Part 3
THE WRITE BROTHERS
BONO: A lot of my lyrics come from improvisation, standing at the microphone and freestyling. That's how we've always done it, looking for nuances and rhythms. Mouth music - trying to put into words what's in the music. So the melodies and the chords come first, which is very humbling if you do want to write songs that people can sing on their 21st birthday. Heh heh! I never could get that together.
KARL: When I read Sam Shepard's The Motel Chronicles and listened to Lou Reed's New York album, I realised I too could write vignettes that didn't have a beginning or an end. I couldn't write a complete picture but I could write down my experiences and emotions, just collecting fragments. I was often writing about very dark experiences, but Rick would find something so positive.
BONO: Lager?
KARL: Yeah, hurr hurr! But again, out of despair comes hope. Very often I'm singing about some really dark times, but it's coming out very uplifting and euphoric.
BONO: I have caught myself punching the air at a couple of inopportune moments in your lyrics. Because there are some macabre stories. Odd that you should mention The Motel Chronicles because that was an important book for me as I was travelling through America in my early twenties. Like Raymond Carver - a lot of American writers who deal in fragments. This is a little lofty but, growing up in Ireland, you think of Beckett and that use of repitition to get into the way language forms from a thought. I've always seen something in the Underworld live show as well, a little bit of those Beckett characters, the unexplained. I love that about Karl's lyrical fragments - the sense that you can't know the full story.
LAGER! LAGER! LAGER!
KARL: We're talking about honestly collecting experiences. And it's no secret that I used and abused alcohol for a long time in order to have a catalyst to get me to that point where I wasn't thinking about anything else other than just going through the city, gathering experiences.
BONO: So you were Orpheus, then?
KARL: Completely, in the underbelly. I look back at that time and I was gathering remarkable things. But there was a period after that where I was very afraid, I was no longer drinking and I was conscious. And I didn't think I could do what Bono does, which is to be conscious. I don't do good stuff when I'm that conscious. But I've been practising, listening to Rick's pointers, trying to get back to that point where I'm with that animal - but I'm not letting it out of its cage.
BONO: Anyone who has abused alcohol, and I certainly have, will tell you - I mean, once I went on stage with a really bad one. I thought I was taking my old man out in Paris, and he actually put me to bed. I woke up 20 hours later and thought I was Jim Morrison. I brought his grave to the people of Paris because I looked like him - a very dead, fat man. But when great stuff comes from me, it doesn't come out of a bottle. I've slid down the side of a few hangovers the next day, and I've written a couple of things on the microphone like that. But very few is the truth. Luckily I haven't figured out how to do this or I might be doing it a lot more. I think it's sometimes very difficult for people who have got to a place high to get there straight. It's like there's no fig leaf.
WATCHING PAINT DRY
BONO: My old man was a painter. I always painted and drew with my friend Guggi, who was a huge influence on me. And later on with Gavin Friday and others, we used to get together to paint and then, drink. Two things you can't do very well together, but great in sequence. Again, it's like lyric writing - it comes out of a deep sense of being inarticulate. Very fine writers are going to be less drawn to fucking chopping down our favourite tee and turning it into a cross, heh heh! As Van Morrison might say, it's all inarticulate speech of the heart. Karl, what's your arty background?
KARL: I was drawing before I was making music. I went to art school and I was an installation artist. But really it was my frustration, the fact that I loved galleries but they were intimidating places for my mates, and a radio wasn't. I wanted to communicate with as many people as possible. Rick's always felt this way. We want to make popular music, but we can't help but be drawn into things like the stuff Brian Eno does. We grew up with that.
BONO: Well, we didn't go to art school, we went to Brian. Brian's reason for working with U2 was the same reason you wanted out of the gallery. He was getting interested in gospel music, in music that was uncool. He was fed up with cool - which was just as well. He made us aware that being hot, being passionate, was a much more Irish thing. But in the end, all this stuff is about the quality of the conversation you're having with the person listening or looking. Just expressing yourself, finally, isn't enough. That old thing Madonna sings, "Express Yourself" - I'm always tempted to say, "Express what, exactly?" She has plenty to express, but so many haven't. So just the idea of "Isn't it great to express yourself?" I tend to think: "Oh fuck off..."
