Recently in the Interviews Category

L.E. Eisenmenger, Boston Pro Soccer Examiner

Seth Ader, the Senior Director of Sports Marketing at ESPN, spoke with me at length about the making of ESPN's campaign for 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. He is passionate about getting the importance of the World Cup across to American and international audiences and worked with U2 to create the message. Since 2005, Ader has been responsible for all ESPN soccer properties including European Championship, English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Major League Soccer and USA Soccer, and also Major League Baseball, "This is Sports Center," and others. Prior to 2005, he was the director of marketing for the NBA and NFL, managed ESPN the Magazine, and launched ESPN Desportes and ESPN HD networks.

Ader oversees ESPN's World Cup promotions and production from concept to design, to creation, to presentation worldwide. His attention to detail within the big picture is amazing, his conviction in the importance of this work is strong. After successfully working with Bono and U2 for 2006 World Cup Germany, Ader approached them again and they agreed to partner in the 2010 message. U2 believe in the World Cup as much as ESPN believes in their music.

Read the full article here

Interview by Mike Pattenden

Times Online

The name on his passport says Dave Evans but the rest of the world knows him as The Edge, the moniker handed to him by a young Bono Vox in U2's early days in Seventies Dublin. Polite and self-effacing, the guitarist is a self-confessed "music obsessive" who finishes our interview asking what new bands he should catch up on. His status presents many opportunities, not least the chance to work and play with his musical heroes. At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert in October he accompanied Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Black Eyed Peas and Patti Smith. "That was amazing," he recalls. "You don't get many opportunities to play with artists of that calibre in your life." Actually, he gets more than most, as evidenced by his starring role alongside Jimmy Page and Jack White in the big-screen rockumentary It Might Get Loud. A guitar fan's wet dream, it traces the threesome's differing approaches to their art before bringing them together to jam."What came out of the movie," he says, "was that it doesn't matter what your influences are, it's whether you are an originator. It's about attempting to express the sound in your head you can't otherwise explain."

By Steve Pond

With six nominations and one win between them, the members of U2 are no strangers to the Golden Globes. They'll be back this year as nominees for "Winter," the closing-credits song they wrote for Jim Sheridan's movie "Brothers."

U2's guitarist, the Edge, who's also a central figure in Davis Guggenheim's terrific rock doc "It Might Get Loud," checked in with theWrap to talk about old pal Sheridan, writing for movies and being an outsider on Hollywood's big nights.

"We are still capable of potentially doing our best-ever album"

David Fricke, Rolling Stone

The Rolling Stone editors picked eight stars -- from Bruce and Beyoncé to Radiohead and U2 -- who not only made the best music but also led the way as Artists of the Decade in our new issue. Here's more of our conversation with U2's The Edge.

U2 in Photos: three decades of the world's biggest band, onstage and backstage.

U2 ended this decade by playing to some of the biggest audiences of your career, in those stadiums, in the round. How has that affected the music -- your connection to rock & roll in those dimensions?
It's only made possible because of the technology, the in-ear monitors. We can hear each other perfectly. Otherwise it would be an absolute disaster. Because of the in-ear technology, I'm right next to Larry, right next to Adam and Bono, in sonic terms.

by Joshua Klein, Pitchfork Media

"Eno is a postman's son," sums up friend and frequent collaborator Daniel Lanois. "He grew up essentially in a peasant environment, but he had a brilliant mind and was able to get to his mountaintop."

"Brian Eno is someone that you don't want to sound stupid in front of, and everything he said, I was just like, 'Wow'," noted (um) Natalie Imbruglia, who recently collaborated with Eno (and Coldplay's Chris Martin) for parts of her comeback album, on the BBC.

Any way you look at it, Brian Eno is one of the preeminent producers and thinkers of our time. Hell, an extemporaneous conversation between him and scholar Richard Dawkins recently packed the house in Oxford, and Eno's as well known these days for his politics, theories, and criticism as he is for his music. Indeed, the once prolific Eno's own output has slowed considerably since the 1970s and 80s, in part due to these extracurriculars and of course thanks to his ongoing work with U2 and Coldplay, something Eno addressed-- in addition to ABBA and Phil Collins-- when he opened some of his packed schedule for a brief conversation.

