During a night off from their eight-night, sold-out residency at Madison Square Garden, legendary Irish rockers U2 sat down with a select group of SiriusXM subscribers for a Town Hall series Q&A in our New York City studios. Not only did these lucky subscribers get the once-in-a-lifetime chance to be inches away from their music heroes, but the band surprised all by also inviting them to attend their sold-out show on July 30.
Throughout the evening, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. answered questions about their celebrated career — starting with the early days of the band when bassist Adam Clayton was their manager and The Edge’s mother was the first U2 roadie, to the future of music streaming and distribution to their most recent album Songs of Innocence, it’s forthcoming counterpart Songs of Experience and their current tour iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour 2015.
The SiriusXM Town Hall with U2, hosted by SiriusXM’s Jenny Eliscu, will air nationwide on Friday, August 7 at 6 p.m. ET on The Spectrum, via satellite on channel 28 and through the SiriusXM App on smartphones and other connected devices, as well as online at siriusxm.com. The Town Hall will also air on all inactive radios on SiriusXM’s Preview channel, Sirius channel 184 and XM channel 1. See complete list of air times below.
What you’ll hear is the iconic band in an uncommonly intimate setting, responding to fans’ and Eliscu’s questions. Asked about the connection between Songs of Innocence and the upcoming Songs of Experience, Bono explained the philosophies behind the two albums for which the tour was named, summing them up with two lines.
“The philosophy of the first album is probably best contained in a line from our second album October in a song called Rejoice. And the line is, ‘I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me.’ That was the position that I think we felt when we were in our younger times,” he explained. “For Songs of Experience, it’s a different line — it’s in [the song] Lucifer’s Hands, which is an outtake that really has both innocence and experience in it – and it has the line, ‘I can change the world, but I can’t change the world in me.’
Bono continued: “So the thing is, when we were younger, we were fighting very much with the physical world and trying to make it a better place, trying to fight when we would see injustice wherever it raised its head. Whereas in the ‘90s we made a kind of a change, and we started fighting perhaps more interesting enemies, the ones that you find in your own life, in your own heart — the hypocrisy of the human heart is great material — and just finding those kinds of enemies, you know, it’s the world in you rather than the exterior world.”
The Spectrum
August 7 @ 6 pm ET & 9 pm ET
August 8 @ 11 am ET, 3 pm ET, 6 pm ET & 10 pm ET
August 9 @ 9 am ET, 3 pm ET & 7 pm ET
August 10 @ 8 am ET & 4 pm ET
August 11 @ 7 am ET & 8 pm ET
August 12 @ 6 am ET & 5 pm ET
1st Wave
August 9 @ 1 pm ET & 5 pm ET
August 10 @ 9 am ET
August 11 @ 9 pm ET
August 12 @ 12 pm ET
After the broadcast, “SiriusXM’s Town Hall with U2” will be available on SiriusXM On Demand for subscribers listening via the SiriusXM App for smartphones and other mobile devices or online at siriusxm.com. Visit www.siriusxm.com/ondemand for more info on SiriusXM On Demand.
