Bono Injury Forces Scrapped U2 Tour

This is not a news flash, as it's been pretty well covered this week. U2 singer Bono injured his back severely enough in rehearsals to require emergency back surgery in Germany last week. Originally a couple of shows were scrapped but now the U.S tour is postponed as well.

Why is this a big deal, besides the obvious concern for Bono's health and the inconvenience and disappointment of the people who made travel plans to attend the enormous shows?

Well, this is not just a typical big arena tour, but rather a continuation of the massive 360 tour. Some info on the logistics from last year:

The cylindrical 360 degree video screen weighs 54 tons and opens up in a scissor-like fashion to resemble an enormous gyro. Fully extended, it covers an area of 14,000 square feet which is as big as 2 doubles tennis courts. The video screen is made up of over 1 million pieces… 500,000 pixels, 320,000 fasteners, 30,000 cables and 150,000 machined pieces. Once the show is over, it takes 6 hours for the production team to dismantle the stage and another 48 hours for the road crew to take down the super-structure and get it loaded onto the trucks. The stage cost $40 million to design and build and that was just for the first one. The band is currently traveling around North America with 3 complete stages tended to by 500 crew members who are using 189 Semi-trucks for its transport.

That means Bono's back surgery is going to cost the band millions of dollars. Note that manager Paul McGuinness after delivering the perfunctory "The band is devastated they can't play for you because they are artists" line, betrays to Reuters the very real monetary concern of this disaster:

Paul McGuinness, speaking to Reuters outside the Munich hospital where the operation was performed on Friday, said the 50-year-old singer "feels awful" about the tour changes, which will affect over a million fans. "Clearly this is a serious injury and the recuperation time necessary to rehabilitate Bono is a big problem for the U2 tour and has unfortunately necessitated the postponement of 16 shows in North America," he said. As well as the band and fans, the injury will also hit Live Nation, the music concert company which signed a 12-year deal to handle merchandising, digital and branding rights and touring for one of the world's most successful bands. "Obviously Bono feels terrible about missing these shows and we are working as fast as we can with Live Nation to reinstate them and reschedule them for next year," McGuinness said.

Let's hope Bono gets better and doesn't worry about the dollars. Money comes and goes but your health is paramount!

DVD Review - The Joshua Tree Bonus DVD - 1987 in Paris

Got the remastered The Joshua Tree box set as an early Christmas present to myself. Take that Santa!

It has a second CD of unreleased nuggets and a bonus DVD. The remaster sounds great, and the bonus disc is pretty cool too, but I was not as blown away as I was with the Unforgettable Fire bonus CD. The only two great bonus tracks are Spanish Eyes and The Sweetest Thing, and the latter has been released in other places.

But man, the DVD alone is worth the money.

First up, there is a 30 minute or so featurette about the band in America on the Joshua Tree tour. It’s kind of a precursor to the Rattle and Hum movie, which I am not a huge fan of. But this documentary is a bit more real, with some of what looks like Super 8 footage, and loads of shots of them hanging around in dive bars in Arizona and Texas. There is a great segment where they are onstage in some shithole bar, drunk, just farting around making stuff up. There is some great rehearsal and concert footage as well.

It’s a compelling watch. They are not mega-superstars yet, but damn close. And it feels like they know it. But they are also still Irish kids in their 20s freaking out on how massive America is.

But the real standout on the DVD is the concert from July 4, 1987 in Paris at the Hippodrome, which looks like it’s full of a city’s worth of people. It’s an ocean of hands. Here, I was blown away by how good of a live band U2 was during this era. I always slagged them in high school as not being good musicians but once again I stand corrected. The band is solid and most refreshingly rocking.

Edge totally kicks ass. His guitar tones are biting and he often carries the whole band musically. This was the era where Bono would wear a guitar that he never played. He also is doing his crazy LiveAid stuff like jumping into the filming pit and running around where the roadie has to chase him with his cable so he has a mic the whole time. I guess cordless mics were not reliable yet. And if you want to see how Edge plays Bad, they zoom in on his hands a few times. Nice for the guitar players in the audience!

