U2 receive lifetime achievement award from Kennedy Center
Irish rockers U2 were bestowed with the lifetime achievement award at the John F Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. At the ceremony in Washington D.C., Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton were joined by George Clooney, Gladys Knight, Amy Grant, and Tania León, who were all there to accept the recognition.
All were awarded the honours by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the Kennedy Center Opera House. The ceremony will be aired on US television on December 28th. “We consider America to be a home away from home and we are very grateful to the Kennedy Center Honors for welcoming us into this great clan,” U2 expressed of the award.
“In December 1980, we made our first trip across the Atlantic to America. Our first show was at The Ritz in New York City, the second, The Bayou in D.C.,” they continued. “We had big dreams then, fuelled in part by the commonly held belief at home that America smiles on Ireland. And it turned out to be true, yet again.”
U2 concluded: “But even in the wilder thoughts, we never imagined that 40 years on, we would be invited back to receive one of the nation’s greatest honours”.
David M. Rubenstein, the Chairman of the Kennedy Center, explained why Bono and the band earned the award, saying that they had not only found love in America but the world with their “iconic anthems, potent lyrics, and powerful messages of social justice and global citizenship”.
Elsewhere, Bono recently suggested that U2 will play in Las Vegas sometime in 2023. “I can’t announce Vegas, you’d have to shoot me! But if it happens, I can promise you it won’t be like anything you’ve ever seen in Las Vegas or anywhere, ever,” he said. “There’s no place yet big enough. For us to go, it has to be something that no-one’s ever gone [to] before.”
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