Deseree Stukes ([email protected])
Wed, 23 Dec 1998 21:24:02 -0500
>From dSIDES:
Buzzin'
You wouldn't think it to look at them that we are here to go dancing. The
man they call The Edge is sporting a sharp Stetson and a brilliant moustache
so he's rocking the Village People look tonight. The man they call Bono is
talking with his mouth full of chips and red meat and he's rocking the Elvis
Costello look that he seems to have been rocking since The Sweetest Thing
video.
They are freestyling about dance music and club culture, and have been for a
good hour. We have just finished talking about Puerto Ricans and The Pogues
for reasons which will hopefully become clear sometime soon. Let's rewind
the tape and go back to the start and see how we got to here from there.
We are talking to Bono and Edge in the resident's lounge of the Clarence
Hotel, their swanky gaff 'just an inch on the posh side of town' if you
listen to Bono. The room is full of their friends and acquaintances. Most
are here because the boys have just set up a new dance label that they are
launching tonight. Neither U2 boyo will be larging it as Kitchen Records'
Pete Tong, that task is left to long-time bud Reggie Manuel. The plot is
that Reggie will find the acts, the chaps will nod their heads, sign the
cheques and the rest is a cool new release in the shops every so often.
The first release is from Dublin's heavyweight champion of minimalist
techno, Rob Rowland, an artist we know from his incredible output on D1 over
the past two years. The second release will come from Belfast beat duo Basic
whom we don't know very much about aside from their rather impressive show
in The Kitchen on the night of the label launch. And we are assured that
there will be more.
There are many reasons why rock stars start labels. There are alleged tax
advantages, there are egos, there are friends looking for something to do
and, well, there's the Edge. 'What would you do if you were in a big band
with loads of money? You have to stay alive, you have to stay tuned in to
what's happening and this is the perfect way for us to do that. It's our way
of keeping on top of everything that is happening. It's not just going off
buying loads of twelve-inches but having our own label to release stuff
which catches out attention. We're the instigators but we don't have the
time or whatever to throw ourselves into the culture enough to be like the
man or men making all the decisions on a daily basis. Reggie is in the
driving seat so we'll be getting tapes from him and listening to what he's
coming up with. We'll hear everything before it goes out, but we won't be
hands on.'
It's not their first venture into the world of wannabe label moguls. That
was Mother Records, a label which began life as a one-stop shop for the
likes of Cactus World News, Hothouse Flowers, The Word, In Tua Nua and many
other Irish Next Big Things of the Eighties and subsequently became a part
of the Polygram corporation with Audioweb and Bjork (for Europe only)
currently on the roster. 'Mother has become a lot bigger than it was when it
started' Edge explains. 'It's based in London for a start, and has turned
into a major label, albeit a small one. It's like Island Records twenty
years ago. In that sense, they don't really need us. Occasionally, we send
on a tape we come across that we think is really great but that's about the
height of our involvement.'
U2 and dance music, it's a weird one. The release of that recent compilation
of Eighties' singles shows that U2 and the groove did not do much
cheek-to-cheek smooching during The Decade That Taste Would Prefer To
Forget. Into the Nineties and it's a different matter. Paul Oakenfold's
remix of Even Better Than The Real Thing. DJs touring with the band.
Supernova remixes. The recruitment of Howie B. The opening of The Kitchen in
Dublin. Albums like Achtung Baby and Pop which acknowledged riddim and beats
as the new R&B. In fact, just as discotheques became clubs, U2 became hip to
the groove. Or did they? Edge smiles and delivers a short history lesson.
'We actually worked with Fancois Kervokian in 1982 in New York. We did three
remixes with him around the time of Sunday Bloody Sunday. I hung out with
him in New York and he turned me on to some fantastic stuff.' Kervokian
remains one of the dons of the New York scene, his Sunday afternoon Body &
Soul shindigs at Vinyl being life-affirming events for a cast of NYC queens,
club kids, smart kids and gobsmacked out-of-towners wondering how the hell
they'll make that flight from JFK after this. And we can recall those U2
remixes with some glee. As can the Edge.
