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Death Valley is in the Mojave Desert and in keeping the heat levels are in the three figures and above for almost six months of the year. There is no doctor, dentist or drugstore, no fast food or video store. No barbershop, beauty salon, movie theatre. This is desert terrain – pure and simple.

Las Vegas, the next city of any size, is an estimated two-hour drive.Tradition says Death Valley got its ominous name from a pioneer whose group stumbled upon it in error 150 years ago and, lacking food and water, they barely escaped alive. Afternoon temperatures sometimes climb into the 120s (the average is 115). As I drive towards Vegas with the stereo blaring ‘All the Small Things’ by Blink 182, I gaze in wonder at the small apparition that looks from this distance like a carousel. As I get closer the carousel morphs into an entire fairground and that fairground is Las Vegas! It seems incongruous that this part of the world would go on to attract the likes of Gram Parsons. He was considered a pioneer of the country rock movement of the late 1960’s into the 1970’s until his death in 1973 at the age of 26.  Though Gram achieved some success in his lifetime, he was never a superstar — but he did influence many bands including The Eagles and The Rolling Stones.  He was a member of two country rock bands, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers; he later became a solo artist, and often performed with Emmylou Harris. In the years after his death, he has become a legend.  

Anyway, the City of Blinding Lights, Sin City – call it what will. Wedding chapels with fake Elvis’ abound, and everywhere there is some colossal casino all trying to outdo another, Caesar’s, the MGM Grand, Paris, Treasure Island & the Bellagio take a bow. Back to the here and now. The arid sensation when I jump out of the car at the hotel takes me by surprise. If you take away all the fancy trappings of wealth and bling, this is still very much part of the Desert, (Las Vegas translates from Spanishas ‘the Meadows’). We’re here at the Venetian hotel which was built on the site of the legendary Sands Hotel, (made famous by the Rat Pack).This is where the original movie Ocean’s 11 was shot, starring Messrs Sinatra, Martin, Bishop, Davis Junior and Lawford. A Place in the Sun wasits tagline and it benefitted enormously from the Rat Pack association. It was regarded as THE casino/hotel to frequent. It was named after a recent film starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. I’m with a guy from Island Records ostensibly to review Blink 182. I’m good to my word.Blink 182 are……. well….…Blink 182. I’m also acutely aware that the Tour of Brotherly Love, featuring co-headliners the Black Crowes and Oasis kicks off nearby during our stay, so I’ve arranged an interview with Noel Gallagher. Oasis is a different proposition entirely. The venue? We’re at the Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel. The venue? Downstairs within the hotel’s hallowed walls. The Hard Rock is located one town along from Vegas, unashamedly called Paradise! It’s mid-afternoon in May so, I hunker up in a non-descript room in the hotel for the interview with Noel. Oasis are virtually unapproachable in the UK but if you get them on American soil you are elected!

Me/ ‘So, how are you?’     

Noel / “I’m still earning vast amounts of money, making extremely witty wisecracks, still supporting Man City, and doing the do basically. We’re waiting for Man City to be demoted to the third division next year and then we can buy them for about 58 quid.”

Me/ So, before we get down to talking music. How do you feel about Ireland and being Irish?

Noel/ “I always supported Ireland since I was a kid. Oasis was asked towrite the England World Cup song and gone on at half time to perform it. My uncles would have disowned me! Scratch beneath the surface of most bands and you’ll find some Celtic influence whether they’re Scots,Welsh or Irish. That is everyone bar Paul Weller who I think is the one and only dyed in the wool Englishman I know. I’m sure he’d be band into Celtic though because he likes a drink. The same with Ashcroft. Poor Fran Healy from Travis having to tough it out with his bandmates who all support Rangers (laughs). I remember me mam saying to me and mybrothers when we were growing up – “you’re only English because you were born here.”  With a mother from Mayo and a father from County Meath, there’s not a drop of English blood in me. I recently had a child with my Scottish girlfriend and there’s no English in him. I feel as Irish as the next man. The first songs I ever heard were at the Irish club in Manchester listening to rebel songs. I think that’s where Oasis gets that ‘punch the air’ feel to the music. It’s from rebel songs.”

Me/ I presume you remember the early days after being spotted at King Tut’s in Glasgow?             

Noel/ It was like a spy thriller he was going ‘Go to Piccadilly Station. There’ll be train tickets waiting for you under your name’. So, I kind of went to the ticket desk and I went ‘Do you have any train tickets to London for Noel Gallagher?’. ‘Yes, we do, here they are already paid for and off you go and...’. In the posh seats and I was like ‘this is alright’. Got to London, got in a cab, gave this guy the address and he looked at the address and he went ‘Fucking hell’. And he put the thing on and off we went, and I’d never been to Hackney before, and it took hours to get there. He dropped us off outside this, well it was like a just non-descript, disused shop. A green door I remember it had. And I had the address and was thinking ‘This can’t be the place’ you know what I mean ‘cos like Primal Scream were on and Ride were, they were selling a shitload of records then do you know what I mean? This is not what I thought it was going to be, you know.

Me/ Any funny anecdotes about the recording of Definitely Maybe.    

Noel/ Right so Alan comes down to Sawmills in Cornwall to listen to the mix of ‘Rock N Roll Star’ and this is true, right. Now, ‘Rock N Roll Star’, it’s a tune, right? If you record it blowing into a trombone it’s a tune. So anyway, up it comes, it’s having it, gets to the end bit, it’s mad “…it’s a rock n roll…” it fades out into this echo reverb and Alan went “It’s greatman, but I tell you what, turn the hi-hat up in the second verse”. And it didn’t dawn on me what he’d said for about ten seconds. And I was like “Is that it? Is that all you’ve got to say, the hi-hat in the second verse? But it’s alright in the first verse I take it?” You know. I thought he was mental. Hi-hat? Who cares about the hi-hat in the second verse? So, we went on this tour, and it was brilliant you know. Press had started to take note and people had started coming up to the gigs and it started to take hold you know. You could feel there was a youth culture thing, was just starting. You know, your record label boss always had drugs on him. Or always had the phone number of somebody who would be there within five minutes. But the partying took its toll on Alan quite quick. You know, he wasn’t kind of there for most of it. That kind of thing happened very early on in in the life of Morning Glory, so he was out of the game but the rest of us went bananas. Well, you would do, wouldn’t you?

Me/ In context how big was Knebworth?                                  

Noel/ People were looking for a reason why you know, after thirty years or whatever it was that a band had become that big. It had never happened since The Beatles. Why did that happen? They were greattimes you know because I think everybody was kind of holding on for dear life because nobody knew where it was going to end. 

And so, to the gig… Oasis begins a 70-minute assault, firing off its melodic pop salvos in rapid succession. Lead singer Liam Gallagher slugs bottled water and shakes a tambourine while stalking the stage like a mischievous child planning his next misdeed. He sounded committed to the cause, however, and his vocals came across especially strong on 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' and 'Champagne Supernova.'… Unity was in full effect as singer Liam Gallagher and Noel happily traded verses and choruses during the soaring 'Acquiesce'… Throughout, Noel provided a solid foundation on lead guitar and handled vocals on 'Don't Look Back in Anger.' Lastly, the band paid tribute to their classic-rock forebears with a raucous version of The Beatles' 'I Am the Walrus.'" 

Ash have just released their 2nd album, ‘Nu-Clear Sounds’. They celebrated with four gigs in four different countries – in 24 hours!!

Flying has never been a particularly inspiring experience. In fact, I’ve got it filed right next to listening to Ocean Colour Scene on the enjoyment front. I should say at this stage there is one thing worse than flying in large or medium sized planes and that is flying in tiny planes. Again, to compound this the sight of 6ft 2” bass player Mark Hamilton sitting next to the pilot in the cockpit of this winged hotdog is a sight to behold. I’m informed the boy wonder is no longer content with playing a three-string bass guitar, creating mayhem and throwing the most bizarre facial expressions in contemporary music – he now fancies himself as Howard Hughes.

