It should have been enough, even for Bono. Lincoln behind him, Obama to his right, a crowd of 400,000 stretched to the Washington Monument. A chance to quote the “I have a dream” speech from the very spot where Martin Luther King Jr delivered it. “Not a bad gig,” U2′s singer says with a grin, shaking his head afterwards in the band’s cramped backstage trailer. Bono’s eyes are hidden under orange shades; his close-cropped hair has a section shaved to the scalp on each side, like racing stripes for his brain. “That crowd! I suppose the fact that I thought I could bond with every single one of them is early — or later — signs of megalomania.” But Bono can’t help thinking about his original plan: King on the video screens, his 1963 speech ringing out again on the National Mall — and when the crowd heard “Thank God almighty, we are free at last,” U2 would have slammed into Pride (In the Name of Love). Instead, the song got a muted intro from Samuel L Jackson.
“They pulled the speech last night,” sighs Bono, still wearing a black scarf from his stage outfit, with a Rilke poem about God and nature printed on it. “We were out with [David] Axelrod and Rahm [Emanuel] and the Obama team, and they said it was a modesty thing. They thought it was presumptuous. Do you get that? I mean, it’s great that they’re being cautious — but it would have been great for the King family to see that.”
The Edge, uncharacteristically giddy after the performance’s adrenaline blast, chimes in. “I can see how they were thinking,” he says. “I’m not sure I agree. Obama is a modest guy, and he’s really careful about being presumptuous and self-lionising.” The guitarist pauses and smiles, eyes gleaming beneath his black ski cap. “We don’t suffer from these problems. We just go for it.”
A few weeks earlier, U2 finished their 11th studio album, No Line on the Horizon, which fuses the spiritual uplift of their Eighties work with the future-shock sonics of their Nineties albums. The result is some of the most moving, adventurous music of their career, from the churning polyrhythms of the title track to the ghostly minimalism of the closer, Cedars of Lebanon. And despite living in a time in which, as Bono puts it, “only teenage girls and very, very honest people” pay for music, they spared neither time nor expense in pursuit of their vision.
“It is now easier and more affordable to record a song than at any other time in the history of recorded music,” says bassist Adam Clayton. “Unless you’re U2.” It was a superstar album-as-art project, with no deadlines on the horizon: during two years of scattered sessions, they recorded in France, London, New York, Dublin and Fez, Morocco. Long-time producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno were along for the ride, with the pair emerging as full songwriting partners for the first time — it was Lanois, for instance, who came up with the chorus melody for a key track, Moment of Surrender.
On their first two albums this decade, U2 reclaimed their core sound and their mass audience — but, along the way, they started to feel like they were playing it safe. So despite the successes of the past eight years, the band went into these sessions feeling like everything was on the line. “We were fighting for our relevance,” says The Edge. “We felt like we can’t really afford not to be innovative.”
Adds Bono: “There is the defying-gravity aspect of it. There’s this fear that this might be the one where the nose of the plane starts to dip down. It’s very hard when you see talents and prolific imaginations that are so great, and wonder, ‘Where’d it go?’ And then you think, ‘That can happen to us! In fact, it’s likely to. And what might stop it?”’
Bono rounds a corner onto a narrow Dublin street, boots crunching on old cobblestone, sleek, black double-breasted overcoat flapping in the January breeze. The street’s only occupants, a flock of fat pigeons, wobble into the air to get out of his way. Bono stretches an arm to try to touch one of them as it flutters overhead. “One beak to another,” he says with a laugh. His enthusiasm and charisma are such that it’s hard not to laugh with him, even if you don’t quite get the joke. “The Dublin walk, by the way, is called ‘the pigeon’,” Bono says. “You probably haven’t seen it yet.” He demonstrates, breaking into a thuggish pimp strut, and laughs again.
He’s running late for his next appointment, which is not unusual in what must be one of the most overstuffed lives on the planet: “part-time” rock stardom; global advocacy for Africa’s poor that has won him nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize; various multinational business and charitable ventures; an op-ed column for The New York Times; and four kids with Ali Hewson, his wife of 26 years. “I find it very hard to leave home,” he says, “because my house is full of laughter and songs and kids.”
Earlier, he had also been late for lunch. “My wife is out of town with her clothing line, and I had to get the kids off to school,” he apologised. Of his multi-tasking, he says: “I wanna squeeze every drop out of the day. But it’s also the tyranny of good ideas, y’know, because if you spot one, or if you have one, then you think you have to follow through on it. And that might be a psychosis — I may have to get that fixed.”
Psychotic or not, he’s in an ebullient mood. This is his town; these are his streets. And with the Obama inauguration looming, he’s hopeful about the future — though he is as worried as anyone about the global financial crisis, which is hitting Ireland hard. “Very serious matter,” he says. “I get really nervous when some of the smartest people I know — some of the smartest people in the world — don’t know what’s about to happen. I believe, in the end, creativity thrives in difficult conditions. I think we’ll see some amazing things come out of this, though my heart goes out to people losing their jobs. And in my work as an activist, we were finding out how hard it is to get people to keep their promises to the world’s poor in good times. You can imagine how difficult it’s going to be now.”
Interviewing Bono is like taking an Alaskan husky for a walk — you can only suggest a general direction, and then hold on for dear life. Over an 80-minute lunch at Eden, one of his favourite Dublin restaurants, he repeatedly goes off on wild, entertaining tangents, which tend to include names such as Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, genomic researcher Craig Venter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu — Bono calls him “the Arch”. He tosses out one killer soundbite after another, blue eyes moving like tropical fish behind today’s pinkish-purple shades. “I was never much good at throwing a television out a window of a hotel,” he says, musing on his failings as a rock star. “Now, I look at a television, and I want to buy the company.”
He eats his chicken breast in big bites, avoiding the potatoes, talking with his mouth full — and when the chicken is gone, he dips a finger into the sauce and licks it off, more than once. “We began this decade well — I think we’ll end it better,” he says, sitting on a white chair at a white table in a restaurant that’s otherwise empty — apparently because management has cleared it out for him. “Wouldn’t it be great if, after all these years, U2 has their heyday? That could be true of a painter or a filmmaker at this stage.” (more…)
Bono thinks he looks “sexy” in eyeliner.
U2 have added a string of dates to their tour of North America, with the new dates kicking off September 12 in Chicago, IL.
