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The Real Thing

The Real Thing

The Real Thing is:
- A music album by Faith No More -- see The Real Thing (album);
- A play by Tom Stoppard. -- see The Real Thing (play).
- A song performed by Russell Morris
- A band responsible for the UK hit You To Me Are Everything
- A short story by Henry James It's the real thing is a slogan used by The Coca-Cola Company.

Other


- U2 made a song with the title Even Better Than the Real Thing on their 1991 album Achtung Baby

Faith No More

Faith No More was an influential rock group that formed in San Francisco, California in 1982 and disbanded in 1998. The band is probably best known for the singles "Epic" and "Falling to Pieces" from their 1989 album The Real Thing, and, particularly in Europe, for their cover version of the Commodores' classic Easy. Their music is difficult to categorize neatly, but is rooted in heavy metal. In some ways they anticipated the nu metal of the late 1990s, combining angular, distorted guitars with big pop choruses and heavy doses of rap-style vocals. Faith No More have been classified as alternative metal, demonstrating their talent for incorporating elements of funk, rap, soul and even country into their sound.

History

country Faith No More formed in 1982 out of the ashes of Faith No Man, a band formed and headed by Mike "The Man" Morris. Roddy Bottum, Mike Bordin, and Bill Gould, all ex-Faith No Man members, decided they wanted rid of him, and rather than firing him, all three quit. They changed their name to Faith No More at the suggestion of a friend (as "The Man" was no more), and recruited Jim Martin to replace him on guitar. A number of singers passed through, including a brief stint by Courtney Love. Chuck Mosley became the full time singer and appeared on their first two records. Their best known song from this era is probably "We Care a Lot", which satirized the prevalence of charity-related rock efforts such as Live Aid and "We Are the World". The band gained a reputation for infighting and friction that sometimes went way beyond the limits of "creative differences." In a notorious interview in 1987, Mosley claimed that Martin had hit him with a bottle, and there were frequent rumours of physical confrontations between band members. Indeed, in a short history of the band in one issue, the British music newspaper Melody Maker observed that the band's internal relationships had descended into "pathological hatred". Bordin in particular seemed to be very much the "whipping boy" of the band and the butt of numerous cruel pranks and practical jokes. It is doubtful that the band would have stayed together had they not been successful after their second album, Introduce Yourself. Mosley was fired in 1988, and replaced with singer Mike Patton. Patton would prove a more versatile singer than the monotone Mosley. At the time, he was singing with his high school band Mr. Bungle (and would continue to do so during his Faith No More years), and dropped out of Humboldt State University to join Faith No More. The group's first record with Patton, The Real Thing, was a major hit, selling over a million copies. Patton's astonishing vocal range was, arguably, the salvation of Faith No More. Although never formally trained, the young ex-student was able to veer wildly from a deep, operatic bass through to screeching banshee death metal yowls and all the way up to soulful, almost feminine drawling—usually over the space of one album (as opposed to doing it a single song as in the band Mr. Bungle). For example, the exuberant rap on "Epic" and the sleazy jazz vocals of "Edge Of the World" (on the 1989 album The Real Thing) are wildly different. This burgeoning singing ability enabled the band to expand and develop far further. Keyboardist Bottum memorably described his new colleague as "a pair of lungs on legs." The Real Thing (or TRT for short) has been described as "not quite early Brian Eno joins Led Zeppelin and Funkadelic." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:a8jgtq9ztu48~T1] The video for "Epic", which featured slow motion footage of a fish flopping out of water, received extensive airplay on MTV in the summer of 1990, despite provoking anger from animal rights activists. That same year, Faith No More gave memorable performances at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards (September 6) and on Saturday Night Live (December 1). Faith No More displayed a distinctly experimental bent on their next album, Angel Dust. One critic writes that the album is "one of the more complex and simply confounding records ever released by a major label," [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:m7rvad5kv8wo~T1] and another writes that "'A Small Victory', which seems to run Madame Butterfly through Metallica and Nile Rodgers … reveals a developing facility for combining unlikely elements into startlingly original concoctions." [http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=faith_no_more] Angel Dust featured the singles "Midlife Crisis" and "A Small Victory", as well as a re-recording of the theme to the film Midnight Cowboy. Later pressings of the album also included their cover of "Easy", which in some parts of the world became the band's biggest hit. Angel Dust, though not as successful as TRT in the U.S., sold 700,000 copies there, and did manage to outsell TRT in many other world charts. In Germany, for example, the record was certified Gold for sales of more than 270,000 copies. Along with heavy airplay of "Easy" and "Midlife Crisis", the album became a bit of a sleeper hit in the U.K., South America, Europe and Australia. After touring to support Angel Dust in the summer of 1992, (including tours with Metallica and Guns N' Roses), longtime guitarist Jim Martin was fired (although he claims he quit) during the early stages of recording their follow-up, King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime in 1995. He was replaced by Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance. However, when the subsequent world tour was about to begin, Spruance jumped ship, leaving the band to recruit their keyboard roadie Dean Menta to handle guitar duties. KFAD/FFAL remains the band's most heavily criticised album, varying in styles and moods from heavy and slow to spasmodic and jazzy. KFAD/FFAL did however sell acceptably in the U.K., Germany and Australia. In the U.S. the album failed to get any sort of attraction or following, slipping out of the charts quickly. Sales (about 1.5 million) were below that of Angel Dust. The band accordingly decided to cut their world tour short by 4 months, deleted the singles "Gentle Art Of Making Enemies" and "Take This Bottle", and released a 7 x 7-inch box set of singles that included the B-sides and some interviews between the songs. Album of the Year was released in 1997 and featured yet another new guitarist, Jon Hudson, who was a former roommate of Billy Gould. The album debuted much higher than expected in some countries, for example Germany (#2, later going gold) and Australia (#1, going platinum). In an additional 12 countries in Europe, it went either gold or platinum. In the U.S. the reaction was slow for the album; however, just as interest was picking up on their tours and album they called it a day. Singles "Ashes To Ashes" and "Last Cup Of Sorrow" had minimal success. Electro-tinged ballad "Stripsearch" was released as a single in various countries (excluding the U.S. and U.K.). "She Loves Me Not" was cancelled as a single which was a little indicator of their imminent break-up. In April 1998, after 16 years as a band, Faith No More dissolved. Although the break-up went by with limited media attention, many rumors had surfaced as to the reason, some which included infighting, disagreement over the amount of side-projects (since the line-up had consistently changed), collective exhaustion of creative energy and even the band's growing popularity, which had been attributed as a main influence for many nu-metal bands who would ascend to the mainstream at the end of the decade. Despite being extinct for some years, the band still manages to influence and inspire musicians worldwide. Patton went on to collaborate with John Zorn, and has been active with several other groups, including Tomahawk and Fantômas. Guitarist Jim Martin went on to collaborate with Anand Bhatt. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum formed Imperial Teen, whose sunny pop music seemed very different from Faith No More. Mike Bordin regularly performs as a member of Ozzy Osbourne's band, as well as Black Sabbath. Billy Gould is a member of Brujeria, as well as founder of Kool Arrow Records, and has also overseen the releases of various Faith No More compilations. Jim Martin also now has the 235th largest pumpkin ever measured [http://home.pacbell.net/diana_do/tallycom.htm], and has made guest appearences on various records, including Antipop by Primus, as well as having released a solo album titled Milk and Blood (1996).

