Speed of Life

I was a bit busy in March, so I missed this wonderful Tiny Desk Concert. Catching up now - Robin Hilton | March 17, 2023 It's hard to overstate the kindness and good-natured humor Bono and The Edge brought to the Tiny Desk. When they first arrived at the NPR Music offices, Bono spoke on an imaginary phone, "The talent's here! The talent's coming through," poking fun at their own fame, while carrying The Edge's guitar. (The Edge called Bono the best roadie he's ever had.) The two never stopped beaming, like two overjoyed newcomers thrilled at the chance to play for someone. The performance was a preview of U2's new album, Songs Of Surrender, featuring stripped-down versions of songs from across the band's catalog. To help pull off several reimagined songs from the 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, Bono and The Edge invited a teen choir from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., to join them. During rehearsals, Bon...

Eddie Vedder honors @U2 at the Kennedy Center #KCHonors via @CBS

Watch @U2 's Bono perform their legendary hit, "With Or Without You" on #Colbert . pic.twitter.com/xlNMXUkf4C — The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 4, 2022   Bono and @U2 have always been known for their improvisation. 😂 #Colbert pic.twitter.com/9zPyp5JVZ5 — The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 4, 2022 Name a better selfie… we’ll wait. 🥃 See you tonight with @u2 ’s #Bono ! pic.twitter.com/WbPTRqRAwn — The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 4, 2022 My summer with Bono. I’ll have much more to say about this incredible audio experience we created. You all should hear it. Bono is a generous collaborator and the kind of fella who spells your name correctly for The NY Times. #Bono #Surrender #Audiobook #U2 #SurrenderMemoir pic.twitter.com/IFsccCNwo2 — Scott Sherratt (@scottsherratt) November 3, 2022

Bono joined David Remnick at the 2022 New Yorker Festival to talk about his new memoir, “Surrender.” “When I sang in U2, something got ahold of me,” Bono said. “And it made sense of me.” They discussed how the band almost ended because of the members’ religious faith, and how they navigated the Troubles as a bunch of young men from Dublin suddenly on the world stage. Bono shared a life lesson from Paul McCartney, and he opened up about the early death of his mother. “This wound in me just turned into this opening where I had to fill the hole with music,” Bono said. In the loss of a loved one, “there's sometimes a gift. The opening up of music came from my mother.”

#SlavaUkraini! 

by Gregg Chadwick I first heard U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree in Western Australia. The album's Cinemascope sound provided the soundtrack for my next few months traveling the breadth of that expansive country from Perth, to Uluru (Ayers Rock), to Darwin, to Melbourne, to Sydney. Having spent a number of summers as a kid traveling across the grand deserts of the United States, I could hear the arid landscape in U2's songs. And while riding through the red deserts of Australia's outback I felt right at home. I gazed at Anton Corbijn's evocative black and white photography each time I pulled  The Joshua Tree out of the cassette case and popped it into my Walkman. My brother Kent is a poet, and I thought of him often as I listened to the poetic, atmospheric wash opening the album. In those Australian months, I often peered out of a bus window as we careened through the desert dust with Bono's plaintive wail in my ear. From Bullet the Blue Sky, to Red H...