The View From The Edge (Part 2)

You guys are very careful about who you give interviews to, how Anton Corbijn photographs you, how you’re presented to the public. I’m not saying you’ve crossed it, but there’s a fine line between controlling quality and controlling an image and projecting a false image.

I’m all for propaganda. [Laughter] It is a fine line. And you’re going to get it wrong sometimes. A lot of bands, though, don’t even think that’s important or relevant. I think we’re aware that maybe that is part of why we ended up being the caricature. A little bit.

Rattle and Hum, the movie, was an example of that. We were criticized by some people for not revealing more. We actually made quite a conscious decision not to reveal more because we didn’t feel comfortable with it. It is a balance because you have to give up so much more when you reveal all. It’s like you no longer have a private life. But at the same time, if you don’t reveal all, people don’t really get the full picture. So it’s a compromise. With Rattle and Hum we just didn’t want to reveal ourselves. My attitude was, “What? Do you think we’re crazy? Cameras in the dressing room? What do you think we are — STOOPID?”

I love what we do because we control it. Because we’ve set it up where we’re comfortable with it. This is the bottom line. That’s why we could do it. If it was done in a way where our private lives were an open book, I don’t think I could be in the band. I didn’t get into the band to become a celebrity. I got into the band because I wanted to play music and write songs and tour and do all that stuff. Some people might object to that, but I say, “Well, fuck you.” [Laughs] It’s my life and this is the way it works for me.

As U2 gears up to go out on tour again, is the sheer size of the operation intimidating?

Yeah, a bit. But what’s actually more intimidating is the expectations. I don’t really worry about mistakes. I’ve never had a problem with mistakes. There’s a certain thing that happens to us onstage, a certain spark, a certain electricity. It’s impossible to describe but it’s sort of like, that is the show, you know? That’s what the band’s always had. “Chemistry” only describes one aspect of it. We haven’t played for a while and we’re assuming that spirit, that spark, will still be there. I don’t know whether it will be. I remember shows when it wasn’t there. It scared the shit out of me. It was like, “Oh…this thing can go away!” That was an eye-opener. I suppose if I have any dark fears it’s that that thing will have gone.

You do tap into something powerful onstage. What goes through your mind when you’re playing “Bullet the Blue Sky”?

Whoa. “Hope I don’t fuck up!” It’s obviously an incredibly dark song. We used to call that part of the set “The Heart of Darkness.” From “Bullet” to “Exit” was all very, very intense. Sometimes Bono would come offstage in the break and would not have left character. The darkness would still be there with him. Sometimes it was hard for him to shake it off and get into playing the next songs. That darkness has a certain kind of adrenaline.

“Exit” and “Bullet the Blue Sky” are both from The Joshua Tree. What was the band trying to capture on that album?

I think that record was a great steppingstone for Bono as a lyricist. He was going for something. Points of reference were the New Journalism, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, Raymond Carver, the bleak American desert landscape as a metaphor. There’s a definite cinematic location, a landscape of words and images and themes that made up The Joshua Tree. It’s a subtle balance, a blend of the songs and lyrics.

Do you think Bono was talking about you in some of the Achtung Baby lyrics?

I think that what was going on in my life had an influence on Bono and therefore on the lyrics to some of the songs. That’s for sure. A lot of people have read into the lyrics that it’s the story of Edge’s marriage breaking down. I’m not denying that that has had an influence, but I think there’s a lot of stories in there and it’s not just my story.

Mat Snow wrote that “Until the End of the World” is sung in the voice of Judas addressing Jesus. Is that true?

Yeah. There’s an Irish poet named Brendan Kennelly who’s written a book of poems about Judas. One of the lines is, “If you want to serve the age, betray it.” That really set my head reeling. He’s also fascinated with the whole moral concept of “Where would we be without Judas?” I do think there is some truth that in highlighting what is rather than what we would ideally like to be, you’re betraying a sort of unwritten rule, but you’re also serving.

The man accused of murdering the actress Rebecca Schaeffer has apparently claimed that he was inspired to do it by listening to “Exit.” When I heard that I thought of Bono’s remark on Rattle and Hum that Charles Manson had stolen “Helter Skelter” from the Beatles. Now a killer’s trying to steal “Exit” from U2.

Well, what do you want me to say? I think it is very heavy. It gets back to censorship, whether self-censorship or government censorship. Should any artist hold back from putting out something because he’s afraid of what somebody else might do as a result of his work? I would hate to see censorship come in, whether from the government or, from my point of view, personal.

Bono wrote the lyrics to “The Fly” as a series of truisms.

Yeah, it is, I suppose. It’s typical Bono in that his greatest gift is his imagination, but it’s also sometimes his worst enemy in that to tie himself to one idea is like torture for him. He’d sooner have 10 ideas in one song. I suppose the list of truisms in “The Fly” is pretty close to following the device from beginning to end. But even there, he brings in a character.

What saves that song from being just a clever exercise is that the things he says are all very powerful.

Yeah. What’s amazing is that he gets so many ideas into a song and somehow makes them work.

It would have been easy to end Achtung Baby with “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World.” The sun comes up and the character goes home and the night is over. Instead the album makes us follow the guy home and face the consequences.

Yeah, it’s not a very comforting ending, is it? But that’s okay, I think. I suppose that’s what we’ve learned. Things aren’t all okay out there. But that’s the way it is.

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An Strat Dubh

The pile of guitars at the U2 rehearsal hall contained four mainstays: a white ’73 Les Paul Custom, a ’76 Rickenbacker 12-string, an ’89 Fender Clapton Strat with Lace Sensor pickups and a ’68 Strat with a Gotoh vibrato. Edge also has an SG doubleneck and a Washburn electro-acoustic with a Photon MIDI pickup, and assorted vintage guitars. His Bradshaw switching system controls a complex series of effects amplified by four Vox AC30s and two Randall combos: an AMS digital delay, two Yamaha SPX90s, two SPX1000s and a GP50, two t.c. electronics 2290s, an Eventide H3000, two Korg A3 processors, an Infinite Sustain box, the Photon MIDI converter and two Roland SDD-3000 delays; Edge’s wireless is a Sony UHF WRR37. On the floor, there’s a MOSFET preamp, SD-1, Turbo Overdrive and graphic EQ pedals, MXR compressors and some t.c. preamps and EQs. On the sidelines are a Crybaby wah, a DigiTech Whammy Pedal, some chrome slides and an E-Bow. Edge’s tech Dallas Schoo strings the guitars

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