Have you been able to come to terms with what rock and roll represents in many people's minds--the sort of "sex and drugs and rock and roll" image?
My feelings are a whole series of contradictions, and I certainly haven't been able to reconcile them. I just know that when I pick up that guitar and Bono starts to sing, I feel good about it. And that's as far as I think it needs to be justified. I'm not pretending that I've got it all sorted out. I don't think I ever will. But this band's special, and that's all I need to know.

Have you gone through any other rough periods, when you questioned what you're doing?
No. For awhile, I wanted to be this sort of Renaissance man in the group, doing soundtracks and producing other people and that kind of thing. But I tell you, being a great rock and roll band is not easy and I've realized that if we want to be a great rock and roll group, there's little time for anything else, really.

What's the hardest thing about it?
Being brilliant (laughs). That's a bitch!! No, seriously, though, there are very few brilliant rock bands around. There have been a handful since rock and roll was invented. There are a lot of really average groups out there who get away with it. But that never would be good enough for us.

So you consider U2 to be a brilliant rock band?
Well, I think The Joshua Tree is a brilliant album. But it's not brilliant enough for me. I'm very proud of that record though. It's the closest we've come to what we've wanted to do. The Unforgettable Fire was a very mixed record, a lot of experiments. But with The Joshua Tree we really set out to write songs and work with with the song as a sort of limitation. And now I don't feel nearly as much need to innovate as I would have earlier on. I feel more at home with the idea of working within classic areas.

But doesn't the magnitude of your success pose a problem for the band creatively? Now people expect a certain "U2 sound" or "Edge sound."
That makes us immediately want to change it. Instantly. When we recorded the War album, even at that stage we were trying to kill this idea of the U2 sound. I don't mind having a characteristic style of playing, but the idea that this is a band with some sort of formula really appalls me. So The Joshua Tree had a lot of great songs that were really very untypical, and that will continue, probably more so on the next records.

What about your guitar playing? There certainly seem to be a lot of Edge imitators out there these days.
Well, you're always going to get that, and it's flattering in a way. But I really think anyone who tries to sound like me has already missed the point, really. What I'm interested in is what new guitar players sound like. It's great to hear somebody coming out with something new. Like Johnny Marr--I thought that was an interesting thing he was doing with the Smiths. That high-life-y quality was something I hadn't heard before. I always thought the guy with with Magazine (John McGeoch) was good. Again, it was something different.
I'm not a fan of the million-miles-per-second guitar player. That's more a form of athletics than anything else. It's not really about music...Peter Buck from REM is also good. Good that in that nothing he ever does really bowls you over--until you've heard it about 20 times. I think that's a sign of music that really has longevity, when it grows on you like that. I like REM. Maybe it needs a few more records to be brilliant, but it's great now.

What guitarists did you listen to as a kid? Did you like people like Eric Clapton?
I was probably a bit young for him. My brother had a couple of Cream albums, but I really missed Clapton. I missed most of those guys. I mean, I would have been eight when Woodstock happened. So it kind of went by me. But I've been playing guitar for some time now. I got my first guitar when I was about nine years old. It took me five years to learn how to tune it (laughs). But it was easy from there on.

Was that the guitar your mother bought you?
It was the one before that. The one my mother bought me I learned how to tune. The one I had before that was like this simple little Spanish guitar. It looked good. That was part of it, I mean, I liked guitars at that stage. I stopped looking at them for awhile. But I've started to notice how amazing they look again.
That's one of the things that attracted me to rock and roll. Initially, there's that feeling of potential, of power, when you strap on an electric guitar. And then you learn that what it's really about is controlling that power. I mean, the guitar has been a big part of rock and roll. I just can't imagine Elvis holding a violin!

How did you develop your style of playing?
I can't really pick out influences. It's very hard. I used to mention Tom Verlaine a lot. I like him--I mean Marquee Moon was a great album--but I think what I took from Verlaine was not really his style but the fact that he did something no one else had done. And I liked that; I thought that was valuable. I mean, I knew more what I didn't want to sound like than what I wanted to sound like early on, when we first formed the group.
In some ways that's why my playing is so minimal. Play as few notes as you can, but find those notes that do the most work. It became a whole way of working. If I could play one note for a whole song, I would. I Will Follow is almost that.

