Several celebrities from the world of entertainment, including comedian Harry Hill, saved the historic and legendary venue.

Hill insisted on saving the Half Moon partly due to the fact that he had entertained crowds at the venue in the past and even performs every night this month to contribute to the cause.

He told reporters that it is a fantastic feeling to be involved in contributing to bring a more attention to the Half Moon.

According to Hill, the Half Moon is a “great institution and a little corner of music history”.

Half Moon received a real threat of closing down in November when brewery landlords Young’s were calling time on the pub’s music career.

Fans of the local music scene were distraught at the idea of having the venue turned into a gastro-pub.

An online petition to save the venue managed to gather a total of some 20,000 names.

Some of the people who signed the list claimed to have seen important bands and performers including The Jam, Elvis Costello and Nick Cave as they were starting their careers. Even the Rolling Stones saw their early days at this pub.

Recent crowds experienced the likes of Kasabian, Newton Faulkner and Seth Lakeman as these now popular acts hone their skills on the pub’s backroom stage.

The public outcry finally managed to overturn the closing decision succeeded; managing to convince Young’s to settle debts with the present day tenant James Harris.

The trio, consisting of Matthew Bellamy, Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard, have been rumoured to be playing the festival for quite a while, but after U2 was confirmed to be featured as the headlining act at the 2010 extravaganza, many sources are now saying that Muse is also about to be announced for the 4 day music bash.

Muse does not currently have any confirmed dates for the festival. The Glastonbury Festival runs between June 23 and 27. The band’s bassist, Chris Wolstenholme, told reporters that they are expecting to perform at some festivals in 2010, although neither festival officials or the band had any further comments about the rumours.

Wolstenholme said that he believed Muse will have a busy summer, with gigs featured in both stadiums and at various festivals.

Muse was also confirmed last week as the headlining band for the 2010 edition of the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

The Glastonbury Festival organisers announced last week that they had managed to get an agreement with U2. Event founder seventy-four-year-old Michael Eavis said last week that U2 was the perfect act to celebrate the event’s 40th anniversary. At the time, Eavis said that the best band in the world will perform at the best rock festival in the world. This represents the first time the boys from Dublin will partake in the huge festival.

Eavis, a former dairy farmer, used his Pilton Worthy farm to launch the festival in 1970. He now runs the event with his daughter Emily.

Apparently, he had tried to get the band for the past 26 year.

This will also mark the band’s initial performance at the Somerset festival, launched in 1970 by Mr Eavis, a former dairy farmer.

In order to play at the event staged at Pilton’s Worthy Farm, the band will need to take a short pause from their tour of North America during the weekend of June 26 to June 28.

Finally, claimed Mr Eavis, the greatest musical on the planet is going to entertain a huge crowd at the world’s best rock festival.

He said that this represented the biggest and best thing for the 40 year anniversary of the Glastonbury happening, hinting that there would be great news in the new future in terms of lineup.

Running and organising the yearly event with his daughter Emily, the 74-year-old music enthusiast has reportedly been longing for an appearance from the boys from Dublin for quite a while. U2 agreeing to the show ends Mr Eavis 26-year-old quest to lure the band.

Mr Eavis said the 2010 edition will feature a series of acts fit for the occasion. All the tickets were sold within 24 hours last month and about 177,500 festival-goers are certain to have a great time.

Famous for its music as well as for its rainy weather, the farm has occasionally ended up looking like an enormous mudbath during some editions in the past.

The Somerset farm suffered some several showers and even flash floods in 2005, creating pandemonium at the site and forcing several concert-goers to creatively use their tents as  makeshift boats in order to navigate around waterlogged areas.

During the 2007 version of the festival, the site experienced further rain thus threatening with a similar scenario, although a 2005 type disaster was avoided thanks mostly to a new draining system.

In related news, U2 was forced to pay the Dublin city council a fine stemming from noise regulation infractions which occurred during their series of shows in the Irish capital last summer. Several residents of the area where the band was performing had made formal complaints to the city. The fine totaled £33,000.

Dublin City Council gave the fine to U2 concert promoters MCD following a series of complaints from residents to council authorities concerning an excessive amount of noise during the band’s Croke Park gigs in July 2009.