8.30am Oxford St, London.

It’s stupid o’ clock and somehow, without realising it , I’m sitting with Ash drummer Rick McMurray at the Virgin Megastore in the heart of London’s West End. We’re waiting for the rest of the band to turn up but before that he outlines the plan for the day ahead. Then in walks Tim, Charlotte and Mark followed by dozens of media types, TV cameras and photographers. You see their debut album ‘1977’ was so successful spawning as it did five hit singles in ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Girl from Mars’, ‘Kung Fu’, ‘Angel Interceptor’ and ‘Oh Yeah!’ that you’d be insane to expect the follow-up to be any less exciting. 

1977 was named in honour of the year Star Wars hit cinema screens and in keeping it is "opened" by the scream of a TIE Fighter. Frontman Tim Wheeler was just 19 at the time of its release and, like most 19-year-olds, was likely enjoying legal drinking age status; but his songs recall a time where park benches were bar stools, and a bottle of flavoured wine drink was the choice of the ‘get-drunk-quick’ teen on their way to a party.

Best-known cut ‘Oh Yeah’ helped shift its share of albums, peaking at 6 on the singles chart in the June of 1996, and Wheeler’s imperfect vocal makes its tale of teenage infatuation even more believable. He’d become a better singer but has never quite conveyed emotion as perfectly as he did so here. And to the ears of a 16-year-old, his words were gospel: this was the way to rule.

And rule Ash certainly did: every single from 1977, 95's ‘Girl from Mars’ onwards, went top 20, and their between-LPs effort ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ (from the film of the same name) was also a top 10 hit.

It’s Monday morning and Ash are about to kick off the ‘Longest Day’. In the next 16 hours or so the band will play four shows in four different cities. “The plan is start by playing here in about 90 minutes or so. We’re then picked up and whisked off to RAF Northolt where we will board a private plane decked out in logos from the new album, ‘Nu-Clear Sounds’. That will in turn deposit us in Cardiff for an in store at the Virgin megastore in the Welsh capital at 2.30pm. Then it’s on to Edinburgh for the same sort of set up at 7.30pm and then rounding off in Belfast at midnight.”

True to form, band hit the stage at 10am sharp. The opening chords of ‘Girl from Mars’ shatter the quiet hum of the record store. As Ash power through a seven-song set the audience flick the Vs at Greenwich Meantime and go mad. There’s a neat blend of old and new material. The most recent single, ‘Jesus Says’, sits well beside ‘Goldfinger’ and highlights include the next release ‘Wild Surf’ and the perennial closer, ‘Kung Fu’.

As they leave the stage Tim sums up the absurdity of the situation. “Thank you and good morning!” We’re then guided into the bowels of the building where there are Previas waiting. Half an hour later we’re on the runway at RAF Northolt taking photos in front of the chartered plane. It’s around this time that I fully realize that this isn’t some sort of surreal dream, this is happening. On the half hour jaunt to Cardiff International Airport, I grab a few words with Charlotte Hatherley who had joined the Downpatrick trio around a year previous.

“I think in a live context I free Tim up rather a lot. Before he was singing, playing lead and rhythm guitars, AND coming up with most of the ideas. Now I can contribute at the creative stage, and we can work our guitar parts out together. Whilst Tim is still chief songwriter, we continue to be a democracy.

I have to say the last year has been a huge learning curve. It doesn’t feel like 12 months, it feels like about a decade. It’s the first time I’ve travelled, the first time I’ve ever been out of London. I’ve been to loads of fantastic places and then spending five months recording the album, that was an experience. We’re now really looking forward to getting out there and touring this album. I think a lot of people wondered how long my shelf life was, especially some of the more fanatical girl fans. I think I’ve proved myself, especially on this record.”

1pm. Cardiff, Wales.

I can scarcely believe it. There are limos on the runway just in case we get tired on the five steps down from the Airfix plane. The Beatles at JFK, the Pope in Dublin – all these momentous occasions whizz through my mind as we take a deep breath of Welsh air and decide whether it’s apt to wave at passers-by as we leave or maybe we should just play it cool. The absence of any passers-by solves that dilemma and half an hour we’re back in the more sobering storerooms of another Virgin megastore. The store again is mobbed, the band again rock out but this time the set has been finetuned. ‘Oh Yeah’ has been replaced by its garage rock uncle ‘Fortune Teller’ from the new record. You can tell Ash have been brushing up on their Stooges. Afterwards drummer Rick is glowing with the look of a man whose glands are fully functioning.

“I’m sweating like a pig. It was a cool gig. The highlight for me was the guy in the suit and the big, long mac moshing away in what appears to be his lunch break. You know it seems like a lifetime ago we spoke this morning I have to say. That said, after touring 1977 for what was an actual lifetime it’s just so refreshing to having a broader canon of work to draw upon.”

6pm. Edinburgh, Scotland.

Anyway, the cars await. I can almost hear Caledonia calling. Yes, it’s a fully-fledged Groundhog Day. Cars to plane. Plane to sky. Then my concern is jolted by Mark Hamilton, the bass player who tells me that he’s keen to get a licence so he can fly this type of plane. To my horror he informs me that it’s only a 20-seater, and this as the sky is darkening! The highlights at the Edinburgh gig include the location of the store on Princess Street just below the famous Castle and a truly wonderful version of ‘Numbskull’ which makes the MC5 sound like Take That. As I mentioned earlier the flight to Belfast is eventful. Everyone is buoyed up by the prospect of a homecoming gig and as if by magic there’s a full moon which lights up Lough Neagh as the plane descends. We’re in an air born magic wand meandering through the stars leaving a trail of twinkling lights behind us.

11pm. Belfast.

On the half hour drive from Aldergrove airport into Belfast’s city centre I jump in with the band to talk about the record that they’ve gone to such great lengths to launch. Frontman Tim Wheeler is in a reflective mood. 

“We’ve done two gigs in a day before but never anything on this scale. I’m just regretful that we didn’t make it five gigs and include Dublin as well. It’s been a crazy enough sort of a day that I’m beginning to wonder whether the album is any good. It’s been two months since we finished it and we’ve been playing the tunes at various festivals over the summer. I was bang into it a couple of months ago, but it now feels like I’ve been talking about it forever……. but for what it’s worth it is brilliant. I am very happy with it.  I’m looking forward to releasing ‘Wild Surf’ as the next single. It’s a positive song. I was reading ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac at the time of writing it and it just oozes these positive vibes. It’s a wicked book, it’s really inspiring so I’ve written a real pop song. I was trying to write a Roy Orbison inspired tune but then it became the Beach Boys meet Nirvana.

Midnight In Belfast.

In Belfast, there are hundreds of kids outside watching on specially erected screens. Inside the lucky few witness the high point of the day. The band play a full set complete with two of their oldest songs, ‘Uncle Pat’ and ‘Jack Names the Planets’. They are greeted by the fans like long lost friends and play accordingly. There are mums and dads, sons and lovers here to witness the greatest hits, but it’s the new material that takes the roof off.

Rock ‘n’ Roll lives on in the form of Death Trap. There’s romance and heartfelt sentiment in Aphrodite and sheer pop brilliance in Wild Surf. By the time we’ve driven back to the Europa Hotel for a bit of ‘refreshment’, I’m now fully adjusted to this surreal world. Outside the apocalypse has just happened. Here in our bubble, we’re still high on ‘Nu-Clear Sounds’.

