Kewl, random tidbits

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

oliveu2cm

Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Joined
Jun 22, 2001
Messages
8,334
Location
Live from Boston
I just have all this random stuff floating around in my mailbox- figured I'd share it somewhere! Sorry I can't find the date or source of this, but it's all from the same interivew.

Mebbe I should put this in ZooConf for Larry though! :ohmy: wait till u read what he retracts....

BONO: Actually, with Nellee, the very first thing we did for the Pop album was we went out and bought a van and turned it into a disco bus - filled it with couches and woofers and... (suddenly grins broadly and breaks out in a dodgy Jamaican accent) BEECHES IN DA FRONT! BEECHES IN
DA BACK! I DIDN'T SEE NO MICROPHONE! YOU TELL IM DAT MAN'S A TIFF!! HEES GUILTEEE!

Em, sorry Bono, but I'm losing you there. What's with the Jamaican accent?

LARRY: Don't mind him. He's just been watching far too much Ali G!

BONO: The man's a comic genius! (laughs) Seriously though, we went out a lot during the making of Pop but we went out a lot because we were enjoying going out. And even at home there was a bit of club culture - there was just a lot of music in that period coming from the dance end of things. We were just loving it - loving being alive and, um, 'living it large' I think is the expression. And we wanted to capture that feeling on a record - because that was the life we were having. Though I think we may have captured more of the hangover than the party.

Was alcohol the only thing being used? Pop struck me as being very E'd up at the start and very spliffed out at the end. And Howie has a bit of a rep as a dope smoker!


BONO: Well if I ever smoked anything stronger than tobacco I wouldn't say it to you - or anybody!! (laughs) But no - some great times but some great hangovers as well.

Was Gavin Friday around at all for the making of All That You Can't Leave Behind?

BONO: Gavin's always around. People who have success - for reasons I still can't quite figure out - seem to rid the room of all argument. It's a really astonishing thing, but you see it, and you often wonder why somebody who blew your head when you were a kid has just released a really crap record. You just think 'did nobody tell them?' I mean, it's crazy. And we've never released a crap record. We've released experimental records or
whatever, but we've never released a crap record. That's because we've got people around us. The band, first of all. And then people like Gavin and Guggi. And the people around me - Simon Carmody, Jim Sheridan and so on.

This back to roots approach must have really pleased you, Larry. I know you hated Passengers because you didn't get to play enough drums.

LARRY: Well I didn't really hate Passengers. It was difficult, maybe, because it was just slightly beyond me. I mean, I can see where that album fits in now. At the time, my hope for it was that it would be soundtracks to movies where I could actually see the visuals. But I wasn't able to
see the big picture - that's a different story, but I think the only way you get to make an album like All That You Can't Leave Behind is by doing all those other things. Because you're never gonna get to this place if you haven't visited all the
other places along the way. You know, we did a lot of experimentation on Achtung Baby and Zooropa, had a lot of fun with guys like Nellee and Howie B doing Passengers and Pop and so on. And these things were all really good experiences. It was great, we learnt a lot from all of them.


But now you've stripped most of what you learnt away. There's very little technology or effects on the album.


BONO: That's really the theory behind the whole album. What happens if you reduce possibilities?

Lyrically, the new songs are all quite universally themed - you seem to be mostly writing about love, loss, life and the pursuit of some kind of happiness in the chaos of the modern world. Is there a sense that you make your big political statements outside of music now?

BONO: Maybe that's what it is. Hmmm, that's an interesting thought. I've found an audience to shout at - and they're not the record buying public! They're just prime ministers, popes and presidential candidates (erupts into laughter). Jesus! You may have just sorted it out there!

Actually, I was being serious. There aren't really any big issues being dealt with in the new songs.

BONO: I am serious! Because, you know, people have a lot in them - a lot of anger sometimes. Well, I can really only speak for myself, but there's always been a rage in me. And maybe I have found a
way of... (pauses). I can't live with acquiescence. I can't make peace with myself or the world. I just can't. To me, it's like rolling over. So, in doing things like Jubilee 2000, I do feel better for actually feeling that I'm getting my hands around the throat of something I care about, which may allow me in other areas of my life not to be at '10' all the time.

