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THE PROFESSIONALS
Move over, World. U2 have come back to sort things out. In New York, their latest LP, entitled Pop, pending, Bono gives a beggar $200, but doesn’t pay for his vodka; Edge gets nervous around Neil Diamond; Adam stays on the wagon and Larry holds the whole caper together. “Look,” they shout at Tom Doyle, “we’re not gonna suddenly turn into Bon Jovi.”

It’s 4.30 a.m. in Bono’s hotel suite on the 49th floor, and lights in the top-floor windows of Manhattan skyscrapers sparkle below. In the near distance, the traditionally green-hued peak of the Empire State Building is tonight bathed in cool blue to mark the suitably dramatic occasion of Frank Sinatra’s 81st birthday. Our khaki-capped host - despite an evening necking Stolichnaya vodka and the preceding afternoon downing cheap red wine, which he thinks may or may not be responsible for the nasty rash now itchily developing around his hairline - is in the suite kitchen, expertly jemmying the tops off bottles of lager. A mere seven days after finally completing U2’s ninth studio album, the wryly named Pop, Bono is clearly enjoying his renewed freedom after such a lengthy creative stretch. Earlier in the week, the New York gossip columns had reported U2’s arrival in town with a sighting of their garrulous leader vaulting the bar of a downtown drinking establishment to mix improvised cocktails for Evan Dando and Helena Christensen. Dimming the lights above the lounge table, a silhouetted Bono sparks up a Camel (now a confirmed smoker after he began inhaling the dang cheroots) and the conversation begins to steer bladderedly through a variety of topics that might reasonably appear unrelated to those not pleasantly lathered at this comfortably indecent hour: the hitherto unexamined similarity between Snoop Doggy Dogg and Steely Dan; the fact that Ash’s songwriting suggests to Bono that there’s something going on that’s “smarter than your average bear”; the sorry tale of The General, a Dublin gangster gunned down on his way back from the video shop with a tape of Scarface under his arm. Then there’s a lovingly delivered anecdote about a waster acquaintance of the bands in the early ’80s, who broke into Bono’s flat while U2 were on tour, cooked himself a meal, did the dishes, and then legged it with his TV and video. Months later, the petty burglar cheerfully admitted the crime to his
>famous victim in a Dublin pub.

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Feb. 12 — U2 took to the lingerie department of a K-Mart in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village to announce plans for a suitably extravagant North American tour.

The scene was every bit as surreal as it sounds, with the band performing "Holy Joe" under a K-Mart section sign that read "Pop Group" while a blue light flashed in the background. But after the music was over, Bono pointed out "We’re here on business."

With that, the band discussed details about their new album, Pop (due March 4), and their eagerly awaited PopMart tour. MTV viewers will be able to purchase tickets for U2’s tour before they go sale anywhere else, and can tune in at 8 p.m. Friday, February 14 for more details about tickets. The band will also play the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in September.

The band’s last outing, the group’s Zoo TV tour was a spectacle in its own right, but U2 declared their plans for an even more ambitious tour this time out, with Bono boasting that it will be "bigger" than before. And, of course, it will not be cheap. "It costs a fortune to look this trashy," Bono deadpanned.
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“Pop: music of general appeal, especially among young people that originated as a distinct genre in the
1950s. It is generally characterised by a heavy rhythmic element and the use of electrical amplification.”
- Collins English Dictionary

By it’s very nature, pop should be a transient, ephemeral thing. Yet it is one of the undoubted paradoxes of life that often it is the most ephemeral things that stick in your mind the longest.

I can still vividly recall the first pop concert I ever attended. It was in the gymnasium of Mount Temple school, Dublin, in 1976, when I was 15 years old. It was the middle of the day, all the lights were on and the familiar smell of rotten sneakers and stale sweat filled the room. Most of the school was there, milling about with end-of-term excitement, paying little attention to official proceedings. Five friends strode out onto a rickety stage constructed from several tables shoved together for the first performance by their group, Feedback. Their leader, Paul Hewson (Bono), struck a chord on his guitar and, I swear, a jolt ran through the room.

Few of the kids there had seen a live electric band before and, as they launched into an enthusiastic version of Peter Frampton’s Show Me the Way, the place exploded. I was utterly awe-struck. I stood transfixed in front of the stage, feeling those electric guitars and pounding drums ripping right through me, watching Paul as he stopped playing his guitar, grabbed the mike stand and yelled: “I want you! Show me the way!”

