Last week, I interviewed Steve Lillywhite - the British producer behind such era-defining records as U2's Achtung Baby, Morrissey's Vauxhall and I and The La's eponymous debut album.

He was talking about the three years he spent behind the mixing desk (and playing bicycles with knives) on U2's first three albums, Boy, October and War - which are all being re-released next week.

The finished piece, complete with archive footage of Adam Clayton's afro and The Edge without a hat on, is over at the BBC website and it is really rather good if I do say so myself.

While you're with the Beeb, have a squizz at this piece about Delia Derbyshire. She's the visionary composer who made all the whooshes and swizzles for the original series of Doctor Who. An unbelievably brilliant woman.

Labels: links, Music, U2

The Onion's AV Club have just published a splendid article running through 21 average albums that would make great EPs. Among their choices are REM's New Adventures In Hi-Fi, The Verve's Urban Hymns and Kanye West's Graduation.

It's a great read... but saldy lacking in pop records. And, as we all know, pop records generally need a good bit of pruning before they make it over to your iPod.

So, here are some of my additions to the Onion's list. Feel free to add your own using the comments thingummy. It'd make my day.

Christina Aguilera - Back To Basics (2006)


In which Aguilera pays tribute to the jazz singers who inspired her by, erm, dressing up like them and singing exactly the same songs she always sings. The public duly ignored it, aghast at the thought of Aguilera screeching and wailing over the course of two entire discs. But, pared down to a more manageable size, this is a corking little album. The big band flourishes and jazz inflections actually serve to highlight Aguilera's vocal technique (it's not just shouting, after all) and the Mark Ronson track, Without You, is among the best things she's recorded.

EP Version: 1) Back In The Day 2) Ain't No Other Man 3) Candyman 4) Without You 5) Slow Down Baby 6) Save Me From Myself


Madonna - Erotica (1992)


Having hit a career high with Vogue in 1990, Madonna dragged that song's co-writer Shep Pettibone into the studio for an entire album. One of the most prolific and talented remixers of the time, Pettibone struggled when it came to writing actual songs. Tracks like Thief of Hearts and Why's It So Hard are little more than drumbeats, and Madonna - never the world's most profound lyricist - is particularly woeful here "Friends they tried to warn me about you / He has good manners," she declares bafflingly during Words. On Deeper and Deeper, Madonna and Pettibone even acknowledge their lack of ambition by slapping the chorus of Vogue over the coda. The good tracks, unusually for a Madonna album, are the ballads.

EP Version: 1) Erotica 2) Deeper and Deeper (a decent song despite itself) 3) Bad Girl 4) Rain


Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac (2000)


Amnesiac already appears on The Onion's list, but I reckon you need to combine both records to create a decent EP. The two albums actually derived from the same recording session - so the songs cohere perfectly. Amnesiac has the best tunes in Knives Out (pretty) and Pyramid Song (claustrophobic). Kid A provides the experimentalism and menace… Plus, in scrapping Life In A Glass House, we can pretend Radiohead never "experimented with jazz".

EP Version: 1) Everything In Its Right Place 2) Knives Out 3) Pyramid Song 4) Morning Bell (Kid A version) 5) You And Whose Army 6) Optimistic 7) Motion Picture Soundtrack


U2 - Zooropa (1993)


This is a bit unfair, as Zooropa was originally intended to be an EP accompanying the band's Zoo TV tour. Instead, in a flurry of activity partially prompted by the dissolution of Edge's marriage, the group turned in a full 10 tracks. Predictably, given the circumstances, they're not all of the highest standard. Stand-outs include the title track - a montage of three different songs that perfectly captures the chaos of the recording sessions - and Stay, Farway So Close, which is perhaps U2's most under-rated ballad. Future Batman single Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me was also started during the recording sessions, so I'm reclaiming it here for my six-track EP.

EP Version: 1) Zooropa 2) Numb 3) Lemon 4) Stay (Faraway, So Close) 5) Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me 6) The Wanderer


Prince - Symbol (1992)


Apparently conceived as a rock soap opera, this album (the sequel to Diamonds and Pearls) has a plot more confused than Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The music, too, lacks focus - as Prince tries to marry his new-found love of 70s funk with the rap stylings of his then-band, the NPG. Sexy MF, for example, wouldn't sound out of place on a James Brown album until it is spectaculraly derailed by Tony M's agressively misogynistic rap. Luckily, there is an edited version that jettisons this atrocious interruption which we can purloin for the purposes of our EP. In addition, several "classic" Prince tracks survived the NPG's onslaught, with The Morning Papers in particular recalling the glory days of Purple Rain's pop/rock crossover.

