February 1
Still at the World Economic Forum, Bono meets with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who promises that Africa will be the main topic of discussion at the upcoming G8 Summit in Canada. Later, Bono offers comments to delegates gathered for an evening concert. There are reports that Bono also sings during the concert, but these reports are never confirmed.

Meanwhile, U2 lose some of its musical gear when a pipe bursts, causing an eight-foot tidal wave to rage through the Crosbie Business Centre in Dublin. U2 and the Corrs both use the facility for storage. Fortunately, much of U2’s most important equipment is with them in New Orleans.

Edge Counts His Blessings After the Dublin Flood

“We lost an awful lot of instruments…. The storage area where we had all our equipment was completely flooded. But luckily my main guitars were with us in New Orleans … the Gibson Explorer that I’ve had since I was 17-years-old, and the amplifier I’ve used on every album for every show since we got a record deal.”

February 2
On day three of the World Economic Forum in New York, Bono sits on a panel and debates foreign aid with US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Many summit participants crowd the stage afterward to get Bono’s autograph.

Later in the day he joins Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to announce the creation of a new organization, DATA, whose purpose will be on eliminating extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa. The name is an acronym for “Debt AIDS Trade Africa.” Gates announces that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will pledge $50 million to support the DATA agenda. The formation of DATA shifts the burden of scheduling and promoting Bono’s humanitarian activities away from Principle Management.

Meanwhile, the rest of the band attend a Super Bowl party at the House of Blues in New Orleans.

February 3
- Superdome, New Orleans. U2 performs at halftime of Super Bowl XXXVI. Bono walks through the crowd to take the stage as ‘Beautiful Day’ begins. A larger version of the Elevation Tour’s heart is used for the stage, surrounded by people on the field and in the heart. As ‘MLK’ starts, a screen rises from the back of the stage, which scrolls the names of the people who lost their lives on 9/11. The scrolling continues through most of ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, before dropping to the ground. As the band’s performance comes to an end, Bono reveals the US flag-like lining of his jacket. Unconfirmed reports later say that only Bono and Edge perform live and Adam and Larry are pre-recorded.

An Almost-Super Disaster

Bono explains how U2’s Super Bowl performance almost ended before it began.

“Our idea was to have a music crowd on the pitch and then walk through that crowd to get up on the stage. I had on these earphones that were wireless. The band are walking through the crowd [sic; only Bono walked through the crowd] and there’s a camera right in front of me, and the punters start slapping me on the back. I realise that the tiny wires of my earplugs are vulnerable. All one person has to do is pull the wire, and I’m off air. I would hear nothing. Off the air in front of a billion people! And this is going out live, and there’s nothing you could do. So because this wire had been left exposed, I just started to quietly panic. But if you look at the film of that, you’ll see me swaggering with the most annoying smirk ever seen. You just think: That guy is such a prat!”

U2’s performance is well received by both football fans and the media, as well as by other musicians who performed prior to the game including Paul McCartney and Mariah Carey. Many call it the best Super Bowl halftime performance ever. All That You Can’t Leave Behind reaches number 25 on the charts after the Super Bowl. As for the game, the New England Patriots beat the St. Louis Rams 20-17 on a field goal on the game’s last play.

After the game, U2 and friends enjoy a celebratory dinner in the French Quarter. Though he’s allergic to red wine, Bono has a glass and later passes out on the floor in the restaurant’s bathroom.

———

October 12
- Top Rank, Brighton, with Comsat Angels.

U2 releases its second album, October. The cover features an unflattering photo of the band at the Grand Canal Docks in Dublin. As the story goes, Island Records had reportedly sent a rep to Dublin to tell the band the label wasn’t happy with the album artwork they submitted. But when U2 objected to the interference, Island backed down and the album is released today as U2 designed it.

The songs reflect the difficulty U2 had in making it. Having lost his briefcase on tour in Portland, Bono makes up many lyrics as he sings the songs in the studio. Thematically, October is a deeply Christian album with lyrics that call out for and question God – just as three members of U2 have been dealing with their own spiritual questions.

