Clannad & Bono_In A Lifetime

Confused about the title, and thinking I was going to hear “Cantaloop” for two hours straight, I grabbed a pair of 3-D glasses and stumbled into a showing of “U23D.”

Oh, U2. Not Us3.
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Though I was never a huge U2 fan, I felt a need to catch a movie in 3-D, the newest phenomenon in 1983. That and, for some reason, they refuse to sell me a ticket to “Hannah Montana.”

All I was hoping for was a good mix of the band’s hits, which are the songs I’m more familiar with. And I got that, despite a few older songs and obscure tracks.

But it was strange seeing the “biggest band in the world” up close and seemingly touchable. Though I don’t keep up with their music as much as I used to, I still realize the global power that just one note, lyric or blowhard speech this band (i.e. Bono) lets out.

As most bands, artists and actors do, U2 has become a bit of a parody of itself in recent years. The band members aren’t so much individual artists anymore as much as they are actors playing the characters of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. The same goes for icons like Keith Richards, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro and Verne Troyer.

Such was the case when the band broke into some of its older, more heartfelt and honest songs. They seemed so far removed from songs like “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” that they very well may have been under the impression they were playing a cover.

But for all of the world-saving, preachy rhetoric of Bono and his cronies, the band still plays some good tunes.

Hipsters and poseurs love to fall back on the idea that music is better heard in a small, smoky club with bottles clanking and body odor offending, but bands like U2 and their arena shows defy such logic. Crummy little clubs are fine for Fall Out Boy fans, but when a band’s music is as powerful, resonant and strong as that of U2, a gigantic arena is more suitable. There’s definitely something to be said for a sea of 60,000 or so people waving in unison and singing along to the same song. Plus, punk’s been dead since it was born.

Seeing them in such a personal capacity also made me appreciate the music of the band, something I normally overlook because I’m so turned off by Bono’s preaching and leather. For a four-piece band, with no real rhythm guitarist, they do a hell of a lot. The Edge has mastered, over the years, a sound that is uniquely his and though it may be oft-imitated, it is hardly ever close to the real thing. It is overly strong in its simplicity how he does so much with so few notes.

But watching the band in full arena-rock mode, moving around the circular catwalk they used as a stage, made me think about one thing many might not. We all know Bono for his ego, and the Edge for, well, his name. But there are two other dudes there, too, whom I always kind of feel bad for. It’s got to be tough for a couple of fellas named Adam and Larry to hang out with the Edge and Bono (or The Fly or Mephisto or whatever he sometimes goes by). I always had a feeling they felt a little neglected during the ’80s and ’90s, most likely because groupies probably weren’t running backstage looking for Larry or Adam. They wanted the Edge or Bono.

No wonder those two branched out and did that “Mission Impossible” stuff. No Edges or Bonos to steal their glory. Or women.




http://magazine.playbackmag.net/playback/200801search/?folio=71&CMP=KNC-Google&src=G_Artists4_U2&gclid=CIqE-7eT_ZECFQjMbgodAU2z_A


As Irish group Clannad prepare to return to the spotlight, Sally Williams speaks to guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan about their unique sound and their certain friend by the name of Bono

IT is more than 20 years since Ireland’s spiritual group Clannad teamed up with their countryman Bono for the spine-tingling hit In A Lifetime.

But, as the band prepare to visit Wales as part of their first UK tour for a decade, don’t hold your breath for the U2 frontman to appear on stage with them.

Guitarist and vocalist Noel Duggan admits that Bono never performed the hit live and when Clannad sang it on Top Of The Pops they did it without him.

Duggan says, "He (Bono) says he doesn’t have the voice for it anymore. So we will have Bryan Kennedy (who has sung with Van Morrison) singing it in Belfast and there will be other guests on tour too.

"But we see Bono a lot, we are bound to bump into him in Dublin because it is such a small place." Duggan says that while his close friend is world famous, he can enjoy life without getting mobbed in his native city of Dublin.