It’s so great to hear the band do nothing but stuff from the first five albums. To hear them do I Still Haven’t Found What I'm Looking For before they had played it a million times, or stuff like Trip Through Your Wire or Party Girl, which I can’t imagine stayed in the set list past this tour.

The band is in its prime. The songs are great. They are still playing with passion and fire, but they are also about to the top of the top and are therefore very confident and are stretching a bit.

I was actually shocked at how rocking they were. I am so sick of With or Without You but the song was so new at the time, this live version almost makes me want to hear it again. Bono in particular sings it like his life depends on the performance, instead of singing it because they can’t NOT play the song at a concert anymore.

Interesting to see Edge play piano, on for example October, Running to Stand Still, and The Unforgettable Fire. And for the closing song, 40, Edge plays bass and Adam Clayton does a nice Edge impression getting some good echo-drenched chordal work in. Who’d have thunk it?

There are great gorgeous performances of The Unforgettable Fire and Bad. New Years Day and Electric Co have a really fresh energy. New Years Day shows what a tight, rocking band they were back then. I am always impressed when Edge jumps from the main piano riff to his guitar solo without missing a beat.

It’s also cool to see how the band takes some of the heavily overdubbed songs from Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree and plays them as a three piece. For the most part it works really well with a couple of exceptions. Pride (In The Name Of Love) does not sound quite as huge as it should.

I’ll tell you what there is very LITTLE of on the DVD – Bono going off on political tangents. Rather, he is smiling a lot, posing like a rock star and kicking major vocal ass. Again, I feel like they are still a bit hungry but also on that total precipice of an insane level of fame. They are not yet jaded or laden with the ‘social responsibility’ that came with being good famous, rich Christians. One notable exception - I can see those fighter planes!

But in general, at this concert U2 is not concerned with saving the world. They are more concerned with rocking the house. And I am really glad someone got it on film.

Here is a clip of Bad from the DVD:

CD Review - U2 The Unforgettable Fire Remastered

On the urging of fellow blogger Seano, I went out at found the 2 CD remaster of U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. I had a bitch of a time finding it too, and finally got it at a Border’s.

I had not heard this album in years but know it well from high school, when U2 and The Police were my ‘secret bands’ I listened to by myself in my room.

Publically, it was all Quiet Riot, Sabbath, Maiden, Priest etc. U2 were just not musically adept enough to pass muster with my metal friends. Plus, way too many of our fellow students with strange haircuts liked this stuff. Therefore, I could not.

But I did! And The Unforgettable Fire is my probably my favorite U2 album, followed by All That You Can’t Leave Behind, No Line on the Horizon, The Joshua Tree, and War, in that order.

Anyway…This remaster is fantastic. The original CD is crisp and as with all good remasters, I hear all sorts of stuff that I never heard on the original. For example, you can hear the amp hiss at the very beginning of Bad. Not something you really WANT to hear, but you get the idea of the clarity presented here. This album is also a great one for remastering because it is so sonically ambitious. The layers of guitars, echo, keyboards and the pulsing bass and drums just sound really good here. A Sort of Homecoming and the title track really stand out.

The very odd Elvis Presley and America is very Floydworthy. I heard they got that sound by slowing the tape down and letting Bono wing it live. He wanted to re-do his vocals and they all said no. Imagine that. Telling Bono ‘no.’

The bonus disc also sounds great. It kicks off with a song begun for the album but finished for the remaster. So, kind of a ‘new’ old U2 song. The next four songs are from the EP Wide Awake in America, which contained live versions of A Sort of Homecoming and Bad, and two studio tunes, the better of which is The Three Sunrises -- a song that sounds like it would have been on War. I have to note that this live version of Bad is my favorite version of my hands-down favorite U2 song. And it just sounds great here.

