U2: ‘We wish to make the sound of the long run’

The band have been in reflective mode for the last half-decade.

In 2019, they set off on a stadium tour celebrating their career-defining Joshua Tree album. Bono spent the pandemic writing his memoir, Surrender, prompting the band to revisit and re-record some of their biggest hits on the mostly acoustic Songs Of Surrender album.

Last year’s Vegas shows recreated their 1990s Berlin reinvention on Achtung Baby and they capped that off with an archival album of unreleased material from 2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

“We spent a second interested by the previous – however you do this as a result of you want to know the place that need to be heard got here from,” says Bono.

“And then you’ll get to the current and to the long run – since the sound of the long run is what we are maximum curious about.

“It doesn’t exist yet. It’s ours to make, and that’s what we have the chance to do.”

Backstage, they talk about their beginnings in Dublin’s punk scene and how it gave four untrained, untested musicians permission to pursue their dreams.

“We do not come from a convention of serious songwriters,” says Mullen Jr. “We did not have any of the ones blues chops, so we have been ranging from scratch, all people.”

“A large number of early influences for us have been bands like The Ramones, who have been doing those three-minute pop songs, and Patti Smith, who used to be slightly extra poetic, and had slightly extra of a social sense of right and wrong,” says bassist Adam Clayton.

“We knew that the bar used to be top, however we have been simply entering into on the backside degree.”

“Punk rock used to be like 12 months 0 for us,” selections up Bono.

“We did not in reality wish to know, or be beholden to, the previous. So we began with a clean web page, in reality, which used to be simply as smartly as a result of we could not play any person else’s songs. We simply began writing our personal.”

Over the years, the honed and finessed those skills. Inspired by Bob Marley – their label-mate on Island Records – they realised that rock music could be more than sex and attitude.

“Bob may sing about anything else he sought after to,” says Bono.

“He’d sing to God, he’d sing to his fanatics, he’d sing to the folk in the street. There have been no regulations for Bob Marley – in order that used to be precisely the suitable affect for us, as a result of that is the place we needed to head.”

“Any songwriter is aware of that they’ve to put in writing about issues that they care about,” agrees The Edge.

“That’s when it connects and when it way one thing. Otherwise, it is artifice.”

Throughout the Ivors ceremony, U2’s decades-long friendship is apparent – albeit through relentless, good-natured taunting.

They try to goad The Edge into dancing for the BBC’s TV crew. Mullen reminds his bandmates of their 1990s penchant for cross-dressing. Bono dredges up Paul Weller’s scathing critique of their band.

“When requested, ‘Why do not you prefer U2′, he mentioned, “Because they wear cowboy boots.’

“‘I leisure my case.'”

Thankfully, the cowboy boot era is ancient history (tonight Bono wears Cuban heels) and, Weller’s opprobrium aside, U2 became one of rock’s biggest bands, selling more than 175 milllion albums worldwide.

There were missteps along the way – Clayton famously disappeared on a drinking bender during the New Zealand leg of the colossal two-year Zoo TV tour (he’s now sober and appearing on Gardener’s World), while the band have repeatedly apologised for the misguided decision to pre-load their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, on to people’s iPhones.

“The loose U2 album is overpriced,” wrote one disgruntled user.

In his autobiography, Bono said he took “complete accountability” for the stunt.

“I’d idea if shall we simply put our song inside achieve of other folks, they could make a choice to achieve out towards it,” he wrote.

“Not fairly.”