It’ll come as no surprise then that my musical tastes growing up were largely influenced by the Emerald Isle; the Fureys, the Clancys, theDubliners and so on. It could be the mist tinged, drink–fueled memories of youth but the Pogues turned my world on its head. This was THE playlist of my formative years. If I Should Fall from Grace with God became the soundtrack to my late teens/ early 20’s but before we start talking about that, let me take you back a few years prior. 

From the moment I heard the opening chords of ‘the Dark Streets of London’, the first offering from the Pogues debut album ‘Red Roses forMe’, I was hooked. I can trace it back to the first time I ever heard a dodgy demo cassette in my mum's kitchen, courtesy of Richard Sefton who had blagged himself a job in the music industry. It featured 'Waxie's Dargle', 'Streams of Whiskey' and 'Navigator'. Now, I come from a long line of so-called 'tunnel tigers' and this was the first time I'd ever heard a song written about them or indeed any other navvies! I was hooked and set out to spread the word. Thing was I was still a sixth former and had nothing and no-one but my network of friends on both sides of the Irish Sea. 

Fast forward to the first time I saw them live. It was a balmy summer's day in Brixton, South London and the venue was a sweaty tiny place inappropriately named 'The Fridge'. It was the August of 1985 and the Pogues topped a bill that also featured the Men They Couldn't Hang and the Boothill Foot Tappers. I seem to recall I travelled down to London with Tim Dunne, (R.I.P) in his 'marvellous' orange mini. True to form the Pogues took the roof off, blowing the walls out as they did. I was in love!! This spoke to me on so many levels. You had rebel bands, trad bands but here was a band that spoke directly to me - a dislocated, confused Irishman abroad. Safe to say I went to as many gigs as I humanly could, catching them on the best part of 20 occasions ranging from a rainy Christmas night that self-same year at the Hammersmith Odeon to consecutive Paddy’s Nights at the Town and Country in Kentish Town and the Brixton Academy. There was the Irish mash-up of Self Aid @ the RDS in Dublin where they shared a bill with the likes of U2, Van Morrison, Clannad and the Boomtown Rats right through to gigs @ the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, the De Montfort Hall in Leicester, Nottingham's Rock City and perhaps dare I say it, the most mental of them all - the Glasgow Barrowlands.

The tunes were great, the live set a sight to behold and personally I loved the fact that for the first time ever it was cool to be that strange hybrid – a second generation Irishman. Yeah, I was born in England and yeah, I considered myself Irish, but far from feeling in anyway plastic. (Plastic paddies is a derogatory name given to people born outside of Ireland bythe ignorant few!) Anyway, the Pogues unknowingly reassured me, and thousands like me, that the second-generation Irish experience was to be celebrated and not brushed under the carpet! So, how did this come to pass? Well, it’s largely down to the man with the terrible teeth who combines the swagger of Behan and the romance of Yeats, throw in a dose of punk rock attitude for good measure, and you’ve just about hit the nail on the head. 

Improbably - during a period dominated by shoe-gazing indie pop and stadium rock - somewhere on the dark streets of London, an ex-public-school boy was leading this bunch of musical hooligans out of the beer-sodden back rooms and into the charts! Shane MacGowan directed the Pogues from low dives into legend. In the greedy, red-braced '80s the Pogues boldly reintroduced the age-old 'Trad. Arr.' tag on record labels, dusted down The Dubliners and took them into the Top 10 again! 

Inevitably they were drawn toward that maverick orphanage, Stiff Records, which in August 1984 released their debut single, ‘Dark Streets of London’; two months later, came their debut album ‘Red Roses forMe’. But it was the band's striking second album, released the following year, that established the Pogues. The title – ‘Rum, Sodomy & The Lash’ - came courtesy of Winston Churchill, and space was found inside for Eric Bogle's magnificent ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’, the traditional ‘Jesse James’, and ‘The Gentleman Soldier’. Producer Elvis Costello took delight in the Pogues' trashing of Ewan MacColl's ‘Dirty Old Town’. But perhaps most remarkable of all were Shane's originals - notably the poignant ‘Pair of Brown Eyes’ and the raucous ‘Sally MacLennane’, which together marked the emergence of a songwriter of authentic brilliance. 

By now, The Pogues were officially the band to watch. Support slots for Bob Dylan and U2 followed, and Shane developed a close friendship with Tom Waits. Incessant touring, and boozing took their toll, but 1988's, ‘If I Should Fall from Grace with God’ remains The Pogues' masterpiece - Shane's writing was at its peak, notably on ‘Turkish Song of The Damned’, ‘Streets of Sorrow/ Birmingham Six’, and ‘Broad Majestic Shannon’. New Pogue (and ex-Radiator from Space) Philip Chevron brought in the atmospheric ‘Thousands Are Sailing’, while the band's folk credibility received a boost when Terry Woods (Steeleye Span founder member) was recruited. The period also marked The Pogues' commercial peak: ‘Fairytale Of New York’, featured Shane duetting with Kirsty MacColl. It was only kept off the 1987 Christmas No.1 slot by the aptly titled Pet Shop Boys' Always on my Mind’. Inevitably, the follow-up album was going to be problematical. ‘Peace & Love’ had its moments, but 1990's ‘Hell's Ditch’ was wayward - and by then, Shane's infamous fondness for hard drinking and other excesses was becoming a problem. 

And so, it is on a cold November evening that I catch up with Jem Finer in a café bar near the Old St Tube Station. Inside the lights are dim – outside it’s raining as the rush-hour traffic dives headlong into the descending twilight. With Christmas fast approaching I feel it’s high time to get to the great conundrum surrounding THAT tune! Although there is agreement among the band that ‘Fairytale of New York’ was first written in 1985, the origins of the song are disputed. MacGowan insisted that it arose because of a wager made by the Pogues' producer at the time, Elvis Costello, that the band would not be able to write a Christmas hit single, while the Pogues' manager Frank Murray has stated that it was originally his idea that the band should try and write a Christmas song as he thought it would be "interesting". Banjo player Finer came up with the melody and the original concept for the song, which involved a sailor in New York looking out over the ocean and reminiscing about being back home in Ireland. Finer's wife Marcia did not like the original story and suggested new lyrics regarding a conversation between a couple at Christmas. Finer says "I had written two songs complete with tunes, one had a good tune and crap lyrics, the other had the idea for 'Fairytale' but the tune was poxy, I gave them both to Shane and he gave it a Broadwaymelody, and there it was”. The song's title, the musical structure and its lyrical theme of a couple's conversation were in place by the end of 1985 and were described by MacGowan in an interview "I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas. It's even called 'A Fairy Tale of New York', it's quite sloppy, more like ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ than 'Sally MacLennane’ but there's also a Ceildh bit in the middle which you can dance to. Like a country and Irish ballad, but one you can do a brisk waltz to, especially when you've got about three of these drinks inside you... But the song itself is quite depressing in the end, it's about these old Irish American Broadway stars who are sitting round at Christmas talking about whether things are going okay."MacGowan had decided to name the song after J.P. Dunleavy’s novelwhich Finer was reading at the time and had left lying around the recording studio. However, despite several attempts at recording it, the group were unhappy with the results and the song was temporarily put aside, to be returned to later. Guitarist Philip Chevron later told me, "It was not quite there. It needed to have a full-on, confident performance from the band, which it lacked." The producer of the final version, Steve Lillywhite diplomatically described the version recorded with Riordan’svocals as not "fully realised".

