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There is no such thing as a quick interview with U2 singer Bono. That also goes for guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Despite the short supply of spare time that U2 had for speaking to Rolling Stone during their recent, mad November weekend in New York — performing on Saturday Night Live, touring Manhattan on a flat-bed truck, playing for free under the Brooklyn Bridge at night — they went into deep, revealing detail about the personal and creative trials and triumphs that led to their Number One album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
What follows are additional excerpts from the nearly six hours of interviews that produced the current Rolling Stone cover story — which comes just three months shy of the twentieth anniversary of U2's first appearance on our cover, in March, 1985. The headline then: "Our Choice: Band of the Eighties."
The decades have changed. Our choice has not.
BONO
You've been in high-gear this
weekend, and for the past month, launching the new album. Do you
feel like you're in control of its destiny?
I know we're in control. But it is a little frightening, because
trajectory is everything. Two inches off on Earth, and you miss
Mars [laughs]. But I won't really feel confident until
"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" or "Original of the
Species," one of those two, punctures the "pop" balloon. Otherwise,
the album won't be what it should be.
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There are two routes for you. There is your relationship with your audience. But that can go on, and the rest of the world not know. And that's OK when you're in a band. It's not OK if you're a songwriter. Because every songwriter wants their song to belong to people other than their audience.
It's like you want your kid to do the best he can. You want your songs to go all the way. And if you can't get them on the radio, you want other people to sing them on the radio. "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" — that's not so easy to get through, because it comes from such a different world than everything else on the radio now. It sounds like it's from the Fifties.
Is the pop success of that song particularly important
for you, because you wrote it about your late
father?
I hadn't thought of it in that light. But as a song, I want to hear
it sung poorly in a bar [laughs]. I really do. I want to
cringe as the cheesy piano player in the blue tuxedo grins, as you
walk across to order your vermouth. [Affects Bill Murray-style
lounge-lizard voice] "Someti-i-i-i-mes you can't make
it..."
I noticed that on Saturday Night Live and at
the free Brooklyn show, you sang a couple of extra lines at the
end, from "No Regrets" by the folksinger Tom Rush. It's a wonderful
song, but I was surprised that you knew it.
"I don't want you back/We'd only cry again/Say goodbye again": That
song came to me through a version by Scott Walker. I'm a big fan.
You can hear that in our music — "City of Blinding Lights,"
that painterly side of the lyrics, that kind of melodrama. But that
just came into my head on Saturday Night Live. It was the
first time I did it. It went through my head, and I sang it.
Yet in making "Atomic Bomb," you recorded a number of
the songs more than once — with producer Chris Thomas, then
Steve Lillywhite — and dropped several that you had nearly
completed. You wrote three different sets of lyrics for "Vertigo"
alone. Why is it sometimes so hard to come up with something that,
at other times, comes to you so naturally?
Because you look everywhere else, don't you? There's a certain hit
you want to get off a song, and we weren't getting it from the
material. It happens. And that's the problem. We're addicted to
that feeling. We could have had an album out [earlier], and it
would have been pretty damn good. You would have really liked it,
because it was a rock & roll album. But we have to sing these
songs for the rest of our lives, and they have to work on so many
levels. Two years — it's a song a month. There are
twenty-four songs that came out of the sessions. Eleven of them are
on the album.
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How would you describe your first set of lyrics to
"Vertigo"? Originally, it was called "Native Son" — a
reference to the jailed American Indian activist Leonard
Peltier.
It was a new-journalism approach. I don't think this man should be
in prison. But the song just didn't change the molecules in the
room. We made the mistake of sending "Native Son" to Interscope,
because we were jumping up and down over it at first. And they
started jumping up and down. And then we sort of stopped. It wasn't
as good as we thought.
How do you explain the strange Spanish math at the
beginning of "Vertigo"? In English, that countoff is "one, two,
three, fourteen."
There might have been some alcohol involved [smiles].
Improvisation is where this group really hits its form. That's when
Larry and Adam feel they're contributing the most to songwriting.
Through improvisations, we got "Miracle Drug." That's Adam's chord
sequence. "Yahweh" — that is something that came into my
mouth, out of my lips, before I knew what I was singing. [Yahweh is
the Hebrew name for God.] What an amazing word. You know it's a
holy word, even if you didn't know what it meant.