How did you start using the different effects, like echo?
Oh yeah--the discovery of the echo unit. When we first started writing songs, I started working with what I later found out to be very Irish musical ideas, like using open strings, alternating those with fretted strings to produce drone type of things. And then when we went in to do some demos, I thought it might be neat if I got hold of an echo unit. Actually, it was Bono's idea for me to go and get it.
So I borrowed some money from a friend and got this really cheap Memory Man echo unit. We wrote and then A Day Without Me, and it just became an integral part of my guitar parts. It was really an enhancement originally, but I quite naturally got into using it as part of the guitar itself.
I tend to use effects that don't change the tone of the guitar. I don't like phasing or flanging or anything like that. I like echo. I like reverb. And Eno's been a big help in adding new sorts of treatments to my repertoire. I really think that the use of treatments and effects is just one reason why U2 works so well outdoors and in these big arenas. We've never had any problem making our music work in a big space. In fact, I think I feel more at home in a big space than I do in a small club or theatre now.

U2 played quite a few stadiums on the last leg of its U.S. tour. How did you feel about that?
It was a difficult decision for us, because we've always tried to create a feeling of intimacy in any show. People said we couldn't do it in arenas, and I really believe we did. When it came to stadiums, we really had to make the move, because if we didn't, it meant playing twenty nights in an arena, which we just couldn't face. Bruce Springsteen seems to be able to do that and retain his sanity, but any more than about 6 shows in one town and we start going totally wacky. It becomes like a job.
There were times when I felt that we really succeeded spectacularly at the stadiums, and times when I felt really disappointed. I remember one great show, in Olympic Stadium in Montreal. It was great. That's when I thought, "Hey, this can work."

But what about the fans? Do you really think someone at the back of a 60,000 seat stadium is feeling "intimate"?
With U2, it's the music that makes the atmosphere. There's no laser show, no special effects. And we always make sure that the sound is as good at the back end as it is right down in front. If we succeed or fail, it's definitely down to our inablility to communicate the music. All I can say is that some of those shows have worked really well, so it's not impossible, just kind of difficult.

Mark Knopfler recently said that any decision to play stadiums really comes down to money. You can make x million dollars by playing stadiums as opposed to only y million by playing arenas--that in the endit really has little to do with how many fans will be able to see you.
There's no doubt that if you do exclusively stadium shows, you'll make a lot of money if they sell out. But what we did was a mixture of stadium shows and arena shows, which is the most uneconomic thing you can do. We didn't feel confident enough to play only stadiums, but we also didn't feel that we wanted to spend 6 or 7 months touring the United States. I don't know what we'll do next tour. I think we could take on the stadiums. But I also feel that we've proven that we can do it, and we don't have to go any further.

In fact, two terrific stadium appearances--at Live Aid, in 1985, and at the final Amnesty International show in New Jersey in 1986--played a big role in establishing U2 as a major-league band. Do you sometimes worry that U2 has gotten too closely identified with those types of benefit shows?
Well, being the Batman and Robin of rock and roll has it's disadvantages. I think we realized in the last couple of months that you can't continue to be involved in charity events. What we are, first and foremost, is a rock and roll band. If we forget that, people are going to stop listening. So ath the moment my feeling is that I don't really want to do any charity shows for the moment. I think it would devalue anything else we've done.
As far as being responsible, I feel no need to be anything other than what we are. When you reach the stage we're at, you have to learn to say no a lot more. I mean, we could do charity events solidly for the next ten years. But I don't think it would really do any good.

What about Amnesty International?
That's the one charity we really feel we can support, because it's aims are so basic. You know, who can argue about human rights? It's fundamental.

In the last year it seems U2 has done everything in the book--had a number one album and single, graduated to playing stadiums, and now a book, a movie, and a live album are planned for 1988. What can you do for an encore?
Break up (laughs).

But seriously, how do you avoid the traps that have destroyed almost every other rock band?
By still being in love with music. I think a lot of groups that fell by the wayside just got distracted. At the moment we're so into where the band is going and what the band can do musically that the other things have really had little effect on us. It's really like we've let it wash over us without messing us up. And also because there are four of us in this group, we're all in the same position.
It must be hard being, say, Bruce or Bob Dylan. Because it's just you. There's no one else you can check with and see how they're feeling or who can keep an eye on you when you're going through a rough period. With us, when we get into the limousine, and there's the four of us, it's a good feeling. There are just those four people--but it makes it a lot easier to handle, no matter what happens.
I think we're more committed to being a great rock group now than we ever were. For years we were insecure about our playing, about how good a band we were. But I've no doubt anymore. We're a lot less insecure. But there are still a lot of musical goals that we haven't achieved. I'm personally very excited abuot what's going to happen in the next three years.

So what's left for U2 to do?
I think we're about to reinvent rock and roll. That's our challenge.

PAGE 1
BACK

This page hosted by   Get your own Free Home Page