Otter (Jan 20 – Feb 19)

Otters have a spunky, eccentric personality. On the other hand, they also excel at solving problems, and will never give up until they have an answer. Many people find them hard to read, but this doesn’t bother the otter. They see the world through a unique lens, and don’t care what anyone else thinks about them. Otters constantly crave freedom and adventure, but have a more gentle, empathetic side as well.

Wolf (Feb 20 – March 19)

The complex, mysterious wolf likes to sit back and watch the world around them, simply observing and taking notes. They can be hard to get close to, as they tend to hide their emotions and only show people certain parts of themselves that they feel comfortable with. Highly creative, intelligent, and artistic, the wolf spends much time in solitude, perfecting his craft. This is where the phrase “lone wolf” comes from, as they are fiercely independent.

Animal Sign?

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Native Americans have always been greatly connected to the Earth and all the creatures that inhabit it. They also believe in something called an animal birth totem, or the spirit animal that guides you through life based on your birth date. Each sign’s birth animal can provide insight into one’s personality, life path, and other important aspects of our existence here on Earth.

So, what is your animal sign, and what does it mean?

Image courtesy: consultthesage.com

Otter (Jan 20 – Feb 19)

Otters have a spunky, eccentric personality. On the other hand, they also excel at solving problems, and will never give up until they have an answer. Many people find them hard to read, but this doesn’t bother the otter. They see the world through a unique lens, and don’t care what anyone else thinks about them. Otters constantly crave freedom and adventure, but have a more gentle, empathetic side as well.

Wolf (Feb 20 – March 19)

The complex, mysterious wolf likes to sit back and watch the world around them, simply observing and taking notes. They can be hard to get close to, as they tend to hide their emotions and only show people certain parts of themselves that they feel comfortable with. Highly creative, intelligent, and artistic, the wolf spends much time in solitude, perfecting his craft. This is where the phrase “lone wolf” comes from, as they are fiercely independent.

Falcon (March 20 – April 19)

This animal represents the sign Aries, a fiery, independent, dominant sign. Falcons like to oversee a situation, leading the way the entire time. They don’t like to be controlled or bossed around, and don’t take it very well when people try to tame them. Falcons dive into a new project or business idea headfirst, without doing much observing or thinking beforehand. They can come off as brash and intolerable, but they have a good heart underneath their stubborn, boisterous personality.

Beaver (April 20 – May 20)

The beaver possesses a strong work ethic, not quitting a job until it’s done. They can be stubborn, however, and not listen to other people’s input about a situation. They are loyal, honest people, and you can always count on them to follow through. They have a level head, and think in terms of practicality and logic.

Deer (May 21 – June 20)

Despite the deer’s docile nature, they can also be sociable and highly likable. They move quickly, never stopping until they reach their destination. Deer are amiable and light-hearted, but can also have a totally opposite personality, crawling into their shell and wanting to be alone at times. This behavior goes along perfectly with a Gemini, whose birthday falls between the dates listed above.

Woodpecker (June 21 – July 21)

Persistent, dedicated, and courageous are just a few words to describe the noble woodpecker. They might be small, but they pack a big punch. Woodpeckers make their presence known when they walk into a room, but they aren’t arrogant by any means. In fact, quite the opposite is true. They are humble, gentle, and extremely caring, always putting others before themselves. However, when people don’t meet their expectations, they can get easily hurt.

Salmon (July 22 – Aug 21)

The salmon has a big personality, and naturally lights up a room when they walk into it. They don’t mind having the spotlight on them, and actually prefer it. Very talented, intelligent, and gregarious, the salmon needs big goals and dreams to set their sights on, otherwise they might fall into bad habits and stagnation. They enjoy having upbeat, positive people to surround themselves with, preferably who also have their sights on a huge dream.

Bear (Aug 22 – Sept 21)

Logical, analytical, and straightforward describe the courageous, mighty bear perfectly. Bears have a great deal of patience, and will remain loyal to you no matter what. While a bear might have a bad temper underneath their quiet disposition, they rarely show this side of themselves.

Raven (Sept 22 – Oct 22)

Ravens have an innate way of creating the perfect balance in their lives, and therefore helping others to feel more balanced, as well. They don’t tolerate injustice or bullying, always standing up for what’s right. While they too have a quiet demeanor, they know what they want in life, and don’t ever hesitate to go after it. They have a very eloquent way of speaking, appearing calm and cool even when they feel a whirlwind churning inside them.

