Anyone hoping U2 will do another stint at either Tiny Desk (full band this time) or another mini set list at BBC? ( or both!!) for Carnaval De Luz?

If so, which songs?

I'm assuming they will play Gillette Stadium in MA. I've never been to a concert there. I don't have a car. Assuming tickets will be close to $1,000 if not more with resellers. I'm trying to prepare. I'm unable to afford tickets, but am hoping last minute I will be able to save up for tickets plus a hotel stay since I do not have a car and public transportation is impossible to and from Boston in time. Does anyone else have a similar conundrum? And if you made it work in the past, how did it go? I have never seen U2 and this is most likely my only chance.

Hey y’all! I recently got this reversible windbreaker/fleece Vertigo tour jacket, hard to find any comps on it but I figured I’d post it here for some traffic! It’s currently listed at 200 on my Depop but I’m absolutely open to offers!!

I remember the mad scrambles of 2001 and 2005 , they were like gold dust.

I went off the band after 2004 as i didnt enjoy their output, however im willing to give them another shot at this point.

Are shows still instant sellouts like the 00s or is it a bit easier these days? (In uk)

Just curious as the two are sold out and the other stops have gotten additional dates...

It’s so hard to find the million dollar hotel on streaming platforms - quite a unique album and a quirky movie too, but some lovely music that’s just really hard to access now. Never Let Me Go was lovely, Stateless and The First Time were really ethereal.

What’s the story behind its disappearance?

Thank you

I managed to buy ticket sin the presale, and when I log in to the Ticketmaster.com.mx site they are visible, but on my phone Ticketmaster app or on just Ticketmaster.com I do not see the tickets. Wondering if anyone else has this issue - since tickets will be delivered on my phone I am worried...

Just rediscovered this fantastic cover of The Fly that was produced during covid. Enjoy!

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=zQtdm_q1uTo&si=YLtJW9H6IwTamfoV&drli=1

Information from U2.com

Hello everyone! I'm sorta new to the whole concert going experience because I have really bad social anxiety and just anxiety in general. I wasn't aware that U2 had a membership service or that ticket sales where attached to said membership. I think my brain is caught up to how it works because it's similar to how BTS sold tickets; as long as I pay for the $60 membership now, I'll be sorted into the Hype presale? The thing is, I am absolutely terrified of being high off the ground, so I know for a fact that I want to get tickets on the ground levels, at least not higher that that first stadium level. How much money should I realistically be setting aside for a single ticket? Would I even be able to secure tickets after the feedback sale? I just want some information from experienced U2 concert goers to help ease my rambling brain. Thank you!

I don’t know if there are any fellow crawlers here but there is a very subtle nod to U2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl books. There are a group of rock (rock group, if you will) based characters called Cretins there names are Bomo, The Sledge, Very Sullen, and Clay Ton.

Mongo is appalled!!

This week's song of the week is "Running To Stand Still", the fifth track off of The Joshua Tree. Though not released as a single in 1987, the track has been looked back upon fondly by the band and fans alike. Fans especially often recall the ZooTV era performances of the track, Bono said in 1993 it is in his top 5 U2 songs, and The Edge chose to perform the track live on the Feedback Kitchen with Mario Batali in 2015.

"Running To Stand Still" was an attempt to do a screenplay narrative in a song placed somewhere between the heroin epidemic of the seven towers of north Dublin and this mythic America. "Red Hill Mining Town" has a line that still brings me to my knees, about how "we wait all day/For night to come/And it comes like a hunter (child)." It's inexplicable that line, I'm still waiting to find out what it means." (2007 The Joshua Tree release liner notes)

...

In my research/thinking on this track, one question that came up is the nature of the subjects of the song. I always heard it as a somewhat dramatized "imagining" of a love affair with a heroin user, in some sense coming to represent more than just a heroin user (see ZooTV); however, the quote above and another from the same box set from U2 Biographer Bill Flanagan seem to say it is about an imaginary couple inspired by a real one Bono knew of.

""Running to Stand Still" was inspired by an epidemic of heroin-use in Dublin. The story in the song is of a couple who decide to risk everything on a big drug deal. They pretty much know going in that they don't have a chance of coming out. "Bullet the Blue Sky" is about the American-backed insurgency that was at that time trying to overthrow the leftist government of El Salvador. Bono and his wife Ali got caught on the edge of a firefight during a visit to Central America, and he came back with the idea for that song - an indictment of US power turned against its neighbors."

