Oh Danny Boy

Long time U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois‘s official website has gone live… and we like it. And if U2 were thinking of hiring him for their new album… well, they can forget it. Lanois is taking time out to concentrate on his own music.

Dirty guitars

Bono is quoted on Infobeat: “We’ve started our album and it’s going to blow your mind. It’s real punk rock, with some great guitar sounds and some beautiful melodies. The band is so tight coming straight off tour.”

European Rumours

We simply cannot keep up with the many rumours about concerts in Europe next summer. From the dungeons of French car manufacturers Renault comes word that the band are negotiating to play the Stade de France on August 24. Austrian sources report August 12 for Vienna’s Praterstadium. In the latest German issue of Rolling Stone, a tour operator advertising their concert travel promotion mentioned U2 and, when questioned, said ‘yes, but no dates known yet’.

Meanwhile, The Salt Lake Tribune reports SLOC officials are booking entertainment for the summer Olympics, and are apparently ‘wooing’ U2. Woo. However, a spokesman for Interscope has denied the Tribune’s statement that ‘U2 will be in Utah during the Games to perform at a private party.’

(sources: several mailing lists, Didi, Martin, Serge, etc)

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Both ends burning

The Sun reports on busy boy Bono’s ‘holiday’ antics. Dining with Will Smith, recording with the band, hugging a tree Clinton, rubbing shoulders with Ronan Keating, dancing in Pacha and a head to head with Tony Blair. He even had time for the missus.

the Grauniad has more details: apparently Bono’s the next Marilyn Monroe, singing Happy Birthday to Bill Clinton (pop up image – sorry, we were bored), in London club ‘The Groucho’.

Stuart Adamson

If you were a fan of U2 in the early 80s, you will remember the reviews that would talk of ‘Big music’ and ‘Celtic rock’. The Alarm, Simple Minds and Big Country were the other bands that got stuck with the same label. While U2 climbed the ladder of succes by walking a fine line between experimentation and world domination, the other three bands – though succesful on a smaller scale – never really broke America, which seems to be the defining factor in these matters.

Stuart Adamson, singer, frontman of Big Country , who went missing on November 7, was discovered in a Honolulu hotel room on Sunday (December 16). He died from asphyxia due to hanging.

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Mapless

No Maps For These Territories, an 88-minute documentary about writer William Gibson, featuring interviews with writers Jack Womack and Bruce Sterling; music by tomandandy and readings and music by Bono and The Edge, will be shown on US TV this week.

The Mark Neale film gets its US premiere on IFC on December 19 at 11.30pm
Eastern, 8.30pm Pacific with repeat screenings at 4.30am Eastern, 1.30am
Pacific. Director Neale ‘A veteran of visual conceptualization and mixed media art’ designed the multimedia presentation for the ZOO TV tour.

More information on Gibson, who based one of the characters (Lo Rez) in his book ‘Idoru’ ($:USA/UK) on Bono, and the film at www.nomaps.com. Salon wrote a feature on the documentary earlier this year, as did Wired.

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Fat Chance

Following up on our earlier story about the latest terror to hit post offices, we present to you the @U2.com Poll — vote for the incarnation of Bono that you think should end up on Ireland’s Oct. 2002 stamp. We remind you that your vote doesn’t even remotely count towards the government’s decision (like all good democracy) — it’s all in fun. At the last hand recount, “Elevation Bono” was winning, with “The Fly” a respectable second. Who wants to stack the deck for the mullet? Not us. But come on, folks, must we really memorialize the paunch and the weave…?

Just Passin’ Through

Dom Joly of Trigger Happy TV (UK) mentions The Forgotten Ones in a recent Guardian interview: “We used to look at all those CCTV cameras and wonder who watched them, so we did things in front of them like mock executions of dogs. It wasn’t very funny so we slo-mo’d it, to give it pathos, then we put Passengers by U2 and Pavarotti on it and it worked. The music gives Trigger Happy totally undeserved depth – we can even drag a tear out of someone occasionally.” (Thanks to Darren)