Side projects and collaborations

In 1991, the Faith No More song "Perfect Crime" appeared on the soundtrack for Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. "Big" Jim Martin also appears briefly in the film. The song "We Care A Lot" was used in the Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin movie Bio-Dome (1996). Faith No More collaborated with the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. for the song "Another Body Murdered" on the 1993 Judgment Night soundtrack. In 1998, the Sparks album Plagiarism was released featuring two collaborations with Faith No More ("This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" and "Something for the Girl with Everything"). "Midlife Crisis" appeared on the soundtracks for the computer video games Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which were released on various platforms in 2004 and 2005. Under the name "Anand Bhatt and Jim Martin", the duo released the controversial album and soundtrack "Conflict" in 2000, which has been re-released for 2005.

Influence

Faith No More has been credited with the influence of the rap/rock music genre. Many credit Aerosmith and RUN D.M.C. as its creators with Walk This Way, though Faith No More had done it a year before with We Care a Lot. We Care a Lot and Faith No More were not well-known at the time; still many rap/rock artists trace their influence back to Faith No More's 1989 commercial success, Epic.

Band members

Discography

Albums

Epic
- We Care a Lot (1985)
- Introduce Yourself (1987)
- The Real Thing (1989)
- Live at the Brixton Academy (live album, 1990)
- Angel Dust (1992)
- King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime (1995)
- Album of the Year (1997)
- Who Cares a Lot? (compilation, 1998)
- This Is It: The Best of Faith No More (compilation, 2003)
- Epic & Other Hits (compilation, 2005)

Singles


- 1987 "We Care a Lot"
- 1988 "Anne's Song"
- 1990 "From Out Of Nowhere"
- 1990 "Epic"
- 1990 "Falling to Pieces"
- 1992 "Midlife Crisis"
- 1992 "A Small Victory"
- 1992 "Everything's Ruined"
- 1993 "Easy"
- 1993 "I'm Easy/Be Aggressive"
- 1994 "Another Body Murdered"
- 1995 "Digging the Grave"
- 1995 "Ricochet"
- 1995 "Evidence"
- 1997 "Ashes to Ashes"
- 1997 "Last Cup of Sorrow"
- 1997 "Stripsearch"
- 1998 "I Started a Joke"

Videography

Music Videos

(In chronological order) #We Care A Lot #Anne's Song #Epic #Falling To Pieces #From Out Of Nowhere #Surprise! Your Dead #Midlife Crisis #A Small Victory #Everything's Ruined #Easy #Another Body Murdered #Digging The Grave #Ricochet #Evidence #Ashes To Ashes #Last Cup Of Sorrow #Stripsearch #I Started A Joke

Other Music Videos

#From Out Of Nowhere (Live) #Caffeine (Live at Hanging With MTV) [there are a few more songs that were recorded from this show but only few were released, on different versions on the Video Croissant video] #Everything's Ruined (Live) #This Guy's In Love With You

VHS Releases

#You Fat Bastards: Live At Brixton Academy #Video Croissant #Greatest Videos

Bibliography

#The Real Story (Story about Faith No More) #The Real Thing (Tablature book) #Angel Dust (Tablature book) #King For A Day...Fool For A Lifetime (Tablature book)

External links


- [http://www.fnm.com/ FNM.com] - home to FAQ, band history
- [http://www.blog.lide.cz/rocktimes/] - Czech Rock magazine with Faith No More Category:American musical groups

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard (OM CBE) is a British playwright born in Czechoslovakia on 3 July 1937. He is famous for plays such as The Real Thing and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and for the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.

Biography

Stoppard was born Tomáš Straussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, into a Jewish family. To avoid persecution, the Strausslers fled Czechoslovakia to Singapore with other Jewish doctors on March 15, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded. However, in 1941 the family had to be evacuated to India to avoid the Japanese invasion of Singapore. His father, Eugene Straussler, remained behind and was killed. In India, Stoppard received an English education. His mother married a British army major named Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boy his English surname. The family eventually moved to England in 1946. Stoppard left school at seventeen and began work as a journalist. By 1960 he had completed his first play A Walk on the Water, which was later produced as Enter a Free Man. From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for Scene, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and under the pseudonym William Boot (taken from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop). By 1977, Stoppard had become concerned with human rights issues, in particular with the situation of political dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In February 1977, he visited Russia with a member of Amnesty International. In June, Stoppard met Vladimir Bukovsky in London and travelled to Czechoslovakia (then under communist control), where he met Václav Havel, at that time a dissident playwright. Stoppard became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee against Psychiatric Abuse and wrote various newspaper articles and letters about human rights. Stoppard was also instrumental in translating Havel's works into English. Recently (in August 2005) he visited Minsk to give a seminar on playwriting, and to learn first-hand about various human rights and political problems in Belarus. He was appointed CBE in 1978 and knighted in 1997. He has been co-opted into the Outrapo group. He has been married twice, to Jose Ingle (1965–72), a nurse, and to Miriam Moore-Robinson, (1972–92), whom he left to begin a relationship with actress Felicity Kendal. He has two sons from each marriage.

Work for the theatre

Stoppard's plays are plays of ideas that deal with philosophical issues, yet he combines the philosophical ideas he presents with verbal wit and visual humor. His linguistic complexity, with its puns, jokes, innuendo, and other wordplay, is a chief characteristic of his work. Many also feature multiple timelines.
- (1967) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of Stoppard's most famous works — a comedic play which casts two minor characters from Hamlet as its leads but with the same lack of power to affect their world or exterior circumstances as they have in Shakespeare's original. Hamlet's role is similarly reversed in terms of his stage time and lines, but it is in his wake that the heroes drift helplessly toward their inevitable demise. Rather than shaping events, they pass the time playing witty word games and pondering the hows, wheres, whys and whos of their predicament. It is similar in many ways to Samuel Beckett's absurdist Waiting for Godot, particularly in the main characters' lack of purpose and comprehension of their situation.
- (1968) Enter a Free Man
- (1968) The Real Inspector Hound is one of his best-known short plays. In it two theatre critics are watching a ridiculous send-up of a Country House Murder Mystery, and become involved in the action by accident, causing a series of events that parallel the play they are watching.
- (1970) After Magritte is a surreal piece which manages to place the characters, through perfectly rational means, into situations worthy of a Magritte painting. It features a husband-and-wife dance team and a detective; Stoppard notes that it is frequently performed as a companion piece to The Real Inspector Hound.
- (1972) Jumpers explores the field of academic philosophy, likening it to a highly skilful competitive gymnastics display. Jumpers raises questions such as what do we know? Where do values come from? It is set in an alternate reality where some British astronauts have landed on the moon and "Radical Liberals" (read Communists) have taken over the British government.
- (1974) Travesties is a parody of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The play starts from the fact that Tristan Tzara, Valdimir Lenin, and James Joyce were all in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1917 (in fact they were there at slightly different times, but Stoppard gets round this by telling the story through the memory of a confused old man, Henry Carr - hence also the facts getting mixed up with the plot of 'The Importance of Being Ernest', which Carr performed in at the time). There are clear relationships between Joyce's literary work and Tzara's dada art. The relation to Lenin's ideas is less well explained.
- (1976) Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land combines two works. Dirty Linen is a farce that portrays a special committee of the House of Commons, appointed to investigate reports that a large number of Members of Parliament have been having sex with the same woman. Naturally it contains implied commentary on the government, its workings, its members, and its relationship to the press and to the public. New-Found-Land is a brief interlude in which two government officials try to decide whether to give British citizenship to an eccentric American (based on one of Stoppard's acquaintances), and contains an imaginative rhapsody about America.
- (1977) Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is one of Stoppard's most unusual works. It was written at the request of André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with Russian exile Viktor Fainberg. The play calls for a small cast, but also a full orchestra, which not only provides music throughout the play but also forms an essential part of the action. The play concerns a dissident under an oppressive regime (obviously meant to be taken for a Soviet controlled state) who is imprisoned in a mental hospital, from which he will not be released until he admits that his statements against the government were caused by a (non-existent) mental disorder.
- (1978) Night and Day is about journalism. Set in a fictional African country governed by the tyrant Mageeba, the plot involves the interactions of two British reporters and a British photographer and the family of a British mine owner during a period of unrest in the country.
- (1979) Dogg's Hamlet and Cahoot's Macbeth are two works. In Dogg's Hamlet we find the actors speaking a language called Dogg, which consists of ordinary English words but with meanings completely different from the ones we assign them. Three schoolchildren are rehearsing a performance of Hamlet in English, which is to them a foreign language. Cahoot's Macbeth is usually performed with Dogg's Hamlet, and shows a shortened performance of Macbeth carried out under the eyes of a secret policeman who suspects the actors of subversion against the state.
- (1979) 15-Minute Hamlet The entire play of Hamlet, only in fifteen minutes. An excerpt from of Dogg's Hamlet, it is often performed and published on its own.
- (1979) Undiscovered Country is an adaptation of Das Weite Land by the esteemed Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler.
- (1981) On the Razzle is a comedic farce based on a play by 19th-century Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy, Einen Jux will er sich machen (which is the source for Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker and the musical Hello, Dolly as well).
- (1982) The Real Thing examines the nature of love, and makes extensive use of 'play within a play'.
- (1984) Rough Crossing
- (1986) Dalliance
- (1988) Hapgood mixes the themes of espionage and quantum mechanics, especially exploring the idea that in both fields, observing an event changes the nature of the event.
- (1993) Arcadia follows the fortunes of a pair of researchers investigating a literary mystery while simultaneously showing what really happened during the incident they are investigating.
- (1995) Indian Ink is based on his radio play In The Native State, and examines British rule in India from both sides.
- (1997) The Invention of Love investigates the life and death of Oxford poet and classicist A. E. Housman, particularly dealing with his homosexuality.
- (2002) The Coast of Utopia is a trilogy about the origins of modern political radicalism in 19th-century Russia. The central figures in the action are Michael Bakunin and Alexander Herzen. The work consists of three plays: "Voyage," "Shipwreck," and "Salvage."