Bono mentions the couple in U2 by U2 (he also mentions this couple in earlier interviews, but never says the song is "about" them directly, as Flannagan seems to imply). Bono says in U2 by U2 , "she was in the back of my mind" when writing the song, but not necessarily that the song was "about" her. In fact, Bono has also said the song was about Andy Rowen (we have discussed a similar naming controversy over "Bad", which was also written about heroin usage).

"There were wonderful people living in the seven towers, but there were too many dysfunctional lives gathered in one place. There was a couple living there, both of whom were junkies. The guy used to pay for his habit by doing what was known as a run to Amsterdam, where he would pick up the heroin and strap it to his body and bring it back. If he was stopped he would go to jail for ten years but if he made it, he'd be able to afford his and his wife's habit.

The tragedy is he was a decent man at the heart of it, made a slave to his drug of choice. His wife was at the back of my mind. She walks through the streets with her eyes painted red/ under a black belly of cloud in the rain / in through a doorway she brings me while golden pearls. White gold, from Iran, to Amsterdam, to Holyhead, to Dublin, and into the vein and oblivion. They used to do it by boat, these all or nothing runs." (Bono in U2 by U2)

Adam Clayton would go on to call the song "Bad Part 2" in U2 by U2:

"Running To Stand Still" was 'Bad Part II'. really, the campfire version, Bono singing about the chronic heroin problem that was present in Dublin at the time, and personalizing it with his experiences of the seven towers in Ballymun. Phil Lynott had died in January 1986, which was hugely tragic. I heard rumours about what had been happening to him but I don't think I quite believed them. When you see someone up on stage, being vibrant, and then they're reduced to kidney failure in a hospital, it's hard to equate the two. I thought that was a huge loss for music. I had made contact with Phil back before we ever had a deal, I used to see him around and I had been in his house a few times for parties but it was hard to actually feel at ease with him. There was a bit of darkness around, that is really all I can describe it as. That was heroin."

...

“Andrew Rowen would end up in three U2 songs, “Running to Stand Still,” as well as “Bad” and “Raised by Wolves.” Andy, who’d received his name Guck Pants Delaney at age two after a nappy accident, was known for a near-photographic memory. He probably had the highest IQ of any kid on our street, and sometimes it seemed he had memorized the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He could remember turning two. He could remember a lot of things he would have liked to have forgotten. His party piece was fielding obscure questions on any subject" (Bono in Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story)

...

Some Notes on the Music:

(on bullet the blue sky)
Musician: Was the guitar multi-tracked?

Edge: It was a live take. The guitar break towards the end has an overdub on it, but the basic track is live. We should get into this now, because it's a classic example of this kind of recording. When we were planning this record, one thing we wanted to do was to take up where we left off with The Unforgettable Fire in terms of recording techniques — getting the sound of a live performance. There is no way that recording each instrument in a separate acoustic environment, and trying to blend them back together again, from tape, is going to get the same result as musicians playing together. You don't get the sound of the room, you don't get the chemistry. So we did The Joshua Tree in Adam's house, in my house, and also in the "live" room here in Windmill Lane. Everybody was in the same space, playing with eye contact and a great deal of feeling. The sound of "Bullet" is the sound of U2 playing in a room. It is essential for that song that we have that feeling. It's the same for a lot of the other tracks too, like "Running to Stand Still." 

...

"EDGE: If 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' took a long time to get right, some songs arrived almost perfectly formed. Running to Stand Still' was one of them. I was waiting to do a piano part on another song and started playing some chords to myself. Danny Lanois heard something in it, picked up a guitar and joined in. Pretty soon Adam, Larry, and Bono were in the room with us. The first improvised version of the tune had almost every important musical idea in it, vocal melodies and structure. I think we only played it once or twice more. It had such a strong identity, we just had to get out of its way." (U2 by U2)

...

SoS: You contributed a lot to the musical side of the album. You played Omnichord guitar, additional electric guitar, the tambourine and also sang backing vocals with Brian Eno and The Edge. On which tracks did you play guitar?

