Live Aid Wembley and Philadelphia

[Silver hill]

I can't help it, he's a hand wringer, very sanctimonious; a middle class punk, rebelled at the weekend then back to boarding school Monday to Friday.
Sir bob; says it all really.

[Captain Obvious]

Some of the live performances in Philadelphia. Most of the music nowadays is shite in comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_jSSJOAjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9myqi7VL9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxqmEeOU9EI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6gXldXkQO8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcnUSw2aK8c

[BennyCake]

Who decided Phil Collins did both gigs? Was he the biggest artist on both sides of the Atlantic or what?

[Eamonnca1]

Who decided Phil Collins did both gigs? Was he the biggest artist on both sides of the Atlantic or what?

I can't remember the exact story but I think there was a few who wanted to do it, but somehow he ended up being the only one who did it.

It probably wouldn't be possible now with Concorde out of service.

[J70]

Who decided Phil Collins did both gigs? Was he the biggest artist on both sides of the Atlantic or what?

He was pretty massive at the time, to be fair to him.

[quit yo jibbajabba]

Watched the second part of that Live Aid prog there. Zeppelin were so annoyed at the performance that they have never allowed it to be shown. And blamed Collins for it

[J70]

Watched the second part of that Live Aid prog there. Zeppelin were so annoyed at the performance that they have never allowed it to be shown. And blamed Collins for it

Here's Collins' take on it from earlier this year:

https://www.nme.com/news/music/phil-collins-on-his-disastrous-led-zeppelin-performance-2601224

[STREET FIGHTER]

Queen were c***ts. Apartheid-propping up soup takers, music for people who hate music.

Bono's performance during Bad changed Ireland. It was quite shocking to see an Irishman get up there in front of the world without the merest trace of self doubt, and demonstrate in plain terms that U2 were the greatest band in the world. It was a remarkable, life changing performance, simultaneously full to the brim with anger and joy. He nailed it in outrageous fashion.

The decade of change in Ireland that was to follow started at that moment.

You could say the exact same about u2. Music for the brown shoed shirt tuckers.

You can say what you want, but you'd be wrong. U2 came from punk and evolved through new wave into the most vital band in the world, branched into blues, folk, dance and club music, and then pushed back the boundaries of what was possible in a live setting with Zoo TV. They were raw, they were explicitly political, they were highly literate and clued in to world around them, they were loud as hell and for 13 years, which is damn sight more than the vast, vast majority of artists, they were undeniably f**king brilliant. And from the mid-1980s on and particularly from Live Aid on, they were a towering presence over not just Irish and world popular culture, but over Irish life and society in general.

Ireland was largely an insular, backward little country up to the mid 1980s where deference to power and establishment was everything. By the end of the 1980s, we were smashing it in popular culture and sporting terms in a way we never had before and even while emigration continued, there was an energy beginning to surge through the country that had never been there before. Irish people started to look defiantly outwards in their worldview rather than inwards and within a short time the deference to establishment power had gone, and all the dirty little secrets of the past were coming out in the wash. By 1995 Ireland was a much, much different place than it had been a decade earlier, more confident, more open, more dynamic, more willing to face up to its past. That decade was the biggest era of change in this country since 1913-23 and U2, like the success of the Irish football team that followed them, cannot be divorced from that.

Good enough summary there....

Some great albums- always tried to evolve.....

[johnnycool]

Queen were c***ts. Apartheid-propping up soup takers, music for people who hate music.

Bono's performance during Bad changed Ireland. It was quite shocking to see an Irishman get up there in front of the world without the merest trace of self doubt, and demonstrate in plain terms that U2 were the greatest band in the world. It was a remarkable, life changing performance, simultaneously full to the brim with anger and joy. He nailed it in outrageous fashion.

The decade of change in Ireland that was to follow started at that moment.

You could say the exact same about u2. Music for the brown shoed shirt tuckers.

You can say what you want, but you'd be wrong. U2 came from punk and evolved through new wave into the most vital band in the world, branched into blues, folk, dance and club music, and then pushed back the boundaries of what was possible in a live setting with Zoo TV. They were raw, they were explicitly political, they were highly literate and clued in to world around them, they were loud as hell and for 13 years, which is damn sight more than the vast, vast majority of artists, they were undeniably f**king brilliant. And from the mid-1980s on and particularly from Live Aid on, they were a towering presence over not just Irish and world popular culture, but over Irish life and society in general.

