Bono and Hirst on Good Morning America

Via U2exit.com
Bono and his pal, the English artist Damien Hirst, lead the The (Red) Auction which raised more than $42 million for programs battling HIV and AIDS.

Bono speaks on World Aids Day

Bono tells Paul Vallely of The Independent why people in rich nations can make a difference to the Aids disaster.

“Do the maths,” says Bono. “It costs about $5 a week to pay for the two pills a day it takes to keep someone with HIV alive.”

And, talking about the work the band has been doing on their new album Bono reveals, yes, here it comes, ‘The Edge is on fire’:

“World music this is not,” he says, though U2 fans will “feel the difference”. Polyrhythmic is the word he chooses with a self-deprecating laugh. “U2 in dancefloor shock. Normally when you play a U2 tune, it clears the dancefloor. And that may not be true of this. There’s some trance influences. But there’s some very hardcore guitar coming out of The Edge. Real molten metal. It’s not like anything we’ve ever done before, and we don’t think it sounds like anything anyone else has done either.”

U2log.com predicts the album will come out sounding just like U2, just the way we like it.

Read more and find out about Bono’s number one in Ghana…

RED strikes back at ‘costly’ claims

Paul Vallely at The Independent refutes claims made by advertising trade magazine Ad Age that Bono’s RED campaign spends more money on advertising than it raises for Africa.

“The money RED has raised means that some 160,000 Africans will be put on life-saving anti-retrovirals in the coming months, orphans are being fed and kept in school in Swaziland and a national HIV treatment and prevention programme has begun in Rwanda. Some 99 per cent of funds raised go directly to life-saving schemes.”

On the RED website, CEO Bobby Shriver also reacts to the article in Ad Age:

“Your article says that $18 million and soon to be $25 million (when we have completed our most recent accounting) is a “meager” amount. It’s five times the amount given to the Global Fund by the private sector in four years.”

Bono and Chris Martin podcast for World AIDS Day

Bono, Chris Martin and Nelson Mandela are joining forces on the first ONE.org podcast, which focuses on World AIDS Day, to try to raise awareness of extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS in the world’s poorest countries. Go check it out on One.org this Thursday. (Instructions.)

By the way, Bono’s trailing behind J.K. Rowling in Time’s ‘Person of the year’ poll. Can’t have that now, can we? Get cracking.

Bono and Edge Attend Rally

While U2 fans enjoyed the MTV/VH1 broadcast of the 46664 concert on World AIDS Day (Dec. 1), Bono and Edge attended an AIDS Day rally organized by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Cape Town, South Africa, where Bono addressed a small audience comprised of HIV-positive people and AIDS activists. The U2 singer acknowledged the inititatives that TAC has taken on, saying he was “overwhelmed” by the organization’s work, and paid tribute to the true heroes of the fight–those living with AIDS/HIV.

Bono and The Edge by Helena Christensen

The Terrence Higgins Trust has kindly supplied us with Helena Christensen’s portraits of Bono and The Edge, which are being auctioned to benefit the trust, a leading HIV and AIDS charity in the UK.

The reserve price for each print is 1,000 pounds. Interested bidders should email the Terrence Higgins Trust to request a bidding form. (Photos © Helena Christensen. Used with permission.)

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