For U2, Aerosmith, Bang the Drums Very Loudly

If it seems that U2 is “Pop”-ing up all over the place these days, that’s good news to Island Records.

Along with the Irish rock group’s management team, the record company has been working behind the scenes for months trying to guarantee maximum media exposure in anticipation of the release next Tuesday of the band’s new album, “Pop.”

Beside the interviews, radio promotions and videos that normally accompany the release of an album, the campaign will include a one-hour prime-time ABC television special in May, a rash of TV and magazine ads and spot news reports from the group’s upcoming “PopMart” tour on both MTV and sister channel VH1.

And right in the midst of the U2 assault, Columbia Records will unleash a multidimensional blitzkrieg of its own on behalf of another best-selling veteran rock band, Aerosmith, whose “Nine Lives” album is due in stores March 18.

Steven Tyler and his Aerosmith bandmates, like their counterparts in U2, have sat for a battery of interviews, made plans for special live television appearances and mapped out an ambitious world tour in preparation for their first release on Columbia since they re-signed with the label in 1991 for a reported $30 million.

Island and Columbia insist that all this promotional activity is standard procedure for the launching of albums by superstar acts, but the stakes are higher than usual these days because U.S. album sales, particularly for rock bands, have stagnated.

Several so-called “sure bets” in rock, including Pearl Jam and R.E.M., suffered disappointing sales downturns in 1996. In addition, several other acts (Green Day, Sheryl Crow and the Counting Crows, among them) have had a difficult time following up mega-hit albums with equally successful records.

Aerosmith’s last album on Geffen, 1993’s “Get a Grip,” sold 4.4 million copies in the United States, while U2’s last effort, 1993’s “Zooropa,” sold only 2.1 million units domestically (according to SoundScan). That album, however, was released in the middle of the band’s “Zoo TV” tour after the U.S. dates were completed. The more accurate barometer would be 1991’s “Achtung Baby,” which sold 4.9 million copies in the U.S.

In the record industry these days, no one is taking for granted that albums by even such proven bestsellers as U2 and Aerosmith are guaranteed blockbusters.

“There’s a lot of apprehension out there,” says Bob Feterl, a Southern California regional manager for Tower Records. “Nothing’s a sure home run anymore.”

That’s why U2 and Aerosmith are pulling out all the stops to promote records that are the first from the bands since 1993.

“It’s very extensive,” Hooman Majd, executive vice president of Island, says of the U2 campaign. “But it’s based on what we feel is our job--to ensure that anybody who could possibly want this record has an opportunity to know about it.

“That means making sure that people get to hear the album on the radio, see it on video and read about it in magazines and newspapers--and so on and so forth.”

Don Ienner, chairman of the Columbia Records Group, says the multimedia push behind records by superstar acts is designed to generate more than awareness.

“We want to build excitement,” the executive says. “It’s the same reason motion picture companies send actors and actresses out to talk shows to promote movies.”

According to Ienner, nobody knows that better than Aerosmith, which has been tireless in promoting its first release on Columbia in 15 years.

Two months ago, the band even fanned the promotional flames within its own record company by playing a surprise show at a Sony branch managers conference in New York. On the weekend before the album’s release, Aerosmith will perform at an MTV spring-break party in Panama City, Fla., a concert that will air on the cable channel March 21. On March 22, the group will appear on “Saturday Night Live.”

Aerosmith has already made promotional treks to Germany, England, Japan, Canada, Italy, France and Sweden, where it will kick off an 18-month world tour on May 8. The tour will arrive in the United States in the summer.

The band plans to release at least four singles and videos from “Nine Lives”--the first, “Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees),” hit stores on Feb. 11--and will participate in several fan-oriented events via the Internet on the album’s release date. The compact disc version of the album is an enhanced CD that includes guitar lessons from the band on how to play the new material.

“The guys in Aerosmith are consummate pros,” says Columbia’s Ienner, whose company is also launching an extensive marketing campaign on behalf of the group’s ‘70s and early ‘80s albums on the label. “Within the structure of their own integrity and their own credibility, these guys will work as hard as any band I’ve ever been associated with in my life.”

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U2 will be just as visible pushing “Pop.”

MTV and VH1 were on hand to broadcast live two weeks ago when Bono and his bandmates took over a Kmart store in Manhattan to announce details of their yearlong world tour, which starts April 25 in Las Vegas and includes a June 21 date at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The cable channels also are offering fans a chance to buy tickets to the U.S. dates before they go on sale to the public.

In September, U2 will make a rare live television appearance when it performs at the MTV Video Music Awards show in New York.

And Island, looking beyond the usual marketing outlets, has bought ads for “Pop” in more than two dozen U.S. magazines, including such nonmusic periodicals as Vanity Fair, Seventeen, Movieline and Surfing.

“It’s a mass-appeal record, and therefore we have to get to the most number of people we can possibly get to,” says Island’s Majd. “A lot of people, after they get to a certain age, they don’t necessarily have time to make regular visits to the record store.

“We have to give them an incentive to go. That’s what it boils down to: We have to let people know this record is available.”