Bono & Edge appear on screen during Nelson Mandela at 90 concert

Prior to today's "Nelson Mandela at 90" concert at London's Hyde Park, rumours circulated that U2 or at least Bono would make a guest appearance at this concert celebrating Mandela's 90th birthday. As it turned out, none of the band appeared live on stage, but a special performance by Bono and Edge was broadcast on screens.

U2-Vertigo-Tour.com becomes U2gigs.com

As some of you would have noticed, U2-Vertigo-Tour.com has recently changed its address, to U2gigs.com. We're well into 2008; the Vertigo Tour finished over a year ago in December 2006 and it's now time to move on and look to the future. Rather than tying the website's identity to the last tour, the new name reflects the whole content of the site - the fact it has the largest U2 concert setlist and photography database on the Internet. Old links now redirect to the new site address, but we recommend that those of you who link to the site update your links for faster and trouble-free web browsing. If you like the site and have your own, please consider linking - more traffic means more submissions of reviews, photos, and setlist information, resulting in a better and more comprehensive site experience for everyone. And more work for us, but we enjoy it!

So now it's just a matter of waiting for U2's next tour to materialise. Reports on the next album's progress are vague, with the band revealing little about when we may hear some new music. So far this year, only three live appearances have taken place. On the 14th of February, Bono made two special appearances, one in Washington DC and then one in New York; at both, he sung an a cappella cover of the Beatles' All You Need Is Love. Eight days later, the whole band appeared on Irish TV to participate with numerous other Irish musicians in a performance of charity single The Ballad Of Ronnie Drew. At this stage, no more live performances are expected in the immediate future. Naturally, wild rumours are doing the rounds - U2 are playing in the Philippines, U2 are playing 20+ gigs at London's O2 Arena, U2 are playing the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. But to use a cliche so common to U2 fansites, just keep in mind Bono's advice in Acrobat, "don't believe what you hear".

Regards,
Macphisto (Webmaster) and Axver (Setlistorian)

U2 to Join Live Nation Artists

LOS ANGELES, March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Live Nation President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Rapino announced today that the company has reached an agreement in principle to enter into a 12-year global contractual relationship with U2, who will join the company's Live Nation Artists roster.

"U2 has created some of the greatest rock music of all time and their career has been uniquely successful," said Michael Cohl, Chairman of the Board of Live Nation and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Artists. "It has long been our intention to consolidate and extend our relationship with U2, so this is a very exciting deal for us. The band has always been forward thinking and as one of our original and most successful artists, we are delighted to be able to work with them for many years into the future."

Your photos wanted for upcoming book

Matt McGee of atu2.com is currently looking for some photos from specific events for his upcoming book "U2 - A Diary". These events include:

* The “fan displays” at the Vertigo Tour gigs.
* Photos of Bono changing his shoes during “I Will Follow” at the 7 July 2005 show in Berlin.
* Photos of the PopMart Lemon getting stuck in Oslo on 6 August 1997.
* Photos of U2 fans in line at the Point Depot for tickets, November 1989.

If you think you can help check this site for more details.

A Year Later: One Tree Hill, ''Thank you, Sydney!'', and other Vertigo memories

U2's second of two Vertigo Tour concerts in New Zealand took place a year ago today. Although the tour still had four shows to go, three in Japan and one in Hawaii, it was my tenth and last concert of the tour; eleventh if you count the Brisbane rehearsal. As the quiet in the U2 world this year has been only briefly punctuated, such as by the band's studio sessions in Morocco and the surprise mini-concert two days ago, this has been a year to reflect on the past. For many fans, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere, it has been two years since U2 toured near them. For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it is hard to believe that it is already a year since U2 visited this part of the world for the first time in 8 years (Australia and South America) or 13 years (New Zealand). There were many memorable events, and the passage of time has revealed which stand out and stick with us the most. In this article, I'd like to mark my own aforementioned anniversary by remembering some of the best and most enjoyable moments of the Vertigo Tour. Naturally, they cover only the shows I attended, and in many cases, the events are chosen simply on a whim or are those about which I could most easily write.