In March 1986 the Pogues toured the US for the first time. The opening date of the tour was in New York City, a place which had long fascinated MacGowan, and which inspired him to write new lyrics for the song. Among the members of the city's Irish American community who saw the show and visited the band backstage after the concert was actor Matt Dillon: would later become friends with the Pogues and play important roles in the video for "Fairytale of New York". Another inspiration was Sergio Leone’s film Once Upon a Time in America which MacGowan and whistle player Spider Stacy would watch over and over again in the tour bus. Apart from shaping the ideas for the lyrics, MacGowan wrote a slow, piano-based introduction to ‘Fairytale of New York’ influenced by the film's score by Ennio Morricone: the intro would later be edited together with the more upbeat original melody to create the final song. The song follows an Irish immigrant's Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York Citydrunk tank. When an inebriated old man also in the cell sings a passage from the Irish ballad, ‘The Rare Oul’ Mountain Dew’, the narrator (MacGowan) begins to dream about the song's female character. The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) is about how their youthful hopes have been crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, as they reminisce and bicker on Christmas Eve. The lyrics "Sinatra was swinging" and "cars big as bars" seem to place the song in the late 1940s, although the music video clearly depicts a contemporary 1980s New York.

Helen Brown of The Daily Telegraph writes, “In careening wildly through a gamut of moods from maudlin to euphoric, sentimental to profane, mudslinging to sincerely devoted in the space of four glorious minutes – it's seemed perfectly suited to Christmas – a time which highlights the disparity between the haves and have nots around the world. Those of us lucky enough to spend the day with friends and families by a cosy fire with a full stomach think of the lonely, the homeless and the hungry. As MacColl and MacGowan's dialogue descends from the ecstasy of their first kiss into an increasingly vitriolic argument their words put the average family's seasonal bickering into perspective. "You're a bum you're a punk/ You're an old slut on junk..." The song's row ends with an expression of love and hope (against all the odds) as MacGowan's character promises MacColl's that, far from wrecking her dreams he has kept them with his own "Can't make it all alone," he pleads, "I've built my dreams around you." The tune is universally recognized as the ultimate chart runner-up whilst being simultaneously revered as the best Christmas record ever.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s three generations of Irish bands on this stage this evening. I’m the old man, Bono’s the middle-aged upstart and there’s some popular new guys on the block who are truly amazing. They’ve become friends because they’re good guys but much more importantly their music is utterly fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen one of the best things Ireland has ever produce - THE THRILLS!”  Bob Geldof exclaims at Live8.

When asked about most embarrassing moments the entire band agrees that the Live8 gig at Murrayfield when frontman Conor Deasy thanked ‘BEB’ Geldof was funny. Conor pleads something about monitors and how he couldn’t hear them due to the pouring rain. As Padraic points out saying ‘BEB’ in front of 80,000 people is a tad on the funny side of things. Bob Geldof gets the joke. “I’ve been called many things over the years. Beb is a new one. There’s been Bib, Brad in America, Bob Gandolph is also big over there. ‘BEB’ is very ebullient after their performance. “They were great. Handled the downpour with aplomb. It gives things that heroic sort of stature because you played through the elements. The Scots aren’t averse to a drop of rain after all, so it was par for the course for them but for these ‘soft’ lads from the South Side of Dublin it was a bit of a shocker, hence Beb.”

San Diego is 150 miles (2.5 hrs drive) , due south of L.A.X. En route you pick up signs for the Joshua Tree National Park the place that inspired the U2 album of the same name . There are also less glamorous cities like Anaheim and Burbank but when you arrive in San Diego it’s like stepping back in time into a different world. This gleaming citadel is the closest place to heaven on earth you’re likely to find. Across Coronado Bay you can see the location of perhaps THE greatest filmic comedy of all – Some Like it Hot - Hotel del Coronado. It made Hollywood history when it became the setting for director Billy Wilder’s classic film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. This romantic romp was voted the #1 comedy of all time by the American Film Institute.

The sun is burning. The sky is so blue you can barely see the horizon where the sky meets the sea. No wonder the Thrills wrote such bittersweet tunes juxtaposing the sunny climes of California with the everyday life of Dublin. We’re by the beach in San Diego close to where the Thrills wrote some of their first album, “So Much for the City”. It was a very innocent time, a very important time “says frontman Conor Deasy. Guitarist and childhood neighbour Daniel Ryan agrees. “It was the first time we’d been away for an extended period. 8 guys living together in an apartment that must have only been about 500 square feet for 4 months! In every way it was brilliant’.

Conor picks up, pointing at the Pacific Ocean, “A couple of the songs were written out here whether it was on the beach or in our own little apartment, but the majority were written when we got home. It has that bittersweet tone from the memories which were flooding back.  I think that’s where that comes from. I remember Daniel saying to me that he was almost looking forward to getting back home because he felt we had the focus now to write the record.”

Johnny Davis of Bright Star Recordings and BMG Publishing then stepped into the picture closely followed by Rough Trade who offered to fund a demo. This was duly recorded, but by then label interest in the band had grown rapidly, with up to thirty A&R men at the band's gig. In September 2002, The Thrills signed with Virgin attracted by the promise of artistic freedom and the label's decision to allow them to record their debut record in Hollywood with producer Tony Hoffer of Beck and Air fame.  After releasing their debut EP in November 2002, the band flew to Los Angeles in December 2002 to record their debut album. It went platinum in both the UK and Irish Album Charts.

The album, described by Pitchfork as “"an ocean-soaked, harmony-heavy homage to California's dreamy dreams, shaking ground, and unrelenting sunshine” was delivered on time and the band hit the road. It went straight in at No 3 in the UK and remained at No 1 in their home country of Ireland for seven weeks as Conor explains. “It was when people were singing album tracks like “Old Friends” back at you that you think this really has broken through.” Daniel picks up. “That whole album. Everything we wanted to happen, happened. If we said we want to do the NME tour, then it would happen. We said we wanted to do Top of the Pops and it happened. We want to do Jools Holland and that would happen. We want to go to Japan and that would happen and so on…”

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It is a classic Irish cliché – roaring turf fire, pints of Guinness, fiddles, singing & dancing. We’re in the snug bar area of Dolan’s pub in Limerick. The Thrills have just blown the roof off the venue attached and we’re all here kicking back. It’s Christmas 2003 and the band have had quite a year. In keeping they pledged to honour that success with a celebratory homecoming tour taking them all over Ireland so here we are on the opening night. Over the next week, there are stop offs in Galway, Mayo, Derry, Belfast before the tour hits the bright lights of the nation’s capital Dublin on December 21st.

Anyway, before we progress, a quick resume - The Thrills flew to Los Angeles in December 2002 to record their debut album So Much for the City.   It was released six months later in May 2003 and quickly became the number one in their native Republic of Ireland where it spent 61 weeks in the top 75 and won 'Album of the Year' at the national music awards. It was also very successful in the UK, debuting at #3, remaining in the charts for 25 weeks, and gave them some attention in Europe. It went platinum in sales in both the UK and Irish Album Charts, (300 IE) and 15 thousand sales (UK).  The album also won the 2003 Q Award for Best New Act, and Best New Act at the 2003 Irish Meteor Awards.

Ever wondered what it would be like if Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan were the songwriters in Teenage Fanclub? It's not a common question, but it is one that now has an answer in the shape of The Thrills. Given the number of American references that litter So Much for The City, it comes as something of a shock to unknowing souls to find that the band hail from Dublin. That said, like all good hippies, they have packed up their bags and headed out to California for the duration, and it's the sound of the sunshine state that is the bedrock for the album. Tight harmonies, breathy cool vocals, upbeat simple tunes, the occasional string section and steel guitar to add an extra dimension here and there, the Thrills have more than done their homework into San Francisco and Los Angeles music, drawing it all together in a retro sound that nods to the seventies but remains firmly implanted in today. The three singles stand out on first listen as being the main tunes of choice, and it's easy to see why they were released. ’One Horse Town’, ‘Santa Cruz’ and ‘Big Sur’ are satisfying blends of surf pop and country that leave a smile on your face and a spring in your step, while ‘One Horse Town’ has a desperate energy that is sometimes lacking elsewhere on the album. The Thrills might not have completely captured the surf life of the American west coast, but the very fact that they're looking there for influences is to be applauded and encouraged.