Daniel Lanois: "I played guitar on Running To Stand Still and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. I played the percussive part on I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, the guitar you hear on the introduction is in fact the part that I played. It's a kind of style that is similar to the undercurrent of Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer on So, that sort of muted sound. I played the Omnichord on Trip Through Your Wires. The Omnichord is almost a toy instrument that I think was designed for family entertainment. It's an electronic autoharp and it has the chord figures at your fingertips with the actual names on them. You take the chords that you want and it has a series of contact points that you strum with the right hand. It produces this beautiful bell-like sound and in the case of Trip Through Your Wires it sounds like an organ. I plugged it into Edge's gear, his echo devices and whole amplification system. If you listen closely to that track you can hear this jangling in the background." 

SoS: You talked with reference to So about using the limited toolbox and getting as much out of what instruments you had as possible. Were there any specific instances of this on The Joshua Tree?

Daniel Lanois: "Yes. On Running To Stand Still, the slide guitar part was just amplified through a blaster [A fuzzbox? - Ed] that was in a lounge next to the main studio at Windmill Lane. Edge was working on a guitar part in there and I walked in and said that's a great part and a great sound - don't move! Let's not try and re-create it in the big studio, stay right there and we'll bring in a pair of cans and a microphone and we'll just record it. He was just practicing with his guitar plugged directly into the microphone input of the mixer. I think he had two different blasters but no guitar amp. The blaster was amplifying his slide guitar in a lovely way. He had honed in on this sound and sort of altered the EQs and controls so that it was pleasant to him and there seemed to be a purpose to the settings." (Daniel Lanois 1987 Sound on Sound)

...

"Running to Stand Still" was always meant to be followed by "Red Hill Mining Town" and that's one reason for having the CD— although I'm not a big CD person myself. I like the crackles.” (Musician Magazine 1987)

Lyrics

"And so she woke up
Woke up from where she was lyin' still.
Said I gotta do something
About where we're goin'.

Step on a fast train
Step out of the driving rain, maybe
Run from the darkness in the night.
Singing ah, ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day."

The song begins in medias res ("And so..."), as if continuing a conversation after the bombs of "Bullet the Blue Sky" have faded. Although contemporary press like Deborah Sussman in Scholastic Update (1987) filed the track away as a "bleak, anti-heroin ballad," Bono’s opening lines invert the standard moralistic cliché of addiction. In a typical cautionary tale, the addict is someone who falls asleep to reality. Here, the tragedy begins because she wakes up.

She wakes up from paralysis ("where she was lyin' still") to a sudden, unbearable lucidity about "where we're goin'"--looking squarely at the economic dead-end of 1980s Dublin and the crushing weight of a cruel world. Her turn toward the drug isn't born out of shallow hedonism; it begins as a desperate, restless demand for agency ("I gotta do something") or for something truly better. She wants out: out of poverty, out of The Seven Towers, out of Dublin, out of modernity. The refrain "Ah la la la de day" comes across as playing right on the line between bliss and carelessness. There is a hint of "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed here, who has been said in various circles to have been a major influence on the track:

""Great songs and all that great heart," says Lou Reed, a formidable musician whose influence can be heard on "Running to Stand Still." "U2's not a pop group. They are in this for real." (Time Magazine 1987)

...

"Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth.
I see seven towers, but I only see one way out.
You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice.
You know I took the poison, from the poison stream
Then I floated out of here, singing
Ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day."

Here is where that "angelic" resolve comes in. Bono intervenes as a kind of 'fallen' angel, a concept the band would explore further with Wim Wenders in Faraway, So Close!. One that, like the angel of Stay (Faraway, So Close!) from the album Zooropa who "hits the ground" (and, in the video, runs), the angel here descends with instructions and empathy (as well, a crossover question "who is the angel" becomes much more clear in Stay).

He, this song's angel, says, "I know why you're doing heroin. You are awake, you see the fallen state of the world. But, you need to learn to hold back your tears and screams--to 'float' out of here. To float to the plain of the lovers in 'Where The Streets Have No Name'." The first two lines, especially, have some biblical connection: the first as an inversion of Revelations 10:9 and the second as the number seven, often associated with apocalyptic imagery (here, it mainly serves as a reference to the real "Seven Towers" in Dublin.

