elevatemymind
Babyface
I'm compiling a lot of U2 stuff for myself (sort of a scrapbook) and I'm in need of some good U2 quotes. Could you guys post your favorite quotes please? 
quotes?
- Thread starter elevatemymind
- Start date
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
adamswildhoney
ONE love, blood, life
Check out Olives site! She has a lot of good quotes! And you can also check out thoses
ones from Bono and ones from adam!
in case your wondering the thumb is suppose to be pointing down to my sig!
ones from Bono and ones from adam!in case your wondering the thumb is suppose to be pointing down to my sig!
OP
OP
elevatemymind
Babyface
thanks! those are great!
dsmith2904
ONE love, blood, life
Here's a link to a thread from a few weeks ago with tons of great U2 quotes as well as links to other threads and sites with more U2 pearls of wisdom (or randomness or whatever).
http://forum.interference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59960
http://forum.interference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59960
madonna's child
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
We make music you can have sex to - Bono
It costs a fortune to look this trashy - Bono
I look cool... I don?t know about the other three... I look cool, I am cool - Larry, 1997
Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades... - Bono
It's a very unusual thing to be in a band like this. It's like being in a street gang. And it's all very well being in a street gang when you're 16, but it's bloody weird when you're 32. - Edge
Everyone argues, then we do what I say. - Bono, 1987
I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet. - Bono, 1981
I don't mean to be arrogant, but ...I do feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups. - Bono, Rolling Stone, 1981
"The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high IQ, he's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords of songs, where he is and so on." -Bono, January 1983
"Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn't play the usual lines." -Bono, February 1982
"Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y' mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock 'n' roll was what he was going to do.? -Bono
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up." -Bono
"It's a con! It's a con. It's just a way of putting people off from the fact that it's a heavy mother. It's probably our most serious record - and yet it's got the least serious title. And it just fooled everyone. They all thought we were, you know, we'd lightened up. Which is totally untrue. We're miserable bastards." - Bono on Achtung, Baby, March 1992
"I believe in love, love and money! I believe in poetry, electricity, cheap cosmetics. I believe in the sky over my head, and the silver shoes beneath my feet. I have a vision! I have a vision! Television!" -- The Mirrorball Man
?It doesn't matter what songs we sing. I'm a drummer. Chicks dig me." (in response when asked what songs they were going to sing for PopMart.) -Larry
"I don't think the lyrics are worth a shit to be honest, if you ask me. I think it's all about drums." -Larry
"I invented cool...and you're on a boat with me." -Larry
"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in the window at Larry. Larry just shouted at them and told them to go away. And then turned the hose on them! Larry likes to play drums." -- Bono
?There was a night in L.A. in the early part of the tour when we had a death threat that the police were taking very seriously indeed. Someone had sent the gun license into the U2 offices and they thought he had gotten into the venue. All of a sudden there were all these people on the stage which I really objected to. I never thought that sort of thing would bother me and, when I went out, it didn't. I just laughed it off, like The Blues Brothers - 'We're on a mission from God and we ain't finished yet.' The second night came up and the cops came up to us just before we were about to go on and said they'd made a mistake, He was coming tonight! Now we get all kinds of racist jibes because we wrote a song for Martin Luther King, or pinko jibes because we did the Amnesty International Tour. Wherever you look we're a target for the loony fringe. So the second night, we're on stage and I'm singing 'Pride' thinking, 'If someone is going to do it it will be during this number.' So I crouched down on the stage, shut my eyes and for a moment the thought of death crossed my mind. When I looked up I just saw Adam standing over me, between me and the crowd. It was a good, good moment." -Bono
"We've made a career out of our personality crises, well, certainly I have." -Bono
"You can download an atmosphere and dial up a groove, but there's a certain magic when three musicians and a dyslexic get together and play in a room." -- Bono, 1999
"In the very start, even though we couldn't really get it together musically, there was something there and I call it the spark."-Bono, on the early days
"I think women are the stronger sex. I don't think it's necessarily putting women on a pedestal, but I think it's acknowledging that women are stronger and you need their support and companionship to help you realise your potential as a man. That's an unusual theme in rock & roll. Rock & Roll is usually...(very macho) yeah" --Adam
"The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never
happened to me before. You know, on a long tour you do hear people saying
they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog.
It's very odd, cos I don't have a dog."
Bono
"If you believe in a cause, you must be willing to put yourself on the line for that cause."
Adam on why U2 agreed to play in Sarajevo
"Rock 'n' roll is a term that's been heavily abused. It's not
something you can buy in a record shop. It's an attitude."
Adam
"My room overlooks the park and yesterday during the afternoon I'd opened up all the blinds and taken back the curtains so I could look out over the park.
Come nightfall, I was grooving to some rap record in my room, bopping around the room
for maybe half an hour. I don't know what I was doing, just messing around...and at one
stage I looked out of the window and there were about 200 people looking up, clapping,
applauding my dancing. That was funny."
The Edge
'Sometimes I wish I was as gifted as Edge on his guitar or Bono on his lyrics or Adam is on other things.' ~ Larry
"... and then I saw Adam, and he just looked so cool. And I said, 'I want to be in a rock n' roll band with him.'" -Larry
"I find it amusing that people think I'm together [because] I'm the most un-together person I know. In the band, they just say, 'here comes chaos.' Oh, I want to be together - it's my ambition to one day get my own life in order and tie it up with string and be as organized as somebody like Adam....Clayton's unbelievable. Field Marshal Clayton! For a guy who can stay out all night, if he needs to be up at 8am, he'll be there at 8am on the button."
-Bono, from U2: a Road to Pop
In a live situation, there's really no such thing as perfection... You can't deal in perfection. You can only deal in emotion."
-Adam
"I simulate love-making by beating a piece of wood with a metal wire on which it vibrates" -Adam Clayton, on what he does for a living.
"There are four members of U2. If there is a fifth, non-musical member it is Paul McGuiness.
Either that or Adam's willie!" - Bono
"I could tell stories of the times each of the others has been there for me. I mean there have been periods when Adam and I didn't particularly get along, over the years. Yet when I left Aislinn I moved into Adam's." - Edge
Some artists become dull when they stop drinking or drugging, but Adam's not one of them. He's his old self. He loses none of his rubber-band-shooting, water-gun-squirting, public-disrobing spirit when he doesn't drink." - Bono
"Men should not be forced to wear pants when it's not cold." -Adam
"You see Larry, you let an outsider taste your food for you. I'm not jealous, but if you need someone to eat off your plate you should always go to your bassplayer."
"Sometimes when I am playing, I get to a place where the bass seems to find its own rhythm, and then it becomes just a matter of which notes to push and which ones to hold back on. It's a discipline, really." -Adam
?Making love involves two people, having sex only involves one." -Adam, during a TV special for the Love Town Tour, 1989
"At school he stuck out like a sore thumb. He used to drink coffee in class and the teachers got used to it. He wore a kilt. He also took off his clothes at one rehearsal when he got very excited."
- Bono, on Adam
In the early days our ambition was just to end the song together!"
- Adam
"I had to be talked into it, I have to say. I was very nervous and apprehensive about revealing myself in such a way. But I got into the spirit of wickedness, I suppose. I really objected to the censorship that happened in certain countries, like I think in America they put a nasty black X over it or something. I think nude photography is absolutely appropriate and it shouldn't embarrass anyone. I think the pictures that Robert Mapplethorpe took of male nudes- those portraits- helped me to look at myself as a man and to get used to looking at penises. It's a hard thing to overcome to begin with but I think it's good. I only wish I had an erection at the time."
-Adam, in an online chat, in response to being asked
"Was it a pleasant experience hanging your willy out for all on Achtung Baby?"
"I love to paint. I don't think it's just the fumes, but it might be." ~Bono
"I just wasn't prepared for the establishment to write me off just because I didn't fit into their academic concept."
-Adam, on his troubles in school
?Hard as it is to keep it together, it is still possible to have those moments when it?s just the four of you being able to keep the rest of the world out... and that?s what it?s all about.?
-Adam, on the relationship of the band
"Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values." -- Bono
"I turn slightly and catch Bono with half a Perrier bottle in his mouth. He's sucking the thing in such a manner it would put Madonna to shame."
Hey, Bono, want to play a game of truth or dare?
A word I've always liked more than happiness is joy. Happiness is a mood that comes and goes, whereas joy is just there. -Bono
"I'd like to give a message to the youth of America: We shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream" -Bono
"He is a big mouth, and I find him a bit of a pain in the arse at times. But I can't help it, I am him!" -- Bono, 1993, describing himself
??Authentic? is a word that's often applied to rock 'n' roll, and ?authentic? is a word I don't give a fuck about. What's authentic? Soul is much more than just authentic.? -- Bono, in 1992
"You can see the halo over his head," Jesse Helms, on Bono
It costs a fortune to look this trashy - Bono
I look cool... I don?t know about the other three... I look cool, I am cool - Larry, 1997
Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades... - Bono
It's a very unusual thing to be in a band like this. It's like being in a street gang. And it's all very well being in a street gang when you're 16, but it's bloody weird when you're 32. - Edge
Everyone argues, then we do what I say. - Bono, 1987
I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet. - Bono, 1981
I don't mean to be arrogant, but ...I do feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups. - Bono, Rolling Stone, 1981
"The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high IQ, he's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords of songs, where he is and so on." -Bono, January 1983
"Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn't play the usual lines." -Bono, February 1982
"Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y' mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock 'n' roll was what he was going to do.? -Bono
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up." -Bono
"It's a con! It's a con. It's just a way of putting people off from the fact that it's a heavy mother. It's probably our most serious record - and yet it's got the least serious title. And it just fooled everyone. They all thought we were, you know, we'd lightened up. Which is totally untrue. We're miserable bastards." - Bono on Achtung, Baby, March 1992
"I believe in love, love and money! I believe in poetry, electricity, cheap cosmetics. I believe in the sky over my head, and the silver shoes beneath my feet. I have a vision! I have a vision! Television!" -- The Mirrorball Man
?It doesn't matter what songs we sing. I'm a drummer. Chicks dig me." (in response when asked what songs they were going to sing for PopMart.) -Larry
"I don't think the lyrics are worth a shit to be honest, if you ask me. I think it's all about drums." -Larry
"I invented cool...and you're on a boat with me." -Larry
"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in the window at Larry. Larry just shouted at them and told them to go away. And then turned the hose on them! Larry likes to play drums." -- Bono
?There was a night in L.A. in the early part of the tour when we had a death threat that the police were taking very seriously indeed. Someone had sent the gun license into the U2 offices and they thought he had gotten into the venue. All of a sudden there were all these people on the stage which I really objected to. I never thought that sort of thing would bother me and, when I went out, it didn't. I just laughed it off, like The Blues Brothers - 'We're on a mission from God and we ain't finished yet.' The second night came up and the cops came up to us just before we were about to go on and said they'd made a mistake, He was coming tonight! Now we get all kinds of racist jibes because we wrote a song for Martin Luther King, or pinko jibes because we did the Amnesty International Tour. Wherever you look we're a target for the loony fringe. So the second night, we're on stage and I'm singing 'Pride' thinking, 'If someone is going to do it it will be during this number.' So I crouched down on the stage, shut my eyes and for a moment the thought of death crossed my mind. When I looked up I just saw Adam standing over me, between me and the crowd. It was a good, good moment." -Bono
"We've made a career out of our personality crises, well, certainly I have." -Bono
"You can download an atmosphere and dial up a groove, but there's a certain magic when three musicians and a dyslexic get together and play in a room." -- Bono, 1999
"In the very start, even though we couldn't really get it together musically, there was something there and I call it the spark."-Bono, on the early days
"I think women are the stronger sex. I don't think it's necessarily putting women on a pedestal, but I think it's acknowledging that women are stronger and you need their support and companionship to help you realise your potential as a man. That's an unusual theme in rock & roll. Rock & Roll is usually...(very macho) yeah" --Adam
"The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never
happened to me before. You know, on a long tour you do hear people saying
they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog.
It's very odd, cos I don't have a dog."
Bono
"If you believe in a cause, you must be willing to put yourself on the line for that cause."
Adam on why U2 agreed to play in Sarajevo
"Rock 'n' roll is a term that's been heavily abused. It's not
something you can buy in a record shop. It's an attitude."
Adam
"My room overlooks the park and yesterday during the afternoon I'd opened up all the blinds and taken back the curtains so I could look out over the park.
Come nightfall, I was grooving to some rap record in my room, bopping around the room
for maybe half an hour. I don't know what I was doing, just messing around...and at one
stage I looked out of the window and there were about 200 people looking up, clapping,
applauding my dancing. That was funny."
