U2's Larry Mullen Jr. to Guest Voice on "The Cleveland Show"

U2's Larry Mullen Jr. will lend his voice to a pair of characters in the upcoming season of the Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show. According to the BBC, Mullen Jr. reached out to producers about guest voicing on the show's second season, and producers were only too happy to oblige. The drummer will voice two characters: a mobster and a bad Elvis impersonator.

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"He came in and we hung out for a couple of hours. We just recorded him doing a couple of different parts and he was very funny," Mike Henry, who voices Cleveland, told the BBC. "It's a thrill for me to do all this. U2 is my favorite band of all time and David Lynch the film director plays a part on our show." (In other Cleveland Show news, David Lynch will also guest voice!) As for recording Mullen Jr.'s part, Henry said, "He's got his own studio so we just record it from Dublin. You don't have to record at a certain time. It's an easy gig and one that people like to do. It's very cool to have all these people from different walks of entertainment participating in what we're doing."

This isn't Mullen Jr.'s first time getting animated for a Fox cartoon: Yellow, four-fingered versions of Larry and his U2 bandmates brought their Popmart tour to Springfield when they appeared on The Simpsons in 1998. As Rolling Stone reported in March 2009, Kanye West will also voice a character named Kenny West on The Cleveland Show in an episode due to air in the Spring 2010. Will.i.am and T-Pain will also guest voice as sidekicks to the character Cleveland Jr.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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