moment of Surrender

U2's 3rd night in Dublin not sold out

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Image via Wikipedia

From The Evening Herald:

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It's hard to believe, but tickets for U2's third Croke Park gig are still available.

Given that tickets for the U2 360 tour sold out in just 40 minutes last March, it seemed natural that their final gig on July 27 would go the same way.

But fans of the chart-topping superstars should note that there's still a chance to see the fab foursome in action when they take to the stage at the monster stadium this summer as they tour their No Line on the Horizon album.

The release is currently enjoying a mixed reaction from fans around the world.

Although their new single, Magnificent, stormed in at number five in the Irish charts, it has failed to set the British charts alight and peaked at only 79 in America's Billboard Hot 100.

Nonetheless, the band still sold some 484,000 copies of their new album in the first week Stateside.

U2 will kickstart their ambitious 100-date world tour on June 30 in Barcelona and will perform a string of dates around Europe.

Then they will be starting their American tour on September 12 at Soldier Field in Chicago.

State of the Music Industry

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Citing a 42% drop off in sales for U2's No Line On The Horizon, this article, which appeared in the Irish Times Print edition, digs into the current state of the music industry, and how it has become affected by file-sharing and download sites like iTunes.

Click here to read it on the Irish Times, or read below.

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MUSIC INDUSTRY: Once upon a time, the record industry was about hits. Michael Jackson’s Thriller , Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA and the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium were multi-million selling releases that allowed the industry to live high on the hog throughout the 1980s and 1990s, writes JIM CARROLL

Back then, music fans spent a small fortune during the format switch to CD and these windfall profits meant major label bosses could sit back, strike up another cigar and believe the good times would never end.

Fast-forward to 2009 and you have an industry in the depths of despair. CD sales are on a permanent downward slide – look at the remarkable 42 per cent drop in first-week US sales for U2’s current album, compared to the previous release, for example – and digital revenue is never going to be enough to match physical sale losses.

All the action is now happening in the live music business and the labels are trying unsuccessfully to elbow their way into that trough.

Remarkably, most of these woes are self-inflicted. In Steve Knopper’s book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age , he points out again and again that the labels ignored how changes in technology and consumer habits would impact on their business. Even when dot-com companies were begging labels to sell music online in the mid-1990s, they resisted. As Knopper notes in the book: “They were making big money, they had the Spice Girls, they had all the time in the world. Why change?”

And there’s nothing new about the industry-wide reluctance to embrace change.

"It is rather striking how those in the record industry have resisted technology over the decades," says Knopper. "They resisted recorded music, radio, MTV, pretty much any new idea that threatened the profits they were already making.

"On the one hand, it's understandable - the guys who traditionally ran record labels were old-school. Their idea was to find talent, record that talent and distribute the music to record stores. That's all they knew how to do, so any new idea was a threat to them. You're not dealing with the most forward-thinking people here.

"What really struck me was by the time Napster came along, every single label had hired people to deal with the internet, but those at the top weren't listening to the advice they were getting. They had been burned on technology before, they remembered things like quadrophonic sound and eight-track tapes, and didn't want to spend a lot of money releasing the new Coke of the record industry and lose again.

"When you want your business to continue doing well, you have to look at these inflection points as they arise. You have to deal with them properly or your business will be destroyed, and that is what is happening now."

Knopper is a seasoned music business analyst and his book, the result of 18 months of research and over 230 interviews, focuses on the industry-wide ignorance, arrogance and hubris as the labels threw their business away.

He points to the lawsuits that followed file-sharing pioneer Napster as a big turning point. "I don't think when Napster happened initially that they thought they would lose the business. I think that occurred after two or three run-throughs of legal action.

"First, they sued Napster out of existence. Then, they reacted to Limewire and Kazaa and Grokster and all the other file-sharers by suing them.

"Then, they started suing their customers. And then they got that hugely favourable Supreme Court decision in 2005.

"But none of this stopped file-sharing. The number of users continued to grow by the millions worldwide. It was at that point that I think they knew legal action was not going to work, long after everyone else had figured that out. They didn't have the moral or legal high ground and they were screwed. Even iTunes wasn't stopping file-sharing."

Knopper feels things would be much different today for the industry if they had done a deal with Napster's Shaun Fanning.

"Napster was more than just Spotify and Lala rolled into one, it was also Facebook and MySpace. It anticipated social networking by several years, it was built on music and had 27 million users at its peak.

"Sure, if they had done a deal, they would have lost some of those 27 million people who just wanted to pirate music and there are a lot of them out there. But it would have got a lot of other people who would have went 'wow, this is a great service' and would have been prepared to pay 15, 20, 50 bucks a month for it."

Instead, they did a deal with Apple's Steve Jobs, which worked out well - for the computer company.

"When the labels look back now, they remember that Jobs was just going to do this iTunes music store thing for the Macs," says Knopper.

"But not long after that, he extended iTunes to the PC and they felt bruised by that. You could argue that Steve Jobs was just being a savvy businessman, but Roger Ames [ of Warner Music] and Doug Morris [ of Universal Music] were savvy businessmen too. These were the top guys, incredibly sharp guys who knew their way around a business deal, and they shouldn't have let Steve Jobs get away with it.

"I think the problem was the labels had no real leverage at that point. In 2002, the only way a consumer could download music on the web was illegally, and that had been going on for three or four years. During that period from 1998 to 2002, from the beginning of Napster to the beginning of iTunes, the only way to get music online was to pirate it.

"The labels were very desperate at that point and were ready to do a deal with whoever came along. They felt they were lucky it was Steve Jobs and not Shaun Fanning's uncle they were dealing with. But they weren't so lucky because they ended up making much the same deal as they did with MTV, when they gave away all their videos for free and have regretted it ever since."

Knopper believes a lot of the current inertia can be put down to those at the top. "The deals the labels are doing with Q-Trax and Spotify and Google in China are really interesting, but the people who are running the labels now are the same people who were running the labels during the Napster era.

"You have to wonder if these guys like [ Warner Music's] Edgar Bronfman, and Doug Morris are the ones who are going to usher in the technology solutions at the labels. A lot of people at tech companies have been waiting a long time for the real tech guys to come in and take power at the labels. That change is what it is going to take for new ideas to really gain credibility."

Knopper outlines two potential futures for the labels. "What I wish it would look like in 10 years' time is something like this: for a start, you'd have the high-tech people in charge. These tech people are smart and are not just relying on unit sales to make all their money. They know that revenue is made up of ad revenue from streaming, ring tones, licensing rights from Guitar Hero .

"The new companies should be smaller, more nimble and not have huge overheads in the form of gigantic executive salaries. They can react quickly to change and go in the direction the artist wants to go and that's different for each artist," he says.

And the other option? "What I worry about is that Live Nation are going to merge with Ticketmaster, they will buy Warner and it will be the same deal that you've always had. Record sales will be the minor part of the equation and ticket sales the major part.

"They'll figure out how to make money from the ticket scalpers out there and then you've got a couple of companies with large revenues trying to hold onto it. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

(This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times)

Magnificent Day

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Image by Tiger Pixel via Flickr

U2.com is offering subscribers the full video for Magnificent. Below, is a youtube video showing a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot in Fez, and also the full video.