EP Version: 1) Sexy MF - edit 2) Love 2 The 9s 3) The Morning Papers 4) 7 5) 3 Chains O' Gold


The Beatles - White Album (1968)


A certain breed of Beatles fan thinks this double album ranks as the fab four's best work. They are so wrong it hurts like a spike in your ear. More than half the record is self-indulgent, druggy bollocks. The other half is frequently unfocused - presumably the casualty of the discordant atmosphere in the recording studio. Indeed, many of the better songs were essentially recorded in isolation - with McCartney playing drums on Back In The USSR and Harrison performing While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton after several Beatley attempts at the song proved unsatisfactory. You could probably get a decent single album out of the 30 tracks, but I prefer a more brisk stroll through this musical wasteland… and I'm subsituting the single version of Revolution for Lennon's throwing-the-toys-out-of-the-pram album mix.

EP Version: 1) Back In The USSR 2) Helter Skelter 3) Dear Prudence 4) Revolution 5) While My Guitar Gently Weeps 6) Happiness Is A Warm Gun 7) Blackbird

Labels: beatles, Christina Aguilera, madonna, Music, Prince, radiohead, U2

Only verbally, mind you, but he's been whining to Yahoo Music that El Nobbo only "increases his celebrity" by campaigning for good causes.

"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't - it looks arrogant," he added.

"It's not as if they have a private source of information. To state the obvious as if you are the only person that knows it is intellectually weak."

The thing is, Bono probably does have a private source of information - or, at the very least, better access to the people that tackle issues like poverty, debt and Aids on a daily basis. It probably wouldn't be too hard for you or I to find out the same things, but most of us can't be bothered. So, in the end, isn't he doing a worthwhile job?

In any case, didn't the Pet Shop Boys headline one of the Live 8 events in 2005?

Tennant, normally a pop star whose opinions I respect, then digs himself further into a deep and murky hole by proclaiming: "The Princess Diana concert is fair enough, but I feel more uneasy about the Al Gore thing."

Words fail me.

Labels: Music, pet shop boys, U2

I bloody love U2. For all their detractors (Bono is a twat, their music is preachy, Larry Mullen eats people's kidneys to stay young) they are one of the most consistent and exciting rock groups ever to pretend to be Irish.

As it happens, I've just finished reading their new book U2 by U2, which tells the band's story in exhaustive detail.

Some poor bastard had to edit down 150 hours of interviews with the rockers into a manageable manuscript, which dishes the dirt on everything from the thrill of appearing on Top Of The Pops to the shame of Bono wetting himself of Frank Sinatra's sofa.

The whole story starts when Larry Mullen Jr pins a scrap of paper to the school noticeboard looking for musicians to join his band. By all accounts, the prototype U2 (Feedback, or The Hype, as they were known) were pretty shoddy, and struggled to make ends meet for years. They even tried playing gigs at airport hotels to earn some money.

"It didn't work," Adam Clayton explains in the book, "because the bands that were actually making money there were almost showbands, doing cover versions... I think six people turned up, and that was only because they thought another band was playing."

It wasn't until Edge stumbled across an effects unit that they really hit their stride.

"Edge acquired his echo unit and that changed everything," says Bono. "It was punk rock with a symphony - suddenly you're in outer space instead of suburbia."

Later, with a few hit singles under their belts, the band made their first forays into writing lyrics with a political message. Edge reveals that the first draft of Sunday Bloody Sunday had a much more explicit anti-terrorist message.

"If I remember rightly, my opening line was 'Don't talk to me about the rights of the IRA, UDA'," he says.

The book is a hefty read. Indeed, it's taken me about a month to get through it (mostly because it's too big to carry onto the bus). But it’s a great little insight into the workings of a globe-straddling rock behemoth. Sure, the band are indulging in a certain amount of self-mythologising - they even admit as much in one passage - and there's only a certain amount of Bono's random association self-analysis you can take, but if you're interested in the band at all, it's a great peak behind the curtain.

Mind you, there is a better U2 book out there. Bill Flanagan's U2 At The End Of The World follows the band for two years as they record Achtung Baby and mount the stupendous Zoo TV tour. With the benefit of an outsider's perspective and full access to the band, Flanagan uncovers some really juicy gossip from a period in time when U2 were at the height of their considerable creative powers.

He accompanies Bono as he steals a boat in Australia, and as the singer wakes up in Brezhnev's bed. But the best part is Flanagan's account of the Achtung Baby recording sessions in Berlin.

"It has never been this hard for U2 before," he writes. "The band begin to consider that they have really reached the end of the line together.