An investigation revealed that the Irish performers exceeded the sound levels normally permitted by the city of Dublin a total of 12 times during the concerts. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had previously set the noise limit at 75 decibel. A council spokesman confirmed that an environmental officer had registered the band performing over the limit.

The fine has been a little controversial because it appears low.

Chair of the Croke Park Area Residents’ Alliance Pat Gates called the penalty “paltry” and said it didn’t provide much of a deterrent. Gates added that all fines coming to city council should be handed back into the local community, since they’re the ones who had to deal with the noise.

It’s been previously reported that Dublin residents had angrily protested U2 because of the 100 trucks which were driven through the small lanes around the venue.

Now on a break, the band is schedule for a second go at the whirlwind extravaganza which will make U2 perform between June and October 2010.

Here are the June dates for the 360 tour:

Anaheim, CA (June 6, 7)
Denver, CO (12)
Oakland, CA (16)
Seattle, WA (20)
Edmonton, Alberta (23)
Minneapolis, MN (27)
East Lansing, MI (30)

U2’s free gig presented at the German capital’s Brandenburg Gate, which was an event taking part of the MTV Europe Music Awards, caused frustration and anger amongst ticketless fans when organisers constructed a wall around the venue to prevent ticketless fans from enjoying the concert.

There was an obvious irony in this situation as Berliners and out-of-towners alike witnessed the erection of a wall around a site dedicated to the fall of the Wall.

A 23-year-old Berlin visitor, Louis-Pierre Boily, said that it was completely ridiculous to block the view in such a way. The young tourist had come to Berlin specifically to attend the U2 concert despite not having tickets.

Boily said he had believed the concert was to be free, adding that MTV probably wanted fans to watch the U2 gig on TV in order to bump up their ratings. A native of Canada, Boily was one of several hundred concertgoers who gathered against the new structure, which was covered with a white tarpaulin to block the view from the street. Some U2 fans even tried to tear the tarpaulin down before the performance.

Officials at MTV claimed to have worked with a local promoter, the city of Berlin and local police to erect a temporary fence around the venue in order to provide better security and safety for the attendees at the concert, a move that was also said to be for nearby residents and businesses.

Around 10,000 tickets were distributed online for free performance by the Irish band. All were snapped up within 3 hours.

The free concert will be broadcasted live on November 5 as part of the MTV Europe Music Awards.

U2’s manager Paul McGuinness said the gig will an exciting event, nearly 20 years to the day since the structure came down.

The show is one of a string of events marking the fall of the Berlin Wall. The German capital has a unique relationship with U2 as they recorded the Achtung Baby album in 1990 in what was at the time East Berlin, on the eve of the reunification of Germany.

Tickets are available starting October 28 via the www.U2.com and www.mtvema.com websites.

The MTV Europe Music Awards is set to be hosted by Katy Perry with a selection of guests including Robbie Williams, Jay-Z and Joss Stone among the acts.

The executive producer of the awards show, Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, said the event’s managing staff is extremely proud to be feature U2 in Berlin for this special performance.

He said that awards this year will be remembered as the occasion when the planet’s major music acts gathered against the backdrop of those dramatic 1990 events celebrating music, freedom and the arrival of a new dawn in Europe.

The Dublin boys have revealed yesterday that their Pasadena Rose Bowl concert will be presented live on the supra popular video- sharing site youtube.com to millions of U2 fans around the world for free this coming Sunday, October 25.

Band manager Paul McGuinness said that for a long time, U2 had expressed the desire to do an event like this.

McGuineness said that since the Los Angeles gig is being filmed, the event presents the ideal opportunity to extend the bash beyond the stadium onto the world.

He added that several fans must often journey long distances to attend a U2 concert; this time, he said, U2 will come to them.

The Rose Bowl concert is the band’s penultimate gig this year as part of the much talked about 360 Tour due to its huge stage named  the ‘Claw’ and its immense budget. The LA show is sold out and a crowd of more than 96,000 fans is expected to attend the concert.

The show will kick off at 3.30am GMT, 8.30pm Pacific Time and 12.30pm in Tokyo and is the world’s first show of this amplitude to be streamed live on the web.