Snake (Oct 23 – Nov 22)

Snakes might have a bad reputation, but don’t judge them before you get to know them. They can appear aloof and sneaky, but they have big hearts. You just have to peel back their layers to understand them better. They are highly sensitive, creative people, but don’t hurt them – they have a tendency to get revenge whenever people do them wrong.

Owl (Nov 23 – Dec 21)

Owls seem to have a split personality. While they do possess great wisdom, strength, and patience, they can also be flighty and unstable. They also have a hard shell, and it’s not easy to penetrate unless you have patience with them. Owls are serious, yet warm and friendly. They don’t like to stay in one spot too long, always wanting to leave to get some fresh air and a new adventure under their wing.

Goose (Dec 22 – Jan 19)

 Geese are some of the hardest workers of the animal signs, and often consume themselves with work so much that they neglect other aspects of their life. They are not easily swayed by other people’s opinions, but enjoy trying to persuade other people to accept and believe theirs. One of their biggest fears in life is failure, so they immerse themselves in their work to make sure that doesn’t happen to them.

I know, that I'm way down on your line,
But the waitin' feel is fine:

Let me photograph you in this light
In case it is the last time
That we might be exactly like we were
Before we realized
We were sad of getting old
It made us restless
It was just like a movie
It was just like a song

"Few people are aware of this because he had the name and physical appearance of a white man, but Steve Jobs was half Syrian.
His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, fled to America in 1954 as a political refugee. He worked hard. He drove a taxi. He fell in love with an American woman. She got pregnant. Her conservative father forced them to break up, and the baby was given up.

It’s why Steve Jobs was raised by adoptive parents, and why his last name is Jobs instead of Jandali. But he was very much the son of an Arab refugee."

1) “However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?”
2) “The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”
3) “A jug fills drop by drop.”
4) “Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”
5) “To understand everything is to forgive everything”
6) “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.”
7) “Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.”
8) “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
9) “In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”
 10) “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”
 11) “Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.”
 12) “Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.”
 13) “There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.”
14) “It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see once own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.”
 15) “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.”
16) “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
17) “Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.”
18) “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
19) “Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.”
20) “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

21) “You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself”
22) “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”
23) “To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others”
24)  “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
25) “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”

 

Look, if any job is going to take up someone’s life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There’s a lot of talk going around my workplace along the lines of, “These guys with no education and skills think they deserve as much as us? Fuck those guys.” And elsewhere on Facebook: ‘I’m a licensed electrician, I make $13/hr., fuck these burger flippers.’

 And that’s exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don’t realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It’s in the bosses’ interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it.

 The workers in NY “made” them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere.

SONGS OF INNOCENCE

So the epic tale of U2’s recording odyssey through 13 studio albums and 35 years reaches the present day — and, as ever, the only direction is forward.

‘Songs of Innocence’ finds the four lifetime friends in unfailingly dynamic form. These new songs, some of the most autobiographical of their lives, brim over with energy and inventiveness. They, and the band, are road-ready, as U2 prepare to take these new-born sons and daughters for a spin around the world, in the company of some much-loved older siblings from their incredible catalogue.

Now that the mists have cleared from the endless attention over the album’s ground-breaking digital release, what emerges is the much more important element: the sheer vitality of its content. That’s been underlined by the unprecedented demand for the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour 2015, set to start in Vancouver on May 14.

Two and a half months of North American shows will culminate in an awe-inspiring eight dates at Madison Square Garden in New York, in late July. Then the tour relocates to Europe for a sold out itinerary of more than two months that will include six nights at London’s 02 Arena.

While other bands trade entirely on former glories, the lifeblood running through U2’s veins is the need to stay new and relevant, to themselves as well as their audience. That was central to both the creation and execution of ‘Songs of Innocence,’ as Edge explained when he spoke to Rolling Stone.

He described what the band have learned about the digital age, after the free release of their new album to half a billion people, in a month-long digital exclusive via iTunes. “We're in the dawn of it,” he said. “The thing it's easy to forget when you live in modern times is that they're modern for about another 30 seconds, more so than ever.

“In a few years we'll look back on this time like we look back on VCRs and rotary phones. When the radio arrived, everyone thought that was the end of sheet music. I think music has become devalued and disposable in the commercial world – but not to music lovers or the people who make it, and not all big tech either. Apple – and U2 – fight hard for artists to be paid.

“In the future, technology has to be a better servant of music, and not its slave master. We can take advantage of the benefits of technology, and we do, but it's also beholden on those of us who have been so well rewarded by music to figure out a way to preserve the ability for artists to create and thrive.”

There may have been a five-year gap between 2009’s ‘No Line On The Horizon’ and ‘Songs of Innocence,’ but the spectacular U2 360° Tour didn’t reach the last of its 110 shows until July 2011. The new record’s evolution took in a variety of studios, with production credits going to Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood.

