"I'm just, like trying to find clarity, y'know. Some people have now heard the record and they want to talk about it and I just feel . . . (grimaces) I just need a week. Having said that, it's very hard to find a place for this record. It doesn't have the sort of grounding that maybe some of the other records have. So that's my problem." --- Mullen circa 1997 before POP's release.
"I dunno. It's very hard because y'know, a lot of people are saying, Have you become dance or trip hop? You hear all these (screws up face) terms used. I'm not comfortable with any one particular genre of music. I just like idea of taking whatever's out there and fucking with it. It's very easy to just lose what's special about a band through technology, and we've touched on that a couple of times. Zooropa was the start of it and we got away with it, but in Passengers, we were just about to cross over into an area that I wasn't comfortable with. So this record was an opportunity for me to actually take it back to (pauses) . . . there's no word to describe it as such. But I'm concerned with these reference points. It's a load of bollocks. We're just messing with different things." ---Mullen circa 1997 before POP's release when asked "Were you going with the techno thing [in POP]?"
So in the first statement, Mullen clearly couldn't put a finger on the record, couldn't find a place for the record, and said it had no grounding which make him admit he had a problem with the record. In the second statement, he said he didn't know if they had gone techno - and he had a long pause to which he could never put to words. Clearly, Mullen didn't seem to have a clue as to what POP was all about.
Edge had a better grasp of the techno question when compared to Mullen's "I dunno."
"We also wanted to take in some new ideas from the world of dance music and hip hop or whatever, because we felt strongly that that's where music is at its most interesting at the moment. So, a lot of the time, it was really about finding our way into those worlds of trance and techno and hip hop, and learning how we could operate in those worlds, and then integrating it back into the songs we'd started to write," said the Edge also back in 1997 before POP's release.
Three years later, Mullen admitted his dilemna about POP. "I remember after the POP record being so gutted that Staring At The Sun. . . it should have been a fucking huge single but we didn't have time to finish it properly. And I remember having to do interviews, and being asked what the album was about and (does mean mean eyes) I had no... fucking ... idea. All I knew was that if we'd had one more month we could have pulled that song through," confessed Mullen in a 2000 interview with Q magazine.
So even back during the 1997 promo blitz for POP, Mullen was "trying to find clarity," "need a week," "trying to find a place for [POP]," and stated that POP doesn't have "grounding" and that he had "problems" with it. When asked the techno question, his reply was that he "didn't know." Three years later, Mullen confirmed everyone's suspicion that he didn't know jack about POP. He admitted to having "no fucking idea" what POP was about.
I theorize that Mullen's lack of understanding about POP is because he missed most of the sessions due to his bad back. The other 3 U2 members had to rely on drum machines to get them through the day. And Edge's admission of dance, techno, trance, an hip hop integration in POP muddles up Mullen's role even more because those forms of music generally rely on non-traditional drumming methods such as programmed beats or drum machines which renders Mullen useless.
So the POP record was clearly U2 not firing on all four cylinders. At least the manual drum portion of U2 was just banging aimlessly without understanding what he was doing. It's a shame that a man of Mullen's stature, as founder of the band, had "no fucking idea" what POP was all about - yet all the armchair critics in U2 fan forums can understand POP in all its hiphop, dance, trance, and techno glory.
POP could have been much better if Mullen had more knowledge and appreciation about U2's goals and influences for that record. He admittedly didn't.
Cheers,
J
to me...
Larry may not have been able explain what Pop was all about, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was incapable of belting out some arse kickin beats on it