Work for radio, film, and TV

In his early years Stoppard wrote extensively for BBC radio, in many cases introducing a touch of surrealism. Some of his better known radio works include: If You're Glad, I'll Be Frank; Albert's Bridge; The Dog it was that Died; and Artist Descending a Staircase, a story told by means of multiple levels of nested flashback. He returned to the medium for In the Native State (1991), a story set both in colonial India and present-day England, and examines the relationship of the two countries. Stoppard later expanded the work to become the stage play Indian Ink (1995). In his television play Professional Foul (1977), an English philosophy professor visits Prague, officially to speak at a colloquium, unofficially to watch a football international between England and Czechoslovakia. He meets one of his former students and is persuaded to smuggle the student's dissident thesis out of the country. He has also adapted many of his own plays for film and TV, notably the 1990 production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It is reported that Stoppard assisted George Lucas in polishing up some of the dialogue for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, though Stoppard received no official or formal credit in this role. Tom Stoppard has written extensively for film and television. Some of his better known scripts and adaptations include:
- (1975) Three Men in a Boat (adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome's novel for BBC Television)
- (1975) The Boundary (co-authored by Clive Exton, a 30 minute BBC television play written, rehearsed and performed within a week)
- (1977) Professional Foul
- (1985) Brazil (script nominated for an Academy Award)
- (1987) Empire of the Sun
- (1990) The Russia House
- (1998) Shakespeare In Love (co-authored by Marc Norman, script won an Academy Award)
- (2001) Enigma
- (2005) His Dark Materials (in production)

Novel

Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966). It is set in contemporary London and its cast includes not only the eighteenth century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual Boswell, Moon, but also a couple of cowboys with live bullets in their six-shooters, a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ (from the dust cover).

External links


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- [http://www.stage-door.org/authors/stoppard.htm More extensive biography] Stoppard, Tom Stoppard, Tom Stoppard, Tom Stoppard, Tom Stoppard, Tom Stoppard, Tom ko:톰 스토파드

The Real Thing (play)

The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of love, and makes extensive use of 'play within a play', also known as a metaplay. The play focuses on the relationship between Henry (a playwright and considered stand-in for Stoppard) and Annie, an actress who is part of a committee to free Brodie, a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest. Real Thing, The

Russell Morris

Russell Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter, who had many Australian Number 1 singles throughout the late 1960's and early 1970's. His most successful song was "The Real Thing", written by Johnny Young, and produced by Ian Meldrum. It was the biggest selling Australian Single of 1969. More recently, his music has appeared on the soundtrack to The Dish, and has appeared on the ABC show Long Way to the Top. Morris, Russell Morris, Russell Morris, Russell

Henry James

:This article is about the writer; for the politician who was almost his contemporary see Henry James, 1st Baron James of Hereford. Henry James, 1st Baron James of Hereford Henry James, OM (April 15 1843 - February 28, 1916), son of Henry James Sr. and brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author (although he spent much time in Europe and became a British subject near the end of his life) and critic of the late 19th and early 20th century, known for novels and novellas based upon themes of consciousness.

Life

Henry James was born in New York City into a wealthy, intellectually inclined family. His father, Henry James Sr., was interested in various religious and literary pursuits. In his youth James traveled with his family back and forth between Europe and America. He studied with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, and Bonn. At the age of 19 he briefly (and very ineptly) attended Harvard Law School, but he much preferred reading and writing fiction to studying law. James published his first short story, A Tragedy of Error, anonymously in 1864 and from then on devoted himself completely to literature. Throughout his career he contributed extensively to magazines such as The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and Scribner's. From 1875 to his death he maintained a strenuous schedule of book publication in a variety of genres: novels, short story collections, literary criticism, travel writings, biography and autobiography. From an early age James read, criticized, and learned from the classics of English, American, French, Italian, German and (in translation) Russian literature. After a brief attempt to live in Paris, James moved permanently to England in 1876. He settled first in a London apartment and then, from 1897 on, in Lamb House, a historic residence in Rye, East Sussex. He revisited America on several occasions, most notably in 1904-1905. The outbreak of World War I was a profound shock for James. In 1915 he became a British citizen to declare his loyalty to his adopted country and to protest the US's refusal to enter the war on behalf of Britain. James suffered a stroke on December 2, 1915. He died three months later in London.

Major themes

James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from different worlds—the Old World (Europe), simultaneously artistic, corrupting, and alluring; and the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive—and explore how this clash of personalities and cultures affects the two worlds. He favored internal, psychological drama, and his work is often about conflicts between imaginative protagonists and their difficult environments. His earlier work is considered Realist, but in fact throughout his long career he maintained a strong interest in a variety of artistic effects and movements. In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James' later work foreshadowed extensive developments in 20th century fiction. In the late 20th century, many of James's novels were filmed by the team of Ismail Merchant & James Ivory, and this period saw a small resurgence of interest in his works. Among the best known of these are the short works Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and The Turn of the Screw, and the novels The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors, and The American.