There were no fewer than seven settings for this new experience, with sessions at Electric Lady Studios, The Church, Shangri-La, Strathmore House, Pull Studios, Assault and Battery and The Woodshed. When the album emerged in September 2014, reviewers heard a rich synthesis of all of the band’s varied influences from different times in their career, made whole by the experiences gained across four decades of invention.

“’Songs of Innocence’ reconnects U2 with the strident, searching, wide awake band of their nascency,” wrote Mojo magazine’s Tom Doyle, “reminding not only us but themselves of their against-the-odds beginnings. The result is their best and most thematically complete album since ‘Achtung Baby.’ By turning towards their past, U2 have found their way back to the future.”

Those themes of looking homeward, and of the 1970s Dublin that the group grew up in, were evident from the robust, uncompromising and infectious opener, ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone).’ It was a tip of the hat to the lead singer of the Ramones, one of the very reasons U2 chose their career path in the first place. “I was young, not dumb, just wishing to be blinded by you,” sang Bono in tribute. “Brand new, and we were pilgrims on our way.”

Elsewhere, there was further acknowledgement of another guiding light for the young U2, The Clash, in ‘This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now,’ dedicated to Joe Strummer. ‘Every Breaking Wave’ rolled to the shore with an assured restraint in the spirit of ‘With Or Without You’; ‘Volcano’ bubbled like lava.

‘Iris (Hold Me Close)’ was yearningly anthemic, named for and inspired by Bono’s late mother, who died when was he was only 14. Swedish pacesetter Lykke Li contributed vocals to ‘The Troubles,’ while ‘Cedarwood Road’ typified that cohesion that occurs when every individual on a record is doing something great. Again, its reference points were real and personal, with a lyric about the cherry blossom tree in the garden of the Hewsons’ neighbours, when Bono was growing up.

“It’s us trying to figure out why we wanted to be in a band in the first place,” Bono told the Irish Times. “The relationships around the band and our first journeys – geographically, spiritually and sexually. It was tough and it took years. Put it this way: a lot of sh*t got dragged up.”

This series of album essays has travelled a million miles around the world and back, on a road that continues to stretch ahead enticingly. The ‘Songs of Innocence’ track ‘Song For Someone’ contains the lyric: “There is a light, don’t let it go out.” U2 never have, and never will.

NO LINE ON THE HORIZON

A gap of nearly four and a half years between studio albums only sharpened the appetite of U2’s ravenous fans all over the world in 2009. When the band returned with ‘No Line On The Horizon,’ the reaction prompted five million sales in as many months and led to the band breaking the record for the highest-grossing tour in music history. The masters of creative renewal had done it again.

During 2005, the year after ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb,’ the ‘Vertigo’ tour saw U2 play to 3.2 million people. It was a staggering total, but their next tour would make mincemeat of it. Furthermore, in the summer of ’05 they opened an event that was beamed live from London’s Hyde Park to half the population of the planet. Thirty years after starring at the original Wembley Stadium spectacular, the band declared Live8 well and truly open by performing ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ with Paul McCartney.

In 2006, there was new multi-platinum glory with the compilation ‘U218 Singles,’ which sold a cool two million through Europe alone and gave a new generation the chance to catch up on 18 of the quartet’s most indelible moments.. Included in that collection were two new songs they’d recorded during a month at Abbey Road that year.

While U2 have always entertained themselves, and their audience, with surprising cover versions in their live shows, a remake on disc is a rarity. But now they revived ‘The Saints Are Coming,’ the 1979 track by Scottish new wave heroes the Skids, in collaboration with Green Day. Always first in line to front a good cause, proceeds went to Music Rising, the charity founded by The Edge to help get the musical heart of New Orleans beating again, after the disasters of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. The other new track was an original composition, ‘Window In The Skies,’ for which the striking video included icons from Louis Armstrong and David Bowie to Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix apparently singing and playing along.

By 2007, U2 were recording again, for what would be their 12th studio release. The first location was both different and exotic, as they were joined in Fez, Morocco by their production confidants since the 1980s, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, now also as co-writers. Seven of the album’s 11 tracks would be jointly credited to all of them, as the North African flavours enriched the melting pot with a new experimentalism.

Work continued at several studio addresses around the world, next at the band’s own Hanover Quay studio in Dublin, then at Platinum Sound in New York. Going the extra mile beyond their intended release date, they moved one more time to Olympic Studios, the famed south-west London spot that had hosted Hendrix, the Stones, The Beatles and so many more.

