Interview: U2

Interview with Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullins

U2 - No Line On The Horizon

The good folks at Universal Music Australia were kind enough to draw our attention to an interview with music greats U2. So we've picked out some of the better excerpts.

Sure - Bono likes to crap on - but they are U2.

Say what you want about Bono & Co - and believe me, people talk a lot of trash about them - but at the end of the day you can't really critisise a band who has consitently churned out #1 hits and albums for over two decades.

If My Chemical Romance are still around and relevant in 2029 - I won't make a single emo joke from that point on... but does anyone really expect them to last longer than next week?

No.

So for those who can appreciate a decent, if not occasionally wanky and socio-political based, ditty then sit back and relax as we take you on a musical journey with the lads from U2.

It's Thirteenth album if you include "Rattle & Hum" - do you feel like it is Lucky #13?

Bono: I don't believe in luck, it's always been about faith – faith in ourselves, faith in the almighty, faith in each other, I suppose. 

I'm the sort of character who walks under ladders deliberately, I would look for floor 13 at the hotel – I'm like that.

The album appears to have had a difficult birth or at least a longer gestation period but it may be the better for it. It seems like it's a real classic record for you.

Bono: We've been getting madly, madly good reviews: a five star review at the Rolling Stone and at Q... and I think it was worth the effort. 

We've been working on a lot of other songs too. They're ones we haven't bought out yet and are part of a different mood which we will get to in the future, so its not just that we just produced those 11 songs in two years, there is some other work.

Adam: Yeah and I wouldn’t attach the word "difficult" to it, you know, there was a different spirit on this record and I think there was a lot of support and consideration of how far to push the songs and how far to keep working on them.

When we did say "lets postpone the release of the record", it gave us an opportunity to examine some of the songs that subsequently we took off the record. 

We finished a few more that came back onto the record too, so it's a very complete record from our point of view – there was no pressure from any other quarter other than ourselves to make the best record that we could, to represent where we are at this point.

You started this record in Morocco. In the eighties, bands used to go off to places like Monserrat to record... for a sunshine break but you obviously got much more than just a nice climate to start the creative process.

Bono:  We're attracted to unusual locations. Whether its Berlin for "Achtung Baby" or, in our heads, "The Joshua Tree" was recorded in Arizona somewhere or whether its playing in Sarajevo. 

A religious music festival was happening in Fez and they invited me, for the last 5 years. The shock was that the band wanted to come, and then, if the band were coming I said "Well why don’t we record? We’ll just get a little hotel, one with a courtyard open where we can set up the band". 

And that's what we did.

You aren't famous in Morocco, is that the only place left?

Bono: No I’m sure there's many other places. I remember we were on the cover of Time Magazine and our publicist in America said "Just so that you know, there are a billion Chinese who do not know who you are". 

Now, I would like to think that that's not true anymore, because I hear that our music is getting around there, but it's great to be anonymous. That's one of the reasons that I enjoy my work in Africa, because no-one has a clue who I am in Africa – I'm like the short Bob Geldof.  It's like, "that can’t be him? No".

Larry, one of the things that people are always taken by is your honesty and you always seem to be enjoying yourself when you're rehearsing, on tour or in the studio. Where does that relentlessly positive energy come from?

Larry: Normally, on the road, particularly performing, it can be a little bit of a struggle, on every level. It doesn’t come as easy as it should, so I struggle a little with my own playing and with my own performing. 

But I enjoy the creative process. And this thing of, "Are you a great drummer?" - I never see myself as just the drummer in the band. I see myself as part of the band and that’s why this record is so important – there was a creative process and I felt very comfortable in that environment.

Sitting with Brian Eno on your left, The Edge on your right, Daniel somewhere else, Adam, there and Bono, there was just this convergence of ideas. It was one of those things that you dream about as a kid and from a drumming perspective, the idea that you could actually engage with other musicians and be treated as a musician as opposed to somebody hammering something.

There seems to be something special in U2 that even though you may have arguments it seems unfathomable that you would ever split up...

Edge: It’s not so much that we have arguments, or don’t have arguments. It’s not unusual for bands to disagree. In fact, what’s really unusual is that a band could exist for this long and have figured out a way to deal with disagreements which doesn’t mean that the band breaks up. 

I think that’s down to the fact that we were mates before we formed the band, or at least before we became a professional outfit, and we figured out early on that, for us all to win, we had to check our individual egos in at the door when we go to work. 