[SIDEBAR]

The difficulties of the October era

Adam: “It was a case of, ‘We’ll make it up as we go along.’ I think we probably would have pulled it together okay if, in the middle of it, we hadn’t had Bono, Edge and Larry going, ‘Maybe this isn’t what we want to do.’”

Edge: “October was a struggle from beginning to end. It was an incredibly hard record to make for us because we had major problems with time. And I had been through this thing of really not knowing if I should be in the band or not. It was really difficult to pull all the things together and still maintain the focus to actually finish a record in the time that we had.

“At that stage we were going through our most out-there phase, spiritually. It was incredibly intense. We were just so involved with it. It was a time in our lives where we really concentrated on it more than on almost anything. Except Adam, who just wasn’t interested.”

Adam: “I didn’t have a problem at all with spirituality and identity. I just had a problem with the disruptiveness that it brought to the band’s activities. And then later, as we got into the October album, and the others were considering whether rock’n'roll was the right form of expression – I never wanted to go to those meetings. I didn’t like the tone of what was going on. It was another band. It was an exclusivity that I didn’t buy into.”

The album enters the British charts at number 11, and peaks there. It climbs no higher than 104 in the US.

Reviews are mostly positive. In Hot Press, Neil McCormick says: “October is a musical and spiritual growth for U2, a passionate and moving LP for me. U2 have evolved constantly, songs changing and growing over a period of time.” Dave McCullough raves about the album in Sounds: “It all breathes fire, recovering too from the pair of standouts appearing at the start of each side – ‘Gloria’ being possibly Their Finest Moment and ‘Tomorrow’, low and muted, gently oozing emotion. This October will last forever.” Writing in Rolling Stone, Jon Pareles calls the album “barely coherent” and dismisses Bono’s lyrics as cliché: “… the way to enjoy U2 is to consider the vocals as sound effects and concentrate, as the band does, on the sound of the guitar.”

Tracks: ‘Gloria’, ‘I Fall Down’, ‘I Threw a Brick Through A Window’, ‘Rejoice’, ‘Fire’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘October’, ‘With A Shout (Jerusalem)’, ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’, ‘Scarlet’, ‘Is That All?’

——–

(In case you missed it, I posted the book entry for War release earlier this year.)

I can’t keep this to myself, so here are a few sample pages (click to see a larger version of each one):

The above is the beginning of the 1981 chapter. This is (currently) pages 38 and 39 in the book. You’ll see some gibberish text below the color photo — that’s where a photo caption will go.

And this sample is the next two pages from the 1981 chapter – pages 40 and 41.

The reason I’m going through all the proofs is to try to catch any remaining typos, make sure photos are generally placed in the right places, write some photo captions, and stuff like that. Need to wrap this up soon so the book can get sent to the printer! Back to work I go…..

——–

February 28
- Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh, with the Nightcaps.

U2 releases its third studio album, War, produced by Steve Lillywhite. It features Peter Rowen on the cover, reprising his role from the Boy album. But the innocence of the first cover is replaced on War with a photo that shows the child scarred and afraid. The music is louder and more aggressive than the band’s first two albums, and sounds nothing like the smooth pop and synthesizer artists that are taking over the charts. War sees U2 addressing the world around them more directly than ever. In addition to ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, songs like ‘Seconds’, ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘The Refugee’ are grounded in Cold War and conflict, hardly the subject matter of most songs on the radio at the time.

Bono explains the “uncool” War

“It was incredibly uncool to make this record, and it completely freaked out most people – Geldof being one of them. I remember Geldof saying, ‘What are you at? I mean, this is pop music we’re talking about, and you’re taking on these ideas.’ All these people – Sting. They were doing the do-do-do-do/de-da-da-das! So this was a break, this was not cool – for a band to take this position.”

War debuts at number one in the UK, U2’s first chart-topping album. It debuts at number 91 in the US, and eventually climbs as high as number 12.