"Bono's wide-eyed raps about junk culture and disposable music are met with disinterest from Adam and impatience from Larry, who finally says, 'What the fuck are you talking about?' Larry says there is a simple problem here: 'You haven't written any songs! Where are the songs!

"That really goes up Bono's ass sideways. When Bono and Edge started abandoning the U2 tradition of all four of them writing songs together and brought in songs on their own, Larry was the first to bitch that he and Adam weren't getting enough input… But now that Bono's laying the burden on the four of them again, Larry wants the songs written for him. There's a fight brewing.

"Larry accuses Bono of not knowing who he is, which Bono throws back at him saying Larry always knows who Larry is because Larry never changes. 'You haven't changed your haircut in ten years!' Bono says."

It continues in this painful vein for dozens of pages before the band accidentally record One, then kiss and make up before it all descends into a torrid night of homosexual love (I may have made that last bit up).

After reading either of these books, you'll want to reappraise U2's songs. And by happy coincidence, they're releasing a new, compact, best-of collection on 20 November. The track-listing has just been announced, and it looks like this:

U2 18
1. Beautiful Day
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
3. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
4. With Or Without You
5. Vertigo
6. New Year's Day
7. Mysterious Ways
8. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
9. Where The Streets Have No Name
10. Sweetest Thing
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. One
13. Desire
14. Walk On
15. Elevation
16. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
17. The Saints Are Coming (with Green Day) - new
18. Window In The Skies - new
19. I Will Follow - UK Bonus Track

There are a few glaring omissions - including three of my personal favourites (Angel of Harlem, All I Want Is You and Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, since you ask). But you'd be hard pressed to find a better greatest hits CD Christmas - and I'm including the Girls Aloud one in that list.

See? I bloody love U2.

You can buy U2 by U2 and U2 18 from Amazon. You'll have to find U2 At The End Of The World at your local second-hand dealer.

Labels: Music, U2

Liam Gallagher slips up! "No wonder they're the biggest band in the world," he says of U2 (while calling them wankers, of course).

Wait a minute -- we thought Oasis were supposed to be the biggest band in the world?

It turns out we'd heard it wrong. They're the biggest band of fuckwits in the world.

No Rock and Roll Fun have a good old rant about Live 8's relevance;

"If [Gordon Brown has] already made up his mind, what is the aim of the concert?", they ask, "Unless he's saying 'A Spice Girls reunion will mean we'll write off all the debt of Benin'".

Cameron Diaz sues the National Enquirer over allegations she's been kissing other boys. Which gives us a nice opportunity to link to her supposed lover's weblog where he tells his wife "If I was hooking up with CD you'd have been the first one I high-fived."

Britney's bump.

Labels: Britney Spears, cameron diaz, liam gallagher, Music, U2

U2's Vertigo tour kicked off in San Diego this week, with a set that strikes a balance between the barren stages of the Elevation tour and the props-ahoy multimedia experience that was Zoo TV.

Early setlists indicate they've ditched the back catalogue and are playing eight songs from "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb". No appearances for "Even Better Than The Real Thing" or "With Or Without You", and not one song from the largely hopeless "Pop" album.

It'll be interesting to see how things change by the time they reach Europe in a couple of months.

According to Undercover, the set-list on the first night was:

City of Blinding Lights - From "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
Vertigo - From "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
Cry / The Electric Co./I Can See For Miles From "Under A Blood Red Sky" (1980)/The Who outro.
An Cat Dubh - From "Boy" (1980)
Into The Heart - From "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004)
Beautiful Day - From "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (2000)
New Year's Day - From "War" (1983)
Miracle Drug - From "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own - From How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
Love and Peace or Else - "From How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" - (2004)
Sunday Bloody Sunday - From "War" (1983)
Bullet In The Blue Sky/The Hands That Built America - From "Rattle and Hum"/"Gangs of New York Soundtrack" (1988/2001)
Running To Standstill - From "The Joshua Tree" (1987)
The Declaration of Human Rights - on the screens
Zoo Station - From "Achtung Baby" (1991)
The Fly - From "Achtung Baby" (1991)
Elevation - From "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (2000)
---encore---
Pride (In The Name Of Love) - From "The Unforgettable Fire" (1984)
Where The Streets Have No Name - From "The Joshua Tree" (1987)
One - From "Achtung Baby" (1991)
---encore---
All Because Of You - "From How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
Yaweh - From "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" (2004)
"40" - From "War" (1983)

Undercover: First night of the U2 World tour

Undercover: San Diego Photo Gallery

Labels: Music, U2