Are you often at '10'? You recently told Q magazine that you had a bit of a temper on you.


BONO: I don't know why I said that to him. There must have been a really rude waiter (laughs).

also noticed you having a minor altercation with a member of the audience in the Popmart Live From Mexico City video. Do you often get into scraps with the audience?

BONO: I've had a go at lots of people in the crowd
over the years, I think it's fair to say. Often it wasn't just white flags that got carried into the crowd, there was a lot of baggage and sometimes people would just spark you off. I even remember when we played Trinity here, when we were kids,
going into the crowd and sometimes you'd just stick the boot in. (Looks at Larry and shrugs, laughing) Well, you would, wouldn't ye? It's always been a very physical thing for me - making music. Being on a stage I've always felt a little like a trapped animal. I've never been one to stand on a stage in front of a microphone and, you know, there's a good fella, just sing the song. But I'm working up to that!

And the death of Jeff Buckley. That just made me think about the voice and what it can do if you're prepared not to lie to yourself.

Did you know Buckley well?

BONO: I only met him once. In New York a few years ago. I hate the word 'sweet' but he had a sweetness in the true sense of the word.

...

BONO: Well, Edge has been editor for a long time. It used to be really boring being the lyricist in U2 because no-one could give a shit, including the producers. And so a song like 'Bad' - which was
written on the microphone - you might've said to
the guy who wrote that, 'you're really onto something there - you should finish that'. Ok? Now, the fact that I didn't has certainly pissed me off more and more as the years have gone by. About the material. So Edge, I think, just kind of got interested as a way of, you know, 'this could be good, let's see where this goes'. And we started writing songs together outside of the band. And he's always been an editor, he's been good to work with. But occasionally his editing strays into more real and substantial songwriting, and, when it does, I just put his name on it.


In 'Peace On Earth', you've borrowed that line about hope and history not rhyming from Seamus Heaney. I know you knew Burroughs and Ginsberg, and people like Salman Rushdie and William Gibson are friends. Do you talk to more conventional writers about your songwriting?


BONO: Not really. But I do like the company of writers. They're like actors. They're fascinated to see the words get up from the page and do a run and a jump onto television or onto stage (laughs).
They're interested in that process. And I'm interested in their discipline, because it takes a lot of discipline, I'm sure, to do what you're doing. I never had any of that - sitting at a desk all day. That's just really hard. And I know that. I never did that. I did a different kind of hard. Years later I would meet writers and they'd say to me, "Oh, that opening lyric in 'Where The Streets Have No Name' is brilliant", and I'd be going "fuck off!" - I'd be climbing under the table in embarrassment. I think it's one of the most banal couplets in the history of rock! But they'd say, "no, it's the idea, it's what you're getting at. This idea of the Other Place".

So I do think that, in a way, by not spending time on the lyrics they became more direct, became more un-interfered with. I'm kind of at peace with that idea. With that decade. Nearly. But then in the 90's I started to write a bit more. And now I'm very interested in language because the words will do what I say now and I won't let them get too brainy or too dumb. I know enough now to get out of the way of them.

Do you enjoy doing the promotion?

LARRY: I have to say that it's a very hard part. Because you've just come out of the studio, you've just made somethingand you're not really quite sure exactly what it is you've done. So you're just coming to grips with that and suddenly loads of people are asking you questions about it.

Can doing interviews be a good way of figuring it all out?

BONO: If you're really lucky. If you're sitting around and you manage to have an actual conversation - then yes. You know, I don't take interviews lightly. For me, you're stepping out into the unknown. If you're gonna ask yourself some hard questions - and why should you? why
would you? - then that's tough enough. And if you're being asked the samequestions by an idiot, it's very hard for somebody like me, who's a little bit twitchy sometimes, to go through that. And I try and be charming to cover that up.


Do you have bodyguards?

