A Celebration
A Celebration
A Celebration

A Celebration

'It's really a celebration of U2 playing at home,' explains Ned O'Hanlon. 'Amoment in time, a homecoming.'

30 Oct 2003
'It's really a celebration of U2 playing at home,' explains Ned O'Hanlon. 'Amoment in time, a homecoming.'

O'Hanlon, producer of countless U2 videos, including the upcoming 'U2 GoHome - Live at Slane Castle', has talked in detail to Matt McGee of fansite @u2.com about the new concert DVD and working with U2 down the years.

Here we carry a couple of choice extracts ­ to read the interview in full click here
@u2.com

US fans can pre-order the new DVD here

What are your memories of those two Slane shows? It was such a difficultperiod for Bono with his dad passing -- how did that impact the work youguys were doing?

It was a very difficult time for him, and for the band. The home shows forU2 -- Irish shows -- are always kinda high-pressure, anyway. The level ofexpectation is always pretty high, as it is everywhere, but particularly athome. And they obviously want to be at their best, as they do everywhere,but with the home crowd...(pauses)...it's a very heartfelt time, and there'salways an enormous amount of pressure brought to bear on them when they playat home. Suddenly they become the most popular guys on the block andeverybody's a friend, and everybody knows somebody, and everybody wants tobe backstage. And if that worked out, there'd be more people backstage thanthere'd be out front.

It's the kings returning to the castle. In this case, literally, right?

Yes, and that, from a management perspective, is a complete nightmare. Butthe show itself -- the last tour was primarily designed as an indoor showand it was a carefully considered point of view they took to stay indoorsand not do the huge outdoor venues. And that was the charm and success ofthat show. It was stripped bare, there was nothing really to it. It was justthe four guys on a stage crankin' it out. So, in order to supply a prettyvoracious market, they decided to bite the bullet and do this one show,initially, at Slane Castle, which is an institution here. They ended uphaving two shows to stage, and they were reluctant to shoot the shows atall, having already shot this tour in Boston, and that was very successful.They're always very conscious of their audience, and they didn't want to beseen to be putting out another one that was from the same tour. It was quitea hard sell for me to convince them that it was a good thing to do -- toshoot this show at all. Really, I think the only thing that convinced themto do it was that we would do it just for archive. It never had to goanywhere, it never had to be released, but that it would be a shame to misswhat would be a pretty unique event -- to play outdoors the only time onthis tour. It was a sort of homecoming, really. My argument was, "How couldyou not shoot it?" So, on that basis, they went ahead. And we did it prettymuch as a scratch production. It wasn't anything on the scale resource-wiseor money-wise as the show we shot in Boston.

As a band, how much interest does U2 take in video in general -- both theshorter music videos and the longer concert videos and such?

They take huge interest and a great deal of care. It's like with any band,videos are kind of a necessary evil - regarded as major pains in the arse.But if you do have to do them, you may as well take them seriously, and Ithink that's the way they go at it. Certainly, Bono is all over it and Edge,too. And Larry and Adam take a very careful interest in it, as well, incoming up with the right idea for the videos. You might say U2 have kind ofa hit-and-miss track record in terms of the videos they've made over theyears -- and I think more hit than miss -- but once they go with an idea anda director, they go all the way. No matter how they feel about it on thesite and the set -- they'll just do whatever they're asked to do and wait tosee the end results.

Read the whole of this interview here
@u2.com

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