Reviews for the album are very positive. “U2 may not be great intellectuals,” writes J.D. Considine in his four-star Rolling Stone album review, “and War may sound more profound than it really is. But the songs here stand up against anything on The Clash’s London Calling in terms of sheer impact, and the fact that U2 can sweep the listener up in the same sort of enthusiastic romanticism that fuels the band’s grand gestures is an impressive feat.”

“It is a major leap forward,” says Liam Mackey in Hot Press, “conceptually and technically, quickly persuading this listener to the view that it totally eclipses their previous two albums. I’ll even go a step further and proclaim War, among the major albums of the last few years.”

But Sounds magazine isn’t convinced: “War suggests a tired U2, a U2 that perhaps hasn’t quite sorted out the variances between live and recorded rock music.”

Tracks: ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘Seconds’, ‘New Year’s Day’, ‘Like A Song’, ‘Drowning Man’, ‘The Refugee’, ‘Two Hearts Beat As One’, ‘Red Light’, ‘Surrender’, ‘40′

———

That’s all!

————-

March 9

U2 releases The Joshua Tree, their fifth studio album. The album cover features another cinematic Anton Corbijn photo, this time showing the band in black-and-white in the California desert. With U2’s stature at an all-time high after Live Aid and the Conspiracy of Hope Tour, anticipation for The Joshua Tree is sky-high. U2 delivers a tour de force that tops the charts, produces number one singles, earns U2’s first Grammy awards, and vaults the band into the stratosphere. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois produce again, but The Joshua Tree has little of the ambience and lack of focus of The Unforgettable Fire. On the contrary, U2 tries and succeeds in crafting a thematic album with tight, direct lyrics and the best songwriting of U2’s career.

[SIDEBAR]

Edge explains U2’s plan for The Joshua Tree

“We felt on this record that maybe, options were not such a good thing, that limitation might be very positive. So we decided to work within the limitations of the song as a starting-point. Let’s actually write songs. We just wanted to leave the record less vague, openended, atmospheric and impressionistic. Make it more straightforward, focussed and concise.”

The Joshua Tree becomes the fastest selling album in British music history, selling 300,000 copies in its first two days and reaching number one. It enters the U.S. chart at number seven, U2’s best debut yet and first Top 10 album, and quickly climbs to number one.

Sensing that U2 is about to reach superstar status, Island Records throws all of its marketing muscle behind the album. Island president Lou Maglia calls it “the most complete merchandising effort ever assembled” in his career. $100,000 is spent on store displays alone. It’s the first album to be shipped on vinyl, cassette, and CD simultaneously. (Typically, CDs hit stores several weeks later than records and cassettes.) It’s also the first album to sell one million CDs in the U.S.

Album reviews are almost universally positive. In the Boston Globe, Steve Morse describes The Joshua Tree as U2’s “most challenging work to date. It’s another spiritual progress report, enwrapped in music that strikes a healthy balance between the lushness of their last album, 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, and the more volcanic rock of their early years.”

Says Los Angeles Times‘ critic Robert Hilburn: “The Joshua Tree finally confirms on record what this band has been slowly asserting for three years now on stage: U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago — the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. In this album, the band wears that mantle securely.”

In Hot Press, longtime supporter Bill Graham writes: “The Joshua Tree rescues rock from its decay, bravely and unashamedly basing itself in the mainstream before very cleverly lifting off into several higher dimensions. They’ve been misunderstood occasionally, even by their committed supporters — but after The Joshua Tree, with its skill, and the diversity of issues it touches, one thing is absolutely clear: U2 can no longer be patronized with faint and glib praise. They must be taken very seriously indeed after this revaluation of rock.”

Jon McCready of NME says the album is “a better and braver record than anything else that’s likely to appear in 1987.”