Here, with another trusted ally, Steve Lillywhite, adding further production, the final touches to the album were added in December 2008. The satisfaction at completing the extended recording project was offset by the sad news of the death of Rob Partridge, one of the band’s earliest allies at Island Records in the late 1970s. ‘No Line On The Horizon’ was fittingly dedicated to him. Another of U2’s brothers in arms, photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn, literally added another dimension to the experience by making the hour-long picture ‘Linear,’ which accompanied various formats of the release.

In February 2009, in the weeks leading to the album’s appearance, U2 unveiled ‘Get On Your Boots’ in awards season. They performed it at that month’s Grammys, BRITS and Arias. They had an even more dramatic set-piece up their sleeve, with a traffic-stopping, headline-starting mini-gig on the roof of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London. Then, another first, with a week-long residency on the American TV staple ‘Late Night With David Letterman.’

The net result was the band’s seventh No. 1 album in the US, and their tenth in the UK, pulling level with Madonna and the Rolling Stones. Only Elvis and The Beatles had had more. Three Grammy nominations ensued, and Rolling Stone magazine made ‘No Line’ their album of 2009, further naming it the band’s best work since ‘Achtung Baby.’

‘No Line On The Horizon’ was a work of measured maturity, infinitely able to create rousing rock on their own grand scale, as with ‘Magnificent,’ ‘Get On Your Boots’ and ‘Breathe.’ But, at the other end of the scale, pieces like ‘Moment Of Surrender’ and ‘White As Snow’ were thoughtful reflections steeped in 30 years of writing and recording experience.

Soon after the album’s release, Bono told the Guardian newspaper about a lyric in the ‘Cedars of Lebanon’ track. “Choose your enemies carefully, ‘cos they will define you,” observed the song. "As an insight into our band, it's the most important line," he said. "It explains pretty much everything. U2 chose more interesting targets than other bands. Your own hypocrisies. Your addictions, but not to the obvious. Your ego. I think we made our enemies very interesting.”

June 30, 2009 heralded the opening of another gravity-defying live spectacle. The U2 360° Tour was aptly named, because this was by far the band’s most immersive concert experience yet. The awe-inspiring and revolutionary circular stage featured cylindrical, expanding LED screens on a towering, four-legged structure straight from the pages of a vintage sci-fi comic. The Claw was the most common nickname; others dubbed it the Spaceship or the Space Station, and it allowed fans to get closer to the band than ever before.

110 shows, including a Friday night headline slot at Glastonbury Festival, stretched over five continents in 30 countries. Audiences totalled an eye-popping 7.1 million. “This tour is a remarkable feat on a global scale,” said Billboard, “from its staging and production, to its video elements, all the way to the scaling of the house, routing and execution. Most importantly, U2 rocked mightily all over the world.”

Therein lay the secret they have owned for so many years: to have the sheer guts and bravura to become, and remain, the very best at their job. Of course, it involves ego; in fact, it demands it, as Bono said with great exuberance in that interview with the Guardian.

“The need to be loved and admired doesn't come from a particularly pretty place,” he mused. “But people tend to do a lot of great things with it. Ego, yes, but the ego that's in everything human beings are capable of. Without ego, things would be so dull.”

HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB

‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ was an album that not only led to three more Grammy Awards for U2, but heralded their momentous arrival in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From the very first sound of Larry Mullen Jr’s sticks and Bono’s count-in to ‘Vertigo', there was no room for doubt that they were in the mood to complete the circle back to being the uncompromising rock ‘n’ roll band we first knew.

The beginning of this 11th studio album project was fuel-injected with the momentum of the massively successful ‘Elevation’ tour, itself a celebration of the rapturously-received ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ record. U2 were not about to relinquish the crown they had worked so hard for, but as almost always, there would be plenty of challenges to negotiate before they could unveil the results of their latest studio exploits.

New songs for ‘Bomb’ (named after a lyric in its closing song, ‘Fast Cars’) started to arrive swiftly when they unpacked their ‘Elevation’ suitcases, and recording began in the south of France.

The resolution to make a definitive rock ‘n’ roll record was unshakeable, but the target of hitting the Christmas 2003 release schedule came and went, and soon Steve Lillywhite was jumping aboard as the album’s new principal producer. He was just the link with U2’s lean and formative persona that was required, chief among a cast of eight production contributors that included further longtime confidants Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Flood, and newer collaborators Jacknife Lee, Nellee Hooper and Carl Glanville.