BONO: I don't need it. I don't feel I need it anyway. I've security at my house, though.

How about you Larry?

LARRY: If you lived in America, there's no doubt that you'd have to have it. Somewhere like Los Angeles, stalking happens a lot. But I don't think Ireland's that kind of place. And when you're living here and your friends are here and your family's here, I mean it's hard enough without having people standing guard around you. I'm a drummer though, so I wouldn't need it.

Free man of the city or not, can you walk around the streets of Dublin without being hassled?

BONO: Yeah. I really can. I've kind of gotten away with it. I've no problem letting people down any more. I've no problem with the idea of manners. I like people who carry themselves with some sense of respect - respect for themselves and respect for others. I don't have to convince anyone now that I have all those things, so if people are rude to me then I've absolutely no problem being rude back. Before, I used to. So that used to make me violent (laughs). You know, I'd go from trying to politely explain the situation to eventual all out war. In fact, one of my last memorable evenings with Bill Graham was like that... (tells lengthy anecdote about a night out with the late hotpress journalist, which ended in fisticuffs when an overly anxious musician attempted to write the name of his band on Bono's hand in a Dublin nightclub).
 
I just read this very article at Hotpress last night--late last night...it was 10 pages long! And now you've posted part of it here...(I'm rubbing my chin)...very interesting...
 
Ahh Hotpress.. that makes sense- a few months back I got hooked on all their articles there!


Here's another cool FYI

The thing in Lypton Village about naming people was that: 1) they thought it strange that you should go by a name given to you by your parents, when that name might not really suit you. 2) the nicknames were often associated with a facial thing and it would then also apply to the person's character. So The Edge had this prominent jaw line & was always on the edge of things: like an observer.

Bono's first Village name was:
Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbangbang (!) Paul
McGuinness became known as 'The Goose'.




-----------
Bono is driving along Dublin Bay, and describing U2's most perilous day onstage, playing at Dublin's Inner City Festival.
"This was in the open air at a place called Sheriff Street, where they don't let the police come round - the kids are on the
roofs of these high-rise projects with crossbows. Our tour manager had told us, "I'm advising you not to play; I'm advising
the crew not to go." They were dismantling our equipment truck before we stopped it."

U2 and their crew voted, keeping in mind Bono's admonition that cancelling, with the crowd already gathered, could
mean a hellish riot. They decided to go on, even after an inebriated local woman walked off a rooftop and was carted
away. They set to playing, winning hearts and minds by degrees as the locals clambered on and around the stage.
Finally, "This guy who looked six feet wide, a docker, just walked onstage and stood in front of me. 'Let's twist again like
we did last summer', he said. 'Play it'.

"The whole crowd quieted - this was the confrontation: were we chicken or not? I must admit, I was chicken. I just
stopped the show and started to sing, no accompaniment, 'Let's twist again, like we did last summer...' And I looked at the
crowd, and all the kids, the mothers, fathers, the wine and whiskey bottles in their hands, started singing and dancing.
And the guy smiled."

This is Bono's favourite kind of tale. He likes the smaller victories. The time the band wasn't bottled off the stage in
Arizona, despite the promoter's warning that the kids there didn't like opening acts. The 1976 showcase gig at the Hope
& Anchor pub in London where The Edge went offstage to fix a broken string and the rest of the band, fed up with the
record-biz crowd, followed him off and sat down. The overzealous moment in Birmingham when Bono, The Edge, and
Adam simultaneously jumped into the crowd, guitar cords popping out of the amps...
 
The song that now frightens him, Bono says, is 'Tomorrow'. He'd originally thought that the words, with their images of a black car waiting by the side the road and a dreaded knock the door, had to do with the killings in Northern Ireland. A few months ago, he realised the song was about his mother's death, which came when Bono was about thirteen. "I realised that exactly what I was talking about was the morning of her funeral, not wanting to go out to that waiting black car and be a part of it. People sometimes say 'October' is a religious record, but I hate to be boxed in that way."

