Month: February 2006

Chile Querido

U2 played at Nacional Stadium in Santiago, Chile last Sunday (Feb. 26). The show was so moving that the full band said goodbye at the end of the show, speaking on the microphone one by one. Bono opened a champagne bottle to celebrate the show’s success.

During “With or Without You,” Bono picked two girls from the crowd to dance with. The big surprise at the show was the delicate performance of “Mothers of the Disappeared.” It was acoustic but played with a Charango, a typical little guitar of the Andes folklore. The instrument was a gift from former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who gave Bono the Pablo Neruda medal for his artistic contributions to global culture. “Mothers of the Disappeared” has a deep meaning for Chileans, since it portrays the not-very-distant past of the country’s dictatorship and “disappearings.”

Setlist

City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
Until the End of the World
New Year’s Day
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Beautiful Day
The First Time
Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet the Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Where The Streets Have No Name
One
Zoo Station
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
With or Without You
Mothers of the Disappeared
Yahweh
All I Want Is You

Transcript of Bono’s effing NME Award speech

Regular readers may remember an earlier story here on U2log.com where we said we had learned Bono had recorded a speech to introduce Bob Geldof at the Meteor Awards. It now appears our information was slightly off mark – it was the NME Awards (February 23) the speech was used at and Geldof was there to accept an award for the Live 8 DVD. Bono’s speech made the news earlier this month for being riddled with profanity. We haven’t got video evidence for you yet, but here’s a transcript – not for the faint of heart:

Presenter: “Now to introduce our next winner we have a special guest, live via satellite orbitting his own ego…”

Bono: “You see, different people have differing abilities to get across the drama, the tension, the percussive qualities of the word ‘fuck’. I’ve tried, but I’m but a student. I’m not fit to touch the hem of this master of the word ‘fuck’: my friend Bob.”

“You see, from his lips it’s onomatopoeia, it’s a poetic device, it’s tragic comedy, it’s violence AND compassion. Bob Geldof has told me to fuck off perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. The same for Richard Curtis, the same for everybody in Make Poverty History.”

“”Fuck fuck, fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck off,” he said. I’m so very pleased that upon asking Bob to do Live 8, we did not listen when he told us to fuck off. And I hope he is too. Because a cheque worth 50 billion dollars has been signed for the poorest people on the planet. Signed but not cashed. Every time somebody buys one of these Live 8 DVDs we’ll put pressure on the politicians to cash the cheque. Thank you very much for this award. And to my friend who is picking it up in all our honour:… Fuck. Off.”

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