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Thu, 5 Nov 1998 22:22:32 EST
The October 31st issue of NME finally showed up today with a nice
interview with Edge. I haven't seen it posted yet, so I thought I'd put
it up in bits for those out there who don't have access to NME. (You
can check http://www.nme.com but they usually don't put up the entire
articles that run in the print version.)
POSTSCRIPTS FROM THE EDGE
Remember the white flags? 'Three chords and the truth' ring a bell?
Yup, we're talking U2 during the '80s as commemorated by a new 'Best
Of...'. Resident guitar god, The Edge takes us back to when the streets
had no name.
His mates called him The Edge because of the shape of his chin. Hey, it
could have been worse.
For a while, Larry Mullen answered to the gang name of Jam Jar. And
then there was the singer of the band, Paul Hewson. He copped a series
of titles. One of them was: Steinrigvanhewsonolegbangbangbangbang. And
then it was changed to something a bit more succinct; plain old Bono Vox
O'Connell Street. The latter, you may know, was a hearing aid shop on
Dublin's main drag. A funny name alright, but the spirit behind the
identity change was a bit cruel.
"It was people having a go at each other," Edge laughs. "It was a
slag. They called him Bono because he looked like the name Bono. A
little stocky man, you know."
This odd, teenage society of northside Dubliners called themselves
Lypton Village. Some of the codes, rituals and creative principles of
that era have lasted over 20 years now, helping U2 to sell 71 million
records en route. And while the Village's art wing, the guys who
performed as the Virgin Prunes, may have been less successful, their
ideas about theatre and subversion have resurfaced on the Zoo TV and
PopMart tours.
All this is relevant again because U2 are fixing to release a
compilation, 'The Best Of And B-Sides Of 1980-1990'. It's trailed by
their feel-good single 'Sweetest Thing', a cast-off from '87 that's been
revamped and redirected towards the top end of the charts. It allows us
to look again at a full-on career that's outlasted most of their critics
and peers.
That's why we're munching sandwiches with Edge (pre-Village name: Dave
Evans, arguably Welsh) in a newfangled Dublin bar. We're talking over
the career spins, the fashion mistakes and the mind-shagging,
incremental rise that saw U2 crowned as Rolling Stone magazine's 'Band
Of The '80s'.
Edge is mentally flicking over some of the key moments. He's cringing
at the memory of the enormous Live Aid bash of '85, when the band hit
Wembley in the afternoon, straight into a ropy sound mix. But that
didn't stop Bono from leaping into the crowd, meeting the people,
causing much embarrassment to the other three. Afterwards, positive
reactions to the show threw that band into an unrealised orbit, but
that's not how it seemed at the time.
"We were all quite depressed when we walked offstage," Edge recalls.
"We were thinking, 'Oh well, we blew that one. But it was for a good
cause'. I was amazed when people went on about the performance."
He's thinking about better times, about finishing off 'The Joshua Tree'
in readiness for the '87 world-domination trip. It felt like an era of
the band's work, which began with 'The Unforgettable Fire', was
ripening. The producers, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, played an
important role in finding the ambient key to that record, and Edge is
glad that the partnership has been re-established for the brand new
work.
"We're writing and improvising in the studio and really enjoying it.
We're hoping that we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this album,
that we can maybe be finished at some point next year. I think this is
going to be an optimistic record."
We talk about the band's spiritual interests in the early days, when they
shared in the charismatic Christian group called Shalom. Adam Clayton, the
only non-believer, used to joke about it. "The band that prays together,
stays together," he'd say. But Edge maintains that the core values remain.
"I would say that through the likes of 'Achtung Baby' and 'Zoo TV', people
might have been thinking, 'Wow, U2 have ticked the other rock'n'roll box
this time'. But no, we've held on to the same spiritual beliefs that we've
had since we were 18 years old."
The fact that Bono isn't promoting the retrospective collection might
suggest that he doesn't care for the idea. Edge insists that there hasn't
been any terrible falling-out over the release.
"It's hard to talk about work that's now over ten years old. I guess he
felt that he didn't really have an awful lot that he wanted to say about it
all. But he's doing a radio thing, so it's not heavy, like a mega silence.
It seemed like there wasn't much point in Bono going out and talking up this
record, to be honest."