'I remember that was the same year that Atomic Dog was out and that was all
over every club in New York. That was the first taste we had of what was
happening on the dance side of things. We also realised it wasn't like
everyone had been saying that disco was the enemy. We were lucky because we
were signed to Island Records and they were very interested in sub-culture
stuff so they introduced us to this scene and these people like Francois. If
we had been on CBS, I don't think that would have happened. But that's the
whole thing about Chris Blackwell (Island MD at that time), he's always been
the culture-vulture kind of guy, a real musicologist on a street level,
always digging out new things.' And then there were tracks like Bass Track,
subtle B-sides which had some shimmering glows to them. 'Oh yeah' remembers
Bono. 'That was ambient before ambient. We were piggybacking Brian Eno a
little bit but we brought a certain (long pause as Bono stares across the
room) earth to it...' Edge starts to laugh. "it's amazing the way you come
out with these things. Earth! How can you just roll out with something like
that?" Bono just grins. We roll on. Tell us about the discos when you were
growing up, chaps. Edge: 'Well, I used to go to the Afro Spot and.... Bono
(interrupts): 'To be perfectly honest, it was the mid-Eighties when I got
all funky and actually got into dance stuff. I didn't have a huge interest
in it up to then. In the Seventies. club culture was the enemy. It was
girl's music and we were boys. I did buy Love Machine. Was it by The
Stylistics? (sings the tune with a fairly credible falsetto) Yeah, it was.
There was an instrumental on the B-side which had a serious groove. I bought
that record but I don't think I told anyone because it was just at the time
punk rock was breaking and punk rock was about as male, white, hormonal
music as you could find.
'It's funny as you get older that the music you loved as a boy now just
sounds so wrong and especially so long! And the music that was supposed to
be so trivial and throwaway has lasted the test of time. Pop music and dance
music from then sound so cool now, whereas progressive rock and the like,
well (laughs). Rock & roll critics used to shit all over the Bee Gees. Fair
enough. the hair-dos were appalling but to think that they were dismissed in
favour of (loud voice) prog rock!'
In fact, U2 discovered their rhythm in the strangest of places. 'We didn't
get rhythm until we went on the road with BB King' Bono exclaims. 'R&B was
where we discovered rhythm and that wasn't until the late Eighties. While
everyone was doing drugs in the summer of love in London, we were in Memphis
hanging out with the Muscle Shoals brass section getting into rhythm that
way. I guess it really came together for us with Achtung Baby.'
So Bono proceeds to switch continents faster than Concorde. 'You see, our
orientation towards the groove came via America. It didn't come to us
through London. It was New York, then LA, then Chicago, then Detroit. Our
first connection with a European groove came in Berlin. What was that band
you were into for a while, Edge? The ones who used to live in the holes in
the ground? Spiral Tribe! They were mad. They used to have bits of military
aircraft with them that they obtained from this site outside the studio in
Berlin that we used. This was in the original centre of Berlin, O'Connell
Street or Trafalgar Square if you like, before it was bombed to bits during
the war. Then, there was all these, what do you call them, crustations? You
know, the people who lived in the ground?'
Edge looks blankly at his companion. The journalist thinks fast and tries to
forget that great Courtney Love line from her interview in The Observer
about celebrity isolation and malapropisms. Er, do you mean crusties, Bono?
He grins. 'Crusties! Yeah, thanks! There was a huge scene like that just
outside the studio. Loads of crusties and gypsies and chickens running
everywhere and bits of fighter planes. That was quite a scene. So we went
from an LA hip-hop scenario to this in Berlin which was quite a trip.'
And before you have time to take that in, Bono is running down the road with
Paul Oakenfold. 'I remember Oakie saying to me "Do you know what people are
playing at the end of these huge raves in the middle of nowhere outside the
cities? They're playing With Or Without You." I was like "No way, you're off
your trolley". And they were! But that was our connection with that scene
because our music was ecstatic. In the Eighties, U2 made ecstatic music.
Whether you want to call it a religious thing or not, the music was big and
universal and it was open in such a way that people who off their nuts and
who were not in raincoats any more and getting into all these drugs were
completely thrown by it.' So if you view your Eighties catalogue as
uplifting, how do you feel about the way acts like Embrace and to an extent
The Verve, those acts standing po-faced under the new seriousness banner,
keep getting compared to U2 scowling under The Joshua Tree? 'Some of that is
a fair cop' Edge accepts 'but it was a different time. It's funny to look
back and realise just how out of step with the Eighties we were. This was
the era of the material girl, this was the era of Reaganomics, it was a very
selfish era and our music certainly doesn't seem to have been in step with
that. It's quite interesting that we survived and thrived in that situation
whereas this is the caring, sharing, loving Nineties and it's perhaps more
predictable that people would be making that sort of music now.'
If that was then and this is now, what sounds are rocking your world at the
moment? And will we hear them on Kitchen Records?
Edge: 'I like techno, I'm not big into drum & bass, I like hip-hop. I like
the fact that the Fugees clan are coming out with some unbelievable stuff.'
Bono: "Lauryn Hill is just amazing, that album man is just one of the
defining records of the last few years. Really. she's head and shoulders
above the pack. Autchere. I dig them. Squarepusher, those beats are mad.
