Photo: Schmidt/DDP/Getty
Thirty years after the release of their debut album Boy, U2 will finally headline their first Glastonbury Festival. The organizers of the famed British fest revealed Bono and Co. will take the main stage to celebrate Glastonbury’s 40th anniversary on June 25th, BBC reports. U2 will perform at the festival’s opening night during a brief window of free dates in the band’s 2010 leg of their North American U2 360° Tour.U2 will leave their giant “Claw” stage setup behind for the performance and instead perform to a sold-out audience of over 177,000 people on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage.

U2’s 360° Tour: photos of the band’s opening night.

“The 26-year-old rumor has finally come true. At last, the biggest band in the world are going to play the best festival in the world,” Glastonbury organizer Michael Eavis said in a statement. “Nothing could be better for our 40th anniversary party. And there are even more surprises in the pipeline…” The set will mark U2’s first festival performance in 25 years, BBC reports, although bassist Adam Clayton appeared at the fest in 1989 to perform one song with the Hothouse Flowers. “The band is really looking forward to it,” U2’s manager Paul McGuinness told U2.com. (more…)

Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and Bono. Three of the greatest artists in rock & roll history and the cover stars of the new issue of Rolling Stone, which documents the epic Rock Hall 25th Anniversary concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden. In this exclusive video from the Mark Seliger photo shoot, we go behind the scenes as the three titans of rock pose for the cover of our new issue just hours before they performed onstage on October 30th. All three legends have graced the cover of RS numerous times, but never before have they appeared together.

Check out all of Bono, Jagger and Springsteen’s Rolling Stone covers.

In the new issue, David Fricke and Brian Hiatt chart the concerts’ journey from the first entreaties to artists (Led Zeppelin declined to reunite again; David Bowie couldn’t make it) to convincing HBO to air the shows as a prime-time special on November 29th to the incredible rehearsals and finally to the historic concerts themselves, which feature legends like Metallica, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Jeff Beck. Our new issue also features annotated set lists from both shows, backstage photos, essays by contemporary artists like Alicia Keys and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James on the Rock Hall of Famers that inspired them and much more. (more…)

Photograph by Mark Seliger

Over two nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden last month, rock history was made again and again: Bono, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and more legends united on one stage to celebrate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary with a pair of concerts featuring some of the biggest talents of the past six decades. Metallica rocked with Lou Reed. Stevie Wonder sang with Smokey Robinson. The Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie and Will.i.am joined U2 and Jagger for “Gimme Shelter.” Rolling Stone has the story behind these epic concerts, and an unprecedented look behind the scenes of one of the greatest rock events ever in our new issue, on stands today.

Get a look at all of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s inductees.

David Fricke and Brian Hiatt trace the concerts’ journey from the first entreaties to artists (Led Zeppelin declined to reunite again; David Bowie couldn’t make it) to convincing HBO to air the shows as a prime-time special on November 29th to the incredible rehearsals, where Springsteen almost rocked his voice away trading “Fortunate Son” verses with John Fogerty. (more…)

With the 25th anniversary reissue of U2’s The Unforgettable Fire due out tomorrow, the album’s producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois spoke with Pitchfork about working on the band’s much-anticipated follow-up to War. At the time, the move was a risky one for both artist and producers: U2 were coming off a hit album, and while Eno had worked on a handful of Talking Heads records, he was in an ambient frame of mind when Bono came calling.

Read Rolling Stone’s review of The Unforgettable Fire reissue.

“I had this phone call with Bono — he is the greatest salesman of all time, you have to bear that in mind — where I said to him, look, what I’m worried about is that I might change things rather unrecognizably,” Eno told Pitchfork. “People might not particularly like the new you that comes out of this. And he said, well, actually we want to be changed unrecognizably. We don’t want to just keep repeating what we’ve done before.” (more…)

Photo: Flanigan/FilmMagic
Hours after broadcasting their 360° Tour stop at California’s Rose Bowl to the entire world via a YouTube live stream, U2 announced plans to bring “The Biggest Rock Show Ever” back to North America in 2010. Last night’s Rose Bowl gig was the band’s final concert in the states on this leg of the 360° Tour, but YouTube has promised to rebroadcast the full show and the band has confirmed they’ll return with their innovative stage dubbed “the Spaceship” in June.

U2’s 360° Tour: photos of the band’s opening night.

Twelve concerts have been announced for the band’s next North American trek, including a performance at Chicago’s Soldier Field — where the band launched its U.S. leg earlier this year — and a July 19th stop at New York’s New Meadowlands Stadium. (more…)

Photo: Tama/Getty

Bono has come out in support of President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win, penning an op-ed column in this weekend’s New York Times celebrating Obama’s goal of eradicating world hunger and crediting the President for helping “rebrand America.” As Rolling Stone previously reported, the recent RS cover star was recruited by the NYT to contribute six to 10 op-ed pieces in 2009, ranging from pieces on Frank Sinatra to poverty.

“There’s a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven’t a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be,” Bono writes. “Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype.”

