Daily News from New York, New York • 170

i-z Bv GEORGE RUSH and JOANNA MOLLOY U2's concert draws the A-list H2's Tuesday concert here was supposed to be for I the die-hard fans who won a radio contest. But I the Irish rockers managed to find a few tickets I for their celeb pals. A Til 1 squeezing into irving riaza weie jonniiy Depp, Cindy Crawford and hubby Rande Gerber, as well as Ed Burns and new girlfriend Christy Turlington. I Jtl KEVIN MAZUR DAILY NEWS Conspicuously missing was fatwa-dogged novelist Salman Rushdie, who collaborated with the band on the song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet." But Bono saluted him from the stage as "very precious to us." The singer also sent shout-outs to the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine fame. "They're two great bands soon not to be with us," said Bono, alluding to recent breakup announcements.

"I feel very, very bad in my soul about that. And I hope you do, too." Elsewhere in the audience was Bono's wife, Ali (who's expecting their fourth child next summer), Little Stevie Van Zandt, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, Garbage singer Shirley Manson, Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein, Interscope chief Jimmy lovine and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. The tired-looking Wenner, who was seen resting his head on the table he shared with main man Matt Nye, didn't make it over to the after-party at Lotus. But Depp, Burns, Turlington and most of the rest of the stellar groupies did join the lads for the celebration. Safe to say, Mel Gibson probably won't be on the list when the band kicks off its official tour next year.

The actor co-produced and starred in "The Million Dollar Hotel," based on a story by Bono. But Gibson has been going out of his way to dump on the flick. "I thought it was as boring as a dog's a-," Gibson recently said in an interview. "Ultimately, I don't think it worked." Bono, speaking to L.A.'s KROC, whose New York sister station co-sponsored the Irving Plaza gig, shot back: "We had a 600-pound gorilla who was supposed to be our bodyguard on the project, Mel Gibson, and now he is sitting on our head. "It's bad.

We can't get the movie out. We're having real difficulty. I think Mel doesn't like his performance in the film. I think it's extraordinary. He doesn't get to win in the end it's not one of those normal, justifiable-homicide-type movies." Russelling up a wife Memo to Meg Ryan: Your boyfriend, Russell Crowe, sounds like he's still on the prowl.

"I'm still looking for the right woman," Crowe said in an interview published yesterday. "I've been looking, and I hope that when I find the right woman and I do get married, that I can enjoy the sort of relationship my parents have." Crowe was mum on reports that he played a role in the breakup of Ryan's marriage to Dennis Quaid. "It's absolutely Their new album includes a song called "New York," so perhaps it's only fitting that U2 gave a free concert in the city. At Tuesday night's show at Irving Plaza, frontman Bono got in touch with fans. Celebrity admirers on hand Included actor-director Ed Burns and model Christy Turlington, at left, flanking U2 The Edge.

guitansx i I I fit; i omental auguring an env fee Repub- apocalypse unde I 2 2 licans. 1 n. pas won, Ifld drill for "Now that Bus they're gonna gq oil up in Jteldwin tells interviewer Robin Milling. inappropriate for me to comment," Crowe told London's Mirror newspaper. "Regardless of what I say, it's going to hurt some people, and I'm really not walking on this planet to do that.

"Let me just say that I'm not getting married this year, and I'm not having babies this year either, although sooner or later in life I will want to get married and have children." All the same, the blustery "Gladiator" star said: "Romance is one of the most important things in my life. However much of a hard you think I am, there is another side to me, and without romance, my life would not be worth writing about." Not that he likes much of what's been written. "I'm going to be misquoted, misrepresented and misconstrued no matter what I do," he said. "I'm going to be the way I am, and if people don't like it, well, that's just bad luck." So there. Is her heart in the Highlands? Madonna and boyfriend Guy Ritchie have laid the groundwork for their wedding in Scotland, British papers reported yesterday.

The two were said to have flown by private jet Tuesday from London to Inverness. Visiting the cathedral where they will supposedly trade vows, Madonna reportedly burst into a rendition of "Ave Maria." The Rev. Susan Brown, whose rumored to be marrying the couple, wouldn't confirm or deny she'll be officiating at the ceremony. "It's a private matter, and I am bound by confidentiality," she was quoted as saying. Madonna spokeswoman Barbara Charone said, "I think it is unlikely that they are in Scotland.

They are not there as far as I know." Alec abandons hope Ardent Democrat Alec Baldwin seems to have lost hope for a Gore victory and he's 3 "They never go back and restore these placfesVThey only degrade. We've gotta get off the oil jones." Baldwin plays a movie star with a "hobby" of underage girls in David Mamet's "State and Main," about a crew of Hollywood film makers who turn a small Vermont town on its ear. The "Wag the Dog" co-writer gets in some political satire in a scene where Phillip Seymour Hoffman offers a cockamamie alibi to new girlfriend Rebecca Pidgeon about what he was doing undressed with Sarah Jessica Parker. Pidgeon says she believes even Hoffman t6 sky, "But that's absurd." Pfiteeon replies: "So is our electdralprocess. But we still vote.

5 RICHARD CORKERY DAILY NEWS B.B. King and Diana Ross are among the recipients of this year's Heroes Awards from the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. They were honored Tuesday during a dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel..