The Edge’s psycho-geographical adventure

The Edge is still buzzing from his trip to Morocco when he takes time to talk to Hot Press magazine’s Peter Murphy. They reflect on the past, remembering the late great Bill Graham and discuss U2′s collaboration with Eno and Lanois in Fez.

The interview with U2′s guitarist is for subscribers only, but we’re sure the good people at Hot Press won’t mind if we share a few choice quotes with you.

To what extent did you use Bill Graham as a sounding board?

“Bill was very important to us from the beginning. [...] We’d meet him from time to time and play him some stuff, and in a very touching way he would mentor us, give us records to listen to that he felt were important for us to hear, stuff that maybe we hadn’t come across before. And I think he filled a certain kind of almost big brother role with the band, and we certainly appreciated all his advice and consideration.”

Is this your latest psycho-geographical adventure (in Morocco), trying to channel the atmosphere of a place into the music?

“I think it is. It was one of those ideas that wouldn’t go away. Bono suggested it a good while ago. He throws out ideas a lot, and a lot of them do not necessarily get met with the greatest enthusiasm. I would probably be the one most ready to go for it, Adam is fairly easygoing, Larry is hard to persuade a lot of times. In this case, to everyone’s amazement, Larry pretty early on went, “I think there’s something to this; it sounds like a good idea.””

Are these songwriting sessions for a U2 album or an extra-curricular endeavour?

“It’s a U2 project, and one of the luxuries we’ve afforded ourselves is not to have to think about exactly what it will be or how it’ll be finished or when it’ll be released.”

Read the full article at Hot Press (if you subscribe).

Catherine Owens makes 3D work for U2 concert film

JoBlog.com interviews U2 3D director Catherine Owens who says:

“It was a very definite decision to shoot in South America. Bono felt that the South American audience had a passion that matched his Irish passion. They felt they would get a result that they wouldn’t get in other places.”

So there you have it, fans, the South Americans and the Irish are kindred spirits. What are the Italians going to think of that? (‘la gente italiana e quella irlandese hanno lo spirito vicino’ – Bono, 1985.)

More important than U2′s special relationship with their fans, however is the bond between the band members themselves:

“They have a very strong relationship. They have their own language on stage and so the only direction was that they should be a little more conscious of their own language between the groups, which they already had on stage. Some of the other cuts you will see in the final film are really incredible. There are moments between them that are very physical and tender. They are four people together for so long, who are like family – you want to kill them, you love them – so there is that kind of tenderness between them.”

Aww.

Read the full interview.

Show us the $%&%!! money

Bob and Bono want to know what happened to the G8 pledges. The BBC’s Gavin Esler talks to the two of them.

Bono: “Maybe the rock will have to go…”

Can we have a hallelujah on that? Oh, there’s more to it: “Maybe the rock has to get a lot harder.” Hmm.

Rock. Hard place. Stuck? Bono’s talked to Jo Whiley on BBC 1 over Christmas, the audio of which you can listen to on the BBC website. Well, you could, if the damn link to the mp3 was working. Luckily Atu2blog.com’s transcribed the most newsworthy bits of the hour-long show. (update: BBC download is now working.)

“[...] our band has certainly reached the end of where we’ve been at for the last couple of albums. I want to see what else we can do with it, take it to the next level; I think that’s what we’ve got to do.”

We’re pretty sure the next level will sound just like U2.

Bono’s sea song ‘dark and intense’

U2log.com editor Caroline van Oosten de Boer talks to Gavin Friday about the Chanteys and Sea Songs tribute album and its all star line-up.

(update: more info added April 5, 06)

Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Antony and the Johnsons, Bono and yourselves… that’s quite an impressive roll call.

‘It’s very ‘who’s in town’, very impromptu. Hal (Willner) has been doing workshops in different cities, Seattle and London and New York. No time to rehearse, just go in and learn your part and sing it.’