Check out photos tracing U2’s rise to superstardom. (more…)

Photo: Natkin/WireImage

Last week, with U2 bringing their 360° Tour to stadiums all across North America and Bono and the Edge on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone, we asked our readers to tell us their favorite songs by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Irishmen. After tabulating the votes, it seems like we’re all in agreement: “Bad” is really good. The Unforgettable Fire centerpiece, a six-minute masterpiece that was never even released as a single, was voted the fan favorite, beating out radio hits and classics like “One,” “With or Without You” and “Mysterious Ways.” Both Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree landed five songs on the Readers’ List. To see the Top 20 U2 songs as voted by the fans, check out the full results below:

1. “Bad”
2. “One”
3. “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
4. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”
5. “Where the Streets Have No Name” (more…)

Photograph by Sam Jones
With U2’s giant spaceship of a 360° Tour landing in stadiums across the country and Bono and the Edge on the current cover of Rolling Stone, all the stars have aligned for a Rock List to finally be dedicated to the Irish rockers. Our feature in the new issue finds Bono and the boys attempting to resurrect the obscure song “Your Blue Room,” a track from the band’s Passengers collaboration with Brian Eno. Bono has been fixated on the song lately, but what we want to know is what U2 songs our readers have been fixated on for the last three decades. Tell us your favorite tracks by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, and on Monday we’ll reveal the Readers’ Rock List of U2 Songs. Before you go diving into their discography, check out some of our picks below:

• “Bad”
• “Running To Stand Still”
• “One”
• “All I Want Is You”
• “Mysterious Ways”

Follow Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. as they meet a throng of screeching fans outside their Chicago hotel, make their way to local radio stations for interviews (”The scale of the production is much bigger, but it boils down to the four of us out there,” the Edge says) and journey to Soldier Field, where U2 kicked off their epic 360° Tour. If you haven’t seen the band’s giant “Claw” stage glowing in a football stadium, don’t miss the last 25 seconds of this clip. Rolling Stone was on the ground at the opening-night show in Chicago, too — read our report and flip through photos of their show.

And don’t miss our other fantastic U2 features:

• Q&A From the Cover Story: U2 on Their Next Album
• Album Guide: The Essential U2
• Photos: Three Decades of U2

Photograph by Sam Jones

When Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt hit the road with U2 to report on U2360°, the biggest tour in history for our new issue, he also got the band to open up about their next project — an album called Songs of Ascent — and the future of the songs for Bono and the Edge’s Spider-Man musical. Bono also revealed how the band views its haters (”They’re in the pub going, ‘I can’t stand him look at his fucking head on him. Look at the head on him. Who does he think he is? Fucking Jesus’ “) and told an awesome story about the unlikely meeting of Jay-Z and James Bond at a posh Monte Carlo restaurant. Read the Q&A here:

• U2 Beyond the “Horizon”: Plans for Next Album Take Shape

More U2:

• U2: Three Decades in Photos
• U2’s Essential Album Guide
• U2 in 360: Photos From Their Epic New Tour

Photograph by Sam Jones; Digital imaging and logo treatment by Splashlight

The numbers associated with the U2360° Tour are staggering: a 170-ton stage rightfully dubbed “the spaceship,” 200 trucks carting it around, 250 speakers, nearly 400 employees and $750,000 a day in overhead. But the band’s stadium show is more than a fantastic spectacle — it’s the biggest rock tour of all time, and Rolling Stone is onstage and backstage with U2’s Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. as they make history in our new issue, on stands today.

Explore three decades of U2 in photos.

Sales for U2’s latest album, No Line on the Horizon, may not match their biggest blockbusters, but the foursome are out to “engage and try and do something different,” as Edge puts it, as well as prove their new material can stand up next to the classics. “I walk out and sing ‘Breathe’ every night to a lot of people who don’t know it,” Bono tells RS‘ Brian Hiatt of the No Line show opener in our cover story. “I’m a performer — I’m not going to hang on to a song that doesn’t communicate and add up to something. They’re great songs live, and I think it’s a great album.” But three-fourths of U2 (save the Edge) think “Get On Your Boots” was the wrong pick for a first single. (more…)

Minutes before a midtown-Manhattan press screening of U2 3D — a digitally shot three-dimensional film of a March 2006 U2 concert in Buenos Aires — this afternoon, a couple of journalists were shooed out of their seats in a center row to clear room for Jay-Z and his posse. Hova clearly has time on his hands for 2:00 Monday movie screenings now that he’s stepping down as president of Def Jam. Jay seemed into it at first, but by “Sunday Bloody Sunday” he took the 3D glasses off and was rubbing his temples as if his brain was going through image overload. By the time The Edge was strapping his guitar on for “Bullet the Blue Sky,” he and his crew were long gone.

They missed out. I haven’t seen a 3D movie since Captain EO at Disneyworld sometime around 1990, but the technology has really come a long way. The filmmakers claim this movie is the “first live-action film to be shot, posted and exhibited entirely in 3-D.” The band jumps off the screen during the entire performance — as does the frenzied crowd in the sold-out soccer stadium. When Adam Clayton takes the spotlight during “New Year’s Day” it looks like he’s playing in your lap. The sound was also as clear and crisp as I’ve ever heard in a movie theater. (more…)