Style

James's middle to late prose style is frequently marked by long, digressive sentences and highly descriptive passages that defer the verb for a longer space than is usual. James's style seems to change during his career from a straightforward style early on to a more languid style later, and biographers have noted that the change of style occurred at approximately the time that James began employing an amanuensis. Henry James was afflicted with a mild stutter. He overcame this by cultivating the habit of speaking very slowly and deliberately. Since he believed that good writing should resemble the conversation of an intelligent man, the process of dictating his works may, perhaps, account for a shift in style from direct to conversational sentences. The resulting prose style is at times baroque. (His friend Edith Wharton, who admired him greatly, admitted that there were some passages in his works which were all but incomprehensible.) His short fiction (such as The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw) is often considered to be more readable than the longer novels, and early works tend to be more accessible than later ones. It should be noted that The Turn of the Screw is itself one of James' later works. Broad brush comments about the "accessibility" of James' fiction are suspect, at best. Many of his later short stories, for instance, are briefer and more straightforward in style than some tales of his earlier years.

Analysis

For much of his life he was an expatriate, an outsider, living in Europe. Much of The Portrait of a Lady was written while he lived in Venice, a city whose beauty he found distracting; he was better pleased with the small town of Rye in England. This feeling of being an American in Europe came through as a recurring theme in his books, which contrasted American innocence (or a lack of sophistication) with European sophistication (or decadence) — see for example The Portrait of a Lady or The Golden Bowl. He made only a modest living from his books, yet was often the houseguest of the wealthy. While not really one of them, James had grown up in a wealthy family and was able to observe them at close range and to sympathize with their problems. (He said he got some of his best story ideas from dinner table gossip.) He was a man whose sexuality was indefinite and whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine. It is often asserted that James's being a permanent outsider in so many ways may have helped him in his detailed psychological analysis of situations — one of the strongest features of his writing. He was never a full member of any camp. (See The Princess Casamassima, especially the Princess' comment that Hyacinth is doomed to looking at the world through a sheet of glass.) It is possible to see many of his stories as psychological thought-experiments. The Portrait of a Lady may be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich; alternatively, it has been suggested that the storyline was inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of sexual selection. The novella The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story that deals with the psychological history of an unmarried (and, according to some critics, sexually repressed and possibly unbalanced) young governess. The unnamed governess stumbles into a terrifying, ambiguous situation involving her perceptions of the ghosts of a now-dead couple: her predecessor Miss Jessel, and Miss Jessel's lover, Peter Quint.

Nonfiction

Beyond his fiction, James was one of the more important literary critics in the history of the novel. In his classic essay The Art of Fiction, he argued against rigid proscriptions on the novelist's choice of subject and method of treatment. He maintained that the widest possible freedom in content and approach would help ensure narrative fiction's continued vitality. James wrote many valuable critical articles on other novelists; typical is his insightful book-length study of his American predecessor Nathaniel Hawthorne. When he assembled the New York Edition of his fiction in his final years, James wrote a series of prefaces that subjected his own work to the same searching, occasionally harsh criticism. For most of his life James harbored ambitions for success as a playwright. He converted his novel The American into a play that enjoyed modest returns in the early 1890s. In all he wrote about a dozen plays, most of which went unproduced. His costume drama Guy Domville failed disastrously on its opening night in 1895. James then largely abandoned his efforts to conquer the stage and returned to his fiction. In his Notebooks he maintained that his theatrical experiment benefitted his novels and tales by helping him dramatize his characters' thoughts and emotions. James produced a small but interesting body of theatrical criticism, including a perceptive appreciation of Henrik Ibsen. With his wide-ranging artistic interests, James occasionally wrote on the visual arts. Perhaps his most valuable contribution was his favorable assessment of fellow expatriate John Singer Sargent, a painter whose critical status has improved markedly in recent decades. James also wrote sometimes charming, sometimes brooding articles about various places he visited and lived in. His most famous books of travel writing include Italian Hours (an example of the charming approach) and The American Scene (most definitely on the brooding side). James was one of the great letter-writers of any era. More than ten thousand of his personal letters are extant, and over three thousand have been published in a large number of collections. A complete edition of the letters is scheduled for publication beginning in 2006. James' correspondents included celebrated contemporaries like Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad, along with many others in his wide circle of friends. The letters range from the "mere twaddle of graciousness" to serious discussions of artistic, social and personal issues. Very late in life James began a series of autobiograhical works: A Small Boy and Others, Notes of a Son and Brother, and the unfinished The Middle Years. These books portray the development of a classic observer who was passionately interested in artistic creation but was somewhat reticent about participating fully in the life around him.

Criticism, biographies and fictional treatments

James' critical reputation fell to its lowest point in the decades immediately after his death. Some American critics, such as Van Wyck Brooks, expressed hostility towards James' long expatriation and eventual naturalization as a British citizen. Others complained about the supposed difficulty and obscurity of James' style, or his alleged squeamishness in the treatment of sex and other possibly controversial material. Although these criticisms have by no means abated completely, James is now widely valued for his masterful creation of situations and storylines that reveal his characters' deepest motivations, his low-key but playful humor, and his assured command of the language. The standard biography of James is Leon Edel's massive five-volume work published from 1953 to 1972. Edel produced a number of updated and abridged versions of the biography before his death in 1997. Other writers such as Sheldon Novick, Lyndall Gordon, and Fred Kaplan have also penned biographies that occasionally disagree sharply with Edel's interpretations and conclusions. Colm Tóibín used an extensive list of biographies on Henry James and his family for his 2004 novel, The Master, which is a 3rd person narrative with James as the central character, and deals with specific episodes from his life during the period between 1895 and 1899. Author, Author, a novel by David Lodge published in the same year, was based on James' efforts to conquer the stage in the 1890s. The published criticism of James' work has reached enormous proportions. The volume of criticism of The Turn of the Screw alone looms almost comically large for such a brief work. The Henry James Review, published three times a year, offers criticism of James' entire range of writings, and many other articles and book-length studies appear regularly. Some guides to this extensive literature can be found on the external sites listed below.

Works

The Turn of the Screw]
- Roderick Hudson (1875)
- The American (1877)
- Daisy Miller (1878)
- The Europeans (1878)
- Washington Square (1880)
- The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
- A Little Tour in France (1884)
- The Bostonians (1886)
- The Princess Casamassima (1886)
- The Aspern Papers (1888)
- The Tragic Muse (1890)
- Guy Domville (1895)
- The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
- What Maisie Knew (1897)
- The Turn of the Screw (1898)
- In the Cage (1898)
- The Awkward Age (1899)
- The Sacred Fount (1901)
- The Wings of the Dove (1902)
- The Ambassadors (1903)
- The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
- The Golden Bowl (1904)
- English Hours (1905)
- The American Scene (1907)
- The Jolly Corner (1908)
- Italian Hours (1909)
- The Outcry (1910)
- A Small Boy and Others (1913)
- Notes of a Son and Brother (1914)

References


- A Henry James Encyclopedia (1989), by Robert L. Gale ISBN 0313258465
- Henry James: A Life in Letters (1999), edited by Philip Horne ISBN 0670885630
- The Portable Henry James, New Edition (2004), edited by John Auchard ISBN 0142437670

External links


-
- [http://www.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway The Henry James Scholar's Guide to Web Sites]
- [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/ The Ladder - a Henry James Web Site]
- [http://www.google.ie/search?q=henry+james+quotes Quotes]
- [http://librivox.org/an-international-episode-by-henry-james/ Free Audiobook (An International Episode)] from [http://librivox.org/ librivox.org] James, Henry James, Henry James, Henry

U2 (band)

U2 is an Irish rock band featuring Bono (Paul David Hewson) on vocals and guitar, The Edge (David Howell Evans) on guitar and pianos and vocals, Adam Clayton on bass, and Larry Mullen Jr on drums and vocals. U2 has been one of the most popular rock bands in the world since the 1980s. They have sold over 120 million albums worldwide, had six #1 albums in the U.S. and are widely considered as one of the most successful groups of the last 25 years. The band is also very politically active in human rights causes, such as the Make Poverty History campaign.

