Amazon lists updated ‘Complete Guide’

Amazon.com are now listing the updated version of the Bill Graham book ‘Complete Guide to the Music of U2′, costing a mere $6.95.

We will be featuring an interview with the current author (um, that would be me) in the near future.

Order Uncut Legends special online

If you hadn’t been able to pick up a copy of the Uncut Magazine Legends U2 special from your newsagent, you can now order it online from mags-uk.com for

U2′s new album “full of big ideas”

Journalist Neil McCormick reports on the first full playback of the new U2 album in today’s Telegraph. (reg.req)

We’re looking forward to Neil McCormick’s new book ‘I Was Bono’s Doppelganger’.

McCormick, whose brother was present at that infamous first meeting after Larry Mullen put a ‘wanted’ ad on the school bulletin board, has written his memoirs of growing up in the shadow of this old friend Bono.

It’s available for pre-order from an Amazon.com (or UK) outlet (or other booksellers) near you.

If you’re looking for more things to read, why not go over to the Dallas Schoo fansite. Dallas has just completed an interview with his fanclub.

Words not your thing? There’s video and still images of the band meeting fans outside their studio on the ‘Station vs U2′ website.

Uncut Legends #3: U2

Uncut Magazine released their third special ‘Legends’ issue this month, this time featuring U2. If you haven’t already picked up a copy from your newsagent, go do it now – it’s quite good value for money.

All U2′s albums are discussed and all members of the band have a chapter dedicated to them. A number of photographers pick their favourite U2 shots and journalists like Gavin Martin and Stuart Bailie chip in with features on ‘what makes U2 tick’.

Tons of pictures complement the words, and yes – there are even a couple you won’t have seen before. Gavin Friday earns the ‘bigmouth strikes again’ award for the best quote in the magazine: “I don’t think Bono decided to be ambitious, he just is. But if this country ever ran out of electricity, just shove a plug up his hole and it would run for a week.”

Unfortunately, the issue is not without its flaws. Irish journalist Bill Graham is mentioned a number of times in the magazine, but the pictures that go with the quotes are of of the American concert promotor of the same name.

How Bono staged the Hume and Trimble handshake

A new unauthorised biography of David Trimble details how Bono got the Northern Irish Unionist leader to shake hands with his political opposite John Hume.

Initially contacted by the SDLP to lend support to Hume and the 1998 ‘Vote Yes’ campaign, Bono recognised it was the Unionists that needed to be embraced in the run up to the Peace agreement referendum:

From the Belfast Telegraph three part series of extracts from the as yet unpublished ‘Himself Alone: David Trimble’ by The Daily Telegraph’s political commentator Dean Godson. Out in March 2005.

New book ‘Crank it up’ includes U2 chapter

Clive Young, senior editor of Pro Sound News, has written a book about concert engineers. ‘Crank it up: Live Sound Secrets of the Top Tour Engineers’ will be published in May 2004, by Backbeat Books.

One of the chapters covers U2′s PopMart and Elevation tours, based on interviews with Joe O’Herlihy, U2′s sound man since 1978.

Besides U2, 33 different bands’ tours are profiled in the book, ranging from The Rolling Stones to Tool, Beyonce to the Dixie Chicks and the Sex Pistols.

‘Crank it up’ can be ordered through the author’s website, Amazon and other web based sellers and your local bookstore (ISBN 087930-778-1, Order Code 0879307781, $19.95)