THE KRAFTWERK CONNECTION
BONO: A great soul group, Kraftwerk. Really an enormous influence on me as a 16 year old, and on other groups that influenced us, and I'm sure Underworld, too. Like Joy Division.
KARL: I remember hearing "Autobahn" for the first time and thinking there's no music like it on the planet. I had no point of reference, like listening to Miles Davis or something. It really stuck with me. When Rick and I eventually met, it was the one thing we could completely agree on.
BONO: The thing they love as much as music is cycling. Has anyone read Tom Davies' Merlyn The Magician And The Pacific Coast Highway? He was a diarist for The Observer a few years ago, and he had a religious experience trying to write the great novel...... It's an amazing book about cycling, Not being the type, but knowing the serenity of that book and of Kraftwerk, I tried it out once, I went cycling in Paris at midnight with my wife, Ali, along the Seine. There is a kind of zen thing with cycling, and it's about as much sports as I'll need for the rest of my life. But I did it, and they were in the back of my mind as influences, Tom Davies and Krafrwerk.
UNCUT: Maybe you should do the next U2 tour on bikes?
BONO: You know what? The next U2 tour I think we're going to do in balloon. Because there's enough fucking hot air in this interview for a round-the-world tour......
THE ART OF NOT FALLING APART
KARL: I work with somebody who doesn't give up on me, who sees some value in our relationship - 23 years counts as something now when we have a row. And the rows are really important.
BONO: That's it, right there! The older you get, the better the argument needs to be. I've noticed this with people. The older they get, they do tend to withdraw to their own domain and rid the room of argument. And I'm talking about your cousin now, and your uncle who owns a sweet shop, or your doctor friend who is only playing tennis with one of those machines, heh heh! People withdraw slowly to a place where they're only in agreement with the people around them. And that's a mistake, because if rock'n'roll is anything it's the sound of friction.
THE FUTURE
KARL: We've been working on the new album - swapping PowerBooks, working on top of each other's tunes. Which is something we've never done before, not really talking about it, just talking through music. That's been a quite liberating experience. We're going to work on a few different platforms; as well as working in linear form on an album we're going to work in a form where the tracks are non-linear, where unlikely pieces fit together to create other scenarios and moods. And that's something the Playstation 2 format is offering us.
BONO: Where's Rick?
KARL: In some country manor where he's living at the moment, putting together another piece of music.
BONO: Watch out for those fish farms!
KARL: Ah, yeah. It's got ducks.
BONO: Be very careful! Here comes those Chinese rugs!
KARL: I'll bear that in mind. So how's it going down there in the sun?
BONO: We're recording in the south of France now. We've done this for years, working in ballrooms and burnt-out nightclubs and rehearsal rooms on the water in Dublin. We're down here on the sea, but it does call to mind that Charles Bukowski line: "Ain't nothing worth a shit ever got wrote in Paradise" Heh heh!
KARL: Why do you think I live in Romford...?
End of article
Hey there is another article in the same magazine about the great lost U2/Underworld collaboration. Here's what it says:
Back in 1997, U2 and Underworld got together to record the sound of Dublin's streets - literally. Sadly, some road user had other ideas....
BONO: It sounds incredible but we recorded a piece of music together outside. We were trying to perform out on the streets, for the sound of the streets, and we had to face down some cement trucks. I kept singing and I wasn't on the headphones. I was lying down in the middle of the road, and this truck driver drove right to the point of running me over, but didnt. But what's interesting is, we stayed in time and key! Cut off from the mothership!
KARL: I was like - how do you do that? That was a really remarkable experience, coming over and doing that.
BONO: If only the song had been any good, heh heh! I don't know if it'll ever be released. Maybe one day we'll finish it.
Phew! That was a long article to type up here but I had to do it cos I think its not available in US so hope u have enjoyed the above as much as I did.
cheers
dougal
Have you already gotten your issue? Pleas let us know.
Seems like an interesting piece to say the least 
OK, I probably have it already (since I own her latest CD), but still... Thanks for the warning!
