Fan Fare

There’s mud at Glastonbury, and it ain’t glorious

Mud, mud, glorious mud. Or so goes the popular English song.

It’s a phrase often applied to the Glastonbury music festival, where the combination of some 180,000 people, rain and 900 acres of grassy fields in an English valley can produce an awful lot of the stuff.

At only my second Glastonbury after last year’s sun-baked edition, the rain and mud has come as a bit of a shock. Of course I’m careful who I complain to at the festival – veterans merely shrug their shoulders and say something like “nothing compared to …” and name a year when the conditions were particularly unpleasant.

Getting from one venue to the next is not easy at the best of times in Glastonbury, with crowds and a poor sense of direction often getting in my way. Now it takes at least twice as long as I trudge through sticky, squelchy mud and try to avoid the kind of messy belly flops I’ve seen performed – mostly accidentally – by fellow festival goers.

Keeping the tent from turning into a mud bath is another challenge, and taking notes in the rain a further frustration.

But then again, I’m not complaining. I’ve decided that if you haven’t done Glastonbury in less clement climes than 2010, then you haven’t really done Glastonbury at all. That said, I do catch myself thinking back to last year and how easy it all was.

At least the Met Office has some good news. They predict that after today’s rain, things will improve on Saturday and Sunday. Probably not in time to dry the mud, however.

U2 played live for the world, were you listening?

U2 played live for the world on Sunday night via YouTube.com, and as they were in Hollywood, Bono gave the band a movie star sheen when he introduced each member. He compared drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to James Dean, bassist Adam Clayton to Clark Gable, The Edge to Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” and himself to a mix of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

But if the setting was L.A. (Pasadena’s Rose Bowl to be exact), the show’s direction was aimed at a global audience. Before U2 performed “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” images flashed on the screen of green-glad protesters in Iran, some of them stained in blood. The crowd reacted with cheers of support for Iranian dissidents, just as they cheered on Bono’s rendition of “Walk On,” a tribute to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, later on in the show.

“Thank you America, thank you everyone watching on YouTube on all seven continents,” Bono said at one point in the show, as he acknowledged the global audience that was tuned in for the live Web stream.

U2′s new concert contraption, The Claw, performed without flaw, transporting the band members around on giant moving bridges over the audience, with a huge video screen that slowly expanded and contracted like an accordion.

The big surprise of the show came during the opening act when the Black Eyed Peas brought on former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash to play “Sweet Child of Mine.” Fergie leaned on Slash’s shoulder during a solo, and Will.i.am moved his head to the beat. But anyone hoping to see The Edge and Slash trade licks on stage went home disappointed because that did not happen.

Bono said after U2 took the stage that having the Black Eyed Peas open for the band was like, “Xena the Warrior Princess joins Parliament-Funkadelic.”

The crowd of nearly 100,000 fans at the Rose Bowl sang to their favorite tunes and held up their cell phone lights when asked, first by Will.i.am and later by Bono. On that note, during the sound check a member of the stage crew who introduced himself as “nobody” told the crowd that the reason the live YouTube show was done from Los Angeles is because of the sing-along factor.  ”L.A. sings U2 songs better than anyone except my bosses,” the purported U2 employee said. What would Paris or Rome think about that? Or Dublin for that matter?

U2′s fans not “groovy” enough?

As U2 enters the third week of its North American tour, smashing sales records along the way, the big elephant in the room is the disappointing sales of the band’s new album. “No Line on the Horizon” has sold about a million copies in the United States since its release in February, according to Nielsen SoundScan, becoming one of U2′s least-commercial efforts.

“I walk out and sing (album track) ‘Breathe’ every night to a lot of people who don’t know it,” frontman Bono says in a Rolling Stone magazine cover story. (We have pictured drummer Larry Mullen at left, playing in Chicago on Sept. 24, since he and bassist Adam Clayton were omitted from the cover.)

“They’re great songs live, and I think it’s a great album,” Bono added. ”I think it will be seen as ‘Gosh, one of their more challenging albums.’”

None of the album’s three singles managed to click with fans, particularly the first single “Get On Your Boots,” which stalled at No. 37 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. With the exception of guitarist The Edge, the band now acknowledges it was the wrong choice, according to the article.

“Look, sometimes our audience isn’t as groovy as we’d like,” Bono said. (Rolling Stone said he was smiling as he said that.) “People are not sure about the club side of U2. They want ‘Vertigo,’” the big crowd-pleasing single from the band’s previous album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”

But the masses are still happy to see U2 on stage. The band’s most recent show, at Giants Stadium near New York City, pulled in just under 85,000 people, which Bono told the crowd smashed a 14-year-old record held by Pope John Paul II. U2 manager Paul McGuinness said in the story that the tour is on track to become the biggest of all time, supplanting the $558 million haul of the Rolling Stones’ 2005-2007 trek.

The next show on the itinerary takes place in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Dates for the North American leg are on tap through Oct. 28 in Vancouver.

U2 links up to Space Station and blasts off new tour

Jimmy Page, Jack White vexed by music videogames

Videogames like Rock Band and Guitar Hero may be one of the few bright lights in the flailing music industry, but real-life guitar heroes like Jimmy Page and Jack White are unimpressed.

“If you start with the first track on the first (self-titled Led Zeppelin) album, “Good Times Bad Times,” and you think of the drum part that John Bonham did there, how many drummers in the world can actually play that? Let alone Dad on a Christmas morning? There might be a lot of alcohol to be consumed over Christmas, he still ain’t gonna get it,” Led Zeppelin founder Page told journalists at a Beverly Hills news conference on Friday.

Added White, the frontman for the White Stripes: “I do know it’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that this is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music. That’s like the only outlet now, that you have to put it in a videogame to get it in front of them. That’s a little sad. But I don’t like to tell people what format that they get things in … But I do think there’s a loss of romance.”