Formation and breakthrough (1976 – 1980)

The band was formed in Dublin on Saturday September 25th 1976. Fourteen-year-old Larry Mullen, Jr. posted a notice on his secondary school bulletin board (Mount Temple Comprehensive School) seeking musicians for a new band. The response that followed that note resulted in 7 boys attending the initial practice in Larry's Mum's kitchen. Known for about a day as 'The Larry Mullen Band', Larry's group featured Mullen on drums, Adam Clayton on bass guitar, Paul Hewson (Bono) on vocals, Dave Evans (The Edge) on guitar, his brother Dik Evans on guitar, in addition to Mullen's friend Ivan McCormick on guitar as well as another school friend Peter Martin. Soon after, the group settled on the name Feedback. Although known as an Irish band, two members - The Edge and Adam Clayton - are actually British by birth. Both McCormick and Martin were out of the core group within a few weeks. [Killing Bono-I Was Bono's Doppelganger by Neil McCormick, 2004] Hewson was nicknamed Bono Vox (allegedly meaning 'good voice' in Latin, though a more accurate translation would in fact be vox bona), after a hearing aid company's advertising sign on the corner of Dame Street and South Great Georges Street in Dublin's city centre (a different theory says he was nicknamed after a hearing aid shop by his friend Gavin Friday because he sang so loudly he seemed to be singing for the deaf). The sign has since been changed to read "Bonavox". The Edge got his name from Bono, who thought he was always on the edge of things, assessing what was going on it. Bono also thought that it was an accurate description of his head, as it had a straight edge. (Other theories on Edge's nickname: (i) he is called after a hardware shop in Fairview, Dublin, outside of which he used to catch the bus home, (ii) the name is due to the crispness of his playing; the edges it has, (iii) Bono once claimed on Irish radio that the name was derived from the shape Edge made when playing guitar.) After 18 months of rehearsals, Feedback changed their name to The Hype. The band performed with their new name at a talent show in Limerick, Ireland on 17 March 1978. One of the judges for the show happened to be CBS Records' Jackie Hayden; they won the contest, earning a £500 prize. Hayden was impressed enough with the band that he gave them studio time to record their first demo. The Dublin punk rock guru Steve Averill (better known as Steve Rapid of the Radiators from Space) suggested that "The Hype stinks, at least as a name." Someone offered "What about U2? It's the name of a spyplane and a submarine, and it's got an endearing inclusivity about it." [http://www.u2.com] Some suggest the meaning of the name "U2" is based on their philosophy. They believe that the audience is part of their music and the concert and that "you too" (U2) are participating in the music. However, in an interview with Larry King, Bono is quoted as saying "I don't actually like the name U2," and "I honestly never thought of it as 'you too'." Dik Evans announced his departure in March 1978. Ivan had already been dismissed by Adam Clayton with the excuse that he was too young to play at the bars U2 was booked in. The Hype performed a farewell show for Dik at the Community Centre in Howth. Dik walked offstage halfway through the set and later joined the Virgin Prunes, a fellow Dublin band. In May, Paul McGuinness became U2's manager. Now a four-piece with a local fan base in place, U2 released their first single in September of 1979, U2-3. It topped the Irish charts. In December of that year, U2 travelled to London for its first shows outside of Ireland, but failed to get much attention from foreign audiences and critics. U2 made their first appearance on US television on The Tomorrow Show hosted by Tom Snyder. It aired on June 4, 1981. They performed "I Will Follow" and "Twilight" and engaged in an interview.

Boy and October (1980 – 1981)

Island Records signed the band in March of 1980. U2 released Boy the following October. It was met with critical praise and is considered one of the better debuts in rock history. That album's release was followed by U2's first tour beyond Ireland and the United Kingdom. These live shows helped establish U2 as one of the most exciting live bands in the UK, as critics noted that Bono was a very "charismatic" and "passionate" showman. The band's second album, October, was released in 1981. Fans and music critics quickly made note of the band's spiritual lyrics. Bono, the Edge and Larry were committed Christians and made little effort to hide that fact. The three band members joined a religious group in Dublin called "Shalom", which led all three to question the relationship between the Christian faith and the rock and roll lifestyle. After nearly throwing in the towel on U2, they decided it was possible to reconcile the two by continuing to make music without compromising their personal beliefs. (In recent years a book of sermons based on U2 songs has been published: "Get Up Off Your Knees" ed. Whiteley & Maynard, ISBN 1561012238)

War (1983)

In 1983, U2 returned with apparently a newfound sense of direction and the release of their third album, War. The album included the song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" , which dealt with the troubles in Northern Ireland. The song starts off by expressing the anger felt in Ireland over Bloody Sunday incident of 1972, but in successive stanzas moves through different imagery that disown that anger and place the song in a religious context, using imagery from Matthew 10:35 ("mother's children; brothers, sisters torn apart"), and a twist on 1 Corinthians 15:32 ("we eat and drink while tomorrow they die") before finishing off with a call for Christians to stop fighting each other and "claim the victory Jesus won, on a Sunday bloody Sunday". The ability to use such a range of images, taking a song initially about sectarian anger, and turn it into a call for Christians to unite and claim the victory over death and evil that Christ achieved in the resurrection, showed the depth of the band's songwriting ability. When some Irish-Americans tried to misrepresent the song as a rallying call for the Provisional IRA Bono responded with what became one of his most recognizable phrases in concerts, notably the performance on the live EP Under a Blood Red Sky - "this song is not a rebel song. This song is Sunday Bloody Sunday." Furthermore, as captured in the concert film U2: Rattle and Hum, during the performance of the song on November 9, 1987, the day after the IRA bombing in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, in which 11 people were killed during a Remembrance Day service, Bono bluntly denounced the violence in Ireland and the Irish expatriates who supported it. His anger and passion were palpable as he shouted: "Fuck the 'revolution'!" The album's first single, "New Year's Day", was U2's first international hit single, reaching the #10 position on the U.K. charts and nearly cracking the Top 50 on the U.S. charts. MTV put the "New Year's Day" video into heavy rotation, which helped introduce U2 to the American audience. For the first time, the band began performing to sold-out concerts in mainland Europe and the U.S. The band recorded the Under a Blood Red Sky EP on this tour and a live video was also released.

The Unforgettable Fire and Live Aid (1984 – 1986)

The band began their fourth studio album with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois producing. The experimental The Unforgettable Fire (named after a series of paintings made by survivors of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) followed in 1984. The album featured the tribute to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., "Pride (In the Name of Love)". "Pride" became the first single from the album, cracking the U.K. Top 5 and the US Top 50. The album represented a turning point in the band's career, as Bono's lyrics became more complex, subtle and experimental, the Edge's guitar explored new sonic landscapes, and the rhythm section got looser and funkier. However, the material, although less overtly so, remained political. Songs include "Indian Summer Sky", a social commentary on the prison-like atmosphere of city living in a world of natural forces, and "MLK", a second song honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.. The album's release coincided with a photo exhibit at the Chicago Peace Museum featuring images of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings; Bono would later contribute a poem entitled "Dreams in Box" to the museum's archives. The centrepiece of the album is "Bad", a long, experimental song which, while never released as a single, provided the album's defining moment: a cathartic exploration on the theme of heroin dependency - a problem particularly prevalent in the Dublin of the mid-1980s. During the tour to support the new album, Bono took to wrapping his microphone cable around his arm in imitation of a junkie looking for a vein. The tour itself became the first time U2 extensively played in indoor arenas. Miles Davis is reputed to have asked the album to be played while on his deathbed. The Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief in July 1985 was seen by more than a billion people worldwide. U2 were not expected to be one of the main draws for the event, but the band provided the show with one of its most memorable moments, a relentless 13-minute version of "Bad" in which Bono left the stage and walked down to the Wembley Stadium crowd to dance with a fan. The other band members were upset with Bono for spending the time they had planned for playing "Pride (In the Name of Love)", and Bono was convinced he had squandered a chance for promoting the band to a greater audience. Somewhat ironically, the Live Aid version of "Bad" has become something of a legend in rock circles, and was an indication of the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. U2 went on to a headlining spot on 1986's Conspiracy of Hope Tour for Amnesty International. This 6-show tour across the U.S. performed to sold-out arenas and stadiums, and helped Amnesty International triple its membership in the process. Rolling Stone magazine called U2 the "Band of the 80s", saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 has become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters."