The rest of the bonus tracks are B-sides, remixes and odd soundscapes that didn’t make the album. Together, they paint an ambitious picture of a band trying to do something new, with producers (Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois) who had some powerful sonic tools at their disposal and weren’t afraid to use them. For example, the instrumental Yoshino Blossom has a bit of a New Years Day feel, but with some screaming guitar tones from The Edge armed with an E-Bow, according to the liner notes written by Edge himself.

Another fun piece is the remixed version of A Sort of Homecoming that was done at Peter Gabriel’s studio (around the time he was recording So with Lanois). You can hear Gabriel doing backing vocals and that is kind of a neat novelty. The song starts like a Peter Gabriel song, as a matter of fact.

Two new mashup mixes of Wire are pretty good too. Overall the bonus disc adds a lot to this release, and the packaging is really nice too, with liner notes from Eno, Lanois, and like I said, Edge. Lyrics are also included. Very helpful in the afore-mentioned Elvis Presley and America, which has always been mysterious to me lyric-wise.

There is a super-deluxe version with a bonus DVD but I didn’t get it – maybe I should have. But if you ever dug this album back in the day, you’ll have fun re-experiencing it in its sonically enhanced state. Rock it!

U2 on YouTube - Say It Ten Times Fast - Then Watch Live on Sunday

U2 have announced that their upcoming concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California on Sunday will be streamed live in full and free of charge on YouTube.

Paul McGuinness, the band's manager, said that the band has wanted to broadcast a gig in this way for sometime. "It's the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium."

You'll be able to see the show at http://www.youtube.com/u2 at 8:30 PM Pacific Time.

Movie Review: It Might Get Loud

When I was about 10 or 11, my brother (who was ten years older) took me to a movie. I remember him being very fired up about this movie and saying I needed to see it because I liked music and guitar so much.

The theater was really far away and the drive took forever. On the way he told me about this new band he thought I would like. It had two kind of cool guys in it, and two sort of nerdy guys – it was Cheap Trick and he was right, I did like them. I also really liked KISS at the time and was getting way into The Beatles. I was still a year or so away from The Stones, Who, Tubes and Police. And puberty.

But he was about to blow my tiny little mind away by taking me to see The Song Remains The Same.

Whoh, mission accomplished, as GWB would have hung in the theater on a big banner. The place was packed. People were smoking dope and being really loud. It was very overwhelming and exciting and my brother turned to me about every three minutes and said, “are you doing OK?”

Of course the main event was on the screen. What a way to be introduced to Zeppelin. Everything about it was huge. The theater sound system was cranked, and I could only imagine why that bearded guy (manager Peter Grant) blew all those card playing dudes (music industry people) away with a machine gun at the beginning of the movie, and that one dude’s head fell off as colored streams of paint fountained out his neck. Huh!?

The music was of course a lot to take in -- 25 minute Dazed and Confused with violin bow solo and Jimmy Page scaling a mountain to meet a wizard-like version of himself, only to be thrown backwards in time back into the womb? Check. Creepy horse-riding highwayman causing general havoc and then returning home to a lovely dinner in his mansion with his family? Check. Insanely long drum solo? Check. Dragon pants? Check. Golden God? Check. Needless to say, I was never the same again.

Thanks, Johnny.

In the same spirit, I took my 10 and 12 year old boys to see It Might Get Loud this weekend. Not to freak them out on some 70s pseudo devil soundtrack, but to celebrate what I have loved and played for more than 30 years – the electric guitar.

The movie was billed as Jimmy Page (there is that name again), The Edge and Jack White getting together to pretty much talk shop and share stories and observations about the electric guitar.

And we got that. But we got more. A lot more.

The movie tracked Page, White and Edge and how they got into the guitar, what was going on in their lives at the time (all three have great stories of struggle and how music helped them respond), and how they have approached the instrument.

I learned a lot from all three but the one guy I didn’t know at all was Jack White. He is a very interesting dude. Youngest of 10 kids, raised in Detroit in a shitty neighborhood. Likes to make things hard on himself for a challenge, to keep things real. Such as, “If the keyboard is three feet away from me onstage, move it to four feet so I have to run over to play it.” I like that. Complacency is not his deal.

