U2 frontman Bono burst back onto rock’s center stage on Friday after a two-month absence for a back injury, as the Irish band resumed what its manager predicts will be the most lucrative concert tour in history.
U2 shook a packed Olympic stadium in Turin, Italy, as Bono strutted, pranced, jogged and danced with little sign of being a 50-year-old rock star just 10 weeks off spinal surgery.
“I don’t really know how to hold back, is the problem. You have to let the songs sing you at a certain point,” Bono said just before relaunching the second leg of U2’s 360 Degree Tour, so called because fans surround a giant circular platform.
U2 and Bono, who said he had done rehabilitation work for three to four hours a day, kicked off a rousing set with Beautiful Day and Magnificent. They also played two new tracks called North Star Acoustic and Glastonbury.
Bono thanked the cheering crowd for letters and e-mails he had received wishing him a speedy recovery.
“This band is like a family. It’s a family business, U2. I am the prodigal son. I would like to thank my brothers for their patience,” the leather-clad Bono told the crowd, referring to his bandmates.
The singer underwent emergency back surgery in May after injuring himself. His subsequent rehabilitation forced the band to delay the North American leg of the tour until next year.
U2’s tour is widely expected to be a strong point in a weak concert season hit by low sales.
“This tour by the end of this year will be the biggest-grossing music tour by anyone of all time,” McGuinness predicted. “And we will still have another 30 shows next year, 20 to 30 shows next year.”
He added that the group would probably gross somewhere between US$650 million to US$700 million by the time the tour ends next year.
That would top the record US$558 million generated by the Rolling Stones’ 2005 to 2007 Bigger Bang tour, according to music industry publication Billboard Boxscore.
While Bono is ready to rock, ex-Fugees star Pras says childhood friend and former bandmate Wyclef Jean is not ready to be president of Haiti.
The Haitian-born musician says he will not back Jean because he lacks a definitive plan to bring the island nation into the 21st century.
“You’ve got 1.2 million people living in tent city right now. What are the plans to get these people out,” Pras said of the survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Pras plans to support Jean’s opponent, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, who he said is better suited to run the country.
“He’s more popular in Haiti than Wyclef,” said Pras.
Jean’s publicist, Leslie Chasky, didn’t immediately return a telephone call on Friday night seeking a response to Pras’ comments.
Jean is currently regarded as the front-runner in the country’s Nov. 28 election. But he has come under scrutiny since officially announcing his candidacy on Thursday.
Actor Sean Penn has accused Jean of not spending enough time in Haiti after the quake and misappropriating US$400,000 of the US$9 million his charity, Yele Haiti, raised after the disaster.
Jean told the Associated Press on Thursday: “I just want Sean Penn to fully understand I am a Haitian, born in Haiti and I’ve been coming to my country ever since [I was] a child.”
Pras said that Jean uses a private jet for his frequent trips to Haiti and that he wonders why Jean doesn’t take a commercial flight, since the money saved can help displaced families.
He added that he loves Wyclef “dearly,” but he just doesn’t support his policies.
Also on Friday, a California judge extended for three years a stay away order against a man who is accused of stalking Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock.
The restraining order bars 41-year-old Thomas Weldon from coming within 100 yards of Bullock, her adopted baby boy and the three children of her ex-husband Jesse James.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carol Boas Goodson had issued a temporary order against Weldon on July 19, after a previous stay away order expired last year.
“This is clearly a case of a fan going beyond being a fan,” Goodson said. “This is the downside of celebrity.”
Weldon allegedly showed up at a house Bullock keeps in Wyoming this past June, saying he had driven there to meet her. The previous orders were issued for similar attempts he made to meet the 45-year-old actress, who won a best-actress Oscar for her role in football film, The Blind Side.
Bullock’s attorney Edwin F. McPherson said Weldon is currently in a mental health facility in Wyoming.
Bullock, who recently relocated to Texas from the Los Angeles area, was not present for the hearing.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50