Search Results for: northern ireland

Members of rock acts Snow Patrol and Ash are throwing their support behind plans to create a dedicated music center in their Northern Ireland homeland. Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody and Ash lead singer Tim Wheeler are rallying behind the project, dubbed Oh Yeah (the title of Ash’s 1996 U.K. top 10 hit), aimed to be a multi-functional nucleus for musicians in the country’s capital of Belfast. An ambitious renovation schedule is planned for the three-story site, which stands at a former bonded whiskey warehouse in the heart of the city’s Cathedral Quarter. The completed venue will feature rehearsal space,… Read more »

An international media horde gathered Thursday at a remote Irish castle hotel, where the owner announced that Paul McCartney and his fiancee, Heather Mills, would have their wedding reception next week. “We are told vaguely it is next Tuesday, but it is all secret. I have to keep it dead-secret,” said Sir John Leslie, owner of Castle Leslie, an offbeat luxury hotel in County Monaghan bordering Northern Ireland. “They might do something at the last minute or change it. You never know.” Leslie, 84, sporting a green beret with a peacock feather, added that McCartney had visited the hotel last… Read more »

U2 frontman Bono’s next tour is less than a week away, although it won’t find the internationally famous singer performing in the glimmering sporting arenas of the first world. Instead, Bono will visit the AIDS-ravaged terrain of Sub-Saharan Africa with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill beginning May 20. The 10-day-tour will take the unlikely duo to schools, AIDS clinics, and various World Bank development projects in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, and Ethiopia, AP reports. Bono has long used his fame as a platform to speak out about the situation, which has seen more than 22 million Africans claimed by AIDS,… Read more »

Bono, lead singer of the Irish rock supergroup U2, is flying back to Dublin every night after the band’s concerts to be with his father, who is dying of cancer. At their weekend concert in London, the singer dedicated the song “Kite” from their latest album to his father, Bob Hewson. The song was originally written for his children but the singer said it now feels “like my father wrote it about me. It’s funny how things work out.” He then used the band’s private jet to fly back to Dublin to be at his bedside. Another new song, “In… Read more »

Rock superstars U2 launched their first U.S. tour in nearly four years in classic form in Florida Saturday night, treating 20,000 devoted, delirious fans to a crowd-pleasing mix of old and new songs delivered with their legendary energy free of the extravagances of their most recent tours. The Irish rockers hit the stage of the National Car Rental Center arena at Sunrise, near Miami, with the house lights still on and launched into a swinging “Elevation” for their new album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. For the next two hours they put on a performance in which the songs,… Read more »

When Paul McCartney first got married, tears from lovelorn Beatles fans who pined for “the cute one” could’ve rivaled the Thames. Still, 30 years later, McCartney’s marriage to Heather Mills left nary a dry eye in the castle. The 59-year-old former Beatle wed Mills, 34, just after 5 p.m. Tuesday (June 11) in Glaslough, Ireland, according to Reuters. The private ceremony took place at St. Salvator’s Church on the 1,000-acre estate of Castle Leslie, a 17th century castle that now functions as 14-room luxury hotel near the Northern Irish border. Following the ceremony a grand reception was thrown for the… Read more »