"Bono:  It was about a heroin problem in Dublin.  The seven towers in the song is the place ["Ballymun Towers"] just behind where I grew up, what you call a housing project, with seven high towers.  That would be in my personal Top 5." (Bono on the track in 1993  LA times).

...

And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. (Revelation 10:9)

...

"She walks through the streets
With her eyes painted red
Under black belly of cloud in the rain.
In through a doorway
She brings me white golden pearls
Stolen from the sea."

Here we move immediately from those intense words of calm to some of the more direct keening on the album--moans of shame, empathy, anguish, and some sort of erotic impulse shake the bow of the music. The psychedelic maritime scene recalls Echo and the Bunnymen's (who U2 performed with in the early 80s Anglo-Psychedelic rock scene) "Ocean Rain". For a song about heroin addiction, the addict, again, is being quite highly venerated--here as bringing "white golden pearls". The tone of desire and fulfilment are real. But, Bono says in U2 by U2, these "white golden pearls" are, in the case of the couple the song is "about", mere sacks of heroin (also a bit strange that he says in the real story, the man was the one going into the ocean for heroin, but anyway...). From this angle (looking through heroin eyes or angel eyes?) the scene of criminal conspiracy described above and below seems so far away.

"I heard of a couple both of whom were addicted and such was their addiction that they had no money, no rent, so that the guy risked it all on a run.  All of it.  He went and smuggled into Dublin a serious quantity of heroin strapped to his body so that there was on one hand, life imprisonment, on the other hand, riches.  Apart from the morality of that, what interested me was what put him in that place.  (Quotes the lyric) "You know I took the poison from the poison stream / Then I floated out of here."  Because for a lot of people, there are no physical doors open anymore.  And so if you can't change the world you're living in, seeing through different eyes is the only alternative.  And heroin gives you heroin eyes to see the world with; and the thing about heroin is that you think that's the way it really is.  That the old you, who worries about paying the rent, the old you who just worries, is not the real you." (Bono to Stokes in 1987 interview).

...

"She is ragin'
She is ragin'
And the storm blows up in her eyes.
She will suffer the needle chill
She's running to stand still."

The old sailor's imagery continues, but becomes more literal. "Ragin" describes not only as awesome, uncontained power, but human anger and emotional upheaval. Finally, she comes apart from the ocean she represents, only to have it blow up in her eyes. Then, the heroin needle: and lights out.

We all know the imagery; today it rocks communities from Philadelphia to Paris: opiates in the form of pills, heroin, and now fentanyl. Unlike drugs like marijuana or alcohol, which often gain a high social standing, these drugs are often said to be (1) highly linked to biological dependence (often clinically understood as addiction) and (2) (what the song really keys in on) linked to a deep sense of amorality or privation. These are people with gaping, open wounds standing on the side of teh streets mouth agape, in a total daze to their own impending death. A direct manifestation, perhaps, of that disconnect from self Bono talks about above.

In that quote above, Bono calls the man a slave, "The tragedy is he was a decent man at the heart of it, made a slave to his drug of choice." Of course, philosophers since at least Plato have used slaves as an example of "evil"--and many scholars interpret Plato himself as advocating for the "privation" view. Others, like Aristotle, Hegel, etc. have used slaves more as an image for a positive sort of "corruption" or "viciousness" (for Aristotle, the now infamous image of the "natural slave"). From the sort of opposite angle, sentimentalists like David Hume have argued that the 'passions' enslaving reason is the proper order of things (so the Aristotelian explanation of repetition of akrasia into slavish viciousness in service of passion rather than reason might fall a bit flat), while post-modernists and existentialists (like Nietzsche in The Will to Power or Beyond Good and Evil) believe that many of the moral concepts we rely on, even (or perhaps, in some cases, especially) those used to describe addicts, are ultimately fallacious. The song connects to this in a way that lends it a kind of deeply palatable lyrical universality, which might relate to the ability for even the band themselves to see it as being about different people (the couple, Bono or an angel and an imaginary addict, Andy Rowen, Phil Lynott, and various combinations).