Not for the first time, the band had recordings of the work in progress stolen, which in the new digital era was an even greater security issue. But, for all the delays, the overriding victory lay in a new set of songs that had plenty enough vigour and sparkle to stay the course. As its features became clear, Bono was getting the strong impression that this could be the best U2 record.

'It started out to be a rock 'n' roll album, pure and simple,” he said. “We were very excited that Edge wasn't sitting at the piano or twiddling a piece of technology, because he is one of the great guitarists. Halfway through, we got bored, because it turns out you can only go so far with rifferama. We wanted more dimension.

“Now you've got punk rock starting points that go through Phil Spectorland, turn right at Tim Buckley, end up in alleyways and open onto other vistas and cityscapes and rooftops and skies. It's songwriting by accident, by a punk band that wants to play Bach.” Adam Clayton added that a lot of the tunes were “a kick-back to our very early days. It's like with each year we have gathered a little bit more, and this is what we are now."

The calling card was the unstoppable ‘Vertigo,’ the sort of definitive U2 single to give “rifferama,” as Bono called it, a good name. It was one of the earliest ideas for what became ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb,’ a riff conceived at The Edge’s house in Malibu that immediately sounded like something from the annals of classic rock, somewhere between Zeppelin and the Stooges, but with a 21st century vitality that was entirely custom-made.

‘Vertigo’ landed in early November, 2004, and established the band’s lasting relationship with Apple when it was featured in a commercial for the iPod. The song smashed straight to No. 1 in the UK, their sixth chart-topping single. It repeated the trick around much of Europe, and its presence would continue to be felt for years: both in the title of the ensuing world tour and in its reaping of three Grammy Awards, including one for its video.

Two weeks later, when the album arrived, it was clear that U2 had outrun all of the misfortune to complete a record full of new signature tunes. Underpinned by rock guitar, they came in a wide variety of moods and tempos, from loud and extrovert on ‘All Because Of You’ to contemplative on ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own.’ The latter song was, said the NME, a “gentle strum of determined rhythm that grows with a mastery that is almost beyond compare.”

Indeed, the album was immersed in that rare spirit that this quartet had developed over decades by now: never to be afraid of thinking big, with inspiring songs that put their arms around their entire world of devotees. As ever, the response could be measured in multi-platinum: quadruple in the UK and Australia, triple in the US and No. 1 just about everywhere.

‘All Because Of You,’ ‘City Of Blinding Lights’ and Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’ all became significant singles through the first half of 2005, by which time the band were well into the ‘Vertigo’ tour, all 26 countries and 129 shows of it.

The first stages were in the arenas and stadia of North America, with support by Kings of Leon, followed by a European run through the summer. A second run in North America took them clean through to Christmas 2005, then came South America, with a final excursion to Australia, New Zealand and Japan late the next year. “They went out guns blazin,’” enthused one fan at the final night under the stars in Honolulu, nearly 21 months after the opening ‘Vertigo’ date.

As with every previous endeavour, U2 emerged from the album and the tour all the wiser. "We make mistakes all the time,” said Mullen. "We're very slow learners, but we do learn. The only way we got to this record was by going down that road. Some mistakes have been our saving grace.”

ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND

A new century, a new sound and new records to be broken. There was a whole lot happening in U2’s world in 2000, but most of all, there was a new album that Rolling Stone described as their third masterpiece.

After the richly experimental odyssey of 1997’s ‘Pop,’ the band came to the decision that it was time to remind people of how they had come to prominence in the first place: by making glorious, celebratory rock music, this time for a new millennium.

At In doing so, they emerged in October 2000 with ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind,’ which has sold a spectacular 12 million copies to date, and achieved something that no other artist had done, or has since. The album contained the Grammy-winner for Record of the Year not just once, but twice, with ‘Beautiful Day’ in 2001 and ‘Walk On’ in 2002. Those were just two from a bounteous haul of seven Grammy Awards. The contract for the role of best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world had been firmly and enthusiastically renewed.

‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind,’ recorded in four Dublin locations including Windmill Lane, as well as in the south of France, was a happy reunion of what you might call the U2 dream team. Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, who had helped the band create the sound that made them world-beaters with ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ and ‘The Joshua Tree,’ and again with ‘Achtung Baby,’ were back in the producers’ chairs. They also provided backing vocals and other instrumental duties, and there was additional production by original collaborator Steve Lillywhite, among others. The results were explosive and joyful.

After almost a year as one of the grandest-scale rock tours of all time, the PopMart itinerary finally came to a conclusion in the spring of 1998, soon after U2’s first show in South Africa. Their next accolade was one afforded to only the select few, when they appeared on ‘The Simpsons.’ In ‘Trash of the Titans,’ despite gatecrashing the band’s PopMart concert, Homer wins a landslide victory as Springfield’s Sanitation Director. No wonder, with a campaign slogan of “Can’t someone else do it?”

