Travis, StarSailor, Oasis, Elbow, The Thrills and Coldplay are among those doffing their caps to you know who in a new edition of UK magazine UNCUT LEGENDS.
Subtitled 'How One Band Put The Heart Back Into Rock'n'Roll', this special 150 page edition devoted to U2 is a collectors item if ever there was one. If you've got some spare U2 reading time while you wait with baited breath for clues on the new album, this should keep you going for a couple of months.
As well as interviews with fellow musicians and comments from former producers, the edition comes with detailed reviews of every album and a series asking 'What Makes U2 tick?' including Irishness, Politics, Image and Playing Live. Then there's 'Their Sweetest Thing - the 20 Greatest U2 Songs Revealed' - chosen by a panel including Shirley Manson, Bobby Gillespie, Moby, Jo Whiley and Flood -
plus some pretty cool photographic features.
Uncut are on the web here -
www.uncut.net - but they aren't carrying the U2 special yet, so, in the meantime, here are a few choice snippets:
'I get physically sick watching them 'cos they're just so good. Everybody is always saying 'We coud be as big as U2'. And no one will ever be as big as them. I mean, to me U2 are what the Beatles were.'(Noel Gallagher, Oasis)
'They work on things relentlessly - and I think they're still trying to do better. They're addicts. They want to write better songs all the time... Also what makes them great is that on every album they put out, they've made sure that it has at least three calling cards on it - three really cracking singles.'(Fran Healy, Travis)
'Until the end of the World' is one of my favourites. I think lyrically it's quite subtle and strong. It's just a little bit of a bleak record. Sometimes you go through periods in life where you only see the negative rather than the positive and I just thought that was a very interesting record because it's not very U2.'(Conor Deasy, The Thrills)
UNCUT Present Legend N0.3, U2 is on sale in the UK now for £5.50