---------

"When people ask us what our influences are", says Bono, "we always say, 'Each other'".
 
Has Bono ever suffered from crazies claiming to have written `Pride' or `Sunday Bloody Sunday'?

"Yeah, I've had some very direct experience of stalking," he admits. "I don't want to get into names or places because it can be an ongoing problem, but let's say I and the office of U2 have had experience of armed and dangerous stalkers at the time when this piece was written.

"There was an amusing incident in a hotel in Los Angeles around about that time, where the stalker had committed a date for revenge on not receiving his royalties. And so they had a load of FBI people around the place where I was staying, it was one of these bungalows you get in the grounds of the hotel. So anyway, midnight had passed and I wasn't dead - at least as far as I could make out - and I went asleep and I guess it was in the back of my mind. And I woke up to this `BANG!', y'know, a very loud crack, and I was up firing telephones and lashing out in the dark with Cuban heels and anything I could find in the direction of the bang. But it was just my suitcase had fallen off the edge of the bed (laughs). Anyway, he went away eventually and I think he bothered somebody else."


----------
Y'know, I just think people loving each other is a kind of miracle," Bono reflects. "And I think it's against all odds and I think everything in the world conspires against that, from just the humdrum of paying the bills to desire - 'cos sex has been elevated to the ultimate commodity, the one that you can't live without - and I'm just amazed when I meet people like that. And this doesn't come from any disappointment myself, I just think it's a remarkable thing to see, and I don't think we should accept it as normal.

It's like when you see people getting married because it's THAT time and you just kind of think, `Oh NO!'. Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously. The reason why there's operas and novels and pop tunes written about love is because it's such an extraordinary
thing, not because it's commonplace, and yet that's what you're told, you grow up with this idea that it's the norm."
 
oliveu2cm said:
He'd originally thought that the words, with their images of a black car waiting by the side the road and a dreaded knock the door, had to do with the killings in Northern Ireland. A few months ago, he realised the song was about his mother's death, which came when Bono was about thirteen.

That's so interesting-I've always thought Tomorrow is about his Mother's death, not Northern Ireland.

Do you know when he said this?
 
Gina Marie said:


That's so interesting-I've always thought Tomorrow is about his Mother's death, not Northern Ireland.

Do you know when he said this?

I think it was a few years after the song was written.

It's definitely about his mother's death...interesting if he is telling the truth that at first he did not realize that. Reminds me of how he didn't realize Kite was written "by his father" at first..
 
Gina Marie said:
Thank you knower of all things U2 :D

I've enjoyed reading everything you posted here.:up:

:lol:

glad u like!

more really random stuff.... too bad my computer at so much of what I had :(


BONO: I feel very close to Prince, closer than you might think.

Mother Jones: Closer than I would think, in that he's considered sex-crazed, while the critics regularly describe U2 as nearly sexless.

BONO: I'm deeply insulted to hear you say that, and shocked, and
mesmerized. I don't think they could have been to too many U2 shows. You'd have to ask our audience. This may be one of those clich?s from the critical community who generally themselves are completely sexless. You can't fuck people with your head, or maybe you can....


--------------------------

`I thought `pop' was a term of abuse, it seemed sort of insulting and lightweight. I didn't realise how cool it was. Because some
of the best music does have a lightweight quality, it has a kind of oxygen in it, which is not to say it's emotionally shallow. We've had to get the lightly coloured wrapping paper right, because what's underneath is not so sweet.' Bono
--------------------------


"I don't know whether U2 were more excited to be at Sun, or if
we were more excited to have them here."
Gary Hardy - owner of Sun Studio in Memphis, 1987.

--------------------------

"Anyway the evening ended quite abrubtly when Larry Mullen's Dad arrived to take an indignant Larry home. Larry was only 15 at the time and his Dad felt that school next morning was far more important than this recording session."
- Jackie Hayden, a judge at the Limerick talent contest which U2
won in 1978, recalls the band's first studio experience.
 
Here're some more.. Pop ones this time..