I'll also go for Dave Angel and for Surgeon. Edge, it's strange to hear you
say that about techno because it is so white and your music tastes are
usualiy so black. I'm just curious to hear you come out with that one'
Edge: Well, it's just the sound as a whole, I think techno is the sound of
Europe. I was always interested in industrial music and in a sense, this is
where it's gone to. I'm a minimalist at heart so I love the stripped-down
sense of it all.'
Bono: 'Thats where you hit off Rob Rowland because he's so spare, so
streamlined. That's what we want on the label. But it's Reggie's show. We
are the bouncers but he has to open and close the doors and get the show on
the road. We've known him for years and years. He has no experience really
of how to deal with the music business but he brought us Rob Rowland and he
brought us Pete Reddy from Paintbox to do the design and he finds these
people and it all adds up. Reggie knows his turf. I'd like to see the sounds
on the label be a bit broader but that will happen. And some people will be
very confused by it all!'
Especially when they can't hear any lyrics because dance music can seem to
get on dandy without the words, thank you very much. You're out of a job,
mate. 'Well, you can live with or without hectoring. depending on the point
of view that is been expressed' Bono smiles. 'I remember being in Dun
Laoghaire a while back in a club full of people off their faces and I
remember being asked was I a lyricist (laughs). I said I didn't know. The
guy said (puts on convincing thick Dublin skanger accent) "We don't want any
of them here and we don't want youse telling us what to do because we know
too much already. Lyrics aren't worth a fuck, we just want the groove. Do
you get that man?" And I said "I get that, man". 'And that's fine. With U2,
I always try to put into words the feelings that I have at any one time but
often, it's just vowel sounds filling my mouth which build into words or I
might find a title or an idea to hold the music around. I don't have to have
the testimony or the story when I listen to dance music
Edge: 'But no-one listens to your lyrics anyway (laughs)' Bono grins and
decides he's hungry. He goes on the prowl for food while Edge talks hip-hop
and Public Enemy. 'With Public Enemy in the US, there were certain venues
where we couldn't tell the owner that they were on the bill or else they
would cancel the show. Certain arenas would not allow them to play because
the owners could forsee racial tensions rising to the surface. It was
something we had to think hard about. We were delighted that Public Enemy
wanted to play with us and we got a lot out of it and they got a lot out of
it. That's one of the fun things about being in a big band, you do have the
power to do shit like that. The only thing we didn't want to do was to treat
our audience like we were giving them lessons in current music. If something
was really turning us on and we really thought it was going to ignite the
crowd, we were going to put them on. If that meant Kraftwerk or Public Enemy
or even the Velvet Underground, we'd have them on. That's one of the big
privileges I've had from being in U2, having these groups accepting our
invitation to play with us.'
For Bono, who has returned with a plate of red meat and a bowl of chips
ideal for chip butties - hip-hop was an insight into another way of doing
things. 'Hip-hop artists are just geniuses at self-promotion' he enthuses
with his mouth full. 'It's so different to that indie mindset which so
castrated the UK scene for so long. Black music wants to communicate, it
wants to shout, it wants to be loud and be large. Sometimes, this can be
crass when you had the whole gold chains and bragging about the size of
their dicks but by and large, they have a sense of their own value and they
try to communicate this in their music. They're advertising themselves and
their work. And their mates. They have a network and they want to big up
everyone in that network. So you have Snoop Dogg or whoever and he's
bringing the next Snoop Dogg into the system and into the chain.'
He sees this as a possible template for Dublin. 'We've got to co-operate.
We've been tagged as white niggers so lets wear it well, lets be black in
that sense. We've got to start to break each other as well as ourselves. It
has to be a community in all sense of the word. It's against our nature but
it might just happen and that's where dance music comes in. Like Donal
Scannell has his Quadraphonic drum & bass label and he's been onto Reggie
saying whatever help he can give, he'll give it. And Nick at Pussyfoot has
said he'll do whatever he can. Club culture is much more democratic than
rock & roll ever was. It is much more about a community.' So what do you
reckon dance music has done for U2?
'It made us jealous' Edge says quietly. 'It's wonderful to be in a rock &
roll band but it is limiting in so many ways. There are so many more
possibilities with dance music as a form. And of course you have the rhythm.
It's also hard for a rock & roll band to match just the sheer excitement of
being in a club and hearing really good dance music.' Bono is not quite so
sure. 'But what we do is not off the shelf. We have something that dance
music will never have. That's one of the things we realised when we were
making Pop. We could be like archeologists digging for some really rare
sticky groove but whv should we do that when we have Larry Mullen? Larry can
do beats like no-one else. And we have a bass player called Adam Clayton who
is the only bass player you would miss if he wasn't there. What I learnt
from dance music is the value of what we do. At first, there was jealousy
but then we realised what we had ourselves. There's no point competing on a
direct level, there's no point in us trying to be dance musicians. You can
aspire to that but we're a rock & roll band at the end of the day.'
