Irish Hospice Foundation Thanks Gavin Friday

All four members of U2 attended a special dinner to honor Gavin Friday last Friday at Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. The Irish Hospice Foundation arranged the event to recognize and thank Friday, who was the driving and creative force behind the Peter and the Wolf project.

Update 23/3: Several of the evening’s guests performed live, including Bono who sang Sinatra’s ‘You make me feel so young’ to his friend. But it was The Edge who apparently stole the show, playing wild and wondrous bass on the Virgin Prunes’ classic ‘Art Fuck’. Brother Dik assisted on guitar, while Gavin and Guggi took care of vocals.

Peter and the Wolf documentary

Ireland’s RTE 1 screened a half hour documentary on the making of ‘Peter and the Wolf’ on Monday, January 5th. There’s a brief review of the documentary on gavinfriday.com. We expect to be able to offer some screencaps and footage next week.

You got the boxed set, you ordered the T-shirt and the catalogue, now fork out for the luxury screen print: all available from the Irish Hospice Peter and the Wolf shop.

Auction watch

We brought you the pictures and we brought you the words. Now here’s the video.

From the auction hall at Christie’s New York, this is ten minutes of footage featuring Gavin Friday introducing Peter and the Wolf and Bono, reading his full speech:

dial up / dsl (Real Media)
Tune in next week for part II.

(video by Chris Conroy, encoding and hosting by Kevin /at/ U2exit.com)

Bono and the Edge appear on Late Late Show

The Edge and Bono both appeared on RTE’s Late Late Show’s Tribute to Jim Sheridan presented by Pat Kenny on Friday evening.

Bono revealed the band had been working in London on using string sections for three on three tracks but had to bin it because ‘the songs were crap’. The Edge said they would have to start from scratch to rework them. (quotes paraphrased from memory)

After being interviewed by Kenny, they were joined by Daniel Lanois to perform Falling at your feet.

Earlier in the day, Bono appeared on ArtZone on Lyric FM, RTE, in a taped interview (windows media) in which he talks very briefly about Peter and the Wolf and the sadness involved in drawing the pictures. There’s also an interview at USA Today. Check the right hand column for an additional real audio excerpt.

Playing Wolf

Bono and The Edge were in playful spirits at the “Peter and the Wolf” exhibit launch in Dublin last week, as these photos show. At the launch, Gavin Friday explained to the media how Bono and his daughters got involved in the Peter and the Wolf project.

“I was actually out in Bono’s for lunch and the kids were going mental as kids do on a Sunday,” said Friday. “I had a rough mix of the recording and I put it on to see if the children liked it and if they related to it — and they all loved it, especially my godchild Eve. And two months later, Bono, Jordan and Eve were painting away for the book.”

Bono attends Wolf launch

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Bono, Gavin Friday and Marie Donnelly (Irish Hospice) attended the ‘invitation only’ launch of Bono’s Peter and the Wolf paintings exhibition at City Hall in Dublin on Friday evening. Introduced by Barry Devlin, Gavin thanked everybody involved, as did Marie Donnelly. Bono then read from a prepared speech.

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