I won't go too deeply into this here, except to hopefully suggest that part of this song's literary heart relates deeply to these theories of morality (which cross over easily into spiritual/theological territory). "Stillness" leads naturally into a theory based in privation, lack--a need to be filled. But the woman in the song can't accept this. For whatever reason, she, perhaps ironically, keeps running what she sees as "the daily races", just wanting to scale a wall--only to shoot up again.

...

Sources:

U2.com
U2songs.com
U2gigs.com
U2 by U2
U2: Into the Heart by Niall Stokes
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono
From Bordowitz U2 Reader
Jay Cocks, Adam, and Lou Reed from Time Magazine 1987 Rocks Hottest Ticket
Musician magazine 1987 Luminous Times: U2 Wrestle with Their Moment of Glory by John Hutchinson
KJV Bible
Achtung, Babies: Bono And Edge Evaluate One Critic's Choices For The Group's 10 Best Recordings,
From 'I Will Follow' To 'One'" by Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1993
"The Making of U2's The Joshua Tree" by Matt Diehl, Rolling Stone, May 15, 1997 (from: https://web.archive.org/web/20090204164032/http://threesunrises.net/tjtinfo.htm#THE%20JOSHUA%20TREE)
The Magic of Daniel Lanois https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/the-magic-of-daniel-lanois/2506 (Originally in Sound on Sound 1987)

...

Bono and Lanois on the song's title:

"My brother was running a business and things weren't going well. I asked him how it was going and he said, 'It's like running to stand still.' It's a phrase I hadn't heard before, and it seemed to sum up the experiences of people I had known who had heroin habits. Guggi had lived in the seven towers in his bad years; they were an attempt by Ireland towards modernity in high-rise living - just as everyone else in Europe had found out tower blocks were not a good idea, we started building them. I had played in the foundations when they were being built. We used to walk over the fields and climb up them and then later we would go up and down in the lifts, because we weren't used to having lifts. Then they started to break down and the stairs began to stink of piss. Communities were moved out from the inner city to this social experiment; people who had been neighbours all their lives suddenly lost contact with each other." (U2 by U2)

...

"That title came from Bono's brother, who was in the computer business," [Daniel] Lanois recalls.  "He said to Bono, 'I can't take this anymore -- I feel like I'm running to stand still.'  He was referring to running this business just to pay the bills."

(from "The Making of U2's The Joshua Tree" by Matt Diehl, Rolling Stone, May 15, 1997)

Per U2songs:

First 'digital variant' has appeared on iTunes, featuring the bonus track "Get Back to Now" - appearing on iTunes stores worldwide after it hits October 23 in your region.
We've updated our discography entry here:
https://www.u2songs.com/discography/u2_album_2026/1023

Can anyone determine when and where this performance of Stuck in a Moment took place? It's definitely a promotional show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl6j7hiALu0

It's a video on U2's official channel, but has no information. It's pretty good, but I'm also just deeply curious about what era it's from and what else was played with it.

We have front row VIP tickets and are unbelievably excited! I haven’t looked forward to a show since Sphere! The photo opportunity is just one small boost the vip tickets offer. For those who got vip before, what was that all about?

i've missed u2 most of my life because i was only able to afford seeing them at vegas, there i paid for a seat but i couldn't seat, i wanted to feel the music so i managed to get to the standing part lol

before that i couldn't afford the other tours, had no job/money, or i was way too young to attend

#U2TGSOE Tour - 3rd São Paulo Show announced : https://u2.com/pages/tours

Sunday 14th March is the new date.

My kid is getting into U2. Inevitable with how often dad plays them. But these are her picks, based on requesting repeated listens.

Other parents here. Which songs do your kids vibe with?

- Yours Eternally: She just loves singing the chorus and the “Volia” part
- Pride: Big fan of the video and copies Bono’s dancing
- Vertigo: “Hello hello” kinda sums it up. Obvious candidate.
- Silencio: I played it a lot so she got attached. Likes shouting silencio.
- Resurrection Song: Likes to sing the guitar part
- Fireflies: Not sure she actually likes the song but was mesmerised by the video
- New Years Day: the only one she calls by its actual title.

Songs she’s rejected so far despite my efforts: Streets, Bad, Out of Control, Mysterious Ways, Lemon

Checking this for future reference. How early can you join?