The duo, along with U2 axeman the Edge, co-star in the feature documentary “It Might Get Loud,” which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 14. The film, from Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), depicts each rocker’s romance with his guitar, and climaxes on a Hollywood soundstage where they jam and swap war stories.

“There are a lot of great guitar players who are virtuosos who can be note-perfect and can play extraordinary ways, but only a few I think that are searchers,” Guggenheim said of his casting choices. “We were just trying to find three really fascinating people who are still searching, and still trying to tell their story.”

The Edge is rehearsing for U2′s upcoming world tour, so he was unable to attend the press event. Asked whether the film might inspire more-formal collaborations between Page and White, both were cagey.

No U2 breakup on the horizon

(Writing and reporting by Dean Goodman)

Just in case anyone was wondering, U2 have no immediate plans to break up, even if the Irish rockers still find it a struggle to make albums after almost three decades of practice.

The band, making a whistle-stop visit to Los Angeles on Monday to promote its 12th release “No Line on the Horizon,” sat down for questions at a radio broadcast hosted by Scottish singer/actress Shirley Manson.

Perhaps unaware that U2 are mere mortals, the former Garbage frontwoman asked whether U2 was “a finite proposition.”

“One crap album and you’re out,” singer Bono immediately joked, possibly forgetting the unloved 1997 release “Pop.”

“It’d have to be a particularly crap one, though,” added guitarist the Edge, who had earlier delivered a lengthy monologue laying out his corporate vision for the band.

“It’s a mystery how we’ve managed to keep it going,” the Edge said. “We all really wanna keep it going as long as we can. Every time we go into the studio it feels like our first album. We can’t, it seems, rely on songwriting technique or any other forms that would make it easy for us. The struggle has always been the same, since the first album (1980′s “Boy”).

Beautiful Day for U2, tour to come

U2 played a few tracks from their new album, and an old favourite from an earlier record, to a small crowd at the BBC in London this afternoon. It was part of a hectic promotion schedule for the Dubliners as they publicise their 12th studio album “No Line on the Horizon” which comes out next week.

Bono announced a tour starting this summer, without giving much else away, and assured punters that there would be cheap seats available in these dire economic times. There would, however, still be expensive ones.

“Rich people have feelings too and we want to cater to them also,” he joked.

U2 played “Get On Your Boots”, “Magnificent” and “Breathe” from the new record and “Beautiful Day” from “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”.

The “gig” was a first of sorts. While the band has played Get On Your Boots at awards ceremonies, this was the first time they had played a number of the new tunes to a non-professional audience. Well, having said that, I was there as a journalist and I wasn’t the only one, but there WERE some genuine fans there.

For those who missed it, there could be a bit more U2 action from the roof of Broadcasting House this evening. The speakers are certainly up and ready, but how much you will see from the street (which does have a name and its name is Portland Place) I cannot be sure.

Coldplay in greatest encore ever?

Coldplay may have performed one of the greatest ever encores, or so says the charity which benefitted from the English rockers’ largesse last night.

The band performed at a double bill with the Killers late on Wednesday/early on Thursday at a gig following the BRITs music awards in London. While the BRITs was, to put it politely, a somewhat staid affair, the concert was much more rock’n'roll. The Killers stormed through a 45-minute set and the rowdy crowd of 2,000 loved every note. One downer was the nearly hour-long wait for Coldplay, which sucked some of the goodwill out of the air.

They warmed the crowd up again, however, with some older hits including “Yellow”, and then came the interesting bit.

First Coldplay provided the music for Take That’s Gary Barlow as he sang love ballad “Back for Good”, with Martin, one of the world’s biggest rock stars at the moment, on backing vocals. The humble gesture went down a treat. Then to round it all off, Coldplay were joined on stage by Barlow, The Killers, and none other than Bono to sing the finale (The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done).

The gig was held to raise money for War Child, a charity aiding child victims of war all over the world. On it’s Website, the charity is daring to suggest it may have been the “the greatest encore ever”.

Brit awards get U2 boost

Irish rockers U2 will play the single “Get On Your Boots” from their upcoming album live during the BRIT awards, the UK’s answer to the Grammys. It will be interesting to see whether the high-profile performance will help boost the TV audience of the annual event, which is being broadcast live on ITV on Wednesday, Feb. 18th.

Organisers are certainly not shy about talking up the show and the band. “Their addition to the line-up for this year’s show makes it possibly the best we have ever had,” says Ged Doherty, chairman of the BRITs. “This cements the BRITs as one of the biggest TV events in  the world.”

That may be stretching things a little, but U2 are big (140 million albums sold and counting), and the industry will be watching sales of their new record closely for signs that the slump in recent years may at last be levelling off.

from Anthony Boadle:

Bono writes op/ed ode to Sinatra

U2 lead singer Bono dropped the mike to take up the pen.

The Irish rocker's first opinion column for The New Times appeared on Sunday, and it wasn't about debt, poverty or Aids in Africa -- causes on which he has long been outspoken.

No, his initial incursion onto the op/ed pages is an ode to the Chairman of the Board.

Frank Sinatra's defiant voice singing "My Way" is a "foghorn" at a time of world uncertainty in business, love and life, Bono writes.

Bono says he was struck by Sinatra's lack of sentimentality in the song, when listening to a deafening chorus of Irish "rabble-rousers" sing "I did it my way" midst the revelry of a crowded Dublin pub at New Year's.

"Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year?" the U2 frontman asks himself.

"In the mist of uncertainty in your business life, your love life, your life life, why is Sinatra's voice such a foghorn -- such confidence in nervous times allowing you romance but knocking your rose-tinted glasses off your nose, if you get too carried away."