The first day of 2018’s inaugural Vinyl festival found us temporarily travelling back in time with photographer and designer Steve Averill, as he took us to Death Valley in 1986. This was of course, the occasion of his working with U2 and Anton Corbijn on The Joshua Tree album.

A mixture of stills , footage and scintillating stories, this talk was a U2 fan’s dream. One has to remember the importance of this album in the band’s history, and of course the visual aspect played a pivotal role. Anton Corbijn’s dry sense of humour got a gentle ribbing; Steve showed us the actual Olympus camera he used during the project (now of course appearing like an outrageously outdated artefact;) and he spoke warmly and openly about his working relationship with U2 – one of rock’s longest creative collaborations.

Next stop was The Great Hall. Ignoring the stares of William of Orange, Queen Ann and sundry other British monarchs, whose impressive portraits adorn the walls, we caught up with Hot Press’ own Stuart Clark as he spoke engagingly with Noel Hogan and Stepehen Steet (all pictured) about The Cranberries’ debut and related tales. There were great insights into the formation of the band and the recording of the magnificent album. We also heard about Noel’s shameless fanboying of Stephen Street, the impact of The Cranberries rapid rise to superstardom and Mr.Hogan spinetingling account of the first time he heard Dolores sing ‘Linger’.