"Boy Falls From The Sky" (2010)

Demo Song

Background Information

“Boy Falls From the Sky” is one of a number of songs by Bono and The Edge that appeared in the musical, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” Bono at one point in late 2009 spoke about possibly recording the Spider-Man music with U2, “If we’re going to do another rock record, I want to do Spider-Man,” he said. “I just haven’t talked Adam and Larry into that.” This particular song was developed by the entire band, and the credit on the cast album goes to U2 for this song.

“Boy Falls From the Sky” was first mentioned in the article “U2: Hymns for the Future“ by Brian Hiatt in Rolling Stone Magazine. In that article the band provides some insight into the album No Line on the Horizon, as well as song songs that will be used for the next album:

The first song Bono plays on the Maserati’s more-than-adequate sound system is called “Boy Falls From the Sky,” with Across the Universe star Jim Sturgess singing as Peter Parker. It sounds a lot like a U2 hit, especially when Bono sings along in the car with the line “I used to use a single thread to cross the sky.” “Killer!” he shouts as the song wraps up, and then he plays a choral, operatic segue. When Bono’s assistant calls on his cell, he cuts the conversation short: “We’re in the middle of an opera here!”

Even at that point, the song had been recorded by someone else, as it had been intended for use in the musical from an early stage.

Bono and The Edge would appear on Good Morning America on September 10, 2010 via video from Zurich, to introduce Reeve Carney singing their song “Boy Falls From the Sky”. The musical was due to go into previews and the promotion for those performances was starting.

During that same 2010 leg of the U2360 tour, U2 introduced a number of new songs to the set throughout the leg. “Glastonbury,” “North Star,” and “Return of the Stingray Guitar” were all introduced for the first time on August 6, at the opening show of the tour in Turin, Italy. (“Glastonbury” had been sound checked August 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (five times!), “North Star” had been soundchecked on August 2, 5 (twice), and “The Return of the Stingray Guitar” was sound checked on August 4 and 5.) Another song debuting was “Every Breaking Wave” on August 21, 2010 at Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland. “Mercy” made it’s tour debut on September 12, 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland at Letzigrund Stadion. And on October 3, 2010, U2 debuted “Boy Falls From the Sky” at Estadio Cidade de Coimbra in Coimbra, Portugal. “Boy Falls from the Sky” was only performed on the one night in Coimbra.

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