One of my favorite lines on Atomic Bomb is in
"Miracle Drug": "Freedom has a scent/Like the top of a newborn
baby's head."
Have you ever smelled the top of a baby's head? It's incredible.
That line came out of a conversation I had with Sean Lennon, when
he was doing his work for Tibet. He asked me what freedom smelled
like? And I said, "Like the top of a newborn baby's head." I carry
definitions around with me a lot.
How long was that one in your head before you wrote it
down?
I don't know if I ever wrote it down. I love definitions,
aphorisms. I have a few around, like "laughter is the evidence of
freedom."
But for me, it's not about the lyrics. That's the last thing. What's important is the world you create, finding this thing that makes you want to be in a band, and then finding out what that sounds like and what it means. Then the subject matter falls into place.
You've talked about how this album has brought U2 full
circle, back to the feeling of empowerment on Boy. Does
mean that U2 has an assured future, and that we can expect another
album before, say, 2007?
I think there will be a record in 2006. Because we're on it now.
But I don't think it's a healthy state of mind to imagine that this
band should go on and on. Everyone in it asks very hard questions
about its continuing.
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What is the question you most ask
yourself?
Me? I don't want to betray the trust of our audience — but
more than that, the gift, and the life that comes with that gift.
When I feel we're abusing that, when we're just knocking them out,
treading the boards...I don't think this band would be capable of
doing that. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's what
most people do — they're just doing the job.
But you have set higher standards, and you are prisoners
of those standards.
Yes. It's a tyranny. If we'd had more sense, we would have outgrown
it [smiles]. But it seems to be hardwired into us. It is
our DNA. I imagine we would just self-destruct if we weren't true
to our own code. It's not that it's better than anyone else's or
somehow nobler. It just is that.
THE EDGE
During the making of Atomic
Bomb, there were long stretches when Bono was absent, off
doing his political work. Did you ever feel you were doing the
lion's share of the labor?
That always happens. You get different times when someone has to
take the strain and push forward. It starts with me, early on. Then
when we started to record tracks, it's Adam and Larry that have to
step up to the plate. And when it comes to the end, when it's about
vocals and finishing the lyrics, Bono is in the hot seat.
My job is to come up with material that will get everyone else excited and inspired. And some of the things I come up with go nowhere. They don't get anyone going. Others take off, and pretty soon, everyone is involved in developing them, and they become U2 songs. Until everyone gets a chance to do their thing with them, they are not U2 songs.
Was that the same process in the beginning, when you
wrote songs like "I Will Follow" or "Stories for
Boys"?
It's changed. Early on, because of the pressures of time, we did
most of our songwriting as a group, in a room. Occasionally, Bono
would come in with an idea: "Here, I've got this." But the first
two albums — we would all be in the rehearsal room, grinding
out arrangement ideas. From the War album on, we developed
other ways of writing. I went off to develop material on my own and
bring it to the band — some very undeveloped, some more so.
It became another way for us to arrive at music.
In the credits for Atomic Bomb, some songs have
the line "Lyrics: Bono with the Edge." That's an interesting
distinction, as opposed to "and the Edge."
I suggested that. On this record, I sat in more as an editor,
rather than contributing. We'd sit down and talk about what the
song is about. We'd throw couplets around. Sometimes I would help
with the particular rhythm of a line. It's rock & roll —
the rhythms of the vocals are very important.
Is Bono proprietary about his lyrics?
Not really. I wouldn't turn to Bono and say, "I've just written a
far better, second verse." I would say, "I think that line can be
better. How about this?" And he might say, "You're right" or "No,
you're wrong." And that's the end of it.
That's how a great band works. He would do the same for me, for a guitar part or an arrangement that isn't working: "Try that" — and it's the missing piece. An example would be "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own." We had this tune that we had started working on for the last record [2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind]. I had a good feeling, but it never came together for us. I had another go at the music and got very close, but it still wasn't quite there. I was sitting on the steps with Bono, outside the house in France where we were working, trying to figure out something. He took an acoustic guitar and said, "Maybe this is what it should be." He played the first two chords, except the second chord was different, this weird thing. I was like, "You can't do that — that's illegal, musically" [laughs].
