And talking of U2, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong has revealed how his group's collaboration with the Irish band on Skids cover 'The Saints Are Coming' came about. That particular track, reworked by the two bands to raise funds for Music Rising - the charity set up to replace instruments lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina - was chosen because 'Saints' is the name of the New Orleans football team. Of course, one might have guessed that that was the reasoning behind it, given that they first performed it at the first game of the season at the Saint's Louisiana Superdome, which, you may remember, housed many made homeless by the hurricane.
Anyway, Armstrong told NME: "It's a huge event for New Orleans to get their team back after losing everything. The fact that the team was coming back was a major thing for them. It just became a monumental event, a little something to celebrate."
The singer went on to criticise George W Bush's handling of that crisis, saying "So many politicians, they don't have a clue what's its like to be working class or lower class or live in any sort of poverty stricken area, they are completely disconnected with that sort of lifestyle. And their reaction to it all made that clear just how disconnected."
U2's The Edge said something too: "It was a big watershed moment because it exposed how vulnerable America was ultimately. This was the world superpower, and it couldn't deal with something that happened in its own backyard."