The Thrills' second album “Let’s Bottle Bohemia” was released in September 2004. It was recorded in L.A. (where their first album had also been recorded) – this time with a guest mandolin performance by REM’s Peter Buck and production by Dave Sardy (of Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson fame). The album enjoyed similar success to the band's debut, entering the charts at number one in Ireland and number nine in the U.K. – largely on the back of the single “Whatever Happened to my friend, Corey Haim?” The Thrills have caught the eye of a lot of big names in Ireland, not least of all, Bob Geldof. “The first album was a corker. The second wasn’t as coherent. Good record but not as coherent as the first. I wanted them to succeed because they’re good guys.” His phone rings.

“That’ll be them now moaning”, he says jokingly. “The cool thing about the Thrills is they’re not thought of as Irish. They don’t sell that side of themselves. They’re not vulgar, they’re not brash, they’re not racist, they don’t have shitloads of money. Are they the emblems of a newer race of Irish musicians? I think that’s too much to put on anybody’s shoulders.”

Fast forward a few months and safely at home in Dublin, the Thrills are preparing for their biggest gig ever - a Christmas homecoming at the 6300 capacity Point Depot in Dublin! Conor is a tad excited. “We’ve seen Blur and Oasis play here. We’ve come here ever since we were young teenagers. It’s the kind of place where you walk in and dream of playing, and here it is, it’s happening. This year has been a tough year for us. I can remember Kev saying this is the first rough ride we’ve had. We’re now looking to the New Year with a fresh spring in our step, but he lets focus first on the show tonight. The plan was to take a big break now and we’re not going to do that now.”

Last word though goes to Bob Geldof talking about the imminent third album. “What I would say is don’t put it out unless there are three key singles on it. Not one, not two but three key singles. Don’t release it unless that is the case. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The point is to get people to listen to your music. There is a place for them – a serious, serious place for them and what they have to say. They must find a way to get there, they’re introspective, they’re interesting as men and the group dynamic is interesting. They’re very good musicians. Their live thing is killer. I had no idea that they could be so good and there is a great untapped promise. It isn’t that they’ve blown it. They haven’t at all. It’s just that they haven’t got to that place where they ARE the Thrills, that they thought they would be and that takes ages. Give me the album. I’d love it if this was the one.”

Bono is climbing up the speaker stack with his white flag. It’s March 20th, 1983, and U2’s War Tour has just pulled into the Derby Assembly Rooms. It’s midway through the gig and the band are between two new tunes ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’. They started the show with the standout single from the last album, ‘October’ – ‘Gloria’. Then there were my own personal favourites all from the first album ‘Boy’; The Electric Co, Out of Control, ‘11 O’clock Tick Tock’ and ’I Will Follow’. I ‘m with my younger sister, Rosaleen, (then aged 14 - I was 16). Afterwards the band took their seats at a small table to sign autographs. Rosaleen commented on how the Edge’s black and white checked shirt matched her skirt. I was too busy trying to impress Bono who was very ‘gracious’.

U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ is designed to transport the listener into 1970’s war-torn Ireland where you’re presented with untold horror as an observer in the North. Their version of accounts is inspired by their passive-aggressive approach to the situation with verses like “How long must we sing this song?”, which signifies their anger towards the authorities’ approach to the situation. However, that verse is immediately followed by ‘cos tonight, we can be as one, Tonight’, which signifies that the door is still open for a peace treaty. They also draw inspiration from the world-famous picture of Edward Daly being spotted protecting a group of survivors attending to an injured boy by waving a blood-stained handkerchief to keep the peace.  Sunday Bloody Sunday doesn’t avoid the issues. Simply, labelled “The Troubles” it tells a bloody tale of a three-decade conflict, which took place between Irish nationalists and their Protestant counterparts.  Although this bloody conflict was ended with the “Good Friday Agreement”, its legacy was so traumatic that it helped influence some of the biggest protest songs to have come out of the music industry. “Bloody Sunday” was a term given to an incident which took place on 30th January 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland where British Soldiers shot 28 unarmed civilians who were peacefully protesting Operation Demetrius. Out of all the people who lost their life that day; Thirteen were killed outright, while another man died four months later due to injuries. Many of the victims who were fleeing the scene were shot at point blank range, while some who were helping the injured were shot. Other protesters were injured by rubber bullets or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles. This massacre is reported to have the highest number of people killed in a single shooting incident during the conflict.

Fast forward almost 14 years, (early March 1997) and U2 are about to unveil their new album, ‘Pop’, in the lingerie section of a downtown Manhattan thrift store.

 I’m at K-Mart to ‘check out’ the launch of U2’s new album, ‘Pop’. This discount store has been selected from a host of hopefuls primarily because of its location – it’s right bang in the middle of the beating heart of Manhattan on the corner of East 8th and Lafayette. U2 didn’t want anything too posh or indeed ordinary so they’ve decided to go to the other end of the scale. Ladies and gentlemen, form an orderly queue. Let’s Go Discotheque! U2 have just announced a world tour which is due to circumnavigate the globe, visiting a mere 40 countries en route. It’s estimated up to seven million people will witness ‘Pop Mart ‘which is being described as a ‘Giant Sci-Fi Disco Supermarket’. Tell me if I’m dreaming but I seem to be standing next to Mohammed Sacirbey, Bosnia’s former foreign minister, in a branch of the American equivalent of Pound-Stretcher, watching arguably the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll band playing live in the lingerie section!

As U2 swagger through a version of ‘Holy Joe’, the B-side to ‘Discotheque’, bemused shoppers gather by the cordoned area which is home to a couple of hundred of the world’s media. However, as you would expect this tiny corner of New York City is being beamed live by satellite all over the world. They don’t mess about these boys. I, as well as all the other journalists, didn’t know the location of the event until an hour or so beforehand. That way it was figured the shop could stay open and continue to trade without being invaded by hordes of U2 fans arriving and causing chaos. And so, after the one song scene setter, the band get comfortable and discuss everything from ‘opening times’ to ‘product range’.

First though the facts – the tour opens in Las Vegas on April 25th and will slowly makes its way around the world for 18 months. The stage set features the world’s largest video screen, (150 ft x 50 ft) , a 100 ft golden arch , a 35 ft Mirrorball lemon , a 12 ft stuffed olive and crucially a 3” squeaky nun (??) U2 have dressed for the occasion. Bono is looking like a walk-on from one of the early Godfather movies clad in knee length black leather jacket, dark shirt, and tie, while Edge has gone for a spangly Night Fever style number which when combined with a questionable choice of brown leather coat makes him look like a pimp.

Larry looks like…. Larry…and Adam hasn’t changed too much either, that is if you ignore the dyed blonde crop. Before the serious business Bono sashays down the aisle of the press enclosure gleefully distributing bits and pieced of Grade A tat from a shopping trolley.

Anyway, back to the stage for the start of the ‘serious’ stuff.

Q / (CNN) By holding your press conference in this setting, you surely don’t mean to suggest that your music is flimsily constructed from cheap materials and it’s discountable and ultimately disposable, do you?

Bono / I agree with every word you just said apart from discountable. Edge/ We believe in trash, we believe in kitsch, that’s what we’re at.

Q / (US Radio Journalist) That song, Holy Joe, which you played for us earlier – is that title, together with the album name, Pop, an attempt to deflate the aura of sainthood that has hung over U2 for years?

Bono / It just won’t go away, will it. No matter about the mirror balls, the tours, the tinsel and the TV, I’m always going to be the f***Ker with the white flag… The truth is that U2 are still a bleeding hearts club. Our music is still painfully and insufferably earnest. We’ve just got very good at the art of disguise and throwing people curve balls. If we had called Achtung Baby anything else, I think we would have been taken out and hung. But here we are! Caught red handed!!