Fresh from Willner’s Dublin two-day workshop, Gavin Friday rattles off details of the sessions in Westland Studios. He serves up the lyrics of one of his songs with gusto, characterising the sessions as very ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’.

‘I did a song called “The Baltimore Whores” (lyrics), probably the dirtiest of them all. It goes: “Roly poly, tickle my holey, smell of my slimey flue, then drag your nuts across my guts…”‘

He laughs:

‘And that’s probably the most commercial of them all!’

Gavin also recorded a lament called “Tommy’s gone to Hilo” (lyrics) with Andrea Corr. It is the odd couple’s second duet since 2003′s “Time Enough For Tears” from the In America soundtrack.

‘It’s not really a duet, though. They’re all chanteys, which are call and response songs. Except Andrea’s “Caroline and her young sailor bold” (lyrics) and Bono’s song, which are both sea songs or seamen’s songs.’

Bono was only able to get involved because of the postponement of U2′s antipodean tour. To prepare for recording, the musicians listened to old old recordings and looked at words and sheet music…

‘…just for a ‘kick start’. Once we started playing we didnt refer to anything other than the gut and Hal’s instinct.’

How did the singers pick their songs?

‘Hal played us a varied choice but left it up to each singer to make their own choice. Hal knows myself and Bono fairly well so he had a good idea of the ones we’d go for. Bono did “The dying sailor to his shipmates”, quite a dark song and very intense it is. The lyrics are sad and heroic and Bono sang a very intense and emotional vocal…’

And indeed one version of the lyrics of this tune as found online suggest a heavy mood: ‘Oh wrap me in my country’s flag and lay me in the cold blue sea, and let the roaring of the waves my solemn requiem be.’

‘But the heaviest of them all would probably be the song I did with Guggi and Dave-id, “Bully in the alley” (lyrics).’

The song reunites the three ex-Virgin Prunes vocalists for the first time since the mid-Eighties.

‘It was Dave-id as head pirate on lead vocals, and myself and Guggi as his shipmates on backing vocals. Hal said it was probably closest to what pirates really would have sounded like.’

Musicians at the Dublin session include Maurice Seezer on piano and accordion, Zoë Conway on fiddle, violin and backing vocals, Tony Molloy on bass, Robbie Casserly on drums, Anto Drennan on guitar and Andrea Corr on tin whistle. But it took a Hollywood star to get this crazy project on the road.

‘It’s all on the back of Pirates of the Caribbean, really, I think Johnny Depp was interested and he’s executive producing the thing and Hal was contacted to do it. It’s the first tribute album’s he’s done since the Charles Mingus one.’

Willner is often credited as the inventor of the modern tribute album, his 1981 Nino Rota tribute is a sought after collectible and he is probably best known for the 1985 Kurt Weill tribute ‘Lost in the Stars’. What are his strengths as a producer?

‘My Metal Guru… he sees feels talks walks and thinks like a singer/musician/painter. Hal is music like Fellini is movies, a godsend. The last of a dying breed, so pure it hurts… I love him.’

With only two days to record, how did the musicians get to know the material and figure out arrangements?

‘It was all done on the fly. All by feel and all live takes, hardly any overdubs. Musically it’s rooted in Irish and Northern English folk music. It sounds… accoustic,’ Friday adds hesitantly, ‘I dunno, it hasn’t even been mixed yet!’

With contributions recorded in other cities by Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry, Antony and the Johnsons, Tom Waits, Richard and Linda Thompson and Loudon Wainwright, there should be plenty material for a double album. Its release on Epitaph records is pencilled in for July 2006.

• Listen to a clip of The Dying Sailor as sung by Paul Clayton (no relation)

Cohen-head: The Edge speaks

The Edge, attending the Sundance Film Festival to promote Lian Lunsen’s ‘Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man’ talks to MTV’s Benjamin Wagner about Cohen, quiet places and his favourite phase of making an album.

