And we depend on what Quincy Jones said, we depend on God walking through the room on our record and want to give thanks. This is a punk road band, hearing mad tunes in their heads that are gospel and folk and psychedelic and hard rock. U2 have been accepted members of the business for 20 years, in stark contrast to the country artists featured on the O Brother Where Art Thou? album, who ran away with more than a dozen awards between them in spite of almost no exposure on mainstream country radio.Their success – including an unexpected album of the year award for O Brother – was nothing short of a revolution that promises to turn the Nashville end of the music business upside down.See the full list of winners at The thoughts of BonoExtracts from Bono’s addresses to the 44th Annual Grammy Awards:On God…It’s an extraordinary thing It’s a gift much more than a craft in our case. I do the talking.”For all his new-found political passion, Bono was far from the most remarkable event at this year’s Grammys. As he said when he interrupted his guitarist, the Edge, while accepting their fourth award: “He’s a guitar player.

“It is a great idea, worth defending.” This was clearly Bono the politician – participant at the World Economic Forum, unofficial consultant to the Pope, and hobnobber with the great and good in major Western governments. The album, and in particular the song “Walk On”, have taken on unintended symbolic meaning thanks to such lyrics as: “I know it aches/And your heart it breaks/And you can only take so much/Walk on.” For all his rambling, Bono clearly knew his audience, and took care to identify himself with the US rather than characterise himself as a critic of its global policies.”I have to tell you, as outsiders, as guests of the nation, we’ve always loved coming here, but this year I’ve rediscovered my love for America – the great idea as opposed to just the great country,” he said. (Last year, the first cut from the album, “Beautiful Day”, was honoured because it had been released just ahead of the October cut-off date.) And, even more unusually, it has been regarded by the industry as a sort of balm for the wounded psyche of America in the wake of 11 September. Unusually, this was the second year that it featured at the awards. He knows this and frequently apologises for it.” U2’s album wafted over the Grammys ceremony with an almost spiritual presence. His four Grammys capped a week in which he was hailed by Time magazine as a man with a mission to change the world, and Paul O’Neill, the US Treasury Secretary, agreed to accompany him on a trip to Africa to examine possible debt relief.As the otherwise wildly flattering Time profile of him said, right at the top: “Bono is an egomaniac. There is particularly nothing unusual about Bono behaving this way.

And God has walked through the room for us.”There’s nothing unusual, of course, about rock stars being full of themselves at awards ceremonies. (It was not – both Alicia Keys and the bluegrass musicians behind the soundtrack album O Brother, Where Art Thou? came away with more awards.)”It is a gift, much more than it is a craft in our case,” the 41-year-old musician-turned-activist said “We depend on God walking through the room more than most. Was this the world’s biggest rock star accepting his due at the biggest industry night of the year? Or the final emergence of Bono, multi-purpose saint and martyr?

Was this the world’s biggest rock star accepting his due at the biggest industry night of the year? Or the final emergence of Bono, multi-purpose saint and martyr? One could have been forgiven the confusion, watching the U2 frontman striding up to the podium at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles on Wednesday night to accept each of his band’s four Grammys for their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind.Bono rambled, invoked God and his mother, overran his allotted time – even talking over the orchestra at one point – and generally acted as though the night was all his. For men, east Dorset is top, at 79 years, followed by Horsham, West Sussex, and Rutland at 78.9 years.. The latest data, for 2000, shows the gap for women has narrowed to 7.8 years while the gap for men remains at 10.3 years.Women from Westminster are likely to live longest, with a life expectancy at birth of 83.5 years, followed by north Dorset at 83.4.