The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1987 – 1989)

In 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree. The album debuted at #1 in the U.K., quickly reached #1 in the U.S., and would go on to win the Grammy Award for Album on the Year. The singles "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" also quickly went to #1 in the U.S., with "Where the Streets Have No Name" being another heavily played track. U2 was the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine (following The Beatles, The Band, and The Who), who declared that U2 was "Rock's Hottest Ticket". The Joshua Tree Tour sold out stadiums around the world, the first time the band had consistently played venues of that size . Bono and U2 were still able to seize the moment. At Wembley Stadium in London, in 1987, U2 sang a haunting version of The Beatles' "Help!" - dedicating it to those in the audience who were dreading another five years of the recently re-elected Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The band began to film and record various shows from the tour for the documentary and album Rattle and Hum in 1988 and released on video in 1989. That album became a tribute to American music, when the band recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, performed with Bob Dylan and B.B. King, and sang about blues great Billie Holiday. The band also covered The Beatles' "Helter Skelter", declaring "This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles; we're stealin' it back." Live footage from Joshua Tree Tour concerts at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona and McNichols Arena in Denver, Colorado featured prominently in the film. The McNichols footage, shot in black and white, included performances from the back catalog while color material from Sun Devil mostly comprised (then) current material. Two shows were filmed in Tempe. To ensure a full stadium, tickets were discounted to $5.00 a piece. Despite a positive reception from fans, Rattle and Hum received mixed-to-negative reviews from both film and music critics. U2 went on the Lovetown Tour (with special guest B.B. King), which visited Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, but avoided the US and most of Europe. Perhaps feeling that U2 was somewhat stagnating, Bono announced during a December 30, 1989 concert in Dublin that it was time "to go away and dream it all up again."

Achtung Baby, Zoo TV and Zooropa (1991 – 1994)

After taking some time off, the band met in East Berlin in autumn of 1990 to begin work on their next studio album, again with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois producing. The original sessions did not go well, but following the inspirational completion of the hit song 'One,' the band eventually emerged from the studio with renewed energy and a new album under its belt. In November of 1991, U2 released the heavily experimental and distorted Achtung Baby. The album was enthusiastically received by fans and critics alike, with Rolling Stone magazine declaring that U2 had "proven that the same penchant for epic musical and verbal gestures that leads many artists to self-parody can, in more inspired hands, fuel the unforgettable fire that defines great rock & roll." In early 1992, U2 began its first American tour in more than four years. The multimedia event known as the Zoo TV Tour masterfully confused audiences with hundreds of video screens, upside-down flying Trabant cars, mock transmission towers, satellite TV links, subliminal text messages, and over-the-top stage characters such as "The Fly", "Mirror-ball Man" and "Mister MacPhisto". The tour was, among other things, U2's attempt at mocking the excesses of rock and roll by appearing to embrace greed and decadence - at times, even away from the stage. Some missed the point of the tour and thought that U2 had "lost it," and that Bono had become an egomaniac. European leg link-ups to war-torn Sarajevo caused further controversy. Following the same theme, U2 went back into the studio to record their next release during a break in the Zoo TV Tour. The album was intended as an additional EP to Achtung Baby, but soon Zooropa expanded into a full-fledged LP and was released in July of 1993. Zooropa was an even greater departure from the style of their earlier recordings, incorporating techno style and other electronic effects. After some time off - and a few side projects (the Batman Forever and Mission: Impossible soundtracks) - the band returned under the radar in 1995 with Brian Eno under the moniker "Passengers", and released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks No. 1. The album, including a collaboration with Luciano Pavarotti, "Miss Sarajevo", was not largely noticed in the industry, and received little attention from the critics and public alike.

Pop and Popmart (1996 – 1998)

In early 1996, U2 began work on their next record. The recording of this album was fraught with difficulty. U2 were once again attempting to change their musical direction, this time the band were experimenting with heavy post production of their music, utilizing tape loops, programming and sampling. This gave the album a techno/disco feel. Pop was released in March of 1997. The album debuted at #1 in 28 countries, and earned U2 mainly positive reviews. Rolling Stone even went so far as claiming U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives." However, audiences and fans felt that the music industry had exceeded the limits of tolerance in promoting Pop, and the album was seen as something of a disappointment by many. One of the main problems the band had when the recording the album was the time constraint placed upon them by their impending tour. The band has admitted they were hurried into completing the album and say that a number of tracks on the album were not finished as well they would have liked. It is not surprising that the tracks from Pop picked for U2's second greatest hits album – "Gone", "Discothèque", and "Staring at the Sun" – were all remixed for inclusion on that album. With the Popmart Tour, U2, once again continued the Zoo TV theme of decadence. The show hit the road in April, 1997; the set included a 100-foot tall golden yellow arch, a large 150 foot long video screen, and a 35 foot tall mirrorball lemon. It was to be U2's most colorful show to date. One of the stops was in Sarajevo, where they were the first major group to perform after the war there. The Popmart Tour was the second-highest grossing tour of 1997 (behind the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon Tour) with revenues of just under $80 million, but it cost more than $100 million to produce. The band played a brief concert in Belfast in May of 1998, three days before the public voted in favour of the Northern Ireland Peace Accord. Also that year, U2 performed on an Irish TV fundraiser for victims of the Omagh, Northern Ireland bombing which killed 28 and injured hundreds more earlier in the year. In late 1998, U2 released its first greatest hits compilation, The Best of 1980-1990.

All That You Can't Leave Behind and Elevation (2000 – 2001)