The Edge
'Sometimes I wish I was as gifted as Edge on his guitar or Bono on his lyrics or Adam is on other things.' ~ Larry
"... and then I saw Adam, and he just looked so cool. And I said, 'I want to be in a rock n' roll band with him.'" -Larry
"I find it amusing that people think I'm together [because] I'm the most un-together person I know. In the band, they just say, 'here comes chaos.' Oh, I want to be together - it's my ambition to one day get my own life in order and tie it up with string and be as organized as somebody like Adam....Clayton's unbelievable. Field Marshal Clayton! For a guy who can stay out all night, if he needs to be up at 8am, he'll be there at 8am on the button."
-Bono, from U2: a Road to Pop
In a live situation, there's really no such thing as perfection... You can't deal in perfection. You can only deal in emotion."
-Adam
"I simulate love-making by beating a piece of wood with a metal wire on which it vibrates" -Adam Clayton, on what he does for a living.
"There are four members of U2. If there is a fifth, non-musical member it is Paul McGuiness.
Either that or Adam's willie!" - Bono
"I could tell stories of the times each of the others has been there for me. I mean there have been periods when Adam and I didn't particularly get along, over the years. Yet when I left Aislinn I moved into Adam's." - Edge
Some artists become dull when they stop drinking or drugging, but Adam's not one of them. He's his old self. He loses none of his rubber-band-shooting, water-gun-squirting, public-disrobing spirit when he doesn't drink." - Bono
"Men should not be forced to wear pants when it's not cold." -Adam
"You see Larry, you let an outsider taste your food for you. I'm not jealous, but if you need someone to eat off your plate you should always go to your bassplayer."
"Sometimes when I am playing, I get to a place where the bass seems to find its own rhythm, and then it becomes just a matter of which notes to push and which ones to hold back on. It's a discipline, really." -Adam
?Making love involves two people, having sex only involves one." -Adam, during a TV special for the Love Town Tour, 1989
"At school he stuck out like a sore thumb. He used to drink coffee in class and the teachers got used to it. He wore a kilt. He also took off his clothes at one rehearsal when he got very excited."
- Bono, on Adam
In the early days our ambition was just to end the song together!"
- Adam
"I had to be talked into it, I have to say. I was very nervous and apprehensive about revealing myself in such a way. But I got into the spirit of wickedness, I suppose. I really objected to the censorship that happened in certain countries, like I think in America they put a nasty black X over it or something. I think nude photography is absolutely appropriate and it shouldn't embarrass anyone. I think the pictures that Robert Mapplethorpe took of male nudes- those portraits- helped me to look at myself as a man and to get used to looking at penises. It's a hard thing to overcome to begin with but I think it's good. I only wish I had an erection at the time."
-Adam, in an online chat, in response to being asked
"Was it a pleasant experience hanging your willy out for all on Achtung Baby?"
"I love to paint. I don't think it's just the fumes, but it might be." ~Bono
"I just wasn't prepared for the establishment to write me off just because I didn't fit into their academic concept."
-Adam, on his troubles in school
?Hard as it is to keep it together, it is still possible to have those moments when it?s just the four of you being able to keep the rest of the world out... and that?s what it?s all about.?
-Adam, on the relationship of the band
"Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values." -- Bono
"I turn slightly and catch Bono with half a Perrier bottle in his mouth. He's sucking the thing in such a manner it would put Madonna to shame."
Hey, Bono, want to play a game of truth or dare?
A word I've always liked more than happiness is joy. Happiness is a mood that comes and goes, whereas joy is just there. -Bono
"I'd like to give a message to the youth of America: We shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream" -Bono
"He is a big mouth, and I find him a bit of a pain in the arse at times. But I can't help it, I am him!" -- Bono, 1993, describing himself
??Authentic? is a word that's often applied to rock 'n' roll, and ?authentic? is a word I don't give a fuck about. What's authentic? Soul is much more than just authentic.? -- Bono, in 1992
"You can see the halo over his head," Jesse Helms, on Bono
souLnation2002
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
my sig!
oliveu2cm
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
I love quotes
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adamswildhoney said:
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*BOOMCHAA!*
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Do you want a quote from me!?!?!?
Bono from Beautiful Day- "TOUCH MEEE!!!!!!"
Me- " Well, if you insist................"
alright, fine, some real quotes:
"Larry just didn't like it coz we hardly let him play the drums."
Bono explains Larry's unease about the controversial 'Passengers' project, 1995
"I have to tell you, I don't like doing intimate concerts. I have very sensitive nasal glands and being that close to so many armpits is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather play a stadium any day."
Bono on the disadvantages of shows like the Astoria gig, 2001.
"It's a tough life being a pop star. You know, at the end of the day when you've paid all the bills and put the kids through college and that, you know, there's only enough left for a small island off the South Pacific."
Larry pleads poverty, 1997.
"He's a poet. He's a philosopher. And last night, I think I saw him walking on water."
Mick Jagger introducing Bono as he received his MTV Free Your Mind award, November 1999.
I liketh that one
"Yeah, Bono's always talking about how he's half Catholic and half Protestant. Now we know which half is Catholic." -Ali, about her pregnancy, on The Late Late Show, 12.15.00
I've never seen that one!!!!!BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Bono from Beautiful Day- "TOUCH MEEE!!!!!!"
Me- " Well, if you insist................"
alright, fine, some real quotes:
"Larry just didn't like it coz we hardly let him play the drums."
Bono explains Larry's unease about the controversial 'Passengers' project, 1995
"I have to tell you, I don't like doing intimate concerts. I have very sensitive nasal glands and being that close to so many armpits is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather play a stadium any day."
Bono on the disadvantages of shows like the Astoria gig, 2001.
"It's a tough life being a pop star. You know, at the end of the day when you've paid all the bills and put the kids through college and that, you know, there's only enough left for a small island off the South Pacific."
Larry pleads poverty, 1997.
"He's a poet. He's a philosopher. And last night, I think I saw him walking on water."
Mick Jagger introducing Bono as he received his MTV Free Your Mind award, November 1999.
I liketh that one"Yeah, Bono's always talking about how he's half Catholic and half Protestant. Now we know which half is Catholic." -Ali, about her pregnancy, on The Late Late Show, 12.15.00
I've never seen that one!!!!!BWAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
OP
OP
elevatemymind
Babyface
Thanks everyone - those were great. And I went through all the threads too, so I have like a 30-page Word document full of quotes now
FallingStar
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2001
- Messages
- 8,800
If you need another 13 pages full of quotes! 
From an interview w/ B.P. Fallon:
BP: Did you ever think you were going to die?
LARRY: Yes, only on the back of Bono's motorbike!
EDGE: Only on the back of Bono's motorbike.
ADAM: Only in the back of Bono's car.
BONO: Die, no. Squashed, yes.
BP: Who's your hero?
Bono: Ali. She's so sane although she chooses to live with me.
BP: What would you like to have that you don't?
Bono: Feet. My legs just don't seem to end.
BP: Have you ever told a lie?
Bono: Everything I say is a lie.
BP: When did you last cry and why?
Bono: I suppose I do everything in extremes - laugh a lot, cry a lot, fight a lot, make love a lot, eat too much, drink too much, try too much, cry too much. Pass the onion..
Q: "Do you consider yourself a good dancer, Bono?"
Bono: "I dance much better horizontally than vertically."
Q : "Most interesting question asked recently by a fan?"
Bono : "Have you seen Bono?"
'Propaganda' Issue 27, '97
Q: Where do you think you'd be now if U2 weren't formed?
Bono: Hmmm, that's an interesting one. God almighty. Whooho, Get me another beer!
Adam: I think Dublin wouldn't have contained you. I think you would have been off somewhere.
Bono: I don't know. To be honest, U2 saved my life in a way because I am unemployable. There's nothing else I can do.
BP: If you were an animal, which animal would you be?
ADAM: A giraffe. Why? 'Cos then you'd meet other giraffes.
EDGE: One of the big cats, so I could just s-t-r-e-t-c-h out in the sun, a panther or a cheetah.
BONO: A wildebeest. You'd have to have a sense of humour with a name like that.
LARRY: Aaah! A fly. Because Bono wrote about a fly and what's good enough for Bono is good enough for me.
What irritates the others about you?
Bono: My temper.
Adam: I'm slow.
Edge: I spend too long on the computer.
Larry: I'm the "negative" one.
From the BP Fallon interview (circa ZooTV)
BP: When did you last wash the dishes or hoover?
BONO: Just last night, I washed the dishes and the hoover...
EDGE: Last time we played house.
LARRY: I've just finished...
ADAM: I'd say in the mid seventies.
BP: Are you a star?
ADAM: Wishin'...
LARRY: I've been called worse.
EDGE: Only after dark.
BONO: No, a firework.....Well more of a banger, really.
BP: Is Elvis alive or dead?
ADAM: Elvis is alive.
BP: Have you ever seen him?
ADAM: I see him every day.
BP: Is he in the band?
ADAM: He thinks he is.
BP: What's in your pockets?
LARRY: Buttons for opening my gate (empties pockets) Lipsil, wallet, packet of Silk Cut cigarettes-nurses cigarettes! - homeopathic gear for sore throats, lighter, penknife.
BONO: I have no pockets.
ADAM: A load of phone numbers. Whose? Nah, I'm not telling.
EDGE: I don't have any in my trousers. In my coat (pulls everything out) there's my Gitanes, my Zippo, my keys and an awful lot of guitar picks. I pick them up every time I leave rehearsal. I never put them back so on a given day it could be anything from ten to about fifty 'cos they just build up. I sometimes think they breed in there.
BP: What's the best thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
ADAM: The way I might like at you.
LARRY: My dog.
EDGE: I don't snore.
BP: And what's the worst thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
LARRY: I'm black and white.
EDGE: I'm so single-minded on some things that I find it hard to keep other things together. When I'm really concentrating on an album or tour or something, a lot of other things in my life get shelved.
ADAM: I'm very bad in the mornings, grumpy. I don't say very much.
BP: And how long does it take you to come to?
ADAM: About a litre of coffee and two hours.
There's now a greater sensuality, which relates to the maturing of U2.
Bono: Yeah, you just stretch it out and realise a whisper can be louder than a scream. You learn that there's a time for letting go and a time for holding back.
What was the impact personally of seeing people going through the deal of drug abuse?
Bono: Ah, I wrote the song, didn't I? I just wrote "Bad". The point is Dublin is rife with a particular problem which people have to come to grips with in their personal lives. To understand the background to the song might help people.
BP: What's your favourite method of transportation?
BONO: An angel's back. No, make that blindfolded.
Q: If the four of you were in a fight, I mean a truly tough brawl, which one of you would kick the other three's asses? (2001)
Larry: Bono
Adam: Bono
Edge: Bono
Bono: Me
"I'd like to give a message to the young people of America, and that is; we shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream."
-Grammy's acceptance speech, Bono
"I'm not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you've nothing to say, other than 'Help!'"
-Bono, 1986
"We make music you can have sex to"
"Contraf*ckingdiction? Sam Shepard said that smack in the centre of a contradiction is the place to be, and that's us"
-Bono, Select interview
"To be united, to be one is a great thing. But to respect differences may be even greater"
-Bono, Belfast Concert - 1997
"It costs a fortune to look this trashy"
-Bono
"Edge, for a minute I heard that awful word in my head ....progressive rock.....but only for a second."
-Bono, Bullet the Blue Sky, Memphis Liberty Bowl May 14, 1997
"I never wanted U2 to be the biggest rock 'n' roll band in the world, just the best."
"I remember when we started making Boy, I was 19 or 20 and I was still living at home with my father, just the two of us. I would come home, maybe three or four o'clock in the morning. I'd be sneaking up the stairs 'cause I didn't want to wake him - he'd be in a bad mood. [But} he'd wake up and say, 'What time is it?' I'd say, 'It's, uh, one.' He'd say, 'How long have ya been working on that record?' and I'd say, 'A week.' He'd say, 'Jeez, have ya not got it right yet?' He has a point!"
-U2: Road to Pop
"When I was three I thought the world revolved around me - I was RIGHT!"
-Bono, Zoo TV Tour
"Rock and roll is ridiculous, it's absurd. In the past U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss."
-U2: Road to Pop
"It would be wrong for me to say 'Yes, we can change the world with a song' -but every time I try writing, that's where I'm at. I'm not stupid. I'm aware of the futility of rock 'n' roll music. But I'm also aware of it's power."
-Bono
"Sex and music are still for me places where you glimpse God. Sex and art, I suppose, but unless you're going to get slain in the spirit by a Warhol or Rothko, I think for most of us art is music."