Even the song title seems strangely pertinent. For, in that moment, was the beginning of something that brought me to where I am now, writing about popular music for The Telegraph having misspent my youth in pursuit of my own rock dreams. And it took four members of that teenage group to where they are now, standing at the very summit of the big rock candy mountain, about to release their eagerly-awaited 10th album.

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By Edna Gundersen
USA TODAY

As blue light specials go, this one’s a rattle-and-humdinger. Already regarded as the biggest rock band in the world, U2 aims to surpass itself with an ambitious stadium tour, announced Wednesday at a packed press conference in New York’s Kmart.

The PopMart Tour, billed as “a giant, sci-fi disco supermarket setting,” starts April 25, at the Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, the first of 33 U.S. cities on the 1997 itinerary. The global outing, expected to gross $260 million, hits 62 cities in 20 countries this year and should easily upstage 1992’s visually dizzying and financially dazzling Zoo TV Tour.

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By JON PARELES

DUBLIN — It was crunch time for U2. The Irish band’s next single had to be finished within three days, and the deadline for the complete album, which had not yet been entitled “Pop,” was less than a month away. U2, with its producers and engineers, was recording and mixing in two studios simultaneously. Workdays stretched to 14 and 16 hours. But even at that stage, everything was subject to change — including, as it turned out, the final deadline. “We have trouble finishing things,” said the Edge, U2’s guitarist. The album, originally due last September as a pre-Christmas release, was finished in late December, with all-night recording sessions up to the last minute. It is to be released March 4.

During the nine months it took to make “Pop,” U2 invited a few journalists in to watch the band record. This observer joined the group just as it was finishing the single, which was released last week. It was a rare chance for an outsider to see a process that usually takes place in private. For a band like U2, making an album is essentially a slow-motion improvisation in which ideas are seized and refined while the tapes roll. What state was the album in? “Chaos,” said Bono, U2’s lead singer. “Promise,” said the Edge.

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Discotheque
The first single, complete with “boom”-enriched outro and accompanying video featuring soon-to-be-legendary appearance of U2 as Village People. Bono: “when we were recording that, we had the whole studio in mirror balls and disco lights”.
Do you feel loved
Heavy groove-based rocker in the vein of Even Better Than The Real Thing. Very likely single. Wry personal references is suspected in the opening lines “take these hands, they’re good for nothing / you know these hands never worked a day”.
Mofo
Sonic assault as U2 are possessed by the twin spirits of Underworld and the Prodigy, with Bono at his most cathartic. Breakneck double-tracked drumming quite likely the highlight of Larry Mullen’s recorded career.
If God Will Send His Angels
Slow-winding ballad constructed around a title that existed during Zooropa sessions. Bono: “it’s this guy who’s beating up his girlfriend about her searching for answers and just telling her to look around. It’s like science fiction gospel. Edge is calling it country hip-hop”.
Staring at the Sun
Infectious, sky-scraping pop song with echoes of Ray Davies and Bowie’s Soul Love. Notable alone for middle eight “referee won’t blow the whistle / god is good but will he listen?”. Dead cert summer number 1.
Last Night On Earth
U2 play Oasis at their own game. Steaming rocker with powerful, beatle-y chorus. The last track to be finished, with vocals recorded at 7am on the day of the album cut. Bono: “it felt like the last night on earth, alright”.
Gone
Soaring uplifter oddly reminiscent of The Verve, replete with darkly spiritual lyric. Likely to be emotional highpoint of candlelit vigil if U2’s plane ever goes down. Edge: “there’s many layers to that song and there’s another level to it which I haven’t figured yet”.
Miami
The strangest track of all. Electro experimental before Mullen kicks in with a weighty John-Bonham-styled groove. Lyrical snapshots of a band trip to Florida in Spring ‘96. Edge: “it’s creative tourism”.
The Playboy Mansion
Touching tale of Lottery-playing Average Joe fantasising about gaining entry to Hugh Hefner’s private Disneyland, set to 60s-flavoured trip-hop. Return to knowingly delivered truisms in verses, including the maybe libellous “if Coke is a mystery / Michael Jackson… history”.
If You Wear That Velvet Dress
Muted and, frankly, horny ballad with echoes of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game. Something for the weekend. Edge: “that was a song that basically came out of improvisation with Nellee Hooper”.
Please
Shuffly meandering and moody mid-pacer. Edge: “one of the most intricate pieces of music we’ve ever written”.
Wake Up Dead Man
Spaghetti Western atmosphere bristling with distant radio voices. A distorted Bono voices his frustration to Jesus: “I’m alone in this world / and a F@#!ed up world it is too”.

Copyright Q Magazine ? 1997