The band's first decade in public finished with 'Rattle And Hum',
essentially a film soundtrack and tour diary that was badly hyped and
damaged the group's standing for a time. One of the lines that sticks out
from that period was Bono's ad-lib about "three chords and the truth". It
was sincerely taken to extremes.
Ten years on, past the irony age, when bands such as the Manics are
reintroducing that challenge of truth to the rock agenda, the Bono line
still jars. Edge's answer is revealing. It's an eloquent defence of U2's
glory-or-bust style, and a good place to start us on our trip through the
band's back catalogue.
"That line about the truth may come over as being trite," he reasons, in his
quiet, precise voice. "But what I think Bono meant was that when it comes
to writing songs, that work that really seems to have strength is the work
that you don't really write at all, that just arrives. It has a kind of
authority of being unadulterated, unedited, just whatever is coming out of
you that day, that minute.
"I suppose that's what he means by the truth. I don't think he means
profound wisdom. In our experience, whenever we've worked and worked on
songs, it sounds as if our hands were all over them. I guess it's about not
being self-conscious, about allowing your real feelings and ideas to come
through, but at the time, Bono's line seemed like it meant something quite
different. Attempting to be profound is one way of making sure that you're
not gonna be, and we also learnt that early on."
Here then, is the NME/Edge guide to the band's '80s albums, excluding a few
live releases.
___________________________
ALBUM: 'Boy' (1980)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'I Will Follow'
MUSICAL FEATURE: Edge's pinging harmonics instead of the customary power
chords.
FASHION STATEMENT: Bono boots; the singer's Cuban-heeled footwear, possibly
worn
to compensate for his lack of height.
In terms of 'Boy' and that ear, how much of it was art and how much was a
matter
of you winging it?
"I think we had great instincts and a lot of great ideas, but our ability to
realise them was always what was lacking. And in the post-punk ethos, we were
just a bunch of kids who decided to become a group. The ideas were always
well-formed, if badly executed."
On songs like 'I Will Follow', Bono was dealing with his mother's death. Was
that difficult, to hear him working out his trauma through the music?
"I don't think any of us questioned that because a lot of the lyrics only sort
of came into focus when we recorded the songs. Bono would just improvise
lyrics, but when we recorded the album, we started to think a little bit more
about some of the themes.
"It was quite a bit afterwards that I started to realise what Bono had
actually
been writing about. We didn't really talk about that sort of stuff much in
those days."
At the stage the band attracted a sizeable gay following, wrongly prompted by
the band's artwork and by song titles like 'Stories For Boys'.
"I think that came out of the import of the 'Boy' sleeve or whatever. I think
in San Francisco we got a really great review from a couple of gay magazines
and
that sort of started a little buzz going in San Francisco and that translated
into the New York scene.
"We kind of found out about it later on and by then we'd met some of the
people
in the gay scene and they were friends of ours. So, we found out about it
rather than just turning up and discovering we had a gay audience."
ALBUM: 'October' (1981)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'October'
MUSICAL FEATURE: Adam's slap-bass solo in the middle of 'Gloria'. The album's
backing vocals are by Kid Creole's Coconuts.
FASHION STATEMENT: The Adam Clayton hair explosion.
Didn't Bono lose his lyrics before recording this album?
"Yeah, so we were really up against it. And 'October' is this frantic sound
of
four guys trying to really wrestle something out of a desperate situation.
And
in the middle there's the track 'October', this piece that seems to be at odds
with everything else.
"That was a hard record to make. It's the classic sucker-punch. You have six
years to write your first album and six weeks to write your second one. Bono
was writing the lyrics upstairs while we were recording the music downstairs."
At the time of 'October' weren't the band members living in a caravan with the
Shalom spiritual community?
"We weren't living there, but we would head down there for a weekend or just
hang out. That was a very strange place and a very strange time."
And you were fasting at this stage?
"We were exploring all sorts of things, and we were reading the Bible and
praying. I remember, at least on one occasion, fasting. It's like, one of
the
principles of early Christianity. I couldn't say that I saw it as that
important, even then."
ALBUM: 'War' (1983)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'New Year's Day'
MUSICAL FEATURE: The powering, martial drumbeat of Larry Mullen.
FASHION STATEMENT: The white flag.
Is it true that the single 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' on 'War', originally began
with the line, "Don't talk to me about the rights of the IRA"?