U2 went back into the studio in early 1999, yet again with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois producing. After the overwhelming extravagance of the Popmart Tour, critics and music industry insiders felt that U2 was trying to return to the days of The Joshua Tree in order to keep its audience of loyal fans. During these sessions, the band collaborated with author Salman Rushdie, who wrote the lyrics to a song called "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", based on his book of the same name. That song, and others, eventually appeared on the soundtrack to The Million Dollar Hotel, a movie based on a story written by Bono. All That You Can't Leave Behind, released in late October, was received widely as U2's return to grace, and was considered by many to be U2's "third masterpiece" (after Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree, according to Rolling Stone). It debuted at No. 1 in 22 countries and spawned a world-wide hit single, "Beautiful Day", which also earned three Grammy Awards. U2 followed that release with a major tour in the spring of 2001. The subsequent Elevation Tour saw the band performing in a scaled-down setting, on a heart-shaped stage and ramp. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 nearly led U2 to cancel the balance of the tour, but they decided to continue, starting the second American leg of the tour at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, home of the "Fighting Irish". The tour was the top concert draw in North America, where the band's 80 shows (out of 113 worldwide) grossed $110 million, the second-highest total behind The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994. Following such an accomplished album, and a hugely successful tour, many fans felt that U2 had been successful in "re-applying for the job of the biggest band in the world," an application Bono had made a year earlier. After the Elevation Tour ended in late 2001, the culmination of U2's resurrection came when the band performed a well-received three-song set in New Orleans, Louisiana during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVI. The highlight was an emotional performance of "Where the Streets Have No Name" in which the names of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were projected onto a pair of backdrops, scrolling up towards the sky; at the end of the song the backdrops were released, descending to the ground in a gentle revisiting of the Twin Towers' fall. Bono then opened his jacket, which he had worn throughout the Elevation Tour, to reveal the American flag printed on the lining, an image that was widely reproduced in the media. U2 was praised for their performance because they actually performed their music live as opposed to lip syncing like previous artists had done for Super Bowl halftime shows. A few months later, All That You Can't Leave Behind picked up four more Grammy Awards. Bono continued his campaigns for debt and HIV/AIDS relief throughout the summer of 2002. In late 2002, U2 released part two of its greatest hits collection, The Best of 1990-2000. Dance artists LMC sampled "With or Without You" for their track "Take Me To The Clouds Above" which also features lyrics from "How Will I Know" by Whitney Houston. All four members of U2 had to clear the track, which was released under the title of LMC vs U2. Adam Clayton said of the track: "It's a good beat and you can dance to it. I especially like the bassline." The track went to the top of the UK singles charts in February 2004 and also went top 5 in Ireland and top ten in Australia.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and "Vertigo" (2004 – )

A rough-cut of the band's follow-up album was stolen in Nice, France, in July 2004 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3897987.stm]. Shortly thereafter, Bono stated that, should the album appear on P2P networks, it would be released immediately via iTunes and be in stores within a month. No such pre-release of the album occurred, however, and the first single from the album, titled "Vertigo", was released for airplay on September 24, 2004. The song received extensive airplay in the first week after its release and became an international hit. The album, titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was released on November 22 in much of the world and November 23 in the United States. The album debuted at #1 in 32 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the band's native Ireland. It sold 840,000 units in the United States in its first week. This was a record for the band, nearly doubling the first-week sales of All That You Can't Leave Behind in the US. U2 promoted How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb heavily. They made appearances on TV shows like CD:UK and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in Britain and Saturday Night Live in America. The band also made a video for the second North American single, "All Because Of You", while riding on a flatbed truck through the streets of Manhattan on November 22. They then played a free concert at a Brooklyn park, attracting over 3,000 fans who had learned of the show on various U2 fan websites. In another first, the band entered an extensive cross-promotion campaign with Apple Computer: the band allowed the single "Vertigo" to be used in a widely aired television commercial for the iPod music player -- though the band did not receive any royalties for the use of the song, due to the commercial the song was well known even before the release of the album. This move shocked some fans who remember U2's previous staunch refusal to get involved in any product promotion. The band also licensed a special version of the iPod with a U2 design (black faceplate with red click wheel, echoing the color scheme for the new album) and facsimilies of the bandmembers' signatures etched on the back plate. The partnership also led Apple's iTunes Music Store to feature a collection known as The Complete U2. The digital box set features each U2 album in its entirety, as well as every single and B-side ever released, rare live sets, and previously unreleased songs from recording sessions of All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Owners of the U2 Edition iPod were able to purchase this collection at a discount. In Europe, the next single released from the album - "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" - once again featured a Bono/Pavarotti performance on the B-side. The performance is a Jacknife Lee remix of "Ave Maria" sung by Bono with Luciano Pavarotti.The B-Side of the single also includes a remix of the hit "Vertigo" and a Jacknife Lee remix of "Fast Cars." Fast Cars is an album track available only on the UK and Japan versions and American deluxe editions of Atomic Bomb. The single will be available on two CD formats and a DVD single. The DVD carries a video of an exclusive live performance of "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" from the band's Dublin studio, and a Trent Reznor remix of "Vertigo." In April 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed U2 in its 50 "greatest rock & roll artists of all time". On March 14, 2005, U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. The first leg of the Vertigo Tour began in the United States, with the band performing 26 sold-out shows. The first leg started off in March in San Diego, California and finished in May in Boston, Massachusetts. The band performed well-known hits, songs from the current album, and early rarities. The second leg was a European stadium tour, which started on June 10 in Brussels and finished on August 14 in Lisbon. The band then returned to the United States and will finish up on December 19 in Portland, Oregon. There are currently rumors of a United States stadium/European arena tour mid-2006. On November 9, u2.com announced that the Vertigo tour will continue into 2006, and the band will appear in Mexico, South America, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. U2 have smashed Irish box office records with ticket sales for their 2005 Croke Park, Dublin concerts, after more than 240,000 tickets were sold in record time. In Belgium, France and Austria the tickets were sold within 60 minutes. The third single from the album, "City of Blinding Lights", entered the UK singles chart at #2 on June 12. They performed alongside Coldplay, Paul McCartney, and Pink Floyd, among others, in the Live 8 concert in London on July 2nd, 2005. The Vertigo Tour European leg climaxed at the Estádio José Alvalade XXI in Lisbon on August 15 after the band received the country's most prestigious honour, the Order of Liberty from Portugal's President Jorge Sampaio regarding the band's hugely influential work for action in Africa and across the world concerning extreme poverty. Commenting on the award, which had never previously been awarded to a foreign music group, Bono said, "It is of course for the four of us a great, great honour... ... if we really believed that an African life was equal to a European life we would not stand by with watering cans while an entire continent was bursting into flames." Before presenting the award, the President said: "Over the last 25 years you have shown that it is possible to combine the pleasure of artistic creation with civic and humanitarian intervention to help build a better world." Action against poverty has been a major feature point of the Vertigo 05 shows, as Bono has used the song "One" as an opportunity to plead with fans in attendance to join the ONE Campaign in the fight against poverty. U2 will be featured on the live DVD "U2// Vertigo // Live from Chicago 2005," filmed over 2 Chicago concerts in May 2005. The DVD will mark their 3rd live film since their 2001 Elevation Tour. On Monday December 5th 2005 U2's Vertigo tour show in Sydney, Australia at the Telstra Stadium sold out in just an hour and during the course of that day the Melbourne and New Zealand shows were also sold out. A second Sydney show was announced and went on sale on the 12th, also selling out in under an hour. December the 8th saw U2 pick up 5 Grammy nominations, including 'Album of the Year' for Bomb, and 'Song of the Year'for Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own.

Next album recordings (2006 – 2007)

In mid-2005, a source ([http://www.antimusic.com/news/05/april/11-01.shtml Anti-Music]) has reported that U2 have plans for new album and are keen to record more. According to Bono there are 24 songs that came out of sessions, of which the band took 11 for their subsequent record. The Vertigo tour kicked off in San Diego on 28 March and is expected to go well into 2006, so there aren't plans to go into the studio to record. Most likely a new record would surface in 2007 but the possibility of a new U2 record in 2006 cannot be ruled out entirely. In the January 2006 edition of Q magazine, Bono said that the band were working on a new album in 2006. In 1993, during a break in the massive Zoo TV Tour, U2 recorded what was to be Zooropa. The album was released only a year and half after their groundbreaking album Achtung Baby. There have also been talks of U2 re-recording their 1997 album, Pop for a tenth anniversary. Considering recent comments from the members of the band, this now seems more likely than them rushing to get the remains of the How to Dismantle... sessions finished. Bono has said that the biggest mistake the band has ever made was letting their manager book the PopMart tour, as it meant they had to rush to finish the Pop album, and so they consider Pop to have failed as an album, despite at least 7 million sales.