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But we went into the studio, tried it — and it was what the song needed. That simple change of the second chord changed the whole song. It took on a whole, new life. In fact, we're going to release the earlier version in this U2 Complete Works set [on iTunes]. So people can get a chance to tell us if we made the right choice or not.
When you went with Bono to the recent opening of Bill
Clinton's new presidential library in Arkansas, that was a rare
foray for you into Bono's political world. You and the rest of the
band have worked hard to keep that separate from the
music.
We figured that out early on. If I disappeared into that world,
we're never get anything done in the studio. That world —
it's about Bono's personal relationships with people in high
places, his ability to persuade them that they can do more than
they think. I don't know what part I would have to play in that. I
like to maintain the position of the artist, where it's about
writing from the heart and not about having to come up with a
workable solution for changing the world.
The difference is, Bono is doing both. I was shocked when I realized he was as successful at this as he is. When it comes to those meetings and telephone calls, you have to be a great presence, someone who can put over a story, to command respect. And he has that. He's always had that. That's the performer in him. He's done that every time he plays a U2 show.
ADAM CLAYTON
When we last spoke, in early
2002, you mentioned that U2 had started writing for a new album,
right after the last, post-9/11 U.S. leg of the Elevation tour. At
that point, you said you had quite a few songs going
already.
Out of that session, the survivor was "All Because of You." That
tour, playing indoors, playing the material from All That You
Can't Leave Behind: We really seemed to connect with people.
In some ways, the songs from that album were much bigger live than
they were on the radio, because they touched people in a certain
way.
I think that's what this record comes down to: questions about how you fit into the world, how you feel about it, and the power and strength of family and relationships. That's what people want from music, at the end of the day. They want the power of those eight notes, and those colors and moods, to touch them.
How have Bono's extracurricular activities changed or
raised those stakes for your music? He does his political work
outside the band, but no matter where he goes or what he does, he
represents you.
People see and hear a very pragmatic, determined man, who is not in
it for the glamour, who is getting up early, going to those
meetings, having those arguments and slowly gaining ground. It is a
real job, and he is getting results. I don't think people see him
as this frivolous pop star. So while what he does might demystify
the band, it creates more gravitas for the band at the same
time.
He seems to be able to strategize and set goals for himself. If he had spent the last two years being frustrated and not getting anywhere, it might have been a very different experience. But he is very realistic and humble, in terms of going after these things. And when he comes back to the band, it's a relief. He is in this other environment where he has to be quite methodical and concentrate. When he comes back to us, it's fun. He can cut loose.
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Was he that organized in 1977 and '78?
Not really. He is, as he says of himself in "All Because of You,"
"an intellectual tortoise." He is a unique character. He is
organized intellectually, but he wouldn't know where his car keys
are. And to say he is disorganized is kind of derogatory. That
stuff isn't important to him, and it never was. As long as he could
borrow money off someone, he didn't care if he had any. And
likewise, as long as he had money, he would lend it to someone
else. And that wasn't just money — it included clothes,
meals, somewhere to sleep. As long as he could find somewhere warm
and dry, he was happy with that.
At what point, during the making of Atomic
Bomb, did you know you were finally on the right track? And in
going back to Steve Lillywhite to produce, were you trying to
recapture something from your beginnings as a band?
I wouldn't say that. Steve has had a durable career: He's virtually
from the same era as us, and he's kept making successful records.
That gives him a certain perspective on us. Initially our first
reaction was, "Let's check our heads. Let's play him where we are
and see what his advice is."
And that advice was?
His reaction was the same as ours. You could see that certain songs
had stopped — they weren't going to make it up the hill. Then
he mentioned that unmentionable of words in the middle of a U2
record, which is: "I think you need more songs." We knew then that
the man was speaking the truth.
But out of that came "Miracle Drug" — and "A Man and a Woman," which although it existed in demo form, hadn't been paid any attention. With those two, suddenly the album was coming up a notch. It became more of a U2 record.
Don't you find a certain irony in obsessing over
simplicity? You didn't have that leisure or leeway when you made
Boy or October, and no one would accuse those
records of being unfinished.