By Ray Waddell

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - As U2 wraps the 2009 dates of its groundbreaking 360 world stadium tour, the band is expected to gross about $300 million and sell about 3 million tickets to fewer than 50 shows.

Rather than a high-end ticket price, the big numbers are more about a unique staging concept that boosts configurations at stadiums, and fans know that U2 is again pushing the production envelope. The tour is in support of the band's latest album, "No Line on the Horizon," and if it isn't scaling the sales heights of previous sets -- since its March release, "Line" has sold 991,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- the band's manager, Paul McGuinness, credits that more to overall market conditions than a decline in the act's popularity.

Though sometimes outspoken about industry issues -- his 2008 MIDEM keynote excoriating the industry for its lackluster response to digital distribution still resonates -- McGuinness is anything but riled as he sits in an office backstage at Chicago's Soldier Field just before U2 went onstage. "What do I possibly have to be pissed off about?" he wonders. Both pragmatist and gambler, McGuinness guides the career of what has become arguably the biggest band in the world, and it has been a banner year for the group he has represented since the start of its career.

By Jane Stevenson, Sun Media

U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. sat down with Sun Media in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview late Thursday backstage at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, just hours before the band performed their second show at the venue.

Mullen gets the credit for the formation of U2, as he was the one who posted an ad on his high school notice board when he was just 14, looking for bandmates. The rest is history. He used to joke it was The Larry Mullen Band for about 10 minutes, before frontman Bono walked in.

Here's the best of what Mullen had to say during our 20-minute chat. Contrary to his reputation for being quiet, he was chatty and warm in person:

By Jane Stevenson, Sun Media

U2 guitarist The Edge is largely considered the soul of the Irish rock band, what with his distinctive, atmospheric style of playing that conjures both emotion and awe with every chord.

He told Sun Media, in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview backstage at Rogers Centre on Thursday night before the band's second show in two nights, that performing live is where it's at for him.

"On a good night, I think there's no band like U2, and there's certainly no audience like the U2 audience," he said.

Here's the best of the rest of what The Edge had to say during our 20-minute chat:

Sun Media: You seem to still be enjoying yourself up there after three decades of doing this.

The Edge: Touring is sort of a crazy way to live, but what really makes it bearable is that two-hours-15 that you're on stage playing the songs with your best friends, to some other great friends -- the U2 fans. It's a fantastic job.

By Jane Stevenson, Sun Media

U2 bassist Adam Clayton is the group's resident sophisticate.

Frontman Bono jokingly described him Wednesday night at the Rogers Centre, during the band's first show at the venue, as "Adam Clayton, the effortlessly stylish citizen of the world, and sexual predator -- the only man in U2 who uses face cream."

Clayton addressed some of those charges in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview with Sun Media on Thursday night backstage at Rogers Centre. Clayton was funny, smart and charming.

Here's the best of what he had to say:

Sun Media: So, I have to ask, what kind of face cream do you use?

Clayton: As it happens, I don't use face cream. I'm very lucky. I have quite oily skin, which means that you don't need to moisturize that much. So he obviously just attributes me as using a lot face cream.

By Jane Stevenson, Sun Media

FROM THE BACKSEAT OF BONO'S SUV, DOWNTOWN TORONTO -- Most first dates involve having dinner and seeing a movie.

Yesterday afternoon in Toronto, U2 frontman Bono picked me up in a shiny black Chevy Suburban on Yonge St., and it was non-stop talking.

OK, so it wasn't a date. Bono wasn't actually driving, and I got in the car first.

But the scenario was that one of the world's biggest music stars and his equally famous bandmates -- guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. -- had just visited 102.1 The Edge radio station, drawing dozens of fans for the last-minute appearance. And I ended up talking to the singer, resplendent in a denim ensemble and tinted glasses, in the backseat of his car, en route to last night's second show by U2 at the Rogers Centre.

The only others with us were his driver and his security man, while the car was given a police escort through downtown Toronto.

Ah, the life of Bono.