U2 Music Group

First-week sales of U2's "No Line on the Horizon" brought the superstar rock band back down to Earth. The album, given the band's stature and sales history, was essentially preordained to debut atop the U.S. pop charts. The only question was how many it would sell. The Interscope album sold a brisk 484,000 copies in the U.S., according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks album sales.

U2's concert at the Rose Bowl shattered attendance records at the venue as more than 100,000 people, including Rose Bowl staff, took in the band's Southern California stop on its 360 Tour, according to the venue's general manager, Darryl Dunn. Yet the number of fans who watched the concert online probably dwarfs that tally. Final figures aren't in yet from Google-owned YouTube, which streamed the concert live, but the page housing the concert has received close to 7 million "channel views."

"It's one of the most banal couplets I've ever heard," Bono says sheepishly about the words he wrote for one of U2's best-known songs. " 'I want to run, I want to hide ... ' That's not very interesting, but you know what? People don't hear the couplets when we play the song. "They hear something else in the music. They hear a band talking about a special place, a better place, and asking if the audience wants to go there with them."

Charismatic U2 frontman Bono, in a reflective mood as the band brings its "360" tour to the Rose Bowl Sunday night, notes the different, more polarized atmosphere in the United States since the group performed at President Obama's inauguration in January. "I didn't think it could come to this so quickly, after the joyous occasion of that election," Bono said in an interview on board the band's plane. "I thought America was looking good. . . . Things are getting a little rough now." Bono said he's been in touch with Obama and is confident the president will deliver on promises made during the campaign, including the singer's favorite issue: funding to fight AIDS in Africa.

Bono is behind the wheel of his black Mercedes sedan, taking a visitor on a mini-tour of the city as he heads downtown to meet the other members of U2 for dinner. The rock quartet has spent much of the day in its rehearsal studio on the River Liffey preparing for some television appearances, and it's time to relax. U2 isn't fond of performing on TV--they haven't done it in 15 years.

Dance . . . techno . . . disco . . . samples . . . loops . . . trip-hop. Those are terms likely to be heard over and over in discussions of U2's strikingly ambitious new "Pop" album--a work whose supercharged textures were inspired in part by the energy and experimentation of the British electronic music scene.

U2, one of the few bands ever to maintain underground credibility while remaining popular enough to fill stadiums, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame here Monday by Bruce Springsteen, who praised the spiritually minded Irish group as one that "wanted to lay claim not only to this world but had their eyes on the next one too."

For most of its celebrated career, U2 has preached the gospel of rock 'n' roll tradition, toasting at every turn such personal heroes as Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. So, why is Adam Clayton, the group's bassist, talking about such '90s techno-dance favorites as the Prodigy, Massive Attack, Tricky and the Chemical Brothers as he drives to U2's recording studio on the banks of the Grand Canal Basin?

U2 guitarist David Evans, a.k.a. the Edge, has a dream: to build five contemporary houses on a hill high above Malibu, with expansive views of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Malibu Pier, Surfrider Beach and the Pacific Ocean. But accomplishing that dream would require feats of engineering and some delicate political maneuvering to get around objections in Malibu.

Bruce Springsteen will induct U2 when the Irish band gets ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14 in New York City. The band's choice furthers the mutual admiration society shared with Springsteen -- the New Jersey rocker tapped U2 frontman Bono to induct him in 1999. B.B. King and Eric Clapton will speak on behalf of Buddy Guy, Neil Young for the Pretenders, Rod Stewart for Percy Sledge and Justin Timberlake for the O'Jays.

Bono was all lighted up Saturday for the opening of U2's North American tour at Chicago's Soldier Field. In a high-tech show beneath a four-pronged, 90-foot-tall canopy that he referred to as "our spaceship," Bono dressed for the occasion in a jacket outlined in neon and dangled from a glowing, steering wheel-shaped microphone as the band kicked into its encore. As he twirled madly during "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" and then more lazily during "With or Without You," the 2-hour, 10-minute concert took on a surreal air, with a disco ball reflecting shards of light against the balconies of Soldier Field, a tiny constellation in a galaxy of sound and glitter.

U2 guitarist David Evans, a.k.a. the Edge, has a dream: to build five contemporary houses on a hill high above Malibu, with expansive views of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Malibu Pier, Surfrider Beach and the Pacific Ocean. But accomplishing that dream would require feats of engineering and some delicate political maneuvering to get around objections in Malibu.

First-week sales of U2's "No Line on the Horizon" brought the superstar rock band back down to Earth. The album, given the band's stature and sales history, was essentially preordained to debut atop the U.S. pop charts. The only question was how many it would sell. The Interscope album sold a brisk 484,000 copies in the U.S., according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks album sales.

Plans to build the tallest building in Ireland -- with new recording studios for Irish supergroup U2 on top -- were suspended Friday because of Dublin's slumping property market and slide into recession. The Dublin Docklands Development Authority said it remained committed to building the long-planned U2 Tower, but a souring economy at home and abroad meant the $250-million project must be shelved. It expressed hope of reopening negotiations with potential developers within 12 months.

Call it stock, options and rock 'n' roll. The rock band U2 now owns a chunk of concert promoter Live Nation Inc. U2 will receive 1.56 million shares worth about $18.5 million, or about 2.1% of Live Nation's shares outstanding, according to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Scratch the new U2 album off your Christmas list. Singer Bono says the album, which had been anticipated for release this fall, will now arrive sometime in 2009. But he says there's a good reason for the delay. "We've hit a rich songwriting vein and we don't want to stop," Bono says on the band's website, U2.com. "It gets a bit dark down here but looks like we've found diamonds not coal. I thought a while back we might have the album wrapped by now, but why come up above ground now if there's more priceless stuff to be found?"

U2 has announced a second leg of North American dates for its Vertigo/2005 concert tour, beginning Sept. 12 in Toronto and including shows Nov. 1 and 2 at Staples Center. The 33 new dates, which conclude Dec. 19 in Portland, Ore., will follow the Irish band's European swing and bring the sold-out tour's total to 91 concerts. The tour begins March 28 in San Diego and includes four Los Angeles and Orange County shows in April. Tickets for the November Staples Center shows go on sale Sunday.

U2 has postponed its world tour, which was expected to begin in Miami on March 1, Rolling Stone reported Thursday, citing a "family illness" in the band as the reason. A spokeswoman for the band said she had no additional information, but U2's manager Paul McGuinness posted a statement on the Irish band's website Thursday saying, "We've postponed the announcement of the tour because the routing is still being worked on.

MEXICO CITY -- If Fernando Kalife had scripted the plotline behind the making of his film "7 Días" (7 Days), he might've ended up tossing it away as one of those eye-rolling Hollywood happy endings that's too good to be real. Instead, Kalife actually lived this improbable life-imitates-celluloid saga, whose cast of characters includes Bono and Larry Mullen of Irish rockers U2 and British supermodel Naomi Campbell.

By the time U2 finally climbed up the stairs of the Palais to belt out "Vertigo" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" at the Cannes Film Festival, it was fast approaching 1 a.m. The late hour didn't keep about 10,000 fans from packing the Croisette, "No Country for Old Men" star Javier Bardem from cutting a rug on the red carpet, and hundreds of photographers perched on ladders, trees and balconies from fighting for shots of the band.