Tracks: Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, With Or Without You, Bullet The Blue Sky, Running To Stand Still, Red Hill Mining Town, In God’s Country, Trip Through Your Wires, One Tree Hill, Exit, Mothers Of The Disappeared

After their TV taping last night, U2 appears at the Makin’ Tracks record store in Belfast at midnight, signing autographs and speaking with about 200 fans who are there to buy The Joshua Tree on its first day of release. (The crowd would likely have been bigger if not for a local radio DJ mistakenly announcing that the album release had been delayed a week.) In London, more than a thousand fans line up at midnight outside a record store to buy the record as early as possible — one of the fans in line is singer Elvis Costello.

I thought I’d post the diary entry for July 13, 1985 — U2 at Live Aid. This is one of the longer diary entries, I think. (The album entries are all pretty long, too.)

In addition to the text I’m writing, I hope to have a lot of “sidebars” in the book — these are typically going to be where pertinent quotes from the band or others involved will be used to explain and expand on what I’ve written. For the purpose of this blog post you’re reading, I’m going to put that text in blockquotes so it’s separated from my text.

So, here we go … hope you likey.

———-

July 13
- Wembley Stadium, London. Live Aid: London and Philadelphia. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof organizes the concert to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia. U2 are set to play at Wembley Stadium in London, about halfway through the day’s lineup. Tickets are sold for £25, but £20 of that is advertised as a donation to the Live Aid charity. Touts outside the stadium are getting as much as £80 for a ticket. Official souvenir stands offer Band Aid videos, Live Aid posters, programs, and shirts – all of which include the line, “This Saves Lives.”

At about 5:20 p.m. London time, Jack Nicholson stands on stage at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and introduces U2 at Wembley Stadium. The crowd roars and what seem like dozens of U2 flags are waving in the air. The band’s planned set is “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “Bad” and “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” but U2 only manage to play the first two in their allotted 20 minutes.

“Bad” lasts an astonishing 14 minutes. During the song, Bono breaks one of Geldof’s rules — don’t leave the stage — when he climbs down to ground level to dance with a girl in front of the crowd. It’s one of the most memorable moments of the entire two-continent event, but it leaves the rest of U2 angry with Bono; they never had a chance to play “Pride,” the hit single that many of the billions watching on TV might know.

[SIDEBAR]

Bono: “Larry told me he was going to stop playing”

“I was trying to find an image that would be remembered for the day. I was not happy with just playing our songs and getting out of there. I wanted to find that moment. Of course, afterwards, I got a terrible time from the band. I was almost fired. Because I had climbed on roofs, I had left stages before, I had climbed on PA stacks, I had jumped into the crowds, I had physical confrontations in crowds, but this was the worst one for them, to leave them for what felt like hours, apparently. Larry told me he was going to stop playing. This was a big show for our band, there were a billion people watching, and we didn’t do our big song. Everyone was very annoyed with me, I mean, very annoyed.”

Bono is so depressed that he reportedly thinks about leaving U2. He decides to take some personal time to sort through his feelings and emotions. He escapes to the Irish country, to a small town where Ali has family. There, Bono meets a sculptor who is working on a statue called The Leap, inspired by Bono’s dance with the young girl at Live Aid. Bono rethinks the idea that he had made a mistake.

An estimated 1.5 billion TV viewers around the globe see U2’s performance. Many journalists pick U2 and Queen as the top performances of the day. The band’s album sales rise worldwide after Live Aid, and U2 later wins Rolling Stone magazine’s Readers’ Poll award for Best Performance at Live Aid.

At the request of the UK press, the band issues the following statement about their participation at Live Aid: “U2 are involved in Live Aid because it’s more than money, it’s music…but it is also a demonstration to the politicians and the policy-makers that men, women and children will not walk by other men, women and children as they lie, bellies swollen, starving to death for the sake of a cup of grain and water. For the price of Star Wars, the MX missile offensive-defense budgets, the desert of Africa could be turned into fertile lands. The technology is with us. The technocrats are not. Are we part of a civilization that protects itself by investing in life…or investing in death?” Hoping for something more quotable, many in the media ignore the band’s statement.

(end)

September 12, 1995

Bono and Edge are joined by Brian Eno and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti at the latter’s “Pavarotti and Friends” concert in Modena, Italy, to perform the new song “Miss Sarajevo,” featuring vocals by Pavarotti. U2 later performs a version of “One” complete with classical orchestra. The concert is an annual event hosted by Pavarotti and is a benefit to raise money for the children of Bosnia.