Online phenomenon YouTube is confident to be capable to handle the gigantic demand stemming from the visits of millions of U2 enthusiasts expected to log on. YouTube officials added that those who will miss the show could always watch it later on as two replays of the full event will be broadcasted immediately afterwards.

U2 Fans will also benefit from instant messaging with the Twitter network while enjoying the concert.

YouTube music manager Michele Flannery said the website is excited to provide its worldwide audience with the live music of one of the world’s all-time greatest rock bands.

Flannery added that YouTube is always searching for different and new ways to link fans around the globe with their favourite performers, and this occasion presents the perfect opportunity to do so.

The 360 world tour costs a very dear £470,000 per day to stage, everyday, even when members of U2 take the day off.

The band, made up of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr., may have  create a blunder after choosing to have a world tour which features an immense stage called ‘The Claw’, which proves to be extremely pricey to log around the planet.
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The ‘Get on Your Boots’ authors have performed the 360 set up across Europe and North America since starting the concert run in Barcelona, Spain, in June.

U2 band manager Paul McGuinness estimates the boys from Dublin have spent so far an excess of £40 million in order to entertain their fans with ‘The Claw.’

Paul McGuinness told British media that the stage is the source of enormous and costly engineering problems. He added that whether U2 is performing or not, the daily expenditures are about £470,000.

He said that covers the payroll for the crew, the rental of trucks and everything else. The 360 tour requires an armada of about 200 trucks, which also transport merchandise and catering.

But the tour which ends late next year, is still expected to generate a sizable profit by the time the series of gigs come to a full stop.

The Welsh company which is the creator of the canopy has revealed they had a very short three months to develop the covering which gives the 360-degree stage such a unique design.

Workers at Architen Landrell began three-months of 12 hour days, six days a week, to complete not one, but a total of three stages for the Irish band.

Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is about to be grabbed by the “The Claw”, as the huge stage has been dubbed, from which U2 will present their hit anthems in front of 70,000 fans.

Architen Landrell’s Kate Cox, hailing from Maine in the US, said the short deadline for the £250,000 project is not unusual in the business.

Kate Cox said: “We got the order in March to get it done by the beginning of June, so yes, it was a challenge. But it is very normal for this kind of project because the rock and pop industry moves at lightning speed and everybody working with it has to keep up.”

Three versions are needed since the stage is so big. While the band performs in one city, another stage will be set up elsewhere and a staggering 180 trucks will be transporting another one to the next stop.

The Welsh company has developed quite a concert expertise with longstanding clients such as the Rolling Stones, Madonna and Robbie Williams.

She said it had been a dream for U2 to be able to perform in the middle of a stadium-sized audience.

She added: “The band wanted the feeling on stage to be the most impressive thing. Luckily for us, when we took on the project most of the engineering was completed so our design was about how the fabric worked with the steel.”

U2 is on August 22 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

We would like to thank www.walesonline.co.uk for quotes used in this article.

During the August 15 show, U2 even paid tribute to Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

U2 front man Bono told the crowd of 88,000 at Wembley Stadium: “An extraordinary woman has spent 20 years under house arrest. Her only crime is if she had run for election she would won have that election.

“Her name is Aung San Suu Kyi. I send a prayer from London to Burma for her safety.”

In a show of support for the Burmese politician, the crowd was encouraged to put on a mask of Suu Kyi during the song ‘Walk On’, which is dedicated to her.

The playlist for the two sold out Wembley Stadium gigs included ‘Breathe’, ‘No Line On, ‘The Horizon’, ‘Get On Your Boots’, ‘Magnificent’, ‘Beautiful Day’, ‘Until The End Of The World’, ‘New Year’s Day’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, ‘Stay’, ‘Unknown Caller’, ‘The Unforgettable Fire’, ‘City Of Blinding Lights’, ‘Vertigo’, ‘I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (Remix)’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘Pride (In The Name of Love)’, ‘MLK’, ‘Walk On’, ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, ‘One’, ‘Bad’, ‘Ultraviolet (Light My Way)’, ‘With Or Without You’, and ‘Moment of Surrender’.

U2 is in the middle of their 360 tour and the remaining British shows are Glasgow on the 18, Sheffield on the 20 and Cardiff on the 22. The band then hops off to North America. The tour ends in Vancouver on October 28.

We would like to thank www.nme.com for quotes used in this article.