-Bono, At The End Of The World
"Most of our organization is run by women. We sort of work for them, really!"
-Bono, 1992
"Hellllooooo, we're on holidaaaay. Daddy, if that's you, we're not coming home until you take the horns off! Byeeeeee!"
-Jordan, Bono's four-year old, on Bono's home answering machine (called during concert 8/27/93)
We get our skis on and Bono falls over immediately...
-Adam, 1982
Excuse me but why have you taken your clothes off, Bono?
Edge on Bono's behalf: "For the same reason, that he's the lead singer. Because he's a rampant sex god with a huge ego."
-Sean O'Hagan, Details, Sep. 1992
"We don't write music for food; we write music for sex. Dinner parties just aren't our thing."
-Bono
Rock & roll is mutating into something else at the moment... Images are everything, and we want to be there when the sort of audiovisual-microchip-interactive music is born.
-Bono, 1997
Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades...
-Bono 1992
"It's your future. The only limits are the limits of your imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in - dream out loud. At high volume! That's what we do for a living. Lucky Bastards!"
Bono in concert, Dublin New Year's Day 1990
"You have no choice of subject matter. You write what's in your heart and on your mind--unless of course it's crap, in which case it means you've thought about it too much."
-Bono in an on-line chat in June of 1999
"Everyone argues, then we do what I say."
-Bono, March 1987
"I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet."
-Bono, May 1981
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"It's a con! It's a con. It's just a way of putting people off from the fact that it's a heavy mother. It's probably our most serious record - and yet it's got the least serious title. And it just fooled everyone. They all thought we were, you know, we'd lightened up. Which is totally untrue. We're miserable bastards."
-Bono on Achtung, Baby, March 1992
"Don't be shy. Why are you so shy?"
-Bono to his two daughters as they join their father onstage during 'Mysterious Ways'; 7-26-01 Paris
"They [U2's parents] weren't always supportive. Like Edges mother, Mrs. Edge we call her, had a little Volkswagen and she was a really cool lady and she would like put all the gear and all the band in the Volkswagen she'd like pick us up at 4 a.m. in the morning to take us home and she was out there so that worked. But my old man, when I came home at night, would be waiting at the top of the stairs with a machine gun, several knives, you know it was just target practice."
"Having played God for most of the 80's, I thought it would be fun to play the Devil.
-MacPhisto
"We don't do this for the money- we have loads of it. We're doing this for something much more worse actually. We're doing this for self respect."
-Bono on the Popmart tour
"I expect for fans to be f*cking brave and a bit brilliant."
"After introducing these beautiful women to my wife, they all lost interest in me! They're her friends now."
"There's 2 kinds of U2 fans - there's the ones that want us to get to number one because they just like the idea of us winning out there. Then there's the others who actually get disappointed when we get to number one because their little brother gets into it."
"I never knew I was Irish until I went to America."
"I used to find it uncomfortable to be around a lot of things. Then I found these goggles. I put them on and I found that I could go anywhere."
"We still have the same ideals, we've just learned to look like we don't."
"Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love. I think there is nothing more radical than two people's loving each other, because it's so infrequent."
-1983
"Grace overpowers karma. Grace rewards where rewards are not justified."
-Bono, 2000
"Actually it's hard to find four people this good-looking who are willing to write and record and perform together."
-Bono, 2001
"Sometimes being a rock star is like going through a sex change. A lot of people treat you like you're a girl, they stare at you and follow you down the street, 'till you don't know where to hide."
-Bono, 1993
"If you're a fifty pence piece in a pile of ten pence pieces, you have to shine so much brighter in order to be noticed."
-Bono
"Peace doesn't exist, it's brought into being."
-Bono, Zoo TV Interview
"As far as we're concerned the Eighties was just a rehearsal. I mean that."
-Bono
"Ali, my missus says "We are not 50,000 people...Shut up!
- Bono on Radio 1
"It is very hard for him to come back home and say, 'Yeah, I'm normal.' He wants to climb on the table at 11 o'clock every night and try to perform! He's wondering where are the 50,000 people. We sort of laugh at it now."
-Ali, Bono's wife, after ZooTV tour.
"He's the perfect rock and roll baby. He sleeps blissfully all day and roars all night. Ali is a saint; I try to do my bit, but I don't have the right breasts."
-Bono, about Elijah, his third child
"Making records is like making hot dogs. You'll probably enjoy them more if you don't see how it's done."
"I believe in love, love and money! I believe in poetry, electricity, cheap cosmetics. I believe in the sky over my head, and the silver shoes beneath my feet. I have a vision! I have a vision! Television!"
-Bono as The Mirrorball Man during the Zoo TV Tour
"The stage is but a platform shoe."
-1992
I've just realised that the facts aren't that important, and as long as there's some relation to the original, that's fine."
-Edge, on Bono's storytelling Site Links
"I like to see Bono working under pressure because he's a great improviser, and I think he sings words much better when he's a bit desperate."
-Adam
"I would certainly consider myself to be one of the inventors of the mullet. I think it comes down to Patrick Swayze or me."
-Bono
"The Holy Spirit is like a woman. Undependable. Joke! Joke!"
-Bono
"Actually '78 was a really exciting time for U2. We had just discovered F sharp minor. So we had the fourth chord and we'd only had three up to then."
"All the best songs are co-written by God, y'know."
-1987
"Paul was a cranky baby. He cried most of the day. Peace only settled on the new house after he went to bed where, exhausted from the trauma of his waking hours, he slept long and soundly"
-Bob, from "Unforgettable Fire - The Story of U2"
"It's the job of rock 'n' roll stars to set fire to themselves, and to, you know, sell flagellation, get up on a cross if they can, but definitely to die at 33."
"That's why I buy cheap cars."
-Bono on being a bad driver and owning a Mercedes
"No matter how much we wrap it up in tinsel and television, I'm still the geezer with the white flag."
"I've learned, for instance, how to listen to Michael Jackson records, I've figured it out. I just pretend I can't speak English. And I am a huge fan as a result. I mean that."
-Bono
"Years ago, before either of the boys were born, my wife and I went down to Sligo for a week. She went to a fortune teller and the fortune teller told my wife that she would have two children and one of them would have the initial P and he would be famous in whatever life he took up.
- Bob Hewson
"My own dad didn't encourage me much, maybe to save me from being disappointed. And my way of rebelling has been to prove I can go out and win the love of the whole world. But it's a funny need for compensation that makes you need fifty thousand screaming people telling you they love you in order for you to feel normal."
-Bono
"They never let Bono drive"
-Paul McGuiness.
"We don't let Bono drive because he likes to fly. And he doesn't really acknowledge corners. Larry knows the rules of the road."
-Adam
'If there are any journalists in the crowd, please note that neither my father nor my mother know I smoke. I tell my old man that I just smoke cigars and I don't inhale and he says, 'Apparently that will lead to stronger things.'
-Bono
"Songs are the language of the spirit...the melodies are how you sing to God. It's a deep language. But they can't explain everything, because really great songs touch places that you can't explain."
-Bono
"I've had sex. And sex with a woman, too. Also I started smoking - cigars first and then cigarettes - but I've had to stop because I couldn't hit the notes any more. There are full-voice B flats and B naturals which can be real bastards."
-Bono, on why his voice is deeper, 2001
"You preach what you need to hear. You sing your life, and you want it to count, I suppose. I'm hoping people are tired of singers whose mouths are filled with words that were written for them and they don't believe. Their arms and legs move in directions that other people choreograph."
-Bono, 2000 Rolling Stone
"My children will tell me to turn down my Bono-ness occasionally"
-Bono, 2001
"My wife Ali has an aversion to violent films, so she thought if she put on Chopper, which is made by a friend of ours, it might do the trick. And indeed it did! We got to the hospital 20 minutes before the baby was born. Twenty minutes! She's an extraordinary girl."
-Bono talks about the birth of John Abraham, 2001
"Innocence is more powerful than experience."
Bono, explaining the most important belief he'd left behind over the years.
"Some experiences are not worth making."
'To be is to do' Aristotle, 'to do is to be' Paul Sartre, 'do-be-do-be-do' Frank Sinatra.
-Edge in an on-line chat
When you're 16 you think you can take on the world - sometimes you're right.
-Bono
Find yourself in someone else don't find yourself in me.
What a marvellous human being you turned out to be.
I can forgive myself the white flag, what I can't forgive myself is the mullet of haircut.
-Bono
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
If we're not the best rock band in the world, we're nothing.
-Bono
Watch more TV.
Believe everything.
It could never happen here.
fake-condom
beLIEve
Death is a career move.
Fear is the opposite of faith.
Reject your weakness.
"Adam is taking the temperature more stoically-- he is simply adding another item of clothing every ten or fifteen minutes, like the Madonna of the Bizzaro World."
-U2 At The End Of The World
"I'll tell you, you learn a lot about women from dressing up in women's clothes! You learn that when a woman asks you "Do I look alright?" what she's really saying is "I have just spent a lot of time making myself uncomfortable. If I go out in this condition will I look foolish, or is it worth it?". When you ask a woman to go out to dinner it's not like asking one of your mates. She has to stop and think, "Hmm, dinner. That will be four hours of being uncomfortable." And if she says yes and then after four hours you say, "Lets go dancing, let's go to a club," and she says "No, I want to go home," it's because she has figured on four hours and now those four hours are up and she can only think of getting home and out of those clothes!"
-Adam
"I find it amusing that people think I'm together [because] I'm the most untogether person I know. In the band, they just say, 'here comes chaos.' Oh, I want to be together - it's my ambition to one day get my own life in order and tie it up with string and be as organized as somebody like Adam....Clayton's unbelievable. Field Marshal Clayton! For a guy who can stay out all night, if he needs to be up at 8 am, he'll be there at 8 am on the button."
-Bono, from U2: a Road to Pop
It's a very unusual thing to be in a band like this. It's like being in a street gang. And it's all very well being in a street gang when you're 16, but it's bloody weird when you're 32.
-Edge
It's funny, but even within the space of one song, you can feel the audience come and go. The only thing to do is kick into heavier gear and go for it. Some of our best gigs have been ones that start off badly and then become manic and unpredictable. Heavy but cool is the key.
-Edge
Adam has always been the roots man in the operation. On tour, it'll always be reggae, Aswad or Black Uhuru blasting out of his hotel room. Larry's more interested in the songs and simple structures. It's speak up or shut up. Write a song, three chords, say what you have to say. So he liked the directness of blues and something like "Trip Through Your Wires".
-Bono
I think we've come up songs where there was a whole process of music inspiring lyrics and lyrics then feeding back on the music and the whole thing becoming intense. And we found that because Bono had enough time to produce lyrics that really did work, it was much more satisfying.
-Adam
You could say this is forbidden ground for U2 because we're the group. But to be an optimist, you mustn't be blind or deaf to the world around you. "Running To Stand Still" is based on a real story while "Exit", I don't even know what the act is in that song. Some see it as a murder, others a suicide - and I don't mind. But the rhythm of the words is nearly as important in conveying the state of mind... If I can be objective and of course I can't, the album's real strength is that though you travel through deep tunnels and bleak landscapes, there's a joy at the heart of it.
-Bono
In its simplest form, I've always seen heroin as a very evil thing. Consequently that's always inspired a great fear of it in me so I can assume that anyone who takes it has a similar fear. To actually have their back so much against the wall, to be controlled by it, is something I can't understand. I haven't been that close to the edge. I've certainly been near it a few times in one way or another but to imagine that next stage is pretty much impossible.
-Adam
Well, I think, first of all, it's not your first reason for being on stage, to effect change in the political climate of a country. I don't know what the first reason is but it's not the first reason. But I like to think that U2 have already contributed to a turnaround in thinking.
-Bono
And if we have, it's not even the point, is it really? You don't write a song because you think it's going to change somebody. You write a song because that's the way you feel.
-Edge
You write a song because something hurts. I mean if you look at social change within America, that came from the Delta areas, the plantations or wherever. A lot of the change in America is rooted in blues music; that was what people listened to. It was the protest music of the time.
-Adam
In "With Or Without You" when it says "and you give yourself away and you give yourself away" -everybody else in the group knows what that means. It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed.
-Bono
God is in the room more than Elvis. It feels like there's a blessing on the band right now. ... In the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it's not just about airplay and chart position.
-Bono, Rolling Stone, May 10, 2001
One of the reasons I did not make it to Ireland this past summer....(the other reason was of course, the TOUR!) We would like to tell everyone that Ireland is a perfectly safe place for a vacation. All of us in the band live and work there. It's a great place for a vacation and we hope you will continue to visit. - Bono, Statement in April 2001 because of foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Ireland
The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never happened to me before. You know, on the tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog. It's very odd, 'cos I don't have a dog.