Q / (CBS) Is there any significance in holding this press conference on Ash Wednesday?

Bono / I think the mixture of K-Mart and Ash Wednesday just about sums U2 up. Therein lies the contradiction, a contradiction we must carry with some humor. You see Carnival means a lot to me, because carnival is the celebration of the flesh going into denial which leads to Easter. Unfortunately, in Ireland we tend to forget about the carnival and go big on the denial. Maybe we can be the Carnival?

Q / (Canadian TV Reporter) You had some great support bands on the Zoo TV tour. Do you have any plans for these dates yet?

Bono / On the last tour we had a lot of great bands and on this tour, we’ll have the same. I’ve been spending a lot of my time listening to the likes of Underworld and the Prodigy. I think the Prodigy are putting the finishing touches to their new record and so won’t be joining us from the off.

Q / (U.S magazine journalist) Could you expand on the choice of ‘Pop’ as the album’s title.

Bono / Pop is just a great word. There’s a big ‘O’ in the middle that you can put your head right through. I think it’s an important point to make that pop became a dirty word, in fact it was often used as term of abuse, in the seventies and eighties. In the UK for sure it was regarded as ‘naff’ or ‘sell-out’ behavior to be No 1. As a band we have always wanted to write it large and that’s exactly what we’re doing

Pop Mart was launched almost a year ago in New York. In the 12 months since, U2 have crisscrossed Europe and the USA, in turn playing everywhere from Belfast to Boston, from San Francisco to Sarajevo. The tour is their most lucrative to date with the band rounded it off with a bespoke appearance at the MTV Music Awards in Rotterdam where they picked up ‘gongs’ for Best Live Act and Best Band. It was here that I hook up with Bono to reflect on the past year and look to what the future may hold. Walking through the corridor into the backstage area at Rotterdam’s Ahoy Stadium, I can’t help but think that I’ve stepped through the back of the wardrobe and am now checking out the Narnia of contemporary popular culture. Out front Boyzone’s Ronan Keating is hosting a slickly produced awards ceremony. Back here I’m led through a labyrinth of makeshift dressing rooms, en route to one known only to the select few. Whilst more recent entries into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame such as Bjork, Skunk Anansie and the Fun-Lovin’ Criminals are easy to locate, U2 have conquered the art of creating comfort in the middle of chaos and the key to that is privacy. The band’s quarters are buried deep within the maze but suddenly the door opens and there they are……sat on a sofa, watching TV! Bono acts as host introducing the others before they get back to watching the awards and we retire to the far end of the room for a chat. The U2 front man is very accommodating and as calm as is possible among this madness but then this is everyday life for the man, they call Bono. Most of the time he exudes that famed mix of swagger and soul interspersed with that all important human touch. At one stage he enquires whether I’m ‘using’ my bottle of beer and proceeds to share it. At others he persuades the tour manager to extend the interview because he’s mid-conversation. That’s not to mention countless pauses so he can check out various people appearing on the awards ceremony on the TV, the same awards ceremony that’s happening live 500 yards away. So in-between intermittent breaks to check out Dennis Hopper talking landmines in Bosnia I get down to the nitty gritty.

Q / Does the best live act award mean a bit more given what you’ve tried to achieve with Pop Mart?

Bono / The thing about the live award is that’s where, at the end of the day, that’s where we live. That’s where it does or doesn’t happen for us. You can dial up a groove, you can bring in an orchestra, you can do whatever but when you’re out on the road people are going to see through you, as you can see people have seen through us. We have glass hearts – what can I tell you.

Q / Zoo TV went through various stages as it straddled the globe. Is Pop Mart evolving and re-inventing itself?

Bono / Pop Mart is improving after a bumpy start.  We had just taken delivery of all that cosmic junk about a week before the opening date in Vegas and were a little shaky but still it was there for all eyes to see – the greatest show on earth was there – it was just buried under the rubble of our big ideas which were spectacularly backfiring on us. Now though we’re bigger than the production. Maybe when we started it was the other way around.

Q / The transition from Zoo TV to Pop Mart…It strikes me that the current show is a looser set-up than its predecessor?

Bono / What we wanted with Pop Mart was to counter what was going on around us. All other rock seemed very brown or black or kind of dull grey. We wanted this to be vivid. We wanted to be in bright colors and make it like a soul review, a kind of sci-fi gospel show. We were just really turned on by what was happening with hip hop music or with older bands like Parliament or Funkadelic where you could have these real soul songs or songs from the street right next to George Clinton’s mad hairdo.

Q / That was particularly evident in Sarajevo. The crowd didn’t seem to have a problem with the stage being erected on a football pitch right next to one of the biggest graveyards of recent times.

Bono / That show went off in a way that we couldn’t have predicted. First off, I lost my voice and so was severely handicapped when it came to singing but the crowd didn’t seem to notice. It was the only show we’ve done for a long, long time where no-one was talking about the production – it was the music!

Q / That gig reminded me of the early days. It was straight back to the fans with no glitter or fancy stage props to hide behind

Bono / Rock ‘n’ Roll’s always had an air of ridiculousness about it. In fact, it gets ridiculous when it loses that. Going right back to Elvis Presley walking down Beale Street in Memphis in a green shark skin suit and blue eyeliner in 1956. That was where it started right through to the Sex Pistols and the Prodigy nowadays. People know the songs and know where they’re coming from and if they’re true you can have some fun with them.

Q / The song Mofo perhaps typifies that. It’s a deeply personal song about losing your mum at a young age and yet you take to the stage shadow boxing as if you’re channeling the spirit of Barry McGuigan.

Bono / It’s got the bollocks that tune. You want to have a lot of bollocks to sing a song about your mother. Always for me the bands, the filmmakers, the painters are the ones who have pulled their rib cage out and let you see their hearts. That’s still what we’re doing. Nothing’s gonna stop us and all the bright lights and the luminous hairdos… that’s the funk of it, that’s the fun of it.

Q / How do you feel about hitting the road again?

Bono / It took us a while. We had a bumpy start but now we’re cooking on gas. Before it was always a case of us and them when it came to support slots. Now with the likes of Oasis, the Smashing Pumpkins and the Prodigy it’s really good. The Prodigy wanted me to record a tune for their album, but we were in the studio at the time. If I was going to join a rock ‘n’ roll group in the nineties it would be something like the Prodigy. Just get in there, throw some gospel and soul in for good measure and completely f**k it up for them.

Q / You’ve done voiceovers for the Simpsons’ 200th episode which features cartoon U2ers. Discuss!

Bono / Oh dear… (long pause) Did you know that Bart Simpson is actually voiced by a woman. That’s a shock!! They’re very cool aren’t they. They’re the shit for me anyway….

Q / The singles feature a host of collaborations.

Bono / There are several remixes of Mofo by the likes of Reprazent and Johnny Moy so then just to freak everyone out we thought that the perfect accompaniment to a load of dance remixes was a song myself and Edge wrote for Frank Sinatra. It’s called ‘Two Shots of Happy and one of Sad’ and also a song we recorded with Willie Nelson called ‘Slowdancing’. That was our swansong, our goodnight, our f**k off!

Q / The US journalist Bill Flanagan accompanied you guys on the Zoo TV tour. His book, At the End of the World details the experience. It features cameos from figures such as Bill Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Mel Gibson and Mick Jagger.

Bono / Pop Mart is about selling the songs – no big ideas, no selling our soul. This time we’re giving it away for free. Zoo TV was about ideas and the characters they threw up. It was about what was going on in the world at that time.

Q / Laying yourself open obviously invites criticism. Does that hurt?