Edge’s story is a bit better known but the background on what was going on in the music industry and in Dublin (lots of strife) when U2 started was fairly eye opening.

Interspersed between the individual stories was footage of the three hanging out on a soundstage, talking about guitars and playing each other riffs. Some pretty cool little jams between all three as well.

Some of the cool scenes:

--Page touring us through the mansion where LZ 4 was recorded and showing the room the drums for When The Levee Breaks were recorded, and how he miked them (from the upper balcony)
--Edge showing how he uses his various effects and pedals – a gear geek’s wet dream
--White writing and recording a song out of the blue on a reel to reel for the movie
--The look on Edge and White’s faces as Page breaks into the Whole Lotta Love riff
--The three jamming on In My Time of Dying, trading slide solos

Anyway, I highly suggest seeing this film is you are a guitar player. It’s a must see, actually. Not sure it changed my kids’ lives or anything, but they really enjoyed it as well and asked when my next gig was. Gotta love that…

If you haven’t seen it yet, the trailer is pretty representative of the movie:

CD Review - U2 No Line On The Horizon

I got an email this week telling me I could buy the MP3 version of the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, for $3.99 at Amazon.com. Are you kidding me? I spend more than that on parking. So of course I went and hit ‘buy’ and have been listening this week.

There has been loads of hype around this album and frankly I have been really busy and have not paid much attention. I missed the band on Letterman all week, and I have not read the Rolling Stone cover story that arrived in the mail (Bono is wearing eye makeup on the cover photo that makes him look like he had a lobotomy. Is that why he wears the shades all the time?). I don’t know what the ‘single’ is, and I have not watched any of the new videos. So I am hearing this with untainted ears.

I also think they will have a hard time topping All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which is my all time favorite U2 album hands down. Sonically, performance wise and songwriting wise, they set a very high bar for themselves.

On first listen to No Line On The Horizon, I thought the first two songs were OK but nothing special. Then I hit the 7 plus minute Moment of Surrender, which is a slow, slinky tune that has a bit of a gospel feel, some fantastic slide guitar work from Edge and a vocal melody that reminds me of another song – Stones, Dylan, Neil Young? It’ll come to me. From this song on, I was engaged. And then on the next listen I got more into the first two songs.

Speaking of Neil, Edge lays down an interesting outro solo in Unknown Caller that sounds like he is channeling Neil – he pulls the notes from the guitar and branches out from his usual, chiming simple solo style. Get On Your Boots sounds like a return to the band’s techno experiment phase, except the main riff is a grungy, groovy thing. Someone gave Adam Clayton a fuzz box – sounds great! Stand Up Comedy is as catchy and funky as U2 gets. Not sure if this is the ‘hit’ but it should be! Great line in there too – “Be careful of small men with big ideas.” Indeed.

What is with all the vocal harmonies on this album? That is kind of a cool departure. Check Get On Your Boots On for the best example but it happens in Moment of Surrender, Fez – Being Born, Breathe and Cedars of Lebanon as well. Not sure I have heard such a rich vocal harmony sound on a U2 album.

And I have to say, Edge’s guitars sound as good as ever on this one. The dude has so many tools in the arsenal, from the smooth, almost jazzy picked chords in Cedars of Lebanon; grainy razor slide guitar; the rocking chunk of Magnificent; and of course the jangly, echo and delay drenched textures we all know Edge for throughout.

The band provides a really healthy balance between funky rhythms/distorted slide guitar and the moody, ethereal stuff I most associate with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno (a la Unforgettable Fire).

I can already tell that this album is going to grow on me. If you are fan of the band, shell out your $4 at Amazon.com while the offer lasts.

One other thing. After all the verses on the title track, Bono belts out “ah woa-oh-oh-ohie” right off of a 70s KISS album. Bono channeling Paul Stanley? You make the call...