-Bono, during ZooTV
Edge, I said 'feel my BOOT because it's leather.' NOT 'feel my booty; it's like heaven'
-Bono
BONO:
"When I talk about love I'm thinking of unselfish love. Sex can be bought and sold just like anything else. But I think real love is about giving and not expecting anything in return." February 1983
"I think the music is much better than the musician, but also the audience is as much applauding itself as us. One of the things people forget about these large concerts is that the audience have heard the records, it knows the songs from the radio and the music has become part of their lives. When they hear those songs their own selves are caught up in them and they are in some way applauding the connection." June 1985
"I use our songs to wake myself up. It's like sticking a needle in your leg after it has gone to sleep." January 1986
"I break out in cold sweat at the thought of drawing out money. It's bureaucracy. Whether to choose the blue slip or...those kind of decisions are impossible! Going to a supermarket nearly gives me a breakdown! I can write three verses for a song sitting in the bath, but Post Offices make me go weak at the knees." December 1987
"Where's my public? My God, they've deserted me! This is a crisis. We'd better do something. Stir up some publicity or something. 'Bono in under-age sex orgy.' That should do it. I want my public back." December 1987
"It's an amazing feeling, to be able to do what you want, when you want. And that is, you don't have to kiss ass, you know that feeling? There's a lot of people out there have to kiss ass every day, every week - just to make a, you know, a buck. Just to...and I don't. I have to kiss Edge's ass occasionally, maybe Larry, but you know..."
"People ask me such serious questions - and I answer them: I'm that dumb."
"When we started it was hard to get the Edge to play aggressively. He is a gentleman and he plays guitar like a gentleman." February 1982
"The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high IQ, he's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords of songs, where he is and so on." January 1983
"Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn't play the usual lines." February 1982
"Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y'mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone elde did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock'n'roll was what he was going to do." 1988
"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls, all these 14 and 15 year old girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in at the windows at Larry. Larry just shouted at them to go away and then turned the hose on them. He's not interested in being a pop star. Larry likes to play the drums." May 1981
"Larry is the core of U2. He never does interviews. He just gets on with his life the way he always has. He still enjoys being back home with his mates." 1987
"I was one of those kids it was impossible to tie down from the very beginning. People used to - and family still do - put up the cross whenever I came in. They called me the Antichrist at age 8!" November 1987
"I had the loudest mouth. When we formed the group I was the lead guitar player, singer and songwriter. Nobody talked back at first. But then they talked me out of being lead guitar player and into being rhythm guitar player and into just being the singer. And then they tried to talk me out of being the singer and into being the manager. But I held on to that. Arrogance may have been the reason." May 1983
"I feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups. There's a certain chemistry that was special about the Stones, The Who and The Beatles and I think it's also special about U2." October 1981
"As a band we have a giant collective ego. It picks us up. Anyway, I don't think I'd be a good bank clerk. Or a hot dog salesman. I might be a good president." February 1982
"We don't allow people to make jokes in our company. Anyone on the crew who's ever seen with a smile on their faces we let go." May 1985
"What has kept us together? Fear of our manager!" February 1987
"All over America they had set up these clubs where they listen to U2 records and actually write cards for Amnesty. If you can inspire something on that scale, that's everything I could ask for. All in fact, I would ask for." November 1987
"I think the church is a big problem." February 1981
"I met this guy once in a mental hospital I was visiting. He introduced himself as Jesus Christ. I just said, 'Haven't we met before?' He said nothing. I asked him why, if he was the son of God, was he in a mental hospital? He said, 'Because it's my 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.' At that point I just cracked up. I asked him when the end of the world was going to come. He said April 1. I thought, 'Brilliant, pencil it into the diary. The world will end on April Fools' Day. Perfect.' " December 1987
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"The traffic is very fast here in London - the lights go green, and wham! they move off. In Dublin they'll cough, scratch and then away they go. It's like Dublin's in a constant state of amber." November 1979
"I would love to see a united Ireland, but I never could support a man who put a gun to somebody's head to see that dream come true." July 1987
"I didn't really begin spending a lot of time on lyrics until halfway into the Eighties." September 1993
"I don't know if any one song is the best song ever written. I find it very hard to listen to our songs because I have no real objectivity but I find the ones I like most are usually the ones that came the easiest."
"I listened to it last week for the first time in ages and I couldn't believe I was part of it. It's a huge record, I couldn't cope with it. I remember the pressure it was made under, I remember writing lyrics on the microphone and at ?50 an hour that's quite a pressure. Lillywhite was pacing up and down the studio...he coped really well. And the ironic thing about 'October' is that there's a kind of peace about the album even though it was recorded under that pressure." February 1982
"We broke up the band after 'War'. We literally broke up the band and formed another band with the same name and the same members. That's what we did. We had all those teething problems that you have when you start a new band." January 1985
"'Pride' is the best song we've evr written. We've done very few songs...normally we just make music. 'I Will Follow' was a song, but then the next one wasn't until 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. It's very different from the rest of the album though - there's nothing on there as straight as this." November 1984
"Greg Carroll ( to whom the Joshua Tree is dedicated ) was almost flesh and blood with U2. We met him in Auckland, New Zealand...and he worked with us on 'The Unforgettable Fire' Tour...he was one of those guys you say is too good for this world. We haven't and I don't think we ever will, get over his loss. And he died doing me a favour. I don't know what to say. He further made 1986 the most paradoxical year in our lives. That's why the desert attracted me as an image. That year was really a desert for us, it was a terrible time. Death is a real cold shower and I've had a lot. It's followed me around since I was a kid and I don't want to see any more of it." March 1987
"What other band in our position would learn the chords of 'All Along The Watchtower' five minutes before they went on-stage, play it live and record it? No one." October 1988
"(Lemon looks at) the power of imagination, the mind taking off in two different directions - in a Studio 54, Disco Duck setting. The falsetto was completely natural. I've always felt there was a fat woman trying to burst out of me. Don't know what Freud would make of that!" September 1993
"The world of rock'n'roll is as black as a mine but you could find a jeweldown there to make it all worthwhile."
"I think it would be rude and ignorant to say money isn't important to me because money is so important to a lot of people because they don't have it and I know I have it and I'm lucky and I thank God that I have money."
"People see a suite in the top of a hotel in Chicago and think it must be the most incredible place to be. But the more plush the surroundings, the poorer you feel in spirit sometimes."
"The difference between pop and rock'n'roll is that the pop star gets the nose job."
"I get people throwing too much responsibility on me. People literally arriving to die on my front lawn. People coming from all over the world to pinch a pair of y-fronts off my line." July 1987
"Anyone who needs 50,000 people a night to tell them they're OK has to have a bit missing. And I do mean that in terms of your sense of self, not necessarily in terms of sanity. And I don't think you start out that way but, as with Elvis, it's a place you can get to easily." August 1993
"As long as the records keep getting better, we'll keep together. As soon as they get worse, I'm off." April 1992
And in the whole half-century-long history of rock music there is a small number of bands, a number so small you could count to it without running out of fingers, who steal into your heart and become a part of how you see the world, how you tell and understand the truth, even when you're old and deaf and foolish. On your deathbed you'll hear them sing to you as you drift down the tunnel towards the light. -Salman Rushdie
I am still amazed at how big, how enormous a love and mystery God is, and how small
are the minds that attempt to corral this life force into rules and taboos, cults and sects.
Mercifully, God transcends the church."
-- Bono, commenting on the book, "They've Hijacked God" by Northern
From an interview w/ B.P. Fallon:
BP: Did you ever think you were going to die?
LARRY: Yes, only on the back of Bono's motorbike!
EDGE: Only on the back of Bono's motorbike.
ADAM: Only in the back of Bono's car.
BONO: Die, no. Squashed, yes.
BP: Who's your hero?
Bono: Ali. She's so sane although she chooses to live with me.
BP: What would you like to have that you don't?
Bono: Feet. My legs just don't seem to end.
BP: Have you ever told a lie?
Bono: Everything I say is a lie.
BP: When did you last cry and why?
Bono: I suppose I do everything in extremes - laugh a lot, cry a lot, fight a lot, make love a lot, eat too much, drink too much, try too much, cry too much. Pass the onion..
Q: "Do you consider yourself a good dancer, Bono?"
Bono: "I dance much better horizontally than vertically."
Q : "Most interesting question asked recently by a fan?"
Bono : "Have you seen Bono?"
'Propaganda' Issue 27, '97
Q: Where do you think you'd be now if U2 weren't formed?
Bono: Hmmm, that's an interesting one. God almighty. Whooho, Get me another beer!
Adam: I think Dublin wouldn't have contained you. I think you would have been off somewhere.
Bono: I don't know. To be honest, U2 saved my life in a way because I am unemployable. There's nothing else I can do.
BP: If you were an animal, which animal would you be?
ADAM: A giraffe. Why? 'Cos then you'd meet other giraffes.
EDGE: One of the big cats, so I could just s-t-r-e-t-c-h out in the sun, a panther or a cheetah.
BONO: A wildebeest. You'd have to have a sense of humour with a name like that.
LARRY: Aaah! A fly. Because Bono wrote about a fly and what's good enough for Bono is good enough for me.
What irritates the others about you?
Bono: My temper.
Adam: I'm slow.
Edge: I spend too long on the computer.
Larry: I'm the "negative" one.
From the BP Fallon interview (circa ZooTV)
BP: When did you last wash the dishes or hoover?
BONO: Just last night, I washed the dishes and the hoover...
EDGE: Last time we played house.
LARRY: I've just finished...
ADAM: I'd say in the mid seventies.
BP: Are you a star?
ADAM: Wishin'...
LARRY: I've been called worse.
EDGE: Only after dark.
BONO: No, a firework.....Well more of a banger, really.
BP: Is Elvis alive or dead?
ADAM: Elvis is alive.
BP: Have you ever seen him?
ADAM: I see him every day.
BP: Is he in the band?
ADAM: He thinks he is.
BP: What's in your pockets?
LARRY: Buttons for opening my gate (empties pockets) Lipsil, wallet, packet of Silk Cut cigarettes-nurses cigarettes! - homeopathic gear for sore throats, lighter, penknife.
BONO: I have no pockets.
ADAM: A load of phone numbers. Whose? Nah, I'm not telling.
EDGE: I don't have any in my trousers. In my coat (pulls everything out) there's my Gitanes, my Zippo, my keys and an awful lot of guitar picks. I pick them up every time I leave rehearsal. I never put them back so on a given day it could be anything from ten to about fifty 'cos they just build up. I sometimes think they breed in there.
BP: What's the best thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
ADAM: The way I might like at you.
LARRY: My dog.
EDGE: I don't snore.
BP: And what's the worst thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
LARRY: I'm black and white.
EDGE: I'm so single-minded on some things that I find it hard to keep other things together. When I'm really concentrating on an album or tour or something, a lot of other things in my life get shelved.
ADAM: I'm very bad in the mornings, grumpy. I don't say very much.
BP: And how long does it take you to come to?
ADAM: About a litre of coffee and two hours.
There's now a greater sensuality, which relates to the maturing of U2.
Bono: Yeah, you just stretch it out and realise a whisper can be louder than a scream. You learn that there's a time for letting go and a time for holding back.
What was the impact personally of seeing people going through the deal of drug abuse?
Bono: Ah, I wrote the song, didn't I? I just wrote "Bad". The point is Dublin is rife with a particular problem which people have to come to grips with in their personal lives. To understand the background to the song might help people.
BP: What's your favourite method of transportation?
BONO: An angel's back. No, make that blindfolded.
Q: If the four of you were in a fight, I mean a truly tough brawl, which one of you would kick the other three's asses? (2001)
Larry: Bono
Adam: Bono
Edge: Bono
Bono: Me
"I'd like to give a message to the young people of America, and that is; we shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream."
-Grammy's acceptance speech, Bono
"I'm not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you've nothing to say, other than 'Help!'"
-Bono, 1986
"We make music you can have sex to"
"Contraf*ckingdiction? Sam Shepard said that smack in the centre of a contradiction is the place to be, and that's us"
-Bono, Select interview
"To be united, to be one is a great thing. But to respect differences may be even greater"
-Bono, Belfast Concert - 1997
"It costs a fortune to look this trashy"
-Bono
"Edge, for a minute I heard that awful word in my head ....progressive rock.....but only for a second."
-Bono, Bullet the Blue Sky, Memphis Liberty Bowl May 14, 1997
"I never wanted U2 to be the biggest rock 'n' roll band in the world, just the best."