Bono / If you’re in a big rock band you deserve a bit of stick. Look at the way we live for God’s sake. Doing all this stuff and getting paid for it? Meeting the people who first steered us into music in the first place – the David Bowies or Frank Sinatras of this world. We deserve a good hiding when you think that here we are, we’ve had such a great time, and no-one has died yet. We could have at least had the decency to choke on our own vomit.

Q / In recent years you’ve really gone for the lounge-lizard rock god.

Bono / I’m only pretending. I’m like the little kid wandering around in his mother’s shoes. I feel like I’m like a part-time rock star. I’m getting much better at being one, maybe fooling a few more people. I don’t think it’s really where I’m at. I’m much more about writing tunes.

It’s 1am and I’m standing in a room with Winona Ryder, Liam & Noel Gallagher and three quarters of U2 (Bono, Edge & Adam to be precise). Liam has commandeered the stereo and is playing the forthcoming and feverishly anticipated new Oasis album while simultaneously bellowing every syllable into Bono’s eardrum. The U2 front man is nodding in approval whilst everyone else is pretending to be deep in conversation, all too aware that two of the most accomplished men of modern times are standing right next to them. 

 Five and a half hours earlier Oasis took to the stage in a quarter full 45,000 capacity Oakland Coliseum. Oakland is a small industrial town about a half hour drive across the bridge from San Francisco. It’s here that the Gallagher brothers and co have decided to return to live performance. Nine months earlier it didn’t look like this would ever happen, that they’d stopped playing’ Live Forever ‘. The latest fracas came after one of their increasingly frequent bust ups culminated with Noel flying home and the band cancelling that tour. Now, it would seem that Oasis’ respect for U2 is such that the Dublin four piece are the only band on earth who would stand a chance of landing them as a support band. And so, to the strains of ‘Acquiesce’, Liam wanders on stage and tells the ten thousand people who have arrived early for the U2 gig that Oasis are from Manchester which is in England. The band then run through, what on this side of the Atlantic are modern day anthems such as ‘Supersonic’, ‘Roll with It’ and ‘Live Forever’. The two singles that have made inroads Stateside, ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ unsurprisingly get the best reception but it’s the two new tunes that I’m here to check out. The album is going to be called ‘Be Here Now’ and the band play the title track and the first single ‘Do You Know What I Mean’. Both tunes are a bit on the pedestrian side, a bit like Slade by numbers. Noel will later admit, that is down to the considerable amounts of ‘refreshments’ which the band were indulging in.

Anyway, back to the Oakland Coliseum and Liam is strutting back and forth across the stage like he owns it. That may be the case in Europe but for now the jury is out over here. The crowd, which by the end of the set has swelled to capacity, give an enthusiastic response but Manchester’s finest are doubtless aware that they’ve got to invest a huge amount of time to tour the States comprehensively to broaden the fanbase. Indeed, they need look no further than tonight’s headliners, U2, for the recipe.

U2 appear as the skies darken. The band enter like a sports team with Bono shadow boxing in a silken hooded gown. He’s ducking and diving and throwing punches under the spotlight as the P.A. blares a newly remixed version of M’s classic ‘Pop Musik’. Bono then shouts, “Let’s Go Shopping” as the band crash into ‘Mofo’. The stage features the biggest screen ever made which beams images of the band as well as animated sequences. There’s a giant arch over the top of the stage which resembles the McDonalds logo. U2’s set focuses mainly on the new material but there are crowd pleasers thrown in for good measure – ‘I Will Follow’, ‘New Year’s Day’, ‘Still Haven’t Found’, ‘With or Without You’, ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. Bono dances like a man possessed, Adam wears an oxygen mask and Edge leads the crowd on a sing a long ‘Daydream Believer’. The band…and Larry arrive like time travelers walking out of a giant lemon for the encore. ‘Staring at the Sun’, ‘Miami’, and a stunning no hold barred ‘Discotheque’ get proceedings off to a healthy start. The show is a blast, a wonderful mixture of cabaret, soul, showmanship, humor, bombast, intelligence, stupidity, colour and ultimately great rock ‘n’ roll songs. As the awestruck crowd leave, I’m ushered into the band’s rehearsal room where I find a very flushed looking Adam Clayton.

Q/ Are you happy with the way things are going. You’re 20 or so dates into around the world tour?

Adam/ It is evolving. Every night we’re finding out something new about the songs. In a way we’re still getting used to being up there with that giant screen. That’s not to mention walking out of a lemon! The record we’ve made is consciously rhythmic and I knew it was going to be difficult to recreate live. Howie B, (renowned Glaswegian dance producer), has been producing the live sound for us and we’re slowly learning how to make the drums and the bass sound good in this environment.  All of that said if we can’t sit down and play whatever tune it is in this room then it’s a no-no. At the end of the day technology is an enhancer not an enabler.

Q/ How does Pop Mart compare to Zoo TV?

Adam/ I think Zoo TV was much more confrontational. There was lots of information coming from a million different and the overall picture was one of the bands in the middle of this digital mess. This time it’s a lot cleaner. The screen is just a single part of the stage and it’s simply showing either ourselves or a pre-recorded animated piece.

Q/ You’ve re-worked some of the older songs?

Adam/ I think that’s a product of new knowledge. When we were rehearsing, we wanted to change some of the elements. We’ve updated ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ and ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’.

Q/ Given the expense involved, do you see the tour as a gamble?

Adam/ It’s reassuring. I think people have been blown away by the fact that this huge noise is being made by just four guys. There has been some tabloid speculation about poor ticket sales. However, the fact of the matter is we’ve sold 45 million albums and over two million tickets so from our point of view that gives us the necessary freedom to keep going.

From the moment Bono knelt on the tarmac at Belfast Airport and playfully kissed the ground, it was clear U2 were going to make sure that their Irish visit was one to remember. The band even gave a rare press conference at the foot of their Pop Mart jet to talk about their first gig in the North for a decade or so.  Bono is in typically bullish form.

“It’s gonna be a great night in a great city with 40,000 of our closest friends. We’ll leave the peace to the politicians because we’re here to make some noise. Admittedly when the tour kicked off in Las Vegas we were a bit crap, but it’s our band and we can be crap if we want to. Having said that right now we’re the biggest, baddest, boldest band on earth”.

 He went on to answer questions about tabloid speculation that Pop Mart, with its giant drive-in movie screen and its attendant 40-foot mirror ball lemon, was stretching resources so much so that this could be the band’s last ever tour?

 “Miles Davis was once stopped on the Pacific Coast Highway in California doing 120mph in his yellow Ferrari. When the traffic cop asked him if he realized he simply replied: “I don’t look at the numbers. I just get to where it feels good.” People talk about the size and cost of Pop Mart. They forget that it’s a simple show at heart. I like to see it as a sci-fi gospel show full of soul music. I can confirm that Pop Mart is our last tour……. this year! We’re having the time of our lives. We’ve been all over the ‘shop’ with our supermarket and now it’s time for Belfast and Dublin. We’ll have to get the clapometer out and see who comes out on top”.

Four hours later the Botanic Gardens is full to overflowing which is extraordinary when you consider that the show was only announced a fortnight previous. Tonight, the houses around the immediate vicinity of the gig are hosting their own Pop Mart parties. Anyway, as the skies begin to darken once again Bono, flagged by bouncers all around him, shadow boxes his way onto the stage before kicking in to ‘Mofo’. This really is sensory shelling at its peak pausing only for the plaintive cry: “Mother, am I still your son. You know I’ve waited so long to hear you say so. Mother you left and made me someone”. The song works on two levels. Firstly, there’s the intensely personal nature of the lyric which details Bono’s attempt to deal with his mother’s passing when he was a teenager. Secondly it is somehow removed, otherworldly and some would argue downright misleading with its thumping merciless rhythm. This is the contradiction that lies at the heart of U2 and it’s not until now that they’ve been able to communicate it so poignantly. The eighties saw the band overplay the good angel with a rhetoric that bordered on pontificating. The early nineties heralded the arrival of a new guarded, playful yet somewhat unnatural dark angel swaggering across the globe with Zoo TV. This band has soundtracked enough people’s lives here tonight to realize that we’re getting the big picture, the real McCoy. The whole beans!