We haven¹t really got to the point where we¹re thinking seriously about the next record. We¹re at that wonderful place where we¹re just experimenting, and trying things, just really letting our imaginations go.

• photo
• Lunsen on the festival screening

Fluxblog sees Kanye West and U2 in St Louis

Fluxblog’s Matthew travels to Missouri to see the band in concert at the Savvis Center in St. Louis. He reviews both the opening act and U2, and touches on the political implications of the current ‘heart of darkness’ part of the band’s set. There are some good reactions in the comments.

“Love and Peace Or Else” was far better in St. Louis than in the 10/8/2005 MSG set, as was the rest of the so-called ‘heart of darkness’ mini-set that also includes “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Bullet The Blue Sky.” Though I quite enjoy “Love and Peace,” this is by far the weakest part of the Vertigo tour – for one thing, these three songs in a row feels more than a little redundant on a musical level, but more than that, there are very troubling political implications in the repurposing of the latter two songs…”

Read more at Fluxblog.

Patti thinks U2 have the power

U2.com interview punk goddess Patti Smith in expectance of her support stint for U2 at their upcoming (and umpteenth) Madison Square Garden shows.

Patti is full of praise for the band now and in the past and recalls a cute anecdote about Larry:

‘The story I remember most is from the 1970’s, when our band weren’t allowed to travel to Ireland because of the unrest so I went with just my piano player. We visited a church, and there were a lot of poor kids and struggling kids and I read poems and talked and sang songs with an old upright piano and we talked about rock’n’roll as something from the grassroots that didn’t belong to the rich or to business but something that was the people’s art. We talked about how everyone in that room was capable and deserving of expressing themselves. And one of the people who was there was Larry, he was just a young boy, and he has told me about that since and we talked about Africa, about Ethiopia and all the things you can do through music – artistically, poetically. And that was my first contact with Larry.’

Talking about seeing the band earlier on this leg of the tour, she says:

‘But the strength of the show took me right back to CBGB’s in the 1970’s, I was so moved by the whole thing: everything you want in rock’n’roll, the sexual energy, the emotional energy, the political concerns… but music you can dance to and express yourself in. It was all there.’

• Read the full interview at U2.com.

Mr B went to Washington

Fourteen. That’s how many pages the New York Times needs to cover ‘singer and global advocate’ Bono’s ongoing campaign to combat poverty and AIDS.

The article, written by James Traub and appearing in NYT’s September 18 edition, reads like a who is who of modern politics. It’s not particularly rock and roll, but someone’s gotta do it, right?

Every summit every city gets a mention, presidents, chancellors, campaigners, celebrities and occasional band members pass the revue. But trust an actor to come away with the best quote. George Clooney explains why he and other celebrities follow where Bono leads:

‘He calls on everyone to be their best. If you fall short, you feel embarrassed. That’s a unique thing. And we all want to be that person.’

Traub follows Bono from the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, right up to recent weeks when Bono tells the journalist he’ll keep ‘a low profile’ as this is not the time to make demands on America’s funds.

No doubt the band will be somewhat pleased to hear that, just in time for the third leg of the tour at that. Says Adam:

‘The band has survived, but there’s been a price in terms of relationships.’

If you have questions for Bono on world poverty and the U.N. summit in New York this week, the New York Times invites you to send them in.

William Gibson on U2′s Vertigo

The August issue of Wired features William Gibson’s view on U2′s Vertigo tour. Very interesting read, going into some behind the scenes detail on build up, lightning, travel and other things. Snippets of conversation with band members, as well as Willie Williams and other people on the band’s touring staff.

“Someone I met in a Dublin pub opined that if U2 hadn’t become the biggest rock act in the world, Adam Clayton might have become a policeman, Larry Mullen would have been the bohemian sort Clayton was perpetually chasing around town, Edge would have become an AI researcher, and Bono – well, it was impossible to imagine what Bono would have done if he hadn’t gotten the job of being Bono.”