U2 hints at November tour

Video of the interview is available here on TVNZ.

(ABC News Online) -- U2 frontman Bono says the band will probably be coming back to Australia in November.

U2 cancelled this month's tour because one of the band's family was extremely ill.

Bono has told the ABC's Enough Rope he cannot give specific dates just yet, but he has promised fans a great concert.

"Because it'll be the only time, you know, we get a chance to play these songs for a long time, it will be extraordinary," he said.

Bono says some extraordinary people have turned up at U2 shows as a result of their social activism work.

"You can't imagine Paul Volker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and we put him in the dressing room of the Fun Loving Criminals by mistake. Let me say there was a smoky atmosphere and he went to make a speech at the World Bank something the next day where he said he, and he tells the story, he said I went in there and I could smell something and I want you all to know today I inhaled."

He also talks about Mikhail Gorbachev arriving on his doorstep in Ireland one Sunday afternoon unannounced, with a four-foot teddy bear.

"And I asked him was he religious and he told me his parents were and that he had been brought up with some sort of Catholic influence in his life and then finally I decided, I said do you believe in God and he said no but I believe in the universe and it was just an amazing, it was the way he said it, I knew he had thought very long and hard about it. I mean there was a lot of Irish whisky involved too."

Bono says he would like to organise a meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard when he is back in the country for the November tour.

"You do get the feeling like in Australia that you know there's just this is a new model, somewhere happening down here, you know something going on, new societies being dreamt up so and you're doing really well, it's an amazing, even just coming like here having not played here for eight years, you can see there's a prosperity, the way people walk, it's a confidence. Now you …you should be the opportunities to lead the world outside of this hemisphere, to actually just to take some moral high ground."

Bono says he was surprised by US President George W Bush's humour at a recent meeting, saying Mr Bush looked "rather enviously" at Bono's signature oversized glasses.

"I liked him a lot more than I thought I would. All I'm thinking when I'm meeting him is how I'm going to explain it to the band."