Many here have cited that U2 seemed to go away for awhile in the mid-90's, particularly in the U.S.
During the Zooropa sessions they actually had about 4-5 songs that eventually ended up on POP all but recorded.
They eventually took those songs off Zooropa for a later time.
Those were:
If God Will Send His Angels
Last Night on Earth
Wake Up Dead Man
Velvet Dress
Slow Dancing(Pop B-side)
The Zooropa sessions also included Hold Me, Thrill Me...Miss Sarajevo, Two Shots of Happy,etc.
Bono wanted to go back into the studio in late '94 and record those finished songs and see what else they could muster and go for another album.
When they reconvened in the studio in late '94, they decided not to lay those tracks down , except for Miss Sarajevo, and instead recorded more experimental stuff with Eno.
Let me play U2 strategist for a second(please indulge me).
What they should've done in late '94 is finish those 4-5 songs and put Hold Me Thrill Me on there and attempted a full album.
Then they could've done their Passengers record and had an album out in '95.
They were ready.
But instead they did their Eno thing and then spent nearly a full year with Nelle Hooper in the studio for their next album, only to ditch his production in '96 and go to Flood for the production.
If you'll notice, Hold Me, Thrill Me, along with the James Bond Goldeneye theme song written by Bono and The Edge and sung by Tina Turner, some eventual B-sides, and a few of the Pop tracks on the eventual album have early production from him.
U2's problem was they ditched those productions of their earlier Zooropa leftover tracks(that I mentioned above) and then had to hurry and finish PoP with Flood because their tour was already booked.
If Bono had had his way in late '93, we would've seen at least half of POP in the mid-90's rather than a few years later.
I think those 2 years made all the difference in the world.
