"War Child Presents Heroes" - Various Artists
Album
U2 Related Content:
- "Running to Stand Still" (Studio Version) - U2 (04:17)
Full Track Listing:
15×7” Vinyl Set:
- Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat – Beck / Bob Dylan
- Victoria – The Kooks / The Kinks
- Atlantic City – The Hold Steady / Bruce Springsteen
- Transmission – Hot Chip / Joy Division
- Straight to Hell – Lily Allen featuring Mick Jones / The Clash
- Sheena is a Punk Rocker – Yeah Yeah Yeahs / The Ramones
- Call Me – Franz Ferdinand / Blondie
- Live and Let Die – Duffy / Paul McCartney and Wings
- Superstition – Estelle
- Wonderful & Song for Children – Rufus Wainwright / Brian Wilson
- Do the Strand – Scissor Sisters / Roxy Music
- Search and Destroy – Peaches / Iggy and the Stooges
- Running to Stand Still – Elbow / U2
- You Belong to Me – The Like / Elvis Costello and the Attractions
- Heroes – TV On the Radio / David Bowie
Canadian CD Release:
- Take this Waltz – Adam Cohen
Background Information
War Child approached many iconic musicians and asked that each of them select a track from their back catalog, and then to choose a modern day artist that they would like to hear cover the song. They were asked to select the new artist they most trusted to cover the song. War Child then worked to have the songs covered and released an album containing the covers on CD in February 2009.
U2 was one of the iconic artists approached. They chose to hear Elbow cover their song “Running to Stand Still”. The song was recorded by Elbow in Bluepoint Studios in Manchester. Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow, has said that “Running to Stand Still” was “the first thing we ever played as nippers. “It was too lovely a thing that we’d also covered it many, many moons ago.” He expanded on this saying “When the band first met each other aged 17, Mark and Craig’s father Gareth would lend us his Volvo to get our gear around. It seemed that for a year and a half all that we listened to in that car was Rattle and Hum. I remember the excitement every time a U2 album was released, we just loved them. The first song we ever covered together before we had enough of our own songs to do a performance was ‘Running To Stand Still’. For ‘Heroes’ we’ve changed the order of things but kept every musical theme in the song. We wrote it with the members of U2 in mind. War Child do exactly what it says on the tin. These kids shouldn’t be in such circumstances in the first place, but they are, so thank god someone’s doing something about it.”
Although the original songs were not featured on the CD release around the world, a unique box set of 15 7-Inch vinyl singles was released in the UK. Each 7-Inch vinyl featured the cover version on one side, and the original version of the song on the other. Thus the Elbow 7-Inch with “Running to Stand Still” also featured U2’s version on the b-side. U2’s version was not included on any other version of this release worldwide, only on this vinyl box set. The cover of “Running to Stand Still” by Elbow was featured on all releases worldwide.