Ireland was largely an insular, backward little country up to the mid 1980s where deference to power and establishment was everything. By the end of the 1980s, we were smashing it in popular culture and sporting terms in a way we never had before and even while emigration continued, there was an energy beginning to surge through the country that had never been there before. Irish people started to look defiantly outwards in their worldview rather than inwards and within a short time the deference to establishment power had gone, and all the dirty little secrets of the past were coming out in the wash. By 1995 Ireland was a much, much different place than it had been a decade earlier, more confident, more open, more dynamic, more willing to face up to its past. That decade was the biggest era of change in this country since 1913-23 and U2, like the success of the Irish football team that followed them, cannot be divorced from that.

Good enough summary there....

Some great albums- always tried to evolve.....

It's a pity Bono knew sweet f**k all about the six counties to the North of him and made a total c**k out of himself with the lad wearing the 49'ers jacket.


Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest.

Just Shut to f**k up Bono and sing some songs as we'd say once the preachy bits came during his shows.

[Jeepers Creepers]

Queen were c***ts. Apartheid-propping up soup takers, music for people who hate music.

Bono's performance during Bad changed Ireland. It was quite shocking to see an Irishman get up there in front of the world without the merest trace of self doubt, and demonstrate in plain terms that U2 were the greatest band in the world. It was a remarkable, life changing performance, simultaneously full to the brim with anger and joy. He nailed it in outrageous fashion.

The decade of change in Ireland that was to follow started at that moment.

You could say the exact same about u2. Music for the brown shoed shirt tuckers.

You can say what you want, but you'd be wrong. U2 came from punk and evolved through new wave into the most vital band in the world, branched into blues, folk, dance and club music, and then pushed back the boundaries of what was possible in a live setting with Zoo TV. They were raw, they were explicitly political, they were highly literate and clued in to world around them, they were loud as hell and for 13 years, which is damn sight more than the vast, vast majority of artists, they were undeniably f**king brilliant. And from the mid-1980s on and particularly from Live Aid on, they were a towering presence over not just Irish and world popular culture, but over Irish life and society in general.

Ireland was largely an insular, backward little country up to the mid 1980s where deference to power and establishment was everything. By the end of the 1980s, we were smashing it in popular culture and sporting terms in a way we never had before and even while emigration continued, there was an energy beginning to surge through the country that had never been there before. Irish people started to look defiantly outwards in their worldview rather than inwards and within a short time the deference to establishment power had gone, and all the dirty little secrets of the past were coming out in the wash. By 1995 Ireland was a much, much different place than it had been a decade earlier, more confident, more open, more dynamic, more willing to face up to its past. That decade was the biggest era of change in this country since 1913-23 and U2, like the success of the Irish football team that followed them, cannot be divorced from that.

Good enough summary there....

Some great albums- always tried to evolve.....

It's a pity Bono knew sweet f**k all about the six counties to the North of him and made a total c**k out of himself with the lad wearing the 49'ers jacket.


Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest.

Just Shut to f**k up Bono and sing some songs as we'd say once the preachy bits came during his shows.

Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest. +1

Him being a knob didn't help. Holding David Trimbles and John Humes hands up infront of a upper class school concert as if he just brought down the Berlin wall.

[sid waddell]

It's a pity Bono knew sweet f**k all about the six counties to the North of him and made a total c**k out of himself with the lad wearing the 49'ers jacket.


Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest.

Just Shut to f**k up Bono and sing some songs as we'd say once the preachy bits came during his shows.

It seemed to me that Bono went out of his way to learn about the North, and what was happening in the North was a huge part of the anger that drove him. I've never understood people who go to U2 concerts and moan about the political stuff. Why go in the first place then? Because anybody with even a cursory knowledge of Bono and U2 knows they are political. Bono has always been unapologetically political. You cannot divide U2's music from politics. I mean was the name of the song Sunday Bloody Sunday a hint?

Or is it that you didn't like his views on politics in the north? Seems to me that most of the CNR community in the North agreed with him, given that the SDLP consistently far outpolled Sinn Fein during that time.

Him being a knob didn't help. Holding David Trimbles and John Humes hands up infront of a upper class school concert as if he just brought down the Berlin wall.

How was he being a knob? He was trying to contribute to the positive political atmosphere around the Good Friday Agreement ahead of the vote on it. That to me seems a pretty laudable thing to do.

The "upper class" jibe is pathetic. Working class Catholics (and Protestants) voted for that same agreement in their droves a few days later.

[johnnycool]

It's a pity Bono knew sweet f**k all about the six counties to the North of him and made a total c**k out of himself with the lad wearing the 49'ers jacket.


Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest.

Just Shut to f**k up Bono and sing some songs as we'd say once the preachy bits came during his shows.

It seemed to me that Bono went out of his way to learn about the North, and what was happening in the North was a huge part of the anger that drove him. I've never understood people who go to U2 concerts and moan about the political stuff. Why go in the first place then? Because anybody with even a cursory knowledge of Bono and U2 knows they are political. Bono has always been unapologetically political. You cannot divide U2's music from politics. I mean was the name of the song Sunday Bloody Sunday a hint?

Or is it that you didn't like his views on politics in the north? Seems to me that most of the CNR community in the North agreed with him, given that the SDLP consistently far outpolled Sinn Fein during that time.

Him being a knob didn't help. Holding David Trimbles and John Humes hands up infront of a upper class school concert as if he just brought down the Berlin wall.

How was he being a knob? He was trying to contribute to the positive political atmosphere around the Good Friday Agreement ahead of the vote on it. That to me seems a pretty laudable thing to do.

The "upper class" jibe is pathetic. Working class Catholics (and Protestants) voted for that same agreement in their droves a few days later.

He should have delved a bit deeper than reading Conor Cruise O'Brien in the Sindo then unless I missed him taking cuts out of the British establishment and unionism for how they allowed the place to become a sectarian cesspit.

[Eamonnca1]

Holding David Trimbles and John Humes hands up infront of a upper class school concert as if he just brought down the Berlin wall.

That was a hugely significant moment. The fact that something as normal as a U2 rock concert could happen in the north was a breakthrough at the time. His endorsement of Trimble and Hume and the peace process was a major factor in building support for the Good Friday Agreement and getting a new generation to reject violence once and for all. It was one of the defining moments of the period.

[seafoid]

It's a pity Bono knew sweet f**k all about the six counties to the North of him and made a total c**k out of himself with the lad wearing the 49'ers jacket.


Musically I loved their earlier stuff but after Joshua tree I lost a bit of interest.

Just Shut to f**k up Bono and sing some songs as we'd say once the preachy bits came during his shows.

It seemed to me that Bono went out of his way to learn about the North, and what was happening in the North was a huge part of the anger that drove him. I've never understood people who go to U2 concerts and moan about the political stuff. Why go in the first place then? Because anybody with even a cursory knowledge of Bono and U2 knows they are political. Bono has always been unapologetically political. You cannot divide U2's music from politics. I mean was the name of the song Sunday Bloody Sunday a hint?

Or is it that you didn't like his views on politics in the north? Seems to me that most of the CNR community in the North agreed with him, given that the SDLP consistently far outpolled Sinn Fein during that time.

Him being a knob didn't help. Holding David Trimbles and John Humes hands up infront of a upper class school concert as if he just brought down the Berlin wall.

How was he being a knob? He was trying to contribute to the positive political atmosphere around the Good Friday Agreement ahead of the vote on it. That to me seems a pretty laudable thing to do.

The "upper class" jibe is pathetic. Working class Catholics (and Protestants) voted for that same agreement in their droves a few days later.

That was the late 90s Zeitgeist. With big Tony a bit of fame could fix any problem. The Third Way. Iraq , Lehman and Austerity were far off in the future.

Bono and his neoliberal plutocrat mates would become the problem. Now even Goldman Sachs is fucked.

[Eamonnca1]

Where the streets have no statues: why do the Irish hate U2?

They're bigger than Guinness and George Bernard Shaw. So why are Bono and co so unloved in their home country?



For three decades U2 have filled the world's biggest stadiums as easily as guitarist The Edge fits his trademark black beanie hat. The group's cultural reach is as wide as the 200-ton arachnid-shaped stage they once performed their mammoth shows on. As an Irish export, they're in the same category as George Bernard Shaw and Guinness.

If another country produced the biggest guitar band in the world – let alone one with a population of just 4.8 million – you'd expect airports to be named after them. But walk around the musicians' home city of Dublin and you'll barely see an image of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. There's no major mural solely dedicated to the group. You might, though, catch some graffiti scrawled on concrete walls and darkened doorways, opining in classically Irish slang that, "Bono is a Pox".

They have their home-town fans, of course. U2's upcoming show at the 73,500 capacity Croke Park stadium is sold out. But to huge sections of the Irish population, Bono is about as welcome as cold sores and spam email. How can that be?

Many of the patrons of Grogans pub – a mid-sized bar in the centre of Dublin you could reasonably pitch to tourists as authentically Irish – share a distaste for U2. Not all can source the root of their feelings, but there's one thing most do agree on: it doesn't simply come down to the echoing guitar riffs or grandiose gesturing of their music.