"We've just played to 120,000 people in NYC. we've sold five million copies of Pop. We're just about to sell our 2,000,000th ticket this week, and apparently we're in trouble.." Bono

Bono told the NME: "We're just outsiders being dragged through the bushes, but we don't wanna be outsiders... I can't quite figure why people won't join in our success like they do with other bands, whether it's Oasis or Radiohead or whoever. People want them to win. With us, we have to win by six or seven goals, in an away match, in Brazil, at midday, with hangovers."

Even Bono acknowledges the claim that's been placed on the band. He told Rolling Stone:
"It's all the same thing really. People looking up on the mountain for light, going to ashrams or churches on Sunday or taking drugs. I think it's in the ordinary things, in the trash you're throwing away, commerce, all this stuff. Go through it - find out what's on your mind. Look at the hole in your heart."
 
My friend sent me a couple older articles about the band. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

"Our music is spilling out of us" ~B, People Magazine 198(3)?

(the following are from the same article)

"..Bono saw him punch someone in the face. Waved
up to the stage by the singer, the boy grinned,
expecting to be embraced. But Bono was outraged.
"I saw what you did," he shouted, motioning in
the guards. "You get out of here. I don't *ever*
want to see you at one of our concerts again."

"Bono 'never had religion shoved down my throat.'
But he was shaken by the lashing anger it instilled in his friends. When he was 14, his
mother died suddenly. At first Bono threw himself
into the mindless warring of the local gangs. 'I
was such a bastard,' he admits. Then drugs
claimed the lives of some of his most vivacious
pals. And he saw his father, a hard-working
postal investigator and amateur painter, abandon
a canvas when Bono's mother died: he never picked
up his brushes again, losing himself in his job.
Bono was devloping a sense of urgency about life
and its contradictions. He was not alone."

"I always thought passion was like a clenched
fist," Bono says. "but when I relaxed, it flowed
in a fuller way. I've learned that if I'm close
to the music, and the audience is close to the
music, we are close to each other. It doesn't
depend on physical proximity."

"yet Bono, 24, still loves 'to see a city before
I sleep in it.' Fame hinders his ability to
wander till dawn with fans, but he still hops out
of limos to sign autographs at hotels and arena
gates. 'It's not that they need it,' he explains.
'I need it. I can't look at the audience as a
mass. It disturbs me. I have to look for
individuals."

"Before his (Larry) bandmates even met him, he
lost a younger sister, and after the four became
friends, his mother was fatally struck by a
truck. In his early teens he realized he was 'a
very aggressive person, in a positive sense. I
liked to hit things. Playing drums was the only
thing I could do.'"

"A few hours before the Phoenix show, Marion
Smyth, the band's makeup and costume person, was
walking by the pool when Adam asked, "Marion, what
am I wearing tonight?" To no one's suprise,
Marion answered, "Black." Abhorring what Bono
calls "pop colors," u2 in concert slides along
the gray scale. Offstage Adam will wear turqouise
shirts. Shading his eyes, Adam looked up and
asked, "what particular *color* of black?"

"*Black* black," said Marion.

Adam nodded and smiled. "A very nice shade
indeed.""



"A couple of days earlier Bono had said, 'I
couldn't walk on stage if I thought 'it's only
rock and roll, a shot in the arm to get you
through the night.' Maybe it is a shot in the
arm, but I like to think it's still running
through people's veins the next week, just a tiny
bit.'"

"The members of U2 are indeed themselves and not
imitators. And they strive for ambiguity- to be
different things to differnet people." ~Youth
Magazine, Oct 1985

(following also from Youth Mag)

"U2 doesn't use gimmicks. Prince's threatening
sexuality, the Rolling Stone's blatant disregard
for what is socially acceptable, Iron Maiden's
violent overtones with chains and leather- none
of these things are present in U2."

"Perhaps one reason U2 is so successful is
because they treat their audience with this kind
of respect. They find ways of saying, "We won't
insult your intelligence by offering you a
sugar-coated view of life with marshmallow days
and hot-rod nights."
 
Back
Top Bottom