Mike Gentile ([email protected])
Fri, 22 Jan 1999 11:10:34 PST
LONDON, Jan 22 (AFP) - British author Salman Rushdie and Irish
rock group U2 are to collaborate on a new single, U2's record
company Island said Friday.
U2 lead singer Bono wrote a score to the opening lines of
Rushdie's new novel "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", which tells the
myth of Orpheus in the Underworld against a rock and roll and Indian
setting, a spokesman said.
Rushdie, whose "Satanic Verses" earned him a fatwa, or Islamic
death sentence in 1989 from the former Iranian spiritual leader,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first worked with U2 when he came out
of hiding and appeared live on stage with the band at a concert in
London in 1993.
Teheran said last year it would not pursue the fatwa, but some
Islamic groups have since declared the fatwa can never be repealed
and should be carried out.
"Bono and I have been friends for several years, and I sent him
the novel when I'd finished it, and he responded by coming up with
this beautiful melody," said Rushdie. "Simple as that, but of course
very pleasurable."
Rushdie's text reads: "All my life I worshipped her. Her golden
voice, her beauty's beat. How she made us feel, how she made me
real, and the ground beneath her feet."
Island currently plans to try to release the single on the same
day as Rushdie's book is due to be published, on April 13.
ajp/aln
-0- (ATT) Jan/22/ 99 13:55
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