Miss Sarajevo is also the title of a documentary directed by Bill Carter, who had appeared via satellite from Sarajevo during U2’s Zooropa tour concerts in 1993. The 31-minute film is produced by Ned O’Hanlon and Bono, and is partially financed by U2. When the program airs on TV, it begins with an introduction by actor Liam Neeson provides and introduction, and closes with U2’s video for the song “Miss Sarajevo.”

December 21, 1997

Bono appears with Luciano Pavarotti at the opening of a cultural center in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

April 8, 2003

The U.N. confirms that Bono and Luciano Pavarotti will perform together at the Italian tenor’s annual charity concert near his hometown of Modena, Italy. This year’s concert, to be held May 27th, is slated to benefit Iraq war refugees. Bono and Pavarotti sang together in 1995 to aid children in Bosnia.

May 25, 2003

Bono arrives in Italy in advance of a performance with Luciano Pavarotti in Modena. Today, they rehearse “One” with a full orchestra, and then practice a new version of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”

They do a news conference after rehearsal, and then Bono and others have dinner at a restaurant that Pavarotti owns in the country. There, Bono joins the house band to sing a bit of “Unchain My Heart.”

May 27, 2003

Bono makes a solo appearance at the Pavarotti and Friends concert in Modena, Italy. His performance includes “One” with an orchestra backing, and a duet with Pavarotti on “Ave Maria.” Bono has written new lyrics for the song that reflect the ongoing situation in the Middle East:

Ave Maria
Where is the justice in this world?
The wicked make so much noise, mother
The righteous stay oddly still
With no wisdom, all of the riches in the world leave us poor tonight

And strength is not without humility
It’s weakness, an untreatable disease
And war is always the choice
Of the chosen who will not have to fight

The concert raises an estimated £1 million pounds for Iraqi war refugees. It’s Bono’s second performance at Pavarotti’s concert — he performed with Edge and Brian Eno during the 1995 concert.

December 13, 2003

Bono and Edge, with their wives Ali and Morleigh, respectively, are on hand for the wedding of Luciano Pavarotti to Nicoletta Mantovani in Modena, Italy. Initial reports suggest that Bono sung for the couple during the reception, and London’s Evening Standard eventually reports that Bono sang “All I Want Is You”, changing the lyrics to the more topical “When the pasta has run dry/And the wine no longer gets you high/All I want is you.”

July 16, 2005

On the third of three nights in Amsterdam, U2 surprise the 50,000 on hand by performing “Miss Sarajevo” for the first time since 1997. Bono sings the operatic verses that were handled in the studio by Luciano Pavarotti.

August 21, 2006

A day after visiting Sarajevo, Bono visits Luciano Pavarotti — who sang with U2 on the song “Miss Sarajevo” — at the tenor’s home in Italy. Pavarotti is recovering from surgery for pancreas cancer in July.

1.) I’m reading this article to get some background about U2’s deal with ESPN for those World Cup soccer/football commercials last year. The article mentions that Bono and Paul McGuinness were looking at the scripts for those commercials while U2 flew from Los Angeles to Monterrey earlier in 2006 during the Vertigo Tour.

Ding! That deserves a mention. Not hugely important, but it should be in the book. It adds a little more detail to the process and development of U2’s relationship with ESPN.

But where to find out the day of that flight?

2) Where else, but Willie Williams’ tour diaries on U2.com. After poking around a bit, it becomes obvious that the band flew to Monterrey on February 10, 2006.

So, we have a new diary entry for the book, which looks like this:

February 10, 2006

Though much of the crew is already in Mexico, U2 flies from Los Angeles to Monterrey today. During the flight, the band reviews the scripts for a series of World Cup commercials ESPN wants to air later this year. The scripts call for each band member to provide voice-overs for a set of five commercials.

As I said, sometimes it’s the little victories…..