Funnily enough, looking back on them now, I would say we should
have taken more time to get them right. But we didn't have that
luxury. We were trying to survive, without being dropped from our
label. But every time we have taken more time, the music and the
records get better.
All I can say is, if you ended up listening to the songs as much as we did, and they weren't any good, you wouldn't have finished them. Quite often people say about U2 songs, "I listened to it fifty times, and it keeps getting better." That's the reason — we listened to it 50 million times. It may appear simple, but you live and breathe every quarter note, every beat. You know it's there for a reason. And you know what would happen if it was removed — and that nothing else would have done the same thing.
LARRY MULLEN, JR.
How far did you get in recording
Atomic Bomb with Chris Thomas? And how hard do you think
it was for him to come to grips with U2's way of
recording?
We got quite far with Chris. It was a real learning curve, and I
don't regret it at all. Chris Thomas is a great producer — he
did work with the Beatles [as an engineer] and the Sex Pistols. But
U2 is unlike any other band you've ever worked with. U2 is a band
in which things are constantly changing. The ground is always
shifting, and everyone has strong opinions. There's been blood,
sweat and tears on every record we've made.
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Everyone in the band has an opportunity to be involved, and, for Chris, it was extremely frustrating. We had ideas for songs, we recorded them, and they were very close. But some people thought they were closer than other people.
What did you think?
We'd come off the road and started writing and recording early on.
Later, after we'd done two or three months with Chris, I took my
foot off the gas and said, "I need some time to settle down." Edge
was in the studio doing a lot of work on his guitars. Bono was
doing his political work, writing lyrics, coming in and out. At
some stage — I think it was towards last Christmas —
Bono and Edge said, "We've put down lots of guitars and vocals.
Let's have a listen." I said, "I don't think it's as good as it
could be." And they said, "If we release this now, we can get on
and make another record."
I felt uncomfortable with that. And it was hard saying it. Edge was in the studio for days and nights, working hard, with his screwdriver out, doing these guitar parts. Then I come in, and I'm like, "I'm not sure." It was hard to say it, and it was hard for him to bite his lip and accept that. But that's what makes us U2.
How hard is it to withstand Bono's
enthusiasm?
You can get away with that on the debating stage [smiles].
But it's much harder doing that with U2. There are very clear rules
of engagement. And one of them is, unless everyone agrees that this
is something special, there must be something not right with
it.
You created your signature sound with Steve Lillywhite,
on your first three albums. What was it like when you first worked
with him?
Steve Lillywhite was our choice. He had done XTC and, before that,
Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was a hot, young, English guy, good
with young bands. He was used to working with people who were not
proficient players — which U2 were not and, to a large
degree, still aren't. I found it particularly hard. I was younger
than the rest of the band, and there were demands on me, to be
professional, to do this right. "You're playing for keeps. This
isn't just for fun." I was so wet behind the ears, and so
righteous.
Steve reminds us where we came from. I think he's amazed that we got away with it for all these years.
When you start touring again this spring, do you think
that, with the changes in this country since 9/11 and the recent
presidential election, you will be playing to a much different
America than you did at the beginning of 2001?
I hope we're playing to a much younger America [laughs].
The purpose of rock & roll, what it can achieve, has changed.
The world we're in now is one in which people recognize the value
of family. People are drawing back and looking at a very dangerous
world. That's what this record is about. It's about living in a
state of fear. But people want to see U2 and feel like they're part
of something special.
People respond to U2 in an unusual way. People trust U2 and believe what we do. And that's much bigger than the music — and it's despite us. I remember one of Bono's classic lines. We were on the last tour, running the names of the victims of 9/11 behind us [during "One"]. There was crying, applause — everything seemed louder and bigger. And those old songs, "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "I Will Follow," "Out of Control" — they suddenly had new meaning. But Bono said, "When people applaud, when people laugh and cry, it's nothing to do with you. It's memory — that song takes them somewhere."
We have to separate ourselves from that. If we thought it was all about us, it would fuck us up. Something happens, but it is not something we can make happen. It only happens when God walks through the room.
But the result is, you're not allowed to break up.
People won't let you.
After twenty-five years, to break up over musical differences would
be quite funny. I'd love to see that headline: "They Finally
Disagree."
[Expanded From Story in Issue 964/965 — December 30, 2004]