"I think it's quite an accomplishment for Bono. He does so much for charity and the poor and yet people still do hate him," says 24-year-old Karl Downey. "I don't really like him. Maybe it's because he's a bit sanctimonious. It might be the glasses as well. He never takes off those glasses." (Bono gets a pass on the shades when Downey's friends point out that the singer wears them because he suffers from glaucoma.)

"We don't like them because they did well," adds Karl Devereux. "They're not the Dubliners, the Pogues, even the Cranberries – they all weren't that big. But U2 did very well."

At another table, one patron expands on the point that the band's huge success might have worked against them by telling the well-worn tale of two men looking up at a big house on a hill. The first man vows that one day he'll live in a home that's just as opulent. The second, from Ireland, curses the owner and pledges that one day he'll wring their neck. At it happens, Bono himself recounted this fable in a 2005 interview with Conan O'Brien.

In other words, the nation's dislike of U2 is classic Irish begrudgery – the phenomenon that Irish people are predisposed to feel envy and resentment towards those who achieve a certain level of success. Harry Browne, author of The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power), believes this theory has some credence. "[There is] a pride in being in the position to take this large object and cut it down to size, which I think is a very Irish, post-colonial phenomenon," he explains. "I think that's a big aspect of it."

The idea of Irish begrudgery is difficult to gauge. Liam Neeson, Saoirse Ronan and Conor McGregor enjoy all the glitzy spoils of being famous but have escaped the same backlash. In rock history, artists such as Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher are widely beloved among their countrymen. A statue of Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott stands on Dublin's Harry Street; there are sculptures and plaques dedicated to Gallagher dotted throughout the island at which fans can bend the knee. If begrudgery plays a part in U2's unpopularity, it's uniquely barbed when it comes to the band.

Bono believes some of the Irish vitriol can be traced back to the band's opposition to Noraid, an organisation that funded the IRA during the Troubles. Some cast-iron republicans can point to U2's ties to British establishment figures – plus Bono's own honorary knighthood – and call treachery, but in 2017, they're a small sect.

No, it's another issue that really dogs the band: their tax arrangements. In 2006, U2 moved part of their business to the Netherlands, where the tax rate on royalty earnings is more favourable for artists. When you operate on U2's financial scale, this is a major detail. Ireland was scalded by the global 2008 financial crash; communities were eroded by austerity, while the band's reputation as "tax dodgers" persisted. As People Before Profit party TD Bríd Smith says: "Bono is seen as part of that cohort of very wealthy people who avoid paying tax in this country but enjoy the fruits of being of this country."

Smith adds: "There's a huge [number of people] that just see U2, and Bono in particular, as hypocrites, because their tax arrangements are deliberately structured – and he makes no bones about this – so that they don't pay [as many] taxes."

The question follows the band like a long shadow. There are no hard figures to look at, but U2 have consistently denied their tax setup is in any way immoral. "It is just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we are taxed," Bono told Sky News in 2015. "We pay a fortune in tax, a fortune, just so people know, and we're happy to pay a fortune in tax."

But the core of the Irish public's contempt for U2 involves some of Bono's activities outside of the band. On paper, his over 30-year record as a humanitarian is impressive: raising Aids awareness, lobbying for third-world debt relief and founding international advocacy organisation The ONE Campaign. Almost no one would deny that Bono genuinely cares about Earth's human suffering and wants to leverage his cultural standing to help eradicate it.

To some, though, there's a hypocrisy to the samaritan who avoids the taxman, aligns himself with corporations like Apple, which is itself fighting a legal battle against paying back taxes in Ireland, and dines with George W Bush and Tony Blair. To others, there's just something about Bono's perceived self-righteousness that rubs them up the wrong way.


Browne's book pitches Bono as a symbol of western exploitation. He points to the singer's close relationships with Bush and Blair as something that grates on the Irish public. "That's definitely the source of some of the problems that people here have with them," he says. "The way in which [Bono's] undoubtedly genuine concerns for the poor end up playing to neoliberal exploitation and imperial war making."

"There is a difference between cosying up to power and being close to power," asserted Bono in an interview with the Observer covering his activism in 2013. When it comes to the Dublin natives, though, it'll take a lot to shift Irish people from their entrenched positions. This fractured bond with their countrymen is a thorn firmly planted in the band's ribcage. It can't be pulled out by a soaring chorus or pretty ballad.