"I remember when we started making Boy, I was 19 or 20 and I was still living at home with my father, just the two of us. I would come home, maybe three or four o'clock in the morning. I'd be sneaking up the stairs 'cause I didn't want to wake him - he'd be in a bad mood. [But} he'd wake up and say, 'What time is it?' I'd say, 'It's, uh, one.' He'd say, 'How long have ya been working on that record?' and I'd say, 'A week.' He'd say, 'Jeez, have ya not got it right yet?' He has a point!"
-U2: Road to Pop
"When I was three I thought the world revolved around me - I was RIGHT!"
-Bono, Zoo TV Tour
"Rock and roll is ridiculous, it's absurd. In the past U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss."
-U2: Road to Pop
"It would be wrong for me to say 'Yes, we can change the world with a song' -but every time I try writing, that's where I'm at. I'm not stupid. I'm aware of the futility of rock 'n' roll music. But I'm also aware of it's power."
-Bono
"Sex and music are still for me places where you glimpse God. Sex and art, I suppose, but unless you're going to get slain in the spirit by a Warhol or Rothko, I think for most of us art is music."
-Bono, At The End Of The World
"Most of our organization is run by women. We sort of work for them, really!"
-Bono, 1992
"Hellllooooo, we're on holidaaaay. Daddy, if that's you, we're not coming home until you take the horns off! Byeeeeee!"
-Jordan, Bono's four-year old, on Bono's home answering machine (called during concert 8/27/93)
We get our skis on and Bono falls over immediately...
-Adam, 1982
Excuse me but why have you taken your clothes off, Bono?
Edge on Bono's behalf: "For the same reason, that he's the lead singer. Because he's a rampant sex god with a huge ego."
-Sean O'Hagan, Details, Sep. 1992
"We don't write music for food; we write music for sex. Dinner parties just aren't our thing."
-Bono
Rock & roll is mutating into something else at the moment... Images are everything, and we want to be there when the sort of audiovisual-microchip-interactive music is born.
-Bono, 1997
Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades...
-Bono 1992
"It's your future. The only limits are the limits of your imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in - dream out loud. At high volume! That's what we do for a living. Lucky Bastards!"
Bono in concert, Dublin New Year's Day 1990
"You have no choice of subject matter. You write what's in your heart and on your mind--unless of course it's crap, in which case it means you've thought about it too much."
-Bono in an on-line chat in June of 1999
"Everyone argues, then we do what I say."
-Bono, March 1987
"I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet."
-Bono, May 1981
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"It's a con! It's a con. It's just a way of putting people off from the fact that it's a heavy mother. It's probably our most serious record - and yet it's got the least serious title. And it just fooled everyone. They all thought we were, you know, we'd lightened up. Which is totally untrue. We're miserable bastards."
-Bono on Achtung, Baby, March 1992
"Don't be shy. Why are you so shy?"
-Bono to his two daughters as they join their father onstage during 'Mysterious Ways'; 7-26-01 Paris
"They [U2's parents] weren't always supportive. Like Edges mother, Mrs. Edge we call her, had a little Volkswagen and she was a really cool lady and she would like put all the gear and all the band in the Volkswagen she'd like pick us up at 4 a.m. in the morning to take us home and she was out there so that worked. But my old man, when I came home at night, would be waiting at the top of the stairs with a machine gun, several knives, you know it was just target practice."
"Having played God for most of the 80's, I thought it would be fun to play the Devil.
-MacPhisto
"We don't do this for the money- we have loads of it. We're doing this for something much more worse actually. We're doing this for self respect."
-Bono on the Popmart tour
"I expect for fans to be f*cking brave and a bit brilliant."
"After introducing these beautiful women to my wife, they all lost interest in me! They're her friends now."
"There's 2 kinds of U2 fans - there's the ones that want us to get to number one because they just like the idea of us winning out there. Then there's the others who actually get disappointed when we get to number one because their little brother gets into it."
"I never knew I was Irish until I went to America."
"I used to find it uncomfortable to be around a lot of things. Then I found these goggles. I put them on and I found that I could go anywhere."
"We still have the same ideals, we've just learned to look like we don't."
"Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love. I think there is nothing more radical than two people's loving each other, because it's so infrequent."
-1983
"Grace overpowers karma. Grace rewards where rewards are not justified."
-Bono, 2000
"Actually it's hard to find four people this good-looking who are willing to write and record and perform together."
-Bono, 2001
"Sometimes being a rock star is like going through a sex change. A lot of people treat you like you're a girl, they stare at you and follow you down the street, 'till you don't know where to hide."
-Bono, 1993
"If you're a fifty pence piece in a pile of ten pence pieces, you have to shine so much brighter in order to be noticed."
-Bono
"Peace doesn't exist, it's brought into being."
-Bono, Zoo TV Interview
"As far as we're concerned the Eighties was just a rehearsal. I mean that."
-Bono
"Ali, my missus says "We are not 50,000 people...Shut up!
- Bono on Radio 1
"It is very hard for him to come back home and say, 'Yeah, I'm normal.' He wants to climb on the table at 11 o'clock every night and try to perform! He's wondering where are the 50,000 people. We sort of laugh at it now."
-Ali, Bono's wife, after ZooTV tour.
"He's the perfect rock and roll baby. He sleeps blissfully all day and roars all night. Ali is a saint; I try to do my bit, but I don't have the right breasts."
-Bono, about Elijah, his third child
"Making records is like making hot dogs. You'll probably enjoy them more if you don't see how it's done."
"I believe in love, love and money! I believe in poetry, electricity, cheap cosmetics. I believe in the sky over my head, and the silver shoes beneath my feet. I have a vision! I have a vision! Television!"
-Bono as The Mirrorball Man during the Zoo TV Tour
"The stage is but a platform shoe."
-1992
I've just realised that the facts aren't that important, and as long as there's some relation to the original, that's fine."
-Edge, on Bono's storytelling Site Links
"I like to see Bono working under pressure because he's a great improviser, and I think he sings words much better when he's a bit desperate."
-Adam
"I would certainly consider myself to be one of the inventors of the mullet. I think it comes down to Patrick Swayze or me."
-Bono
"The Holy Spirit is like a woman. Undependable. Joke! Joke!"
-Bono
"Actually '78 was a really exciting time for U2. We had just discovered F sharp minor. So we had the fourth chord and we'd only had three up to then."
"All the best songs are co-written by God, y'know."
-1987
"Paul was a cranky baby. He cried most of the day. Peace only settled on the new house after he went to bed where, exhausted from the trauma of his waking hours, he slept long and soundly"
-Bob, from "Unforgettable Fire - The Story of U2"
"It's the job of rock 'n' roll stars to set fire to themselves, and to, you know, sell flagellation, get up on a cross if they can, but definitely to die at 33."
"That's why I buy cheap cars."
-Bono on being a bad driver and owning a Mercedes
"No matter how much we wrap it up in tinsel and television, I'm still the geezer with the white flag."
"I've learned, for instance, how to listen to Michael Jackson records, I've figured it out. I just pretend I can't speak English. And I am a huge fan as a result. I mean that."
-Bono
"Years ago, before either of the boys were born, my wife and I went down to Sligo for a week. She went to a fortune teller and the fortune teller told my wife that she would have two children and one of them would have the initial P and he would be famous in whatever life he took up.
- Bob Hewson
"My own dad didn't encourage me much, maybe to save me from being disappointed. And my way of rebelling has been to prove I can go out and win the love of the whole world. But it's a funny need for compensation that makes you need fifty thousand screaming people telling you they love you in order for you to feel normal."
-Bono
"They never let Bono drive"
-Paul McGuiness.
"We don't let Bono drive because he likes to fly. And he doesn't really acknowledge corners. Larry knows the rules of the road."
-Adam
'If there are any journalists in the crowd, please note that neither my father nor my mother know I smoke. I tell my old man that I just smoke cigars and I don't inhale and he says, 'Apparently that will lead to stronger things.'
-Bono
"Songs are the language of the spirit...the melodies are how you sing to God. It's a deep language. But they can't explain everything, because really great songs touch places that you can't explain."
-Bono
"I've had sex. And sex with a woman, too. Also I started smoking - cigars first and then cigarettes - but I've had to stop because I couldn't hit the notes any more. There are full-voice B flats and B naturals which can be real bastards."
-Bono, on why his voice is deeper, 2001
"You preach what you need to hear. You sing your life, and you want it to count, I suppose. I'm hoping people are tired of singers whose mouths are filled with words that were written for them and they don't believe. Their arms and legs move in directions that other people choreograph."
-Bono, 2000 Rolling Stone
"My children will tell me to turn down my Bono-ness occasionally"
-Bono, 2001
"My wife Ali has an aversion to violent films, so she thought if she put on Chopper, which is made by a friend of ours, it might do the trick. And indeed it did! We got to the hospital 20 minutes before the baby was born. Twenty minutes! She's an extraordinary girl."
-Bono talks about the birth of John Abraham, 2001
"Innocence is more powerful than experience."
Bono, explaining the most important belief he'd left behind over the years.
"Some experiences are not worth making."
'To be is to do' Aristotle, 'to do is to be' Paul Sartre, 'do-be-do-be-do' Frank Sinatra.
-Edge in an on-line chat
When you're 16 you think you can take on the world - sometimes you're right.
-Bono
Find yourself in someone else don't find yourself in me.
What a marvellous human being you turned out to be.
I can forgive myself the white flag, what I can't forgive myself is the mullet of haircut.
-Bono
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
If we're not the best rock band in the world, we're nothing.
-Bono
Watch more TV.
Believe everything.
It could never happen here.
fake-condom
beLIEve
Death is a career move.
Fear is the opposite of faith.
Reject your weakness.
"Adam is taking the temperature more stoically-- he is simply adding another item of clothing every ten or fifteen minutes, like the Madonna of the Bizzaro World."
-U2 At The End Of The World
"I'll tell you, you learn a lot about women from dressing up in women's clothes! You learn that when a woman asks you "Do I look alright?" what she's really saying is "I have just spent a lot of time making myself uncomfortable. If I go out in this condition will I look foolish, or is it worth it?". When you ask a woman to go out to dinner it's not like asking one of your mates. She has to stop and think, "Hmm, dinner. That will be four hours of being uncomfortable." And if she says yes and then after four hours you say, "Lets go dancing, let's go to a club," and she says "No, I want to go home," it's because she has figured on four hours and now those four hours are up and she can only think of getting home and out of those clothes!"
-Adam
"I find it amusing that people think I'm together [because] I'm the most untogether person I know. In the band, they just say, 'here comes chaos.' Oh, I want to be together - it's my ambition to one day get my own life in order and tie it up with string and be as organized as somebody like Adam....Clayton's unbelievable. Field Marshal Clayton! For a guy who can stay out all night, if he needs to be up at 8 am, he'll be there at 8 am on the button."
-Bono, from U2: a Road to Pop
It's a very unusual thing to be in a band like this. It's like being in a street gang. And it's all very well being in a street gang when you're 16, but it's bloody weird when you're 32.
-Edge
It's funny, but even within the space of one song, you can feel the audience come and go. The only thing to do is kick into heavier gear and go for it. Some of our best gigs have been ones that start off badly and then become manic and unpredictable. Heavy but cool is the key.
-Edge
Adam has always been the roots man in the operation. On tour, it'll always be reggae, Aswad or Black Uhuru blasting out of his hotel room. Larry's more interested in the songs and simple structures. It's speak up or shut up. Write a song, three chords, say what you have to say. So he liked the directness of blues and something like "Trip Through Your Wires".
-Bono
I think we've come up songs where there was a whole process of music inspiring lyrics and lyrics then feeding back on the music and the whole thing becoming intense. And we found that because Bono had enough time to produce lyrics that really did work, it was much more satisfying.
-Adam
You could say this is forbidden ground for U2 because we're the group. But to be an optimist, you mustn't be blind or deaf to the world around you. "Running To Stand Still" is based on a real story while "Exit", I don't even know what the act is in that song. Some see it as a murder, others a suicide - and I don't mind. But the rhythm of the words is nearly as important in conveying the state of mind... If I can be objective and of course I can't, the album's real strength is that though you travel through deep tunnels and bleak landscapes, there's a joy at the heart of it.
-Bono
In its simplest form, I've always seen heroin as a very evil thing. Consequently that's always inspired a great fear of it in me so I can assume that anyone who takes it has a similar fear. To actually have their back so much against the wall, to be controlled by it, is something I can't understand. I haven't been that close to the edge. I've certainly been near it a few times in one way or another but to imagine that next stage is pretty much impossible.
