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Mon, 21 Dec 1998 23:26:49 -0500
What follows is an interview with Edge that is in 'Entertainment PROFILE'
magazine which is a freebie that is available in Walmart stores in Canada.
It's the Dec. '98 - Jan. '99. issue. I thought I'd post it and hope that it
isn't all old news.
Faith, Hope and *LOVE*,
Di/Gloria2
P.S. Anybody else out there think, after reading this, that it's sweet how
Edge says that, to him, U2's making music together "seemed like magic"?
He's so modest....U2's music *is* and has *always been* pure magic! But
from the sounds of things, we'll have to wait 'til the end of next year for
more of that U2 magic.
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"Twenty and Still Counting" by Bert van de Kamp
Bono is in Paris, working on some lyrics. Larry Mullen's here; Adam Clayton
might be in London. U2 guitarist The Edge sits comfortably on a sofa in the
band's Hannover Quay studio, a few miles outside the centre of Dublin. He
seems completely relaxed. "Yes, we're all in good shape," he says. "Isn't
it great?"
This year has been an anniversary year for U2. It was in March 1978 that
the band, formerly known as Feedback and the Hype, entered a talent contest
in Limerick as U2, a name suggested to them by a friend. Four young Irish
guys, trying to create a new sound. Twenty years on, the band has released
its first Greatest-Hits package, 'The Best of 1980 - 1990'. For its initial
run, a special second disc of rarities and B-sides is also included.
Int. - When you started, were you aware of what you wanted to create?
Edge - No. At first we weren't very ambitious about what we played. The
idea of playing at all was enough. We'd play anything. We hardly knew what
was going on. Those were the days before MTV. The Jam was on 'Top Of The
Pops' and a few weeks later, The Sex Pistols and suddenly everything
changed. We saw kids like ourselves were on televison playing songs that
were really kind of simple. That sent our imagination into orbit. Right
after that, we started writing our own songs.
Int. - What made U2 special was that you took the energy of punk, but not
the negative attitude of it.
Edge - We had read the 'New Musical Express' and 'Melody Maker', but we
didn't really know anything about the movement in Britain in art and
fashion that was related to this punk music. The Irish context stripped it
down, and what we got was the energy, the aggression and the vitality of
the music. Plus this concept that you could do it, that there was nothing
to stop you doing it. The music that we were making seemed to come out of
this Irish thing. We felt outsiders, but that didn't bother us. We were not
part of any scene. We were very much on our own from day one.
Int. - Were you surprised at the sound that came out of the four of you?
Edge - At times we were surprised by the music that we would make. I can
remember how after recording our first album, Boy, we were listening to it,
really loving it and being proud of it, but also thinking, "Where did that
come from?" I didn't know how it happened. That was a funny feeling. Some
of it seemed like magic. It just kind of came together. We operated alot on
instinct and everything happened really fast. There was a certain kind of
freshness. A song like 'I Will Follow', from that first album, still stands
up as a great 45. It still sounds wild to me.
Int. - It is no surprise, therefore, that 'I Will Follow' is amongst the
tracks selected to represent the first ten years of U2's existence on the
compilation "The Best Of 1980 - 1990", for which the band collected a
stunning 50 million dollars.
Edge - It's something that for a long time we didn't know we'd ever do. We
resisted it. We could have done one over the years many, many times. I
guess, in the last few years, we started thinking about it, because alot of
people out there who like the last few records may not be familiar with the
early ones. Also, we can start to see what are the tunes that have dated
well and what one's haven't. We felt more
comfortable about it.
Int. - So you picked the tracks for the compilation yourselves?
Edge - Yeah. We looked at a few other possibilities, but in the end what it
turned into was: What are the songs that were the strongest and the
clearest little Polaroids of that time? They're mostly singles with the
exception of 'The Sweetest Thing' (a re-recorded B-side) and 'Sunday Bloody
Sunday', which was only released as a single in Holland. We wrote that song
without ever considering how serious an issue it [Northern Ireland] was to
everyone else, and how outrageous it was for a rock & roll band to start
writing about this. To us it was the most natural thing. We never held back
on anything. We were really clear that violent struggle was never going to
work. We were very angry about the fact that people were still dying in
what we saw as a vain, stupid war in Northern Ireland. So our stance was
completely anti-war.
Int.- How does 'The Unforgettable Fire' rate now as an album?
Edge - I think it was quite an influential record. I can hear alot of bands
that have taken sounds and ideas from The Unforgettable Fire. It was quite
innovative, I think. We consciously went into the record trying to do
something new and Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois were in a phase of real
experimentation. We talked alot about using room ambience, the sound of a
room and of musicians playing together in a room, instead of using an
artificial sense of space, which was a very common thing in the earlier
'80's. We wanted to try and record in a more naturalistic way, so that you
could get the impression of a space, giving the recording a real sense of
dimension.
Int. - 'The Joshua Tree' sold 15 million albums, making it your most
successful album to date, yet the critics were divided about its merits. It
appears that certain critics prefer young and struggling bands rather than
hugely successful ones.
Edge - I think, because we'd become successful in America, that was a
cardinal sin as far as the media were concerned in Britian. That meant we
could not be given respect, because we had sold out. That was the term of
the day. Since we've always felt outsiders, it didn't bother us, but I
think that attitude broke up alot of really amazing English groups. The
only time that they revised this concept was when Oasis came around. That's
when British rock & roll media stopped eating their young.
Int. - 'Rattle And Hum', both the album and the movie, were misunderstood
in some of the media.
Edge - To me, it was a sort of a diary of a pilgrimage through the American
south, looking for the roots of rock & roll. What started it was our
interest in gospel music, which we were exploring with The Joshua Tree with
songs like 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'. Our original idea
was a small film and a kind of scrapbook record: a combination of live
tracks, interesting new tracks and obscure tracks. What happened was that
at some point we allowed the movie to change from being a small budget
film, that we controlled, into being a major Hollywood film. So we had to
endure the backlash of there being too much U2 everywhere. It wasn't a
plan. It was simply that we weren't paying attention and suddenly this is
where we ended up.
Int. - Are you working on a new studio album?
We're starting to put some songs together for it. We're excited. I think
realistically, it's gonna be released no sooner than the end of next year.
We're working with Brian and Danny again.
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