As the band embarked on their own, real-life campaigning for Amnesty International that year, the name of U2 remained an indelible chart presence throughout the world. ‘Sweetest Thing’ became a huge hit, the better part of 20 years after it had been recorded, and the ‘Best Of 1980-1990’ compilation, accompanied by a b-sides collection, sold in its millions.

A memorable start to 1999 for Bono had him presenting a Freddie Mercury Award to Muhammad Ali, joining Bob Dylan on stage again and then inducting Bruce Springsteen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. But songwriting, and demo sessions, for what would be the follow-up to ‘Pop’ were already well under way.

The no-nonsense, back-to-basics approach to making each song on ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ into a keeper was summarised by Bono. “From the beginning,” he said, “we were excited when music met the real world, and, going into this, we reckoned that people aren't buying rock records any more because of this progressive rock lurgy, which is on the rise, where the single has been forgotten. In our heads we've written 11 singles for this record.”

Absolute confirmation of that resolution came in the opening single ‘Beautiful Day.’ It was one of those rare, top-of-your-lungs anthems from the moment it left the studio, and it’s been part of every single live performance by U2 since it was released.

‘Beautiful Day’ went to No. 1 in the UK and internationally, providing the best possible trailer for the album that arrived two weeks later. What better celebration of a new century than a lyric that beamed “It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away”? The track was not only the Song of the Year at the 2001 Grammys, but Record of the Year and Best Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Elements of the club-compatible U2 sound of the late 1990s remained in ‘Elevation.’ It was one of three more compositions honoured at the next Grammys, as the band, uniquely, retained that Best Rock Performance trophy. The heart and soul of the album was the inclusive immediacy of the music, with ‘Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ taking the 2002 Best Pop Performance Grammy, as the inspiring, defiant ‘Walk On’ won the Record of the Year title. The band were on hand to perform it at the ceremony.

Supporting those celebrated numbers was a backbone of powerful album tracks such as ‘Kite,’ the ultra-positive ‘In A Little While,’ the charming ‘Wild Honey,’ ‘Peace On Earth’ and ‘When I Look At The World’ and the gentle ‘Grace.’ U2 have not once taken such things for granted, but the album went on to accrue a dizzying array of No. 1 positions, all through Europe, Australia and beyond.

Rolling Stone called the album a masterpiece because, said the magazine, it represented a masterful sum total of all the experience they’d gathered. “U2 distill two decades of music-making into the illusion of effortlessness usually only possible from veterans,” went the review. “The album represents the most uninterrupted collection of strong melodies U2 have ever mounted.”

The ‘Elevation’ tour that commenced in March 2001 was a celebration of another album triumph. The band were on the road for the remainder of the year, playing 113 shows in 14 countries, to a breathtaking total of two million people. The European leg included four nights at Earls Court in London and a summer show at Slane Castle in Ireland.

The encore was the super-prestigious slot at the Super Bowl XXXVI half-time show at the Louisiana Superdome. The band dedicated their performance to all those who had lost their lives on 9/11. It was some stage on which to marry U2’s present with their past, as they played ‘MLK’ and ‘Where The Streets Have No Name,’ after they had unleashed that hedonistic new signature tune of theirs. Beautiful days indeed.

POP

It was less about reinvention and more about rediscovery, said one review. It was a record with multiple identities, said The Edge. It was about love, desire and faith in crisis, said Bono. “The usual stuff,” he added.

The album in question was ‘Pop', the ninth studio release by U2, which emerged, in March 1997, more than three and a half years after its predecessor ‘Zooropa’. This, the then longest hiatus between albums, afforded the band the space to pursue outside projects in greater depth than ever before — and, as happens in the most healthy creative environments, that only added to the wealth of ideas that illuminated the new record.

At the end of 1993, just ahead of his 78th birthday, Frank Sinatra’s first ‘Duets’ project had been released, featuring a vocal pairing with Bono on Cole Porter’s ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’ The album sold more than three million copies in the US alone. A few months later, the U2 frontman had the further honour of presenting the Chairman of the Board with his Living Legend award at the Grammys.

1994 was a year of both giving and receiving. In January, Bono inducted the late Bob Marley into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York; in May, he and Bono accepted a Special Award for International Achievement at the Ivor Novello Awards in London. In the autumn, U2 performed ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ for an Elvis Presley television tribute.

In ’95, the ‘ZOO TV — Live From Sydney’ video won a Grammy, in the year that the band also performed the atmospheric ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me’ for the soundtrack of the new ‘Batman Forever’ blockbuster.

