I think it's neccessary to qualify and contextualize some of the quotes that get thrown around here, especially the band's supposed attitude towards keeping the momentum going.
first, from Dec. 8/2001
Bono said:
"We have to keep recording. There could be another album soon -- we're in the studio this week. We just thought it would be very interesting to come straight off the tour and go straight in. We'll see."
Now I'm guessing the interview from which this comes (
http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=1777) is the source of the keep-the-momentum mentality. And it certainly seems as though that's what Bono is hinting at... Though we shoud note that even he's not sure at this point. I will admit however, that at the time I interpreted that quote to mean "new u2 album within the next year."
now, a couple weeks later, on Dec. 24/2001, atu2 says:
" A reliable source tells @U2 that Bono is telling close friends that "serious recording" of the new album won't begin until February or March of 2002."
At this point, we should have begun to be suspicious.
jump forward three months, again atu2 has report for us.
According to Edge,
"the band was looking at taking a year-and-a-half to finish an album."
a year and a half from March 2002 puts us at Fall 2003. Three years after ATYCLB. By this point, it should have been clear that the band were no longer thinking in terms of cranking out an album as quickly as possible. Yet I still held on to the belief that we'd see it in 2002... I imagine so did many of you.
by october that year, the 2002 release was clearly out of the question. In an interview with a Norweigan newspaper, Larry stated
"We wrote down 16-17 good ideas for new songs. In December we enter the studio again. And we plan to have a new album out by the end of 2003.
Note that he admits they've only got 16-17 ideas for songs, not actual complete songs.
From this point until last fall, we all thought we'd see an album by October/November 2003. Everything from the band hinted at this. But we now know that this didn't happen, and that the band are finding that the recording is progerssingly slowly. Check out the "Band Meetings and Sightings folder" in PLEBA for some good quotes from Adam that say this.
So what can we conclude from all this? Almost anything. But it seems likely that it's either
1) the songs weren't good enough/needed more work, so they've put off ther intended release date to compensate, this way, new songs can be written.
or
2) the recording is taking time cause Bono is always away, or because of family matters.
If it's #1, then I'm dissapointed, but I can still understand that they want to spend more time polishing.
If it's #2, then I'm still dissapointed, but again, especially if it's due to family issues, I can understand why it's taking so long.
Given the recent quotes from Adam as to the slow nature of the recording, it's probably #1. But we can't know, so it's all just speculation.
But I do think that we should avoid getting worked up over not "keeping the momentum"; it's been clear since March 2002 that this was not going to be the case. I think we just all got over excited, and relied too much on one of Bono's famous off-hand remarks/exaggerations.
but I thought they can only match the venues they played on Zoo TV or Popmart. Maybe they will also include more Asia on their tour, and they'd play football (I mean soccer
) stadiums, like they did in South America.
I believe the plan was to release the album in late 2003 (Adam and McGuiness both talked in that direction) with a tour in 2004 (O'Herlihy, Larry) which would coincide with their usual timetable of a 3 year or so album span.
I think what the author means here, not enough songs with Bono's vocal 