You seem very definite about it. 'Yeah because at the end of the day, what
we're about is a much different thing than club culture. Sure, we're going
to work with beats and we're going to work with beatmasters like Howie B and
sure we have a club with a beautiful sewer running through the bottom of
this posh hotel! But you're not going to walk in there and hear a lyric
(laughs)! That's not going to happen and I don't want it either.'
This has also helped Bono appreciate that sometimes the two beasts are
better off in different fields. 'Up to recently, I thought one of the most
exciting things was going to be when rock & roll hit club culture. Right at
that point, that was where it was going to be for the future. Now, I'm not
so sure. Now, I'm actually enjoying the difference. Speeding up and slowing
down is quite cool, we're digging the friction.'
We're back on the dancefloor again. Let's talk clubs. Tell us about some
really cool clubs that have turned you on. 'Tokyo!' Bono exclaims with
enthusiasm. 'In Tokyo, I learned about one really important innovation -
girl's music. Girls always play the best party music, always. They know what
to put on, they're intuitive, they know what's going on in the room, they
know where people need to go and they have no rules about particular tracks
or styles. They play what works and they play what inspires. There was this
ciub in Tokyo....
Bono shouts across the room at Howie B who's enjoying a quiet pint. 'Howie,
what was the club called in Tokyo that played girls music? Like melodies and
hip-hop beats? The freestyle thing?' Howie shouts back. 'Asia? The big one?
Asia, that was it.' 'The people were just joyful' Bono continues 'because
the music was so up, so melodic, so right. You were just lifted by these
beautiful melodies, these amazing soulful strings, soulful singing, hard-on
grooves. Yeah, it was a sexual experience. All this mixing and matching, it
was post-modernism running amok. That was something else.' 'In New York on
Puerto Rican Day' Edge recalls, 'there was this club and I had never been in
a club like it. Everybody was dressed in the most incredible exotic clothing
but what was really cool was that people were dancing sexily to Puerto Rican
beats. The whole place was just charged. I was thinking could I ever imagine
this on St Patrick's Day in a Dublin club? The vibe was just something else'
Bono is now on one. 'The thing with clubs like that one Edge is talking
about is that you'll find three generations there. It's people hanging out,
from the mamas to the kids. Funnily enough, I used to see that with the
Pogues. What I loved about Shane McGowan was that he brought three
generations together. You'd have some old geezer holding onto these young
kids who were at their first gig in some GAA hall or other. That's our
difference, that's what separates us from everyone else, that's our
identity. We're not really North Europeans. The roots of our music are
Celtic, Middle-Eastern, Abyissian, that's where it all comes from. We are
not Europeans so we shouldn't try to be. Let's not be intimidated by it.'
Edge smiles wryly at Bono's wired flow. 'I love Bono's theories about the
idea that it came from North Africa, Bob Quinn had similar theories about
where art and music came from to get to this country. it's a very compelling
argument but it's still a mystery. Black music is a bit easier to trace
because the journey is pretty well documented. African music came to
America, got mixed up with gospel and now, it's gone back full circle to
rhythm again. I remember when we were recording in LA and on Fridays, these
amazing lowriders would be driving up and down Hollywood Boulevard pumping
out this massive hip-hop. The whole thing was display and it was pure
rhythm. Like it or not, we're playing black music, rock & roll is black
music and sometimes I feel we're not that good at it."
All this talk about club culture and we forgot to talk about the
disco-jockeys themselves. Ever fancy becoming DJ Edge, Edge? 'I stood next
to David Morales for his whole set in a club in Tokyo one night. It was the
only time that I felt that I'd love to do this. Seeing the relationship
between a DJ and his audience up close for the first time and the whole vibe
to what he was doing...
Edge looks away with a wistful look in his eye and Bono keeps munching, his
eyes darting around the room in search of the next topic or next person to
hug. In a few hours time, we will find these two rock & rollers tripping the
light fantastic around that beautiful sewer in their own swanky basement
club as their new dance label gets a taste of the limelight. While your Noel
Gallaghers hang out in houses called Supernova Heights polishing their
mopeds and your Thom Yorkes go to bed early with the weight of the world on
their shoulders, the man they call The Edge and the man they call Bono will
stay up late in a dance club and talk shite about techno and a lot of other
things too to anyone who will listen. I don't know about you but I think the
old-skool are having far more fun...
des
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