Other fascinating work that year included Bono, The Edge and Brian Eno, aka Passengers, singing ‘Miss Sarajevo’ at Luciano Pavarotti’s ‘War Child’ concert in Modena, Italy; Bono’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ for a Leonard Cohen tribute album, and even an electronic duet with Marvin Gaye on ‘Save The Children.’ There was a top ten hit for Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr’s version of Lalo Schifrin’s ‘Theme From Mission: Impossible,’ for the new movie interpretation starring Tom Cruise.

But in May of 1996, U2 served long notice of their collective return. With sessions for the new album already well under way, they announced plans for an extensive world tour the following Spring. Dublin’s Hanover Quay, The Works and the ever-present Windmill Lane Studios were all used for the recording sessions, as was South Beach Studios in Miami.

Mark ‘Flood’ Ellis, listed as co-producer for the first time on ‘Zooropa,’ now had the chief credit for ‘Pop,’ with additional work by Scottish artist-producer Howie B and dance tastemaker Steve Osborne. The sessions led to perhaps the widest assortment of sounds, samples, riffs and beats yet heard on a U2 album: the lead single may have been called ‘Discotheque,’ but this was no conventional dance record.

It was, instead, the next audacious leap by a band determined to remain at the sharp edge and to stay ahead of the pack, as evidenced by rugged, adrenalin-fuelled productions like ‘Mofo’ and the episodic ‘Last Night On Earth.’ “’Pop’ is a magic album,” enthused Howie B. “I listen to it, there's music there, songs, beats. I'm glad I had something to do with it.”

NME, among others, trumpeted that U2 had “gone dance,” but the truth was far more complex. The band were certainly assimilating more influences from club culture, but ‘Pop’ was far from defined by beats per minute. It had too many dimensions for that: ‘Staring At The Sun,’ for example, had acoustic touches and almost psychedelic guitar textures; ‘Miami’ was spacy and restrained, ‘The Playboy Mansion’ was low-key funk, ‘If You Wear That Velvet Dress’ deliberately introverted.

In that NME story, which described the band as the “new high priests of postmodernism,” Bono was in the mood to dissect the production process. “We're into cell division,” he said. "You take a song and you let it be interpreted by somebody you respect, like David Holmes or David Morales or Howie B. They're doing mixes of these tunes, which is the dance aspect.

“That's what jazz used to be. The songwriter would write the melody and then somebody else would interpret it in a different way. Except we're not just farming it out, we're collaborating by choice, or sometimes by being in the studio. If we'd made a full-on dance tune and called it 'Discotheque' it would have been a bit obvious, I think!"

‘Discotheque’ topped the charts from Ireland to Italy, from Norway to New Zealand, and became their third UK No. 1. A month later, ‘Pop’ would top the charts in 35 countries, as it became another seven-million seller. Then, back to the road.

That promise to tour again had been confirmed at a press conference held in a K-Mart in New York’s East Village. The ‘PopMart World Tour’ would, U2 announced, travel with the biggest video screens on the planet. They promised visits to 20 countries, but they were understating it: ‘PopMart’ would call at 31, easily their biggest global undertaking to date.

The expedition began in Las Vegas in the spring of 1997, came to Europe in the summer, then back to North America in the fall. Early in 1998, U2 were in South America playing in venues only accessible to the true giants, such as the Maracana in Rio and the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. The final instalment was staged in the stadia of Australia, Japan and South Africa.

Perhaps to make light of the idea that they’d defected to dance, the encore of that final show at the Johannesburg Stadium had them segueing from ‘Discotheque’ into ‘We Are Family’ and ‘Love To Love You Baby.’ Everywhere, the audience response to the largest U2 shows ever was ecstatic.

Already more than 20 years from their origins in a Dublin school band, their globe-sized adventures were making Mullen reflect on just what they had, and how rare it was. "We still live within 20 minutes of each other in Dublin," he told the Irish Independent. "We spend a lot of time together. Other bands, when they get to our age, there's a couple of jealousies, there are management problems.

“We've been lucky, or wise, and we can devote our energy to being in U2. We're very lucky, and I tell you, it's only on this tour I've started to realise that on a daily basis.”

ZOOROPA

Even while they were on the road all over the world on the ‘ZOO TV’ tour, the ideas for U2’s next album were burning such a hole in their pocket that it became the fastest record they’ve ever made.

