Oh yeah, we almost forgot — it’s the 4th Of July. A relevant excerpt from Niall Stokes’ Into The Heart (buy, buy, buy):

“I started playing along with Adam, totally unaware that Brian (Eno) was listening in the other room,” The Edge recalled. “He happened to have some treatments set up for the vocal Bono was doing and he applied those to the guitar. He thought it was really nice, so without bothering to put it on multi-track, which is the 24-track tape machine, he just recorded it straight down to stereo tape. It was very much a live performance. There was no way we could mix it or re-do any of the instruments.” There was probably a temptation to get Bono to stick a vocal on top, but the singer must have been relieved when that option was dismissed. One less lyric to write. Whew! … In no way an attempt to celebrate Independence Day, it should be taken rather as a kind of musical diary-entry. This is how we were feeling on 4 July.