There’s the working-class hero honesty of ‘Pride’, (which incidentally tonight is dedicated to John Hume), the cabaret of ‘Discotheque’ and then the extraordinary ‘Please’. (Your flying colors. Your family tree and all your lessons in history…Please…please get up off your knees.)

That said it’s the funny moments that showcase a band reveling in the moment. Halfway through the set Bono, Adam & Larry leave Edge to encourage the crowd to take part in the evening’s karaoke.  He starts by saying; “This song is not a rebel song; this song is an Elvis song”. There’s a dedication to Gerry Adams & Martin McGuinness, to David Trimble & Ian Paisley before the giant screen beams out the lyrics to ‘Suspicious Minds’. The crowd respond dutifully roaring out every syllable. I first saw Pop Mart in San Francisco and was blown away by the spectacle. However, the show lacked the fervor, the intangible passion on show in Belfast. There just aren’t words to describe what it is to see 40,000 people lose themselves for two hours dancing headfirst into the Catherine wheel of emotions thrown up by tonight’s show. Pop Mart means different things in different places. In Belfast it’s sweet relief, it’s clever, it’s telling, sentimental, hilarious, bombastic but most of all it’s a band bringing people together in a way only music can.  As Bono sings the closing lines of the closing tune – “We’re one but we’re not the same “he is inaudible. He ends by stating the blindingly obvious for the first time this evening – “I won’t forget tonight”.

Dublin is, as ever, a different ball game. U2 nearly didn’t get to play here at all after three residents lodged complaints, a farcical process which ended up in the Supreme Court. Anyway, the show must go on and what a show! Well, the Jacks are back and what an All-Ireland we have for you. Lansdowne Road is going mental.  From the opening chords of ‘I Will Follow’, the second song in, the whole stadium bounces up and down in unison. The band are visibly taken aback by the response. It’s not that they haven’t experienced anything like this before but it’s their hometown’s charged response to the occasion this time around that is the real curve ball. Bono points at the screen; “Look what we’ve brought back from Las Vegas for you” before humming a couple of verses of Molly Malone. He is a showman. This is a showman’s town and tonight U2 are unashamed. Bono tells the crowd to keep the noise down for fear of disturbing the neighbours before cracking up laughing and shouting “Hey missus can I have my ball back?” The telling thing tonight is that the new tunes like ‘Staring at the Sun’ and ‘Last Night on Earth’ get as big if not bigger applause from the audience.

The karaoke tonight is Dana’s ‘All Kinds of Everything’, a song which Edge introduces as Ireland’s new national anthem. Stadium shows used to be an awful bore. Now this one feels like a club. Just like Neil Armstrong in 1969, U2 are now walking on the moon albeit metaphorically. They’ve conquered space and now anything is possible.

“Would you please welcome two men who have taken a leap of faith out of the past and into the future”; cue stage left the UUP’s David Trimble and stage right it’s John Hume from the SDLP. The roar inside Belfast’s Waterfront Hall is deafening. The place is packed with 2000 sixth formers from throughout the North and Bono is holding court. With around 400 members of the international press this truly is a world party which will go down in history. As the politicians shake hands there’s an almost tangible silence followed by what can only be described as a primal scream.

I’ve certainly not been invited to many gigs like this in the past. Ash took to the stage and rocked the house before inviting Bono and Edge to join them. The assembled cast then jammed their way through a cover of John Lennon’s ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ which became even more poignant when the lights focused on the banner above the stage, VOTE YES, MAKE YOUR OWN HISTORY. Backstage John Hume is in tears, it was after all his idea. Elsewhere assorted crew members are hugging each other whilst other people are trying to get their heads around what they’ve just witnessed.

I’m invited to U2’s dressing room for drinks. Inside there are around 20 or so people all hunched around the Nine O Clock News. When the report switches to a clip of Bono he quips, “the BBC use widescreen technology a bit too effectively”.  At the end of the feature, we retire to a nearby room for a chat.

Q / What were you hoping to get across this evening?

Bono / I don’t know. I know a rock ‘n’ roll gig isn’t going to change people’s minds who already have them made up, some for true and proper reasons, some maybe not so… We’re here for the ‘don’t knows’. Even from the South we feel a stake in this, big time! You’ve got to imagine what it’s like seeing the North from the perspective of someone who’s been around the world.  This place is really rocking right now. It was a sunny day today and you’re coming into Belfast, and you just see these people – they’ve had it with the past. They’re now looking ahead. Maybe it’s not perfect. I know some people don’t see it as perfect, but for God’s sake it’s a start.

 Q / There are people who have suffered wild acts of terrorism. They may have lost family, friends & loved ones.

Bono / What can I say? What can a spoilt rotten rock star say to someone who’s lived in the eye of this storm? There just aren’t words. They don’t need me. I just met some of them from both sides and they said the same thing – they want a new start, but it’s hard for them. Some of the things that have happened in recent weeks are testament to the strength of their resilience. Compromise is a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be. The ability to compromise is one of the higher things. Now could I/ would I ask someone who’s lost people close to them. How dare I! But if they can do it then I’m inspired way beyond this situation.

 Q / Should politics and pop mix?

Bono / I don’t know. What I like about Irish people is that you’re not supposed to speak about sex, religion and politics but that’s all we talk about. If you look at our band, U2. That’s all we ever write about so maybe it’s just not correct, but I just can’t stop it. I’m just like any Joe in a bar shouting my mouth off. Only I’ve got a loudhailer!!!

 Q/ What was it like on stage?

Bono / It was very special for me because I come from both sides. My mother was Protestant, and my father is Catholic, and they had a lot of hassle over that. I mean my mum’s family even boycotted their wedding! In the South years ago, it was tough being Protestant but that’s all over now. Today the South has forgotten about that and, incidentally, there’s more understanding for the position of Unionists and Loyalists than you may think.

Q / Bringing David Trimble and John Hume on stage. Bet that wasn’t in the script when you were releasing your first single 18 years ago?

Bono / This is an amazing thing for me. We wanted to be part of an event that represented both sides of the community and that was in extreme evidence tonight. To see genuine respect between David Trimble and John Hume was amazing. Respect is everything. Respect for difference is maybe even more important. It’s like the lyric to our song, ‘One’. “We’re one but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other “. That’s what that tune is all about. It’s not ‘let’s pretend we’re all the same’. The world would be a very boring place if that were the case.

Q / Was it a joy to play with Ash?

Bono / I mean how to make a slick band look ropey. They were rockin’ the house. They’re on top of their game and then we come and try our utmost to screw it up. 

Q / It was refreshing to see U2 playing as a garage band again. It must have been a blast to just plug in to someone else’s kit and do the gig.

Bono / Our road crew has all gone away on a much-deserved break so we asked Ash if we could borrow their gear. They were very accommodating. This is their event, and they have a generosity that I think is reflected every time we play up here. This is a seriously happening place and we would have loved to have played more tunes, but we are, as you’ve pointed out, a garage band not a weddings band and we don’t know too many covers.

Q / Finally do you think that tonight will have an impact?

Bono / I believe people here in the North have a certain common sense that I think will shine through and those people registered their protest over the past few weeks because they saw a lot of saber rattling which offended them. I think when it comes to it, they’ll vote yes because they know it’s the voice of reason and that’s what we’re all hoping for.