Just as Bono had explained that 'Rattle and Hum' belonged with 'The Joshua Tree' as its natural partner, the band knew in their bones that 1991’s ‘Achtung Baby’ would soon inspire a complementary follow-up. Its name would be ‘Zooropa,’ and although it was first envisaged as an EP, it simply demanded to become their eighth studio album.

As ever, there was some extracurricular fun en route, such as the night in January 1992 when The Edge inducted the Yardbirds into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During the ‘ZOO TV’ tour, on-stage guests included Axl Rose in Vienna, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry in Paris and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus in Stockholm, for an unexpected U2 take on ‘Dancing Queen.’ In August, they became only the second act ever, after Billy Joel, to perform at Yankee Stadium in New York.

U2 started making ‘Zooropa’ early in 1993, during a break in that ‘ZOO TV’ itinerary, with the audio-visual extravaganza evolving into the ‘Zooropa’ tour once the record was completed. This time, three Dublin studio locations were involved: Westland, The Factory and the band’s trusted recording spot which retained its old name despite a new relocation, Windmill Lane. In another first, these last two studios ran in production with the record simultaneously.

The album arrived in record stores in July, only 20 months after ‘Achtung Baby’ and with 100-plus epic concerts in between. The Edge explained such a marathon of momentum by telling Q magazine, on the road in Italy: “I think we were still surfing on the wave of creative energy from ‘Achtung Baby’ and the ZOO TV tour when we were making ‘Zooropa.’ It was the same burst of inspiration.

“When we were working on ‘Achtung Baby,’ we were looking to discover new sonic terrain, and on this record that was already established, so we were more confident of what we were doing.” Later, Edge added: “I'm still getting to know the record as well. Often, you don't begin to see the themes that run through the whole record until some time afterwards, because often they're not even conscious.”

For the first time, The Edge was named individually as co-producer of a U2 album, along with their unswerving confidant Brian Eno and another new name in the credits, but one who was in reality a U2 veteran. Mark ‘Flood’ Ellis had co-engineered ‘The Joshua Tree’ and then, after enhancing his reputation immensely by co-producing Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ and Depeche Mode’s ‘Violator,’ returned to the U2 fold for ‘Achtung Baby.’ With Daniel Lanois unavailable for ‘Zooropa,’ Flood was the perfect choice to step up as co-producer, in what has been an enduring relationship.

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments paid to the record was that it went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album. That accolade was testament to the continuing inquisitive spirit of a band that might by now have been seen as the rock establishment, but were still investigating fresh landscapes and locations with voracious enthusiasm. Spin magazine called the record “the sound of a band shedding its skin.”

The opening shot for ‘Zooropa,’ and the defiant choice as its lead track in June, was the mantra-like, sound effects and sample-drenched ‘Numb.’ It was uncompromising and cutting edge, on the cusp of an almost industrial dance timbre that set the scene for the futuristic course plotted by the full album.

‘Zooropa’ offered such a rich palette of sounds to take in, such a wash of instrumental colours and effects to assimilate, that it was wise and appropriate for Bono often to assume a measured, less-is-more vocal delivery. Indeed, on ‘Numb,’ again on the club-friendly ‘Lemon’ and at times on the tender ‘The First Time,’ he showed an entirely new facet by using a falsetto delivery.

Another single, ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!),’ was used in an alternative version in the Wim Wenders film of its subtitle. That led to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song; the track also went to No. 1 at home in Ireland and into the UK top five. Elsewhere on the album, Bono’s lyrics explored areas that he admitted at the time he was only beginning to understand himself.

"There's certainly an evil feel to things like 'Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car'," he told Q. "That song could be about dependency or something more sinister. It's an electronic blues, my Robert Johnson thing. Flogging the soul to Satan."

The album concluded with one of the most notable collaborations in U2’s history, when a 60-year-old Johnny Cash provided the lead vocal on the closing track, ‘The Wanderer.’ Just as with B.B. King some years earlier, the band’s fascination with the true heartlands of American music helped them to a remarkable achievement with another hero.

The ‘Zooropa’ tour roared into life, even with the album still in production, at the Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam in May. This sensational, stadium-sized rock spectacle raced through Europe all summer long, coming to rest in Dublin in late August before rebooting as ‘Zoomerang’ in New Zooland, as they affectionately termed it, in November.

By then, ‘Zooropa’ was on its way to worldwide sales of some seven million, after topping the charts in the UK, the US, Australia and all over Europe. It was yet more validation of what, even by then, was a unique relationship between four friends.

“As the band has become more successful and achieved more, you find that the people who still know the most about what you do are the other three guys in the band,” said Adam Clayton at the time. “It really is the most exciting combination of people, for any member of the band. Because we're all out there together trying to find out what's going on.”