Concert or record featuring likes of Lauryn Hill, R.E.M
Beastie Boys being considered.

Contributing Editor Brian Hiatt reports:

U2 singer Bono has lined up support from such artists as
Lauryn Hill, R.E.M., the Smashing Pumpkins, the Beastie Boys,
Oasis and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti for a campaign to
persuade the world’s richest nations to cancel the debt of the
world’s poorest.

Bono and the nonprofit organization Jubilee 2000 have yet to
say what exactly he and the other artists might do for the cause,
but they have made it clear the effort will be musical and most
likely done on a large scale.

“Bono and ourselves are discussing how we can be creative,
have fun, make some noise,” said Jamie Drummond, a Jubilee
2000 spokesperson.

“I want to have fun. And I want to change the world.” — Bono,
U2 singer

Angela Travis, another Jubilee 2000 spokesperson, said the
U2 singer is “talking to lots of people who may come out and
say they’re going to make a record, they’re going to put on a
concert, or they’re just going to write songs about it.”

But nothing is definite, she said. Rumors of a Live Aid-style
concert in June in Cologne, Germany — site of the G8 economic
summit of world leaders — have already made their way into the
U.K. press, but Travis dismissed them. Live Aid was a massive
benefit concert event that took place simultaneously in
London and Philadelphia in 1985 to fight famine in Ethiopia.

“I think people make associations with Live Aid and assume this
is the same thing,” she said. “It’s not. It’s a new issue and we may
need to address it in a new way. People don’t tune into large
concerts anymore. We’re going to do something better than that.”

R.E.M. are scheduled to perform in Madrid, Spain, on June 19,
but the band’s manager, Bertis Downs, said Tuesday (Feb. 23)
that the band still is considering taking part in whatever happens
in Cologne that day.

“We’re not ruling it out,” Downs said. “It’s in the discussion stages
much in the way that the Bridge show [rocker Neil Young's annual
all-star charity show] was, and at some point it becomes more real.
We’ll see what happens. It’s not out of the question.”

If a large concert happens, it “may be part of something more
interesting,” said Drummond, who is working directly with Bono.

Travis said Bono, who first announced his support of Jubilee
2000 earlier this month at the Brit Awards — the U.K. equivalent
of the Grammys — plans to take no concrete action at the Grammys
on Wednesday (Feb. 24). But, she said, “Bono will be there talking
to a lot of artists, trying to get them signed up.”

Bono (born Paul Hewson) and U2 have a long history of political
and social activism. Among their biggest politically motivated songs
was the 1984 hit “Pride (In the Name of Love)” (RealAudio excerpt),
a tribute to slain civil- rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“As a pop star I have two instincts,” Bono wrote in an article
published Feb. 16 in the U.K. newspaper the Guardian. “I want to
have fun. And I want to change the world. I am not alone.”

Bono wrote that he’s “had calls from people such as the singer
Lauryn Hill … Pavarotti, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Beastie
Boys, Michael Jackson and the blessed Bob Geldof himself.” Geldof
organized the 1985 Live Aid concerts.

He wrote that the support of those artists along with that of major
charity organizations and political leaders marked the beginning
of “the kind of broad convergence that ended slavery, and
eventually, apartheid.”

Jubilee 2000 already has some firm plans for action June 19.

“Whether or not any pop stars turn up, there will certainly be
100,000 people turning up to hold hands around the world
leaders in a [huge] circle,” Drummond said. That “human chain,”
he said, will symbolize the problems created by “debt slavery,” which
results in crushing liability for Third World nations. Jubilee put
on a similar display, involving what the organization
estimated at 70,000 people, at another G8 summit, May 1998 in
Birmingham, England.

Drummond emphasized that Jubilee 2000’s goals are not musical
ones. “Our objective is not to put on concerts, not to sell records,
not to do anything other than [create] an advantageous climate
for leaders to cancel these debts,” he said.

(Senior writer Gil Kaufman contributed to this report)

- Addicted To Noise

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