"Yeah, that was the only lyric I had before the other guys got back. I had an
idea for this song and I put down a four-track version. We talked about the
lyric and everyone thought we were walking into a minefield. Bono rewrote the
lyric and it became less of a polemic. It was how we felt about what was
going
on in the North."
ALBUM: 'The Unforgettable Fire' (1984)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'MLK'
MUSICAL FEATURE: Vaporous, ambient textures, and Bono's Joycean lyrics.
FASHION STATEMENT: The Larry Mullen flat-top.
You once called 1984's 'Pride (In The Name Of Love)' "the only successful pop
song" you've ever written. Do you still agree with that?
"Well, I don't think it's true now, but maybe then it was. I think it still
is
a great pop song. It's an idea that just connects and says something. And I
guess it's really direct as well."
Did Brian Eno put any of his famous 'oblique strategies' to work at this time?
"He never really brought out the cue cards, y'know? But he's always got some
sort of idea about how we should work. That's a big part of what he does. At
the time, early sampling was what we were playing around with."
Is it true that you recorded this album naked?
"Ah, yeah. But only for a day. I remember there was gaffer tape involved
which
was fine during the day but pulling it off was very painful. You'll do
anything
in the studio to stop from getting bored."
___________________________ALBUM: 'The Joshua Tree' (1987)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'Where The Streets Have No Name'
MUSICAL FEATURE: The studio as an instrument, man.
FASHION STATEMENT: The Shaker-Quaker-Undertaker look.
The Rolling Stone review of this album predicted that it would probably shift
three million copies. Eventually, it sold over 14 million.
"I remember thinking to myself at the end that we'd actually made a special
record. But I thought it was very much just a record, I didn't think that it
had many singles on it. So that was a surprise."
There was a lot of trouble over the fading, twisted intro to 'Where The
Streets
Have No Name', wasn't there?
"Brian Eno wasn't a man who was used to being in a studio for a long time. He
really hated it when we would get stuck on one song for a long time and I
think
'...Streets...' took a long time to get right. That song was a real
breakthrough because it was so different for us.
"At one point Brian got so tired of waiting around for it to be finished that
he
tried to erase the multi-track! He almost had to be restrained, forcibly, by
the tape op."
You must remember the context of this album. It was the era of Ronald Reagan
and Margaret Thatcher.
"It was the era of the Material Girl, y'know? All that was what was going on,
so our record was really out of step. It really was like nothing else going
on
elsewhere."
ALBUM: 'Rattle And Hum' (1988)
STAND-OUT TRACK: 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' with the New
Voices Of Freedom choir.
MUSICAL FEATURE: Famous mates.
FASHION STATEMENT: The Sandymount Cowboy vibe. Navajo waistcoats a specialty.
What's the feeling on 'Rattle And Hum'?
"I think everything would have been fine if we'd stuck to the original idea,
which was a small movie. It was gonna be a sort of scrapbook of ideas,
moments,
some new songs with a lot of live versions from 'The Joshua Tree' tour. But
then the movie became such a big deal.
"The only thing I regret would be some of the cover versions. Like we did
'All
Along The Watchtower' which is just a throwaway thing we did at a free open-
air
gig in San Francisco which we just happened to record and then put on the
album. It was too important a song to throw together just a piecemeal
arrangement of it."
And there was Bono's intro to 'Helter Skelter', talking about stealing The
Beatles' song back from Charles Manson.
"That was fine on the night, but you really had to be there. Y'know, it was
that whole thing. Sun Studios was a blast. If you're in a rock'n'roll band,
that's the kinda shit that you should do. It was just a great thing for us
and
we enjoyed it. We were blown away by BB King as a singer, I mean obviously
his
guitar playing is incredible, but it was the singing that blew us away."
So if U2 were hailed as the Band Of The '80s, does that gut you hungry to be
remembered as the Band Of The '90s as well? Is the ambition still there?
"Absolutely. Just to be creatively alive. I think we have done great stuff
in
the '90s. The album I'm most proud of is 'Achtung Baby'. But once we've
finished an album, then it's on its own. You lose it and you have to let it
go. Once we're happy with our work ourselves, I don't think anyone's that
worried about how we're remembered in the '90s."
So, what did you guys think about this...interesting that Edge is doing all of
the interviews, nice to hear his perpective on thingz for a change..although I
still love to hear Bono talk, don;t get me wrong!
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