-Adam
Well, I think, first of all, it's not your first reason for being on stage, to effect change in the political climate of a country. I don't know what the first reason is but it's not the first reason. But I like to think that U2 have already contributed to a turnaround in thinking.
-Bono
And if we have, it's not even the point, is it really? You don't write a song because you think it's going to change somebody. You write a song because that's the way you feel.
-Edge
You write a song because something hurts. I mean if you look at social change within America, that came from the Delta areas, the plantations or wherever. A lot of the change in America is rooted in blues music; that was what people listened to. It was the protest music of the time.
-Adam
In "With Or Without You" when it says "and you give yourself away and you give yourself away" -everybody else in the group knows what that means. It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed.
-Bono
God is in the room more than Elvis. It feels like there's a blessing on the band right now. ... In the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it's not just about airplay and chart position.
-Bono, Rolling Stone, May 10, 2001
One of the reasons I did not make it to Ireland this past summer....(the other reason was of course, the TOUR!) We would like to tell everyone that Ireland is a perfectly safe place for a vacation. All of us in the band live and work there. It's a great place for a vacation and we hope you will continue to visit. - Bono, Statement in April 2001 because of foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Ireland
The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never happened to me before. You know, on the tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog. It's very odd, 'cos I don't have a dog.
-Bono, during ZooTV
Edge, I said 'feel my BOOT because it's leather.' NOT 'feel my booty; it's like heaven'
-Bono
BONO:
"When I talk about love I'm thinking of unselfish love. Sex can be bought and sold just like anything else. But I think real love is about giving and not expecting anything in return." February 1983
"I think the music is much better than the musician, but also the audience is as much applauding itself as us. One of the things people forget about these large concerts is that the audience have heard the records, it knows the songs from the radio and the music has become part of their lives. When they hear those songs their own selves are caught up in them and they are in some way applauding the connection." June 1985
"I use our songs to wake myself up. It's like sticking a needle in your leg after it has gone to sleep." January 1986
"I break out in cold sweat at the thought of drawing out money. It's bureaucracy. Whether to choose the blue slip or...those kind of decisions are impossible! Going to a supermarket nearly gives me a breakdown! I can write three verses for a song sitting in the bath, but Post Offices make me go weak at the knees." December 1987
"Where's my public? My God, they've deserted me! This is a crisis. We'd better do something. Stir up some publicity or something. 'Bono in under-age sex orgy.' That should do it. I want my public back." December 1987
"It's an amazing feeling, to be able to do what you want, when you want. And that is, you don't have to kiss ass, you know that feeling? There's a lot of people out there have to kiss ass every day, every week - just to make a, you know, a buck. Just to...and I don't. I have to kiss Edge's ass occasionally, maybe Larry, but you know..."
"People ask me such serious questions - and I answer them: I'm that dumb."
"When we started it was hard to get the Edge to play aggressively. He is a gentleman and he plays guitar like a gentleman." February 1982
"The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high IQ, he's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords of songs, where he is and so on." January 1983
"Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn't play the usual lines." February 1982
"Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y'mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone elde did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock'n'roll was what he was going to do." 1988
"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls, all these 14 and 15 year old girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in at the windows at Larry. Larry just shouted at them to go away and then turned the hose on them. He's not interested in being a pop star. Larry likes to play the drums." May 1981
"Larry is the core of U2. He never does interviews. He just gets on with his life the way he always has. He still enjoys being back home with his mates." 1987
"I was one of those kids it was impossible to tie down from the very beginning. People used to - and family still do - put up the cross whenever I came in. They called me the Antichrist at age 8!" November 1987
"I had the loudest mouth. When we formed the group I was the lead guitar player, singer and songwriter. Nobody talked back at first. But then they talked me out of being lead guitar player and into being rhythm guitar player and into just being the singer. And then they tried to talk me out of being the singer and into being the manager. But I held on to that. Arrogance may have been the reason." May 1983
"I feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups. There's a certain chemistry that was special about the Stones, The Who and The Beatles and I think it's also special about U2." October 1981
"As a band we have a giant collective ego. It picks us up. Anyway, I don't think I'd be a good bank clerk. Or a hot dog salesman. I might be a good president." February 1982
"We don't allow people to make jokes in our company. Anyone on the crew who's ever seen with a smile on their faces we let go." May 1985
"What has kept us together? Fear of our manager!" February 1987
"All over America they had set up these clubs where they listen to U2 records and actually write cards for Amnesty. If you can inspire something on that scale, that's everything I could ask for. All in fact, I would ask for." November 1987
"I think the church is a big problem." February 1981
"I met this guy once in a mental hospital I was visiting. He introduced himself as Jesus Christ. I just said, 'Haven't we met before?' He said nothing. I asked him why, if he was the son of God, was he in a mental hospital? He said, 'Because it's my 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.' At that point I just cracked up. I asked him when the end of the world was going to come. He said April 1. I thought, 'Brilliant, pencil it into the diary. The world will end on April Fools' Day. Perfect.' " December 1987
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"The traffic is very fast here in London - the lights go green, and wham! they move off. In Dublin they'll cough, scratch and then away they go. It's like Dublin's in a constant state of amber." November 1979
"I would love to see a united Ireland, but I never could support a man who put a gun to somebody's head to see that dream come true." July 1987
"I didn't really begin spending a lot of time on lyrics until halfway into the Eighties." September 1993
"I don't know if any one song is the best song ever written. I find it very hard to listen to our songs because I have no real objectivity but I find the ones I like most are usually the ones that came the easiest."
"I listened to it last week for the first time in ages and I couldn't believe I was part of it. It's a huge record, I couldn't cope with it. I remember the pressure it was made under, I remember writing lyrics on the microphone and at ?50 an hour that's quite a pressure. Lillywhite was pacing up and down the studio...he coped really well. And the ironic thing about 'October' is that there's a kind of peace about the album even though it was recorded under that pressure." February 1982
"We broke up the band after 'War'. We literally broke up the band and formed another band with the same name and the same members. That's what we did. We had all those teething problems that you have when you start a new band." January 1985
"'Pride' is the best song we've evr written. We've done very few songs...normally we just make music. 'I Will Follow' was a song, but then the next one wasn't until 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. It's very different from the rest of the album though - there's nothing on there as straight as this." November 1984
"Greg Carroll ( to whom the Joshua Tree is dedicated ) was almost flesh and blood with U2. We met him in Auckland, New Zealand...and he worked with us on 'The Unforgettable Fire' Tour...he was one of those guys you say is too good for this world. We haven't and I don't think we ever will, get over his loss. And he died doing me a favour. I don't know what to say. He further made 1986 the most paradoxical year in our lives. That's why the desert attracted me as an image. That year was really a desert for us, it was a terrible time. Death is a real cold shower and I've had a lot. It's followed me around since I was a kid and I don't want to see any more of it." March 1987
"What other band in our position would learn the chords of 'All Along The Watchtower' five minutes before they went on-stage, play it live and record it? No one." October 1988
"(Lemon looks at) the power of imagination, the mind taking off in two different directions - in a Studio 54, Disco Duck setting. The falsetto was completely natural. I've always felt there was a fat woman trying to burst out of me. Don't know what Freud would make of that!" September 1993
"The world of rock'n'roll is as black as a mine but you could find a jeweldown there to make it all worthwhile."
"I think it would be rude and ignorant to say money isn't important to me because money is so important to a lot of people because they don't have it and I know I have it and I'm lucky and I thank God that I have money."
"People see a suite in the top of a hotel in Chicago and think it must be the most incredible place to be. But the more plush the surroundings, the poorer you feel in spirit sometimes."
"The difference between pop and rock'n'roll is that the pop star gets the nose job."
"I get people throwing too much responsibility on me. People literally arriving to die on my front lawn. People coming from all over the world to pinch a pair of y-fronts off my line." July 1987
"Anyone who needs 50,000 people a night to tell them they're OK has to have a bit missing. And I do mean that in terms of your sense of self, not necessarily in terms of sanity. And I don't think you start out that way but, as with Elvis, it's a place you can get to easily." August 1993
"As long as the records keep getting better, we'll keep together. As soon as they get worse, I'm off." April 1992
And in the whole half-century-long history of rock music there is a small number of bands, a number so small you could count to it without running out of fingers, who steal into your heart and become a part of how you see the world, how you tell and understand the truth, even when you're old and deaf and foolish. On your deathbed you'll hear them sing to you as you drift down the tunnel towards the light. -Salman Rushdie
I am still amazed at how big, how enormous a love and mystery God is, and how small
are the minds that attempt to corral this life force into rules and taboos, cults and sects.
Mercifully, God transcends the church."
-- Bono, commenting on the book, "They've Hijacked God" by Northern
FallingStar
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2001
- Messages
- 8,800
Wow, that is the longest post I've ever seen----->and I posted it! *is proud*
*BOOMCHAA!*
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
FallingStar said:If you need another 13 pages full of quotes!
From an interview w/ B.P. Fallon:
BP: Did you ever think you were going to die?
LARRY: Yes, only on the back of Bono's motorbike!
EDGE: Only on the back of Bono's motorbike.
ADAM: Only in the back of Bono's car.
BONO: Die, no. Squashed, yes.
BP: Who's your hero?
Bono: Ali. She's so sane although she chooses to live with me.
BP: What would you like to have that you don't?
Bono: Feet. My legs just don't seem to end.
BP: Have you ever told a lie?
Bono: Everything I say is a lie.
BP: When did you last cry and why?
Bono: I suppose I do everything in extremes - laugh a lot, cry a lot, fight a lot, make love a lot, eat too much, drink too much, try too much, cry too much. Pass the onion..
Q: "Do you consider yourself a good dancer, Bono?"
Bono: "I dance much better horizontally than vertically."
Q : "Most interesting question asked recently by a fan?"
Bono : "Have you seen Bono?"
'Propaganda' Issue 27, '97
Q: Where do you think you'd be now if U2 weren't formed?
Bono: Hmmm, that's an interesting one. God almighty. Whooho, Get me another beer!
Adam: I think Dublin wouldn't have contained you. I think you would have been off somewhere.
Bono: I don't know. To be honest, U2 saved my life in a way because I am unemployable. There's nothing else I can do.
BP: If you were an animal, which animal would you be?
ADAM: A giraffe. Why? 'Cos then you'd meet other giraffes.
EDGE: One of the big cats, so I could just s-t-r-e-t-c-h out in the sun, a panther or a cheetah.
BONO: A wildebeest. You'd have to have a sense of humour with a name like that.
LARRY: Aaah! A fly. Because Bono wrote about a fly and what's good enough for Bono is good enough for me.
What irritates the others about you?
Bono: My temper.
Adam: I'm slow.
Edge: I spend too long on the computer.
Larry: I'm the "negative" one.
From the BP Fallon interview (circa ZooTV)
BP: When did you last wash the dishes or hoover?
BONO: Just last night, I washed the dishes and the hoover...
EDGE: Last time we played house.
LARRY: I've just finished...
ADAM: I'd say in the mid seventies.
BP: Are you a star?
ADAM: Wishin'...
LARRY: I've been called worse.
EDGE: Only after dark.
BONO: No, a firework.....Well more of a banger, really.
BP: Is Elvis alive or dead?
ADAM: Elvis is alive.
BP: Have you ever seen him?
ADAM: I see him every day.
BP: Is he in the band?
ADAM: He thinks he is.
BP: What's in your pockets?
LARRY: Buttons for opening my gate (empties pockets) Lipsil, wallet, packet of Silk Cut cigarettes-nurses cigarettes! - homeopathic gear for sore throats, lighter, penknife.
BONO: I have no pockets.
ADAM: A load of phone numbers. Whose? Nah, I'm not telling.
EDGE: I don't have any in my trousers. In my coat (pulls everything out) there's my Gitanes, my Zippo, my keys and an awful lot of guitar picks. I pick them up every time I leave rehearsal. I never put them back so on a given day it could be anything from ten to about fifty 'cos they just build up. I sometimes think they breed in there.
BP: What's the best thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
ADAM: The way I might like at you.
LARRY: My dog.
EDGE: I don't snore.
BP: And what's the worst thing about you?
BONO: My nose.
LARRY: I'm black and white.
EDGE: I'm so single-minded on some things that I find it hard to keep other things together. When I'm really concentrating on an album or tour or something, a lot of other things in my life get shelved.
ADAM: I'm very bad in the mornings, grumpy. I don't say very much.
BP: And how long does it take you to come to?
ADAM: About a litre of coffee and two hours.
There's now a greater sensuality, which relates to the maturing of U2.
