Month: October 2004

Bono Tells Portland Audience to Care and Get Involved

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Bono speaks in Portland, Oregon, about Africa: a continent of tragedy and opportunity.

Darci Chapman Hanning reports for U2log.com. Photos by Peter Hanning.

Beginning his speech with a surprise announcement, Bono revealed that two women had returned the lyrics and notes that had been stolen from him 23 years earlier, just after U2’s first gig in Portland. The notes and lyrics were for U2’s then upcoming album October.

“People who could have published or sold my back pages, for absolutely no award, have handed them back. An act of grace, an act of goodness; you will never know how much that means to me. You will never know the contents of these letters because of the decency of these two women. They’re here tonight, and I want to thank them.”

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Top Hat Turns Bono Spanish

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Bono opened the third annual MTV Video Music Awards Latin America last week via a pre-recorded video. Wearing a top hat and speaking in Spanish, Bono greeted the Latin audience in this way:

Senoras y Senores!
Pasen y vean!
llego el circo!
Bestias del Rock and Roll
Magos del Pop
Bandas en vivo y sin red
y la lengua más grande del planeta
Bienvenidos a los MTV Music Awards
Latin America two thousand and…1, 2, 3, 14.

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Bono and Edge Team Up With Jobs

Bono and The Edge were in San Jose, California, today to help Apple announce:

  • A special 20GB black U2 iPod that will retail for $349US featuring all four band members’ signatures.
  • A digital box set of all of U2’s albums as well as over 25 rare and unreleased tracks. The box set will retail for $149US. U2.com says that those tracks will include material from Hasta La Vista, Baby! and Melon, the Propaganda-only fan club CDs. The total is said to be “over 400 tracks” — which is a lot more than just all the albums. Hopefully there’ll be more on this soon.
  • The iTunes music store is now available in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, in addition to the UK, US, Germany and France. (No Ireland?)
  • A iPod Photo for sharing your iPhoto library with friends and family who aren’t already sick of your photos. Price: $499US (40GB); $599US (60GB).
  • Bono on CNBC, discussing the release: “Music and technology have always been neighbours. Today they moved into the same house.”

Update:Watch the video stream of the event.

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Go Vertigo, go Dutch

The Dutch U2 fanclub is having a fanclub meet on November 22, the day before the release of U2’s new album. Fans will be able to listen to the new album, see the accompanying DVD and buy the CD and DVD in all three formats.

So if you’re Dutch, get yourself to Stairway to Heaven in Utrecht, Mariaplaats 11-12 from from noon to 5pm. For more info, mail info@u2fanclub.nl

U.K. fans should keep an eye on Channel 5. Bono is being interviewed by Alastair Campbell on Wednesday 27th October at 19.30pm.

… still strung out on U2? Check out this ‘string quartet tribute‘ to U2. Whatever will they think of next?

Bono’s stolen briefcase returned after 23 years

Readers should know something about U2log.com: We are damn good at being discreet. Almost a year ago, one of U2log.com’s editors was contacted by Danielle Rheaume from Olympia, Washington (now a Vancouver resident), who claimed a friend of hers, Cindy Harris, had found some “interesting U2 material” in the attic of her Tacoma home. Harris had found the material when she and her husband purchased the home many years earlier and had forgotten about it. Last year, however, Harris brought up her discovery in a conversation with her friend Rheaume, who is a U2 fan.

When Rheaume heard what her friend had in her attic, she was astonished because she recognized exactly what it was: the contents of Bono’s briefcase that had been stolen 23 years earlier in Portland.

The saga of the stolen briefcase is well known within U2 fan circles. It contained lyrics for U2’s second album ‘October’, and disappeared when U2 played a club in Portland in 1981. The theft influenced the making of the U2’s crucial second album, as Bono had to rewrite from scratch. Over the years, Bono’s briefcase has become the Holy Grail of U2 mythology. Only recently a U2log.com reader commented how finding it would be ‘quite the story’.

This is the story. Rheaume contacted U2log.com to help her and her friend get in touch with U2’s management so the two could return the material to Bono in person. Knowing that anyone would find their claim unbelievable, we asked for photographic evidence to provide to U2’s management and received the photos that are published with this report.

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Bono’s Trek to the City of Three Kings


Representative John Lewis (D-Ga) and Bono

The historic city of Memphis, Tennessee, with its shores resting on the mighty Mississippi River, keeps any resident or passerby out and about busy with everything from the musical legacy of Elvis Presley’s Graceland, Sun Studios, Stax Records, the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, Beale Street’s jazz and blues clubs, to wondrous riverboat rides, museums, and sporting events. A visitor’s most important stop during a stay in Memphis, however, might very well be a motel.

Ruth Barohn reports for U2log.com

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Atomic Details

U2log.com has learned a few more details from yesterday’s preview of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in Australia, including the running time and producer of each song:

1. Vertigo 3.11 (Steve Lillywhite)
2. Miracle Drug 3.54 (Steve Lillywhite)
3. Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own 5.05 (Chris Thomas)
4. Love & Peace 4.48 (Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois)
5. City of Blinding Lights 5.46 (Flood)
6. All Because of You 3.34 (Steve Lillywhite)
7. A Man & A Woman 4.27 (Steve Lillywhite)
8. Crumbs From Your Table 4.59 (Steve Lillywhite)
9. One Step Closer 3.48 (Chris Thomas and Daniel Lanois)
10. Original of the Species 4.34 (Steve Lillywhite)
11. Yahweh 4.22 (Chris Thomas)

Other details emerging from the preview:

  • The second single will be released on February 5, 2005, and the third on May 16, 2005.
  • U2 will perform around 10 shows in Australia and New Zealand during their tour.
  • “City of Blinding Lights” was originally called “Firefly” and was the track the band were thinking of contributing to the “Spiderman” soundtrack. (We had heard it was called “Sky Hawk.”)
  • The band will be doing some video shoots in Dublin in the next few weeks.
  • The band have been working on live versions of the new songs in rehearsals and will return to rehearsing once Bono’s commitments to DATA have been fulfilled.