Back in their terrifying heyday, they threw pigs’ heads around on stage, covered themselves in muck, provided Marilyn Manson with a career and wrote ‘Community Games’ for Aidan Walsh. Having escaped the clutches of a sinister born-again Christian turned transvestite, they’re now making movies with Neil Jordan, dining with Damien Hirst and consorting with Tony Blair. All in all, it’s been a long, strange trip for The Virgin Prunes
Guggi first emerged into the public eye as a member of the Virgin Prunes – the band that shared their early growth and development with U2. Having departed the Prunes fold, he turned his attention to art and has since become one of the country's most bankable painters.
The extravagantly monikered Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab of Oz crazies Machine Gun Fellatio assures Colm O’Hare that they’re a bit more Las Vegas than the Virgin Prunes
PETER MURPHY meets GAVIN FRIDAY and discovers a fascination with Kurt Weill that has led to Friday and Maurice Seezer’s Ich Lieb Dich revue at the Tivoli Theatre
t certainly would, Joe. But you can have a toot on my megaphone if you like! Gavin Friday discusses the finer points of sexual politics not to mention the post-Freudian subtext to his stunning new meisterwork Shag Tobacco with Dr Joe Jackson. Our man in the white coat concluded: Gavin s time has come. But is the world finally read
They may sport one of the most original sounds in rock’n’roll – but along the way they’ve been influenced by some of the greats.
STUART BAILIE identifies the ten (plus!) key influences on the music of U2
Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves can't but arrive as a Big Statement. The Virgin Prunes were always elitist, dissembling, treacherous spies in the house of Irish rock.
For many people it is U2's greatest album. Twenty years on, to mark it's re-release, Colm O'Hare talks to Daniel Lanois and reflects on the extraordinary background to a monumental album.
In the new Hot Press, Peter Murphy picks his 20 highlights from the last 35 years of home-grown alternative culture (in strictly chronological order!). Take a look and then have your say on the indie moments that rocked in your lifetime...
peter murphy meets the multi-faceted pelvis, whose debut album Who Are You Today marks them out as one of the most formidable new Irish
talents in years.
Hard Working Class Heroes, featuring big names and rising stars – and everything from rock to hip-hop – is set to provide a snapshot of one nation under a groove. Phil Udell reports
THE SUBTONICS are young, gifted . . . and angry. Having made a name for themselves through their guerilla promotional tactics, they now tell EAMON SWEENEY that we re coming close to the end of rock n roll in Ireland.
But where would you be in the middle of the night with no bells and your knickers ringing? Or more to the point, where would you be without the new Hot Press/Heineken link up with Tower Records on Sundays?
Never ones to be left behind the times, Bono and chums have gone 3D with the release of U2 3D. Director Catherine Owens gives us the inside track on the historic project.
With his work on the soundtrack to In The Name Of The Father bringing him into the full glare of media attention Gavin Friday takes this opportunity to put to rest any accusations of riding on U2’s coat-tails. Confident and brimming with ideas for his solo career, The Spotlight Kid gives the lowdown to an eager BILL GRAHAM.
Rogues’ Gallery – traditional sea songs, pirate ballads and chanteys, interpreted and performed by an eclectic mix of artists – is part high art, part punk aesthetic.
They looked great, played great, wrote great songs and, in PAUL CLEARY had a frontman with bundles of charisma. Yet THE BLADES never followed U2 into the stratosphere. On the occasion of the release of a retrospective set GEORGE BYRNE rewinds the tape
Not so long ago mavericks and experimentalism were thin on the ground in Ireland. But with the growth of an independent scene, all of that has changed. for confirmation, look no further than the rise to eminence of The Jimmy Cake.
Exclusive: Kevin Shields, the missing presumed lost genius of Irish rock, re-emerges to tell the truth about sandbags and barbed wire, the making of Loveless, early Dublin days with Gavin Friday, Liam O Maonlai and U2, and his Bafta-winning work on Lost in Translation.
...or was it? U2's recent Irish dates were greeted with everything from wide-eyed adoration to open hostility. BILL GRAHAM was in the crowd at Pairc Uí Caoimh and the RDS and puts the Zoo TV experience into perspective. Pix: COLM HENRY
Recorded mostly at home in Montréal and in art galleries and hotel rooms by the quarter-Irish, one-woman cottage industry that is Emm Gryner, Songs of Love and Death is a brave selection of Irish pop and rock songs that thankfully avoids the obvious and gives some perhaps forgotten gems an overdue turn around the block.
DO YOU WANT NAILS OF FEEDBACK DRIVEN THROUGH YOUR BRAIN? DO YOU WANT YOUR EARS TO BLEED? THIS IS HARDCORE AND IT'S THE MOST VITAL ATTITUDE IN ROCK'N'ROLL, FROM LOU REED TO THERAPY? VIA NICK CAVE, FUGAZI AND... CHRISTY MOORE. OR SO SAYS GERRY McGOVERN, WHO ALSO ADVANCES THE THEORY THAT 'HARDCORE IS GENERALLY FOR HARD WHITE MEN'. SHOOTING GALLERY AWAITS YOUR RESPONSE!
Gavin Friday has been talking about his involvement in a Johnny Depp-inspired project that also involves Bono, Andrea Corr, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry, Antony & The Johnsons, Richard & Linda Thompson, Loudon Wainwright and some of his former Virgin Prunes bandmates.
IN THE FIRST PART OF A WORLD EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW IN THE LAST ISSUE OF HOT PRESS, BONO UNVEILED THE NEW U2 ALBUM, SPOKE ABOUT ITS GENESIS IN CYBERPUNK LITERATURE AND THE BAND'S HUNGER TO PUSH ROCK'N'ROLL TO ITS LIMITS. HERE HE ELABORATES ON HOW U2 GO ABOUT WRITING THEIR SONGS AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF GLOBAL CHAOS, HIS ARTISTIC REFERENCE POINTS OUTSIDE MUSIC, THE SUBVERSIVE POWER OF HUMOUR, AND HOW HE ADMIRES THOSE WHO 'PARTICULARLY AGGRESSIVELY' DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD. AND THEN THERE'S THE STORY ABOUT JOHNNY CASH AND THE EMU. CAN THIS MAN BE FOR SURREAL? INTERVIEW:JOE JACKSON.
"In dreams begin responsibilities" – is the Delmore Schwartz line that's been used by both Lou Reed and U2. But it doesn't quite suit the latest album from another member of their coterie, T-Bone Burnett.
AGNES BERNELLE s death last month brought a truly remarkable
life to a close. SIOBHAN LONG looks back, in the company of
Gavin Friday, Philip Chevron and Alan Amsby.
Pelvis are a band going places. To London for a start, where they are playing every fleapit dive, indie emporium and up-market lounge bar that will have ’em.
Our 1982 cover stars included UB40, the Virgin Prunes, Moving Hearts, Rolling Stones, Kevin Rowland, Echo & The Bunnymen and new wave heroes Ultravox, Haircut 100 and ABC.
Though often overlooked, some of U2’s most exciting and challenging music through the years is to be found hidden away on the flip side of their singles. From U23 to Melon bill graham rides the wild horses of the U2 back catalogue and finds that there’s quite a few thoroughbreds among their many cover versions and experimental remixes.
Neil McCormick, a friend of U2 in their earliest days, who, as a writer, has closely monitored their progress since then, analyses Eamon Dunphy's much-touted 'authorised' biography "Unforgettable Fire" – and can't quite believe what he reads
