U2 Fans Ignore McGuiness; Band Reignites the 360 Tour
April 25, 2010 · Print This Article
Editor’s Note: In the current Rolling Stone, a Top “40 Reasons To Get Excited About Music” lists the return of the 360 tour this summer as number four. In that piece, the U2 manager weighed in on the rumored album Songs of Ascent. Interference asked its contributing writer and resident comedian Jaime Rodriguez to chime in on the news.
Well, by now you’ve Heard the details: U2 Manager Paul McGuiness briefed Rolling Stone magazine: there will be no U2 album by June when the 360 Tour resumes. He also added it’s increasingly likely they will have an album ready by the end of the year. This, of course, invalidates what he told the U2 fan community earlier, promising albums and new songs.
Any moment now, I’m sure we’ll receive a statement from Principle Management, telling us Bono is a social activist and that Larry King wears suspenders. Unfortunately for us U2 fans, statements from McGuiness have become a problem, like eating Chicken Fingers by yourself before applying Cocoa Butter to your body: initially grandiose but ultimately leaving you depressed and crying.
All of this talk of managers telling fanbases things that aren’t true has made me a little nostalgic for the days when I used to go do errands with my grandfather who used to work at a local record label and seeing what he did for fans. By the way, we call my grandfather “Bumpy.” Which, apparently in my native Colombia, is a nickname for a grandfather. As opposed to in Miami, where it’s a nickname for a drag queen.
Back in those days, Bumpy liked to wander the streets asking fans what they thought of their favorite local artists. Whatever negative complaints he heard, he always wrote them on a napkin or on a spare tobacco box in his pocket.
Anyway, Bumpy would pick me up at my house, offering the obligatory “you do not mind the pipe, do ya?”
“No, (cough),” I’d say, “it’s (cough) fine,” as I blindly tried to find the window handle-through the cloud of tobacco smoke.
Meanwhile, the radio would be set on the smooth rock station. You know, the one that boasts the largest playlist of ballads and Diana Ross / Lionel Richie duets. Yeah, that’s Bumpy’s favorite. And for an added bonus, he’d offset the music with strings of expletives frequently leveled at other drivers. To this day, I instinctively blurt out “eff-ing do not even try it, pal” whenever I hear Carole King’s “So Far Away.”
But the point here is that Bumpy knew how to treat fans. And although it was a smaller scale, I don’t remember him ever saying facts that aren’t facts, or promising new records that won’t happen. I realize this is not the band´s fault, but maybe it’s better to say nothing at all than to have to backtrack and disappoint every six months. –Jaime Rodriguez, Contributing Writer
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Great piece Jaime. Love the writing style.
As far as McGuinness, unfortunately he has somewhat become a “black sheep” in a band we all love. I dont trust him either