Bono: Yeah, you just stretch it out and realise a whisper can be louder than a scream. You learn that there's a time for letting go and a time for holding back.
What was the impact personally of seeing people going through the deal of drug abuse?
Bono: Ah, I wrote the song, didn't I? I just wrote "Bad". The point is Dublin is rife with a particular problem which people have to come to grips with in their personal lives. To understand the background to the song might help people.
BP: What's your favourite method of transportation?
BONO: An angel's back. No, make that blindfolded.
Q: If the four of you were in a fight, I mean a truly tough brawl, which one of you would kick the other three's asses? (2001)
Larry: Bono
Adam: Bono
Edge: Bono
Bono: Me
"I'd like to give a message to the young people of America, and that is; we shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream."
-Grammy's acceptance speech, Bono
"I'm not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you've nothing to say, other than 'Help!'"
-Bono, 1986
"We make music you can have sex to"
"Contraf*ckingdiction? Sam Shepard said that smack in the centre of a contradiction is the place to be, and that's us"
-Bono, Select interview
"To be united, to be one is a great thing. But to respect differences may be even greater"
-Bono, Belfast Concert - 1997
"It costs a fortune to look this trashy"
-Bono
"Edge, for a minute I heard that awful word in my head ....progressive rock.....but only for a second."
-Bono, Bullet the Blue Sky, Memphis Liberty Bowl May 14, 1997
"I never wanted U2 to be the biggest rock 'n' roll band in the world, just the best."
"I remember when we started making Boy, I was 19 or 20 and I was still living at home with my father, just the two of us. I would come home, maybe three or four o'clock in the morning. I'd be sneaking up the stairs 'cause I didn't want to wake him - he'd be in a bad mood. [But} he'd wake up and say, 'What time is it?' I'd say, 'It's, uh, one.' He'd say, 'How long have ya been working on that record?' and I'd say, 'A week.' He'd say, 'Jeez, have ya not got it right yet?' He has a point!"
-U2: Road to Pop
"When I was three I thought the world revolved around me - I was RIGHT!"
-Bono, Zoo TV Tour
"Rock and roll is ridiculous, it's absurd. In the past U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss."
-U2: Road to Pop
"It would be wrong for me to say 'Yes, we can change the world with a song' -but every time I try writing, that's where I'm at. I'm not stupid. I'm aware of the futility of rock 'n' roll music. But I'm also aware of it's power."
-Bono
"Sex and music are still for me places where you glimpse God. Sex and art, I suppose, but unless you're going to get slain in the spirit by a Warhol or Rothko, I think for most of us art is music."
-Bono, At The End Of The World
"Most of our organization is run by women. We sort of work for them, really!"
-Bono, 1992
"Hellllooooo, we're on holidaaaay. Daddy, if that's you, we're not coming home until you take the horns off! Byeeeeee!"
-Jordan, Bono's four-year old, on Bono's home answering machine (called during concert 8/27/93)
We get our skis on and Bono falls over immediately...
-Adam, 1982
Excuse me but why have you taken your clothes off, Bono?
Edge on Bono's behalf: "For the same reason, that he's the lead singer. Because he's a rampant sex god with a huge ego."
-Sean O'Hagan, Details, Sep. 1992
"We don't write music for food; we write music for sex. Dinner parties just aren't our thing."
-Bono
Rock & roll is mutating into something else at the moment... Images are everything, and we want to be there when the sort of audiovisual-microchip-interactive music is born.
-Bono, 1997
Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades...
-Bono 1992
"It's your future. The only limits are the limits of your imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in - dream out loud. At high volume! That's what we do for a living. Lucky Bastards!"
Bono in concert, Dublin New Year's Day 1990
"You have no choice of subject matter. You write what's in your heart and on your mind--unless of course it's crap, in which case it means you've thought about it too much."
-Bono in an on-line chat in June of 1999
"Everyone argues, then we do what I say."
-Bono, March 1987
"I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet."
-Bono, May 1981
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"It's a con! It's a con. It's just a way of putting people off from the fact that it's a heavy mother. It's probably our most serious record - and yet it's got the least serious title. And it just fooled everyone. They all thought we were, you know, we'd lightened up. Which is totally untrue. We're miserable bastards."
-Bono on Achtung, Baby, March 1992
"Don't be shy. Why are you so shy?"
-Bono to his two daughters as they join their father onstage during 'Mysterious Ways'; 7-26-01 Paris
"They [U2's parents] weren't always supportive. Like Edges mother, Mrs. Edge we call her, had a little Volkswagen and she was a really cool lady and she would like put all the gear and all the band in the Volkswagen she'd like pick us up at 4 a.m. in the morning to take us home and she was out there so that worked. But my old man, when I came home at night, would be waiting at the top of the stairs with a machine gun, several knives, you know it was just target practice."
"Having played God for most of the 80's, I thought it would be fun to play the Devil.
-MacPhisto
"We don't do this for the money- we have loads of it. We're doing this for something much more worse actually. We're doing this for self respect."
-Bono on the Popmart tour
"I expect for fans to be f*cking brave and a bit brilliant."
"After introducing these beautiful women to my wife, they all lost interest in me! They're her friends now."
"There's 2 kinds of U2 fans - there's the ones that want us to get to number one because they just like the idea of us winning out there. Then there's the others who actually get disappointed when we get to number one because their little brother gets into it."
"I never knew I was Irish until I went to America."
"I used to find it uncomfortable to be around a lot of things. Then I found these goggles. I put them on and I found that I could go anywhere."
"We still have the same ideals, we've just learned to look like we don't."
"Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love. I think there is nothing more radical than two people's loving each other, because it's so infrequent."
-1983
"Grace overpowers karma. Grace rewards where rewards are not justified."
-Bono, 2000
"Actually it's hard to find four people this good-looking who are willing to write and record and perform together."
-Bono, 2001
"Sometimes being a rock star is like going through a sex change. A lot of people treat you like you're a girl, they stare at you and follow you down the street, 'till you don't know where to hide."
-Bono, 1993
"If you're a fifty pence piece in a pile of ten pence pieces, you have to shine so much brighter in order to be noticed."
-Bono
"Peace doesn't exist, it's brought into being."
-Bono, Zoo TV Interview
"As far as we're concerned the Eighties was just a rehearsal. I mean that."
-Bono
"Ali, my missus says "We are not 50,000 people...Shut up!
- Bono on Radio 1
"It is very hard for him to come back home and say, 'Yeah, I'm normal.' He wants to climb on the table at 11 o'clock every night and try to perform! He's wondering where are the 50,000 people. We sort of laugh at it now."
-Ali, Bono's wife, after ZooTV tour.
"He's the perfect rock and roll baby. He sleeps blissfully all day and roars all night. Ali is a saint; I try to do my bit, but I don't have the right breasts."
-Bono, about Elijah, his third child
"Making records is like making hot dogs. You'll probably enjoy them more if you don't see how it's done."
"I believe in love, love and money! I believe in poetry, electricity, cheap cosmetics. I believe in the sky over my head, and the silver shoes beneath my feet. I have a vision! I have a vision! Television!"
-Bono as The Mirrorball Man during the Zoo TV Tour
"The stage is but a platform shoe."
-1992
I've just realised that the facts aren't that important, and as long as there's some relation to the original, that's fine."
-Edge, on Bono's storytelling Site Links
"I like to see Bono working under pressure because he's a great improviser, and I think he sings words much better when he's a bit desperate."
-Adam
"I would certainly consider myself to be one of the inventors of the mullet. I think it comes down to Patrick Swayze or me."
-Bono
"The Holy Spirit is like a woman. Undependable. Joke! Joke!"
-Bono
"Actually '78 was a really exciting time for U2. We had just discovered F sharp minor. So we had the fourth chord and we'd only had three up to then."
"All the best songs are co-written by God, y'know."
-1987
"Paul was a cranky baby. He cried most of the day. Peace only settled on the new house after he went to bed where, exhausted from the trauma of his waking hours, he slept long and soundly"
-Bob, from "Unforgettable Fire - The Story of U2"
"It's the job of rock 'n' roll stars to set fire to themselves, and to, you know, sell flagellation, get up on a cross if they can, but definitely to die at 33."
"That's why I buy cheap cars."
-Bono on being a bad driver and owning a Mercedes
"No matter how much we wrap it up in tinsel and television, I'm still the geezer with the white flag."
"I've learned, for instance, how to listen to Michael Jackson records, I've figured it out. I just pretend I can't speak English. And I am a huge fan as a result. I mean that."
-Bono
"Years ago, before either of the boys were born, my wife and I went down to Sligo for a week. She went to a fortune teller and the fortune teller told my wife that she would have two children and one of them would have the initial P and he would be famous in whatever life he took up.
- Bob Hewson
"My own dad didn't encourage me much, maybe to save me from being disappointed. And my way of rebelling has been to prove I can go out and win the love of the whole world. But it's a funny need for compensation that makes you need fifty thousand screaming people telling you they love you in order for you to feel normal."
-Bono
"They never let Bono drive"
-Paul McGuiness.
"We don't let Bono drive because he likes to fly. And he doesn't really acknowledge corners. Larry knows the rules of the road."
-Adam
'If there are any journalists in the crowd, please note that neither my father nor my mother know I smoke. I tell my old man that I just smoke cigars and I don't inhale and he says, 'Apparently that will lead to stronger things.'
-Bono
"Songs are the language of the spirit...the melodies are how you sing to God. It's a deep language. But they can't explain everything, because really great songs touch places that you can't explain."
-Bono
"I've had sex. And sex with a woman, too. Also I started smoking - cigars first and then cigarettes - but I've had to stop because I couldn't hit the notes any more. There are full-voice B flats and B naturals which can be real bastards."
-Bono, on why his voice is deeper, 2001
"You preach what you need to hear. You sing your life, and you want it to count, I suppose. I'm hoping people are tired of singers whose mouths are filled with words that were written for them and they don't believe. Their arms and legs move in directions that other people choreograph."
-Bono, 2000 Rolling Stone
"My children will tell me to turn down my Bono-ness occasionally"
-Bono, 2001
"My wife Ali has an aversion to violent films, so she thought if she put on Chopper, which is made by a friend of ours, it might do the trick. And indeed it did! We got to the hospital 20 minutes before the baby was born. Twenty minutes! She's an extraordinary girl."
-Bono talks about the birth of John Abraham, 2001
"Innocence is more powerful than experience."
Bono, explaining the most important belief he'd left behind over the years.
"Some experiences are not worth making."
'To be is to do' Aristotle, 'to do is to be' Paul Sartre, 'do-be-do-be-do' Frank Sinatra.
-Edge in an on-line chat
When you're 16 you think you can take on the world - sometimes you're right.
-Bono
Find yourself in someone else don't find yourself in me.
What a marvellous human being you turned out to be.
I can forgive myself the white flag, what I can't forgive myself is the mullet of haircut.
-Bono
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
If we're not the best rock band in the world, we're nothing.
-Bono
Watch more TV.
Believe everything.
It could never happen here.
fake-condom
beLIEve
Death is a career move.
Fear is the opposite of faith.
Reject your weakness.
"Adam is taking the temperature more stoically-- he is simply adding another item of clothing every ten or fifteen minutes, like the Madonna of the Bizzaro World."
-U2 At The End Of The World
"I'll tell you, you learn a lot about women from dressing up in women's clothes! You learn that when a woman asks you "Do I look alright?" what she's really saying is "I have just spent a lot of time making myself uncomfortable. If I go out in this condition will I look foolish, or is it worth it?". When you ask a woman to go out to dinner it's not like asking one of your mates. She has to stop and think, "Hmm, dinner. That will be four hours of being uncomfortable." And if she says yes and then after four hours you say, "Lets go dancing, let's go to a club," and she says "No, I want to go home," it's because she has figured on four hours and now those four hours are up and she can only think of getting home and out of those clothes!"
-Adam
"I find it amusing that people think I'm together [because] I'm the most untogether person I know. In the band, they just say, 'here comes chaos.' Oh, I want to be together - it's my ambition to one day get my own life in order and tie it up with string and be as organized as somebody like Adam....Clayton's unbelievable. Field Marshal Clayton! For a guy who can stay out all night, if he needs to be up at 8 am, he'll be there at 8 am on the button."
-Bono, from U2: a Road to Pop
It's a very unusual thing to be in a band like this. It's like being in a street gang. And it's all very well being in a street gang when you're 16, but it's bloody weird when you're 32.
-Edge
It's funny, but even within the space of one song, you can feel the audience come and go. The only thing to do is kick into heavier gear and go for it. Some of our best gigs have been ones that start off badly and then become manic and unpredictable. Heavy but cool is the key.