Other projects

Beside their band-project, U2 and its members also worked with other musicians, such as the Irish band Clannad with which Bono recorded the song "In A Lifetime." Together with The Edge, Bono wrote the song "GoldenEye" for the James Bond movie of the same name, which was performed by Tina Turner. They also wrote the song "She's A Mystery To Me" for Roy Orbison, which was released on his album Mystery Girl, while Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. did a rework of the title track of the movie Mission: Impossible in 1996. While working under the pseudonym "Passengers," U2 gave producer Brian Eno quite a bit more creative control and cranked out the album Original Soundtracks No. 1. The work is a compilation of film music for nonexistent movies, and a bit of a step back from the usual style of the band, thus the pseudonym "Passengers". Two of the tracks, Miss Sarajevo (that got world airplay after its live duet between Bono and Pavarotti was included in the album "Pavarotti And Friends") and Your Blue Room (a fan favorite, including a vocal track by the band's bassist, Adam Clayton), even made it to their best of album for 1990-2000. U2 also worked together with other artists, like the U.S. author William S. Burroughs who had a guest appearance in their video of Last Night on Earth shortly before he died. His poem 'A Thanksgiving Prayer' was used as video footage during the bands Zoo TV Tour in the early 1990's. Also many other musicians were influenced by the work of U2 - there are several cover versions of U2 songs by bands including Pet Shop Boys, Pearl Jam, Aslan, and The Chimes and musicians such as Cassandra Wilson, Mica Paris and Johnny Cash. U2 has enjoyed reciprocal influential relationships with artists including REM and Anton Corbijn, as well as exerting influences on others, including the Austrian painter [http://www.kave.at Kave Atefie] who dedicated successfully two art-series ('Like a promise in the year of election' and 'Outside it's America') to the work of the Irish band. Since 1982, Anton Corbijn has been photographing U2. He "invented" U2’s public image and he is still shaping it. Since their first encounter in February 1982 in New Orleans to their April 2004 Lisbon shooting for "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", their longstanding friendship, mutual inspiration, and shared experience of rock history is part of the history of photography.

Discography

For a complete discography, see U2 discography.

Studio albums

#1980 - Boy (total sales 3M) #1981 - October (2M) #1983 - War (8M) #1984 - The Unforgettable Fire (8M) #1987 - The Joshua Tree (26M) #1991 - Achtung Baby (18M) #1993 - Zooropa (7M) #1997 - Pop (6M) #2000 - All That You Can't Leave Behind (12M) #2004 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (10M)

Live albums

#1983 - Under a Blood Red Sky #1988 - Rattle and Hum (half-live/half-studio album)

Other projects

#1985 - Wide Awake in America #1995 - Original Soundtracks No. 1 (with Brian Eno, band went under the name The Passengers). #2000 - Million Dollar Hotel Soundtrack #2004 - The Complete U2 (available for download from the iTunes Music Store) which includes all studio albums, singles and officially released live tracks, as well as some previously unreleased content.

Campaigning

U2 is almost as well known for its humanitarian nature as it is for its music. Bono is perhaps the best-known advocate for finding a cure for AIDS and helping the impoverished in Africa. Some human rights causes helped by U2 include:
- Amnesty International
- Greenpeace
- African Well Fund
- Support for Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi
- DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa)
- Chernobyl Children's Project
- Jubilee Debt Campaign
- The ONE Campaign
- Live 8
- Make Poverty History

Sound samples


- Download sample of a live performance of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song"
- Download sample of "Pride (In the Name of Love)" from the album, The Unforgettable Fire.

See also


- U2's record label sues the band Negativland over claimed copyright infringement
- Best selling music artists - World's top-selling music artists chart.
- List of number-one hits (United States)
- List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (US)
- List of number-one dance hits (United States)
- List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart

External links


- [http://www.u2.com/ U2.com] - official site U2 U2 U2 U2 U2 U2

Other links


- [http://www.u2log.com/ U2 webblog] ko:U2 (밴드) ja:U2 simple:U2 (band)

Achtung Baby

Achtung Baby is an album by Irish rock band U2, released on November 19, 1991 (see 1991 in music). The album was released nearly two years after lead vocalist Bono announced the band would have to "go away and dream it all up again", following the mixed reception of 1988's Rattle and Hum. "Achtung, Baby!" in German means "Attention, baby!" or "Careful, baby!"

History

One of U2's best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums, Achtung Baby was a vast departure for the band, adding more European than American influences, especially the avant-garde theatrics of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and other artists. During the 1970s, Producer Brian Eno collaberated with Bowie in the same Berlin studio in which U2 did its earliest session work for Achtung Baby, and the Edge uses guitar effects and pedal similar to those used by Bowie on albums such as Low and "Heroes". U2 sampled techniques and sounds from other musical genres previously unused by the band, including Dance, House and Electronica, whilst maintaining their original feel of rock and roll. The album's new sound was a source of conflict in the band because The Edge and Bono favored the new sounds they were coming up with while recording their sessions in Berlin, while drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton were partial to the band's traditional sound. The conflict amongst the members of U2 very nearly led to the band breaking up, but the fighting subdued after The Edge arrived at the studio with an alternate guitar riff for the song "Mysterious Ways". The band rallied around the riff and was inspired to write the song "One", which was able to heal the rising tensions between the members of U2. It essentially changed the band's entire outlook on the album. It helped bring the band back from the brink during recording sessions and it was responsible for a renewed sense of optimism towards the material they had already recorded. Leaving Berlin on a high note, the band was able to complete the rest of the album in Dublin. While ostensibly a song of loss, "One" and its three separate music videos came to be seen by the band, and many of its fans, as an anthem extolling hope wrought from despair. Achtung Baby was also darker sounding than previous efforts, thanks in large part to songs such as "So Cruel," "Acrobat," and "Love Is Blindness," which deal with themes of helplessness and broken relationships. The spiritual yearning of U2's eighties work began to take on a more existential, despairing element in Achtung Baby. The band's political activism moved to the AIDS crisis and environmental issues, even using the CD single and one of the song's videos to draw public attention to AIDS. At the same time, the band also took on a lighter tone, electing to use irony rather than earnestness in its music and public appearances, and poking-fun at its own self-importance during the 1980s. This evolving outlook culminated in the pleaful soul-searching (and jaded skewering of contemporary life) on 1997's Pop and would not subside until the more hopeful tracks on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Other tracks included the distorted opener "Zoo Station," the danceable single "Even Better Than The Real Thing," and the thumping rocker (and future live favorite) "Until the End of The World," an allegorical afterlife confession of Judas Iscariot. Lead singer Bono described the album, and its first single, the bombastic and fuzzy guitar raver "The Fly," as "the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree". The album was supported by the Zoo TV Tour, a ground-breaking multimedia extravaganza.

Track listing

#"Zoo Station" (4:36) #"Even Better Than the Real Thing" (3:41) #"One" (4:36) #"Until the End of the World" (4:39) #"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" (5:16) #"So Cruel" (5:49) #"The Fly" (4:29) #"Mysterious Ways" (4:04) #"Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World" (3:53) #"Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" (5:31) #"Acrobat" (4:30) #"Love Is Blindness" (4:23) Music by U2, words by Bono and the Edge. Produced by Daniel Lanois with Brian Eno. "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways", "One", "Even Better Than the Real Thing", and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" were released as singles.

Personnel


- Bono--lead vocals, guitar
- The Edge--guitar, keyboards, vocals
- Adam Clayton--bass guitar, guitar
- Larry Mullen, Jr.--drums, percussion
- Daniel Lanois--guitar, percussion

Accolades

On the Billboard Music Charts (North America), Achtung Baby topped the Billboard 200 chart. It won a Grammy Award f