U2, THE CORRS and Bob Geldof featured on an Irish TV tribute to the victims of the Omagh Bombing. The special edition of The Late Late Show was broadcast live on RTE on Friday, November 20.
NOEL GALLAGHER would have appeared on the show, but he was ill and sent a message instead. He gave the show a cassette, containing a demo version of ‘She’s Electric‘, recorded before OASIS signed to Creation Records. He also sent a gold disc of ‘Be Here Now’ to Claire Gallagher, an Oasis fan. She was blinded by the bombing.
U2 bookended the programme with the songs ‘North And South Of the River’ and ‘All I Want Is You’. Bono also spoke about the day in Omagh, Northern Ireland, which caused 30 deaths when a ‘Real IRA’ car bomb went off on August 15.
“The only grain of hope that you can possibly glean from this terror,” Bono said, “is that this has to be the end of it. That was the moment that marked the end of The troubles. We have to belive that – the polititians, the police and the paramilitaries and priests and whoever, that they will go that extra mile now to understand their adversaries and then go one mile further. That is the only thing that we can hope for.”
The Corrs had helped to organise the programme, and they sang REM‘s ‘Everybody Hurts‘ to an audience that was made up of people from Omagh and Buncrana who had been traumatised by the bombing. Other guests included Brian Kennedy and Paul Brady.
Bob Geldof brought an angry note into the show by slamming “the shame and horror of 30 years” and reading from the apocalyptic WB Yeats poem ‘The Second Coming’. He said that the event had left him “sick with rage”. He performed ‘The Great Song Of Indifference’.
OMAGH TRIBUTE ALBUM
Here is the full tracklisting for the album, ‘Across The Bridge Of Hope’. This has been compiled in response to the bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland on August 15, which killed 30 people.
LIAM NEESON ‘The Cure At Troy’ (Seamus Heaney poem), SINEAD O’ CONNOR ‘Chiquitita’, THE DIVINE COMEDY ‘Sunrise’, BOYZONE ‘Words’, The Corrs ‘What Can I do?’, DANIEL O’ DONNELL ‘Beyond The Great Divide’, VAN MORRISON ‘The Healing Game’ (acoustic version), ASH ‘I’m Gonna Fall’, U2 ‘Please’, JULIET TURNER ‘Broken Things’, PAUL BRADY ‘The Island’, OMAGH COMMUNITY CHOIR ‘Across The Bridge Of Hope’ ENYA ‘Silent Night’
The record will be released on November 30. The net proceeds will be donated to the Omagh Memorial Fund.