-Edge
Adam has always been the roots man in the operation. On tour, it'll always be reggae, Aswad or Black Uhuru blasting out of his hotel room. Larry's more interested in the songs and simple structures. It's speak up or shut up. Write a song, three chords, say what you have to say. So he liked the directness of blues and something like "Trip Through Your Wires".
-Bono
I think we've come up songs where there was a whole process of music inspiring lyrics and lyrics then feeding back on the music and the whole thing becoming intense. And we found that because Bono had enough time to produce lyrics that really did work, it was much more satisfying.
-Adam
You could say this is forbidden ground for U2 because we're the group. But to be an optimist, you mustn't be blind or deaf to the world around you. "Running To Stand Still" is based on a real story while "Exit", I don't even know what the act is in that song. Some see it as a murder, others a suicide - and I don't mind. But the rhythm of the words is nearly as important in conveying the state of mind... If I can be objective and of course I can't, the album's real strength is that though you travel through deep tunnels and bleak landscapes, there's a joy at the heart of it.
-Bono
In its simplest form, I've always seen heroin as a very evil thing. Consequently that's always inspired a great fear of it in me so I can assume that anyone who takes it has a similar fear. To actually have their back so much against the wall, to be controlled by it, is something I can't understand. I haven't been that close to the edge. I've certainly been near it a few times in one way or another but to imagine that next stage is pretty much impossible.
-Adam
Well, I think, first of all, it's not your first reason for being on stage, to effect change in the political climate of a country. I don't know what the first reason is but it's not the first reason. But I like to think that U2 have already contributed to a turnaround in thinking.
-Bono
And if we have, it's not even the point, is it really? You don't write a song because you think it's going to change somebody. You write a song because that's the way you feel.
-Edge
You write a song because something hurts. I mean if you look at social change within America, that came from the Delta areas, the plantations or wherever. A lot of the change in America is rooted in blues music; that was what people listened to. It was the protest music of the time.
-Adam
In "With Or Without You" when it says "and you give yourself away and you give yourself away" -everybody else in the group knows what that means. It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed.
-Bono
God is in the room more than Elvis. It feels like there's a blessing on the band right now. ... In the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it's not just about airplay and chart position.
-Bono, Rolling Stone, May 10, 2001
One of the reasons I did not make it to Ireland this past summer....(the other reason was of course, the TOUR!) We would like to tell everyone that Ireland is a perfectly safe place for a vacation. All of us in the band live and work there. It's a great place for a vacation and we hope you will continue to visit. - Bono, Statement in April 2001 because of foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Ireland
The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That's never happened to me before. You know, on the tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog. It's very odd, 'cos I don't have a dog.
-Bono, during ZooTV
Edge, I said 'feel my BOOT because it's leather.' NOT 'feel my booty; it's like heaven'
-Bono
BONO:
"When I talk about love I'm thinking of unselfish love. Sex can be bought and sold just like anything else. But I think real love is about giving and not expecting anything in return." February 1983
"I think the music is much better than the musician, but also the audience is as much applauding itself as us. One of the things people forget about these large concerts is that the audience have heard the records, it knows the songs from the radio and the music has become part of their lives. When they hear those songs their own selves are caught up in them and they are in some way applauding the connection." June 1985
"I use our songs to wake myself up. It's like sticking a needle in your leg after it has gone to sleep." January 1986
"I break out in cold sweat at the thought of drawing out money. It's bureaucracy. Whether to choose the blue slip or...those kind of decisions are impossible! Going to a supermarket nearly gives me a breakdown! I can write three verses for a song sitting in the bath, but Post Offices make me go weak at the knees." December 1987
"Where's my public? My God, they've deserted me! This is a crisis. We'd better do something. Stir up some publicity or something. 'Bono in under-age sex orgy.' That should do it. I want my public back." December 1987
"It's an amazing feeling, to be able to do what you want, when you want. And that is, you don't have to kiss ass, you know that feeling? There's a lot of people out there have to kiss ass every day, every week - just to make a, you know, a buck. Just to...and I don't. I have to kiss Edge's ass occasionally, maybe Larry, but you know..."
"People ask me such serious questions - and I answer them: I'm that dumb."
"When we started it was hard to get the Edge to play aggressively. He is a gentleman and he plays guitar like a gentleman." February 1982
"The Edge is a really, really intense guy, he's got this incredibly high IQ, he's great at sorting out issues of worldly importance, it's just that he forgets the everyday things, like the chords of songs, where he is and so on." January 1983
"Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn't play the usual lines." February 1982
"Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y'mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone elde did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock'n'roll was what he was going to do." 1988
"My earliest memory of Larry was when we were starting off. We were at our first rehearsal in his kitchen and all these girls, all these 14 and 15 year old girls kept climbing over the walls and looking in at the windows at Larry. Larry just shouted at them to go away and then turned the hose on them. He's not interested in being a pop star. Larry likes to play the drums." May 1981
"Larry is the core of U2. He never does interviews. He just gets on with his life the way he always has. He still enjoys being back home with his mates." 1987
"I was one of those kids it was impossible to tie down from the very beginning. People used to - and family still do - put up the cross whenever I came in. They called me the Antichrist at age 8!" November 1987
"I had the loudest mouth. When we formed the group I was the lead guitar player, singer and songwriter. Nobody talked back at first. But then they talked me out of being lead guitar player and into being rhythm guitar player and into just being the singer. And then they tried to talk me out of being the singer and into being the manager. But I held on to that. Arrogance may have been the reason." May 1983
"I feel that we are meant to be one of the great groups. There's a certain chemistry that was special about the Stones, The Who and The Beatles and I think it's also special about U2." October 1981
"As a band we have a giant collective ego. It picks us up. Anyway, I don't think I'd be a good bank clerk. Or a hot dog salesman. I might be a good president." February 1982
"We don't allow people to make jokes in our company. Anyone on the crew who's ever seen with a smile on their faces we let go." May 1985
"What has kept us together? Fear of our manager!" February 1987
"All over America they had set up these clubs where they listen to U2 records and actually write cards for Amnesty. If you can inspire something on that scale, that's everything I could ask for. All in fact, I would ask for." November 1987
"I think the church is a big problem." February 1981
"I met this guy once in a mental hospital I was visiting. He introduced himself as Jesus Christ. I just said, 'Haven't we met before?' He said nothing. I asked him why, if he was the son of God, was he in a mental hospital? He said, 'Because it's my 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.' At that point I just cracked up. I asked him when the end of the world was going to come. He said April 1. I thought, 'Brilliant, pencil it into the diary. The world will end on April Fools' Day. Perfect.' " December 1987
"All our songs are about God or women, and we often get the two mixed up."
"The traffic is very fast here in London - the lights go green, and wham! they move off. In Dublin they'll cough, scratch and then away they go. It's like Dublin's in a constant state of amber." November 1979
"I would love to see a united Ireland, but I never could support a man who put a gun to somebody's head to see that dream come true." July 1987
"I didn't really begin spending a lot of time on lyrics until halfway into the Eighties." September 1993
"I don't know if any one song is the best song ever written. I find it very hard to listen to our songs because I have no real objectivity but I find the ones I like most are usually the ones that came the easiest."
"I listened to it last week for the first time in ages and I couldn't believe I was part of it. It's a huge record, I couldn't cope with it. I remember the pressure it was made under, I remember writing lyrics on the microphone and at ?50 an hour that's quite a pressure. Lillywhite was pacing up and down the studio...he coped really well. And the ironic thing about 'October' is that there's a kind of peace about the album even though it was recorded under that pressure." February 1982
"We broke up the band after 'War'. We literally broke up the band and formed another band with the same name and the same members. That's what we did. We had all those teething problems that you have when you start a new band." January 1985
"'Pride' is the best song we've evr written. We've done very few songs...normally we just make music. 'I Will Follow' was a song, but then the next one wasn't until 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. It's very different from the rest of the album though - there's nothing on there as straight as this." November 1984
"Greg Carroll ( to whom the Joshua Tree is dedicated ) was almost flesh and blood with U2. We met him in Auckland, New Zealand...and he worked with us on 'The Unforgettable Fire' Tour...he was one of those guys you say is too good for this world. We haven't and I don't think we ever will, get over his loss. And he died doing me a favour. I don't know what to say. He further made 1986 the most paradoxical year in our lives. That's why the desert attracted me as an image. That year was really a desert for us, it was a terrible time. Death is a real cold shower and I've had a lot. It's followed me around since I was a kid and I don't want to see any more of it." March 1987
"What other band in our position would learn the chords of 'All Along The Watchtower' five minutes before they went on-stage, play it live and record it? No one." October 1988
"(Lemon looks at) the power of imagination, the mind taking off in two different directions - in a Studio 54, Disco Duck setting. The falsetto was completely natural. I've always felt there was a fat woman trying to burst out of me. Don't know what Freud would make of that!" September 1993
"The world of rock'n'roll is as black as a mine but you could find a jeweldown there to make it all worthwhile."
"I think it would be rude and ignorant to say money isn't important to me because money is so important to a lot of people because they don't have it and I know I have it and I'm lucky and I thank God that I have money."
"People see a suite in the top of a hotel in Chicago and think it must be the most incredible place to be. But the more plush the surroundings, the poorer you feel in spirit sometimes."
"The difference between pop and rock'n'roll is that the pop star gets the nose job."
"I get people throwing too much responsibility on me. People literally arriving to die on my front lawn. People coming from all over the world to pinch a pair of y-fronts off my line." July 1987
"Anyone who needs 50,000 people a night to tell them they're OK has to have a bit missing. And I do mean that in terms of your sense of self, not necessarily in terms of sanity. And I don't think you start out that way but, as with Elvis, it's a place you can get to easily." August 1993
"As long as the records keep getting better, we'll keep together. As soon as they get worse, I'm off." April 1992
And in the whole half-century-long history of rock music there is a small number of bands, a number so small you could count to it without running out of fingers, who steal into your heart and become a part of how you see the world, how you tell and understand the truth, even when you're old and deaf and foolish. On your deathbed you'll hear them sing to you as you drift down the tunnel towards the light. -Salman Rushdie
I am still amazed at how big, how enormous a love and mystery God is, and how small
are the minds that attempt to corral this life force into rules and taboos, cults and sects.
Mercifully, God transcends the church."
-- Bono, commenting on the book, "They've Hijacked God" by Northern
HEHEHEH..........NOW I HAVE THE LONGEST POST
FallingStar
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2001
- Messages
- 8,800
YOU--------*BOOMCHAA!* said:
HEHEHEH..........NOW I HAVE THE LONGEST POST
But I don't have time to argue about that evil trick - I have a mission to complete! *runs off again*
Chrissie Clayton
Acrobat
Ma fave one:
Everyone argues then we do what I say - Bono
Everyone argues then we do what I say - Bono
No dogs?
No doggies for Bono? I was sure he had 2, at least at some point in his life; I want to say their names were Fanny and Angel...
Can anyone confirm or deny this? I'm less than 2 years away from becoming a vet, I havta know if he may need my services (for any animals or *otherwise*......... )
No doggies for Bono? I was sure he had 2, at least at some point in his life; I want to say their names were Fanny and Angel...
Can anyone confirm or deny this? I'm less than 2 years away from becoming a vet, I havta know if he may need my services (for any animals or *otherwise*.........
)
*BOOMCHAA!*
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Wait a second Wait a second.........
I thought he had those dogs too..........
and if he doesn't............
WTF was he saying in the quote!?!??! 
I thought he had those dogs too..........
and if he doesn't............
WTF was he saying in the quote!?!??!
*BOOMCHAA!* said:Wait a second Wait a second.........
I thought he had those dogs too..........
and if he doesn't............
WTF was he saying in the quote!?!??!
Yep, I'm really kind of confused myself
Maybe he is missing a dog he *used* to have?!? I could provide grief counseling if it is something he is having trouble getting over.....
FallingStar
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2001
- Messages
- 8,800
He has Fanny and Angel. I thought he said this about missing a non-existing dog already before Zoo TV and not at the time of it.
Bono had two German sheppards.
That's it. Something wrong with the undertitle of that quote - that's all. 
Bono had two German sheppards.
That's it. Something wrong with the undertitle of that quote - that's all. Wepon X
Babyface
thats a lot of quotes
ZooEuropa
War Child
The missing dog quote confused me as well. LOL. But I figured he meant a non-existing dog and was just messing.
OP
OP
elevatemymind
Babyface
Wepon X said:thats a lot of quotes
I know! I think I'm gonna make a small site for all the quotes I collected.
Thanks everyone!
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