Bono and Edge perform Wave Of Sorrow at surprise appearance in London

The 20th anniversary re-release of The Joshua Tree has just happened or is on the immediate horizon, depending upon what part of the world you live in. Otherwise, however, all seemed quiet on the U2 front, especially with regards to concert appearances. Rumours of U2 playing 21 concerts at London's O2 Arena next year have been swiftly debunked. U2 have sprung a London surprise on us, though. Last Friday night, the 23rd of November, Bono and Edge appeared at Union Chapel in Islington, London, for an appearance as part of Mencap's Little Noise Sessions.

Recently, U2.com featured a clip of Bono singing along to Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland), a rarity made public for the first time on the Joshua Tree re-release, and some fans wondered if Bono's evident enthusiasm for the track would lead to U2 performing the song live. However, given U2's track record of rarely playing b-sides, let alone other rarities, since the start of the 1990s, this was considered idle speculation. So to considerable surprise, Bono and Edge did in fact debut Wave Of Sorrow live. In addition, Zooropa's Stay (Faraway, So Close!) was performed for the first time in over six years - it last made a live setlist on 25 November 2001 in New York during the Elevation Tour.

The full setlist was:

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Desire / Need You Tonight (snippet) / Never Tear Us Apart (snippet)
Like A Rolling Stone (snippet) / Angel Of Harlem
Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland)

For more details about the concert, please see the NME's article "U2 Play Surprise Gig in London".

Deine Stimme Gegen Armut - P8 concert in Rostock

On June 7th, a unique concert event took place in Rostock. With the G8 summit just around the corner in Heiligendamm, the largest NGOs and popular musicians joined forces to speak out against extreme poverty around the globe. Bono was there to perform a couple of songs with other artists.

We posted quite a few of our photo to our gallery. Click the image above to see them all.

Photos of other artists at the concert can be found here as flickr set.

U2 Perform at the Cannes Film Festival

U2 have just performed on the steps of the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the Palais des Festival in Cannes, France prior to the premiere of the U2 3D movie at the Cannes Film Festival. This is the first time the band has performed live since the last gig of the Vertigo Tour in Honolulu on 9 December 2006. In a throwback to the tour, The Arcade Fire's Wake Up was played as the band walked up the red carpet, and then U2 performed a brief set. It was:

1. Vertigo / Ca Plane Pour Moi (snippet)
2. Where The Streets Have No Name / All You Need Is Love (snippet)

Bono made a number of comments in French, including the count-in to Vertigo and a short speech during Streets' intro.

This set is notable as one of the extremely few times that Streets has been performed outside of a full tour concert. This has only occurred twice before: the first instance was the very first time it was publicly performed, at its video shoot in Los Angeles on 27 March 1987, and the second instance took place on 3 February 2002 when U2 performed the Super Bowl's half-time show.

AWF U2 Photo Auction NOW LIVE!

(http://www.africanwellfund.org) -- Last year was such a success, we decided to do it again!

In addition to our Bono's birthday donation drive (which is well underway and goes through May 6th), we are offering U2 fans a chance to bid on some great photos from the Vertigo tour, including several from the West Coast and Hawaii.

100% of the proceeds of this auction will go towards building water projects in Africa. Be sure to bookmark our auction link on ebay and come back when the first auction begins on April 14, 2007 at 12pm EST.

Some additional details: Each auction will start at one-minute increments until they are all live. This is to allow time for each individual auction to end separately, as opposed to multiple auctions ending at the same time. So if you are bidding on several photos you will have a better chance of winning them!

AWF would like to thank Phil Romans and all of the following photographers for their generous donation of time and photographs:

Phil Romans, Babette Ross, Bob Reck, Matthias Muehlbradt, Daniel Boud, Greg Wigler, Mike Kurman, Caroline Oosten de Boer, Rob Wanenchak, Ruth Barohn,Ayaz Asif, Henry Wagner, Otto Kitsinger, Ingrid Erler, Jim Rinaldi, Barbara Kibart, Musicfoto.com, JJ Booth, John Griffin

HAPPY BIDDING!!!

A look back at the Vertigo Tour

Firstly, I would like to offer a somewhat belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our visitors from those of us here at U2gigs.com. Have a fantastic 2007 - and let's hope that the year includes a new U2 album. But for now, instead of looking to the future, I would like to turn my sights back to the past and reflect on the last two years of U2's concerts. The Vertigo Tour is now well and truly over, and with everything in the U2 world calming down, now seems to be an opportune time to reflect on what has been. This article is a general reflection on the tour, and shall be followed by a detailed statistical analysis of the tour in the coming days.