US – Friday, March 19
Published 15:58, October the 1st, 2009
Send
 
Gavin Friday, to say he’s looking forward to Sunday is “sort of an understatement.” Gavin Friday, to say he’s looking forward to Sunday is “sort of an understatement.”
 

Tell all your friends what you want to do for your birthday

>Gavin Friday did and it seemed to work out for him >Singer and U2 ‘midwife’ gets to realize his dream while raising money and awareness to fight AIDS

Disparate luminaries

Gavin Friday has been friends with Bono since boyhood, when he played in a band with Edge’s brother called Virgin Prunes. Friday has also worked with U2 for years.

“I’ve been called everything from consultant to midwife,” he laughs of his role with the band.
But this weekend, Friday plays the role of ringleader, guiding guests through Friday’s own material and punk and cabaret classics. The lineup includes such disparate luminaries as all the members of U2, Laurie Anderson, Joel Grey, Scarlett Johansson, Courtney Love and Martha and Rufus Wainwright.

“I think there are really great things in there,” says Friday. “It excites me, the cast, how eclectic and dramatic it is. It’s just that these events, the way they’re put together, are quite spontaneous, which is a rare thing in this day and age when you go to a show.”

 

In the 1990s a television reporter asked Gavin Friday what he’d most like to do before he turned 50, and the Irish singer and composer said his lofty ambition was to play Carnegie Hall. His friends wouldn’t let him live it down. This ended up being a good thing.

“All my friends were slowly beginning to hit 50,” says Friday, who will actually realize his dreams this weekend. “I was at a birthday party about six months ago and my friend Guggi had turned 50, and Bono said to me, ‘Hey what are you going to do for your 50th?’ and I said, ‘Eh, I don’t know, whatever.’ And he said, ‘I know what you’re going to do.’”

That’s when Bono told him of his plans with the (RED) campaign to fight AIDS and their friend Hal Willner, who put together similar live events to celebrate artists like Leonard Cohen, Thelonius Monk, Tim Buckley, Edgar Allen Poe and Marquis de Sade.

Hal Willner Presents: An Evening With
Gavin Friday and Friends
Sunday, 8 p.m.
Carnegie Hall
57th St. and Seventh Ave.
$35 - $250, 212-247-7800
www.carnegiehall.org

Pat Healy