As well as the records, you have also been part of history at events such as Live Aid, Live 8 and Obama's inauguration. When you look back in twenty years time...

Adam: Some of those events that we've been invited to have been amazing. The thing I remember most is when we played in New York City in Madison Square Garden after 9/11, that was an amazing party - but for completely different reasons. 

It was the fist time that the citizens of the city had been out in a large group and gathered together, so what went off that night was phenomenal – an amazing thing to witness and be a part of.

Edge: Yeah but then there's the haircuts. Just when you're starting to feel maybe a little smug about those historic moments, you just look back at the footage and the smile is wiped off your face pretty quickly.

Larry: We’re the band that, when we arrived in America and opened for one of those American bands, they’d have the stage set and the curtains and we figured out what they were gonna do and Bono just said, "OK, what we’ll do is we’ll ask them to close the curtains before we come on so we can be on the stage, then people see us in all our finery", so they agreed that the curtains would come. 

Bono figured that if we got that then people might think we were the main band and that we would get a big roar and he could take that roar and maybe bring it through the whole show.

He realised that we were so crap that there's no way that, if we stumbled onstage, no matter how good we looked, that we could carry it. He understood the theatre and totally reaching higher. The audacity of that.

Adam: It’s called opportunism.

U2 in Morocco

What track on the album are most proud of?

Edge: Well I think that Moment of Surrender is one of those amazing songs that is really, for me, an example of how this process of recording really paid off.

Often we would take the mainstream path towards writing songs and making albums, but in this case, because we really took a risk and invited Brian and Danny into the recording process, we got places that we wouldn’t have got otherwise. 

It’'s 7 minutes long and Brian Eno campaigned long and hard for us to make it long, to keep it three verses before the first chorus and not two verses. It defied logic, but we eventually said, Brian, if you care about it that much, we will try it for you.

You have quite a lot of self-deprecation in the lyrics on this album...

Bono: Yeah there's some funny one-liners on Standup Comedy.  There’s little jokes, even in Magnificent there's a joke that goes "From the womb, my first cry was a joyful noise, and everyone in my family said that I didn’t stop wailing for three years".

It makes me smile every time I sing it.

Bono on music journalists and new bands.

Bono: One of the reasons I think that Q became such a popular magazine was that it was the first British magazine to say "Lets cut this bullshit, we’re putting these groups on the cover that we’ll never hear of after the next week and we’re pouring out items that we don’t really think are that great". 

The truth is that there isn’t a lot of great music. It’s a lie to think that every year there's another 10 great bands. There isn’t. There’s 1 great band every 10 years if you’re lucky, well, let’s say every 3 years. 

This year’s been a bumper crop, you’ve got The Killers, Kings of Leon, I think a band like Interpol are incredible, Coldplay have run off and become a big success, which is great for them, but it’s very rare.

Backstage after a show in San Francisco... Oasis had supported at the gig and they were playing their new album – looking for your approval– and you seemed so supportive of them... do you think that ability to get outside of the pomp of the super group is part of your success?

Bono: I have great memories of Oasis playing live but on that occasion it was a very funny one where there were a lot of negotiations to get some of the speakers turned around so that the band could have better side fills, and then they had all their side fills turned right up loud. 

I realised that they weren’t all that interested in the sound out front at our show, they just wanted to get into it themselves. They wanted to get a hit off it, they wanted to get a bang off the PA. So they were turning our PA around – it says so much about them, because they’re lost in their music too. 

I mean, look, one of the real pieces of bullshit that we’re all asked to swallow is that rock and roll should be a different art-form to making paintings or filmmaking or being a poet.

People think that Oasis don’t care or think about what they’re doing.  They think a lot about what they’re doing. Noel’s a great strategist and Liam’s a top performer.

Bono on playing Pride at Obama's inauguration.

Bono: It’s a funny thing, it sound jokey to say weddings and funerals, but the inauguration was definitely a wedding, that’s what was going on. The American people and their new leader, and we’re playing a song... that we wrote 23 years ago about this black reverend from Atlanta, and we’re now performing it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he gave his "I have a dream" speech - and a black president is being inaugurated, and he’s asked us to play. 

That’s bonkers.

Will you be touring this summer?

Bono: Oh we’re coming in the summer, we’re trying to do something very special, something that’s never been done with an outdoor show, whilst at the same time having an extraordinary production, so that every seat in the house is special.

We’re also trying to get the ticket price down low because these are tougher times, so that’s what we’re working on.

"No Line On The Horizon" by U2 is in stores and online now.