The March 19, 2009 issue arrived in the mail today, and, while I'm sure there isn't much in the way of new information in it, there was part of it that I felt compelled to type out(a little of it was in the part the RS site has, but not close to all of it). It has to do with the battle over "Winter", and the philosophical musical differences between Brian Eno and the band. It's the debate we've had countless times about whether or not U2 are focusing on singles too much, pretty much had out in consolidated form in this article. Eno plays the part of the person who doesn't care about singles, and Bono responds with an argument that is valid and interesting (except for lumping the Sex Pistols in the same category as the Beatles). The rest of the article isn't about this particular subject as much, and this is just over a page from an article that has in the neighborhood of 4 pages worth of text. Read on...
In the basement of London's Olympic Studios, armed only with a MacBook and a Nord keyboard, Brian Eno is leading a doomed, one-man insurgency. It's early December and U2 are wrapping up their sessions for No Line, the track listing almost finalized, but Eno is still pushing for prayerful, moody songs that were long ago abandoned. He's most passionate about "Winter", which sounds like no other U2 song. It begins with fingerpicked, chiming acoustic guitar and falsetto backing vocals, and once Bono hits a key line - "Summer sings in me no more" - Eno's dramatic strings kick in. "Listening to the silence, the deaf and dumb roar of white noise/your voice", Bono sings at one point, followed by a choral chant. "Beautiful, isn't it? They're bonkers to leave it off," Eno says with real sadness, as the tune winds up with soaring, dissonant strings - they're synthesized played on his little keyboard down here in the basement.
Well before Barack Obama thought of it, U2 embraced Abraham Lincoln's idea of a team of rivals. "Brian's job is basically to take everything and destroy it," says Lillywhite. "And I suppose I come in after he's destroyed it, and I listen to what he's done, and to what was there before, and I sort of get some middle ground, and try and bring it back to a place where art and commerce live side by side." Adds Edge, "That tension is important to the process. But I think we're pretty much always right."
Eno, whose fearlessly arty vision has shaped some of the best rock of the last 30 years - from Roxy Music to his experimental solo albums to Bowie in Berlin to Coldplay's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends - is bald, professorial, and unexpectedly genial, with Prada glasses hanging on a chord around his neck. "It's too long, it needs a bit of work," he says of "Winter." "But, you know, they won't spend time on it. They've spent months working on the ones that are supposed to be the radio singles. Months! This: played, put aside."
"Winter" didn't make it, but another ballad, "White As Snow", came in at the last minute. And Eno is all over the record - the squiggy synth sounds are his, and many of the songs had their seed in the atmospheric loops he records using the program Logic Studio, giving them titles such as "Grunge Beatstorm Gate." "You can hear Brian in the sort of Germanic krautrock feel of the title track," says Clayton. "You can hear his brain there."
Eno and Lanois both pick the hypnotic, seven-minute-plus "Moment Of Surrender" as a favorite track, and the one closest to the original concept of the album. It came out of what the band its producers describe as a small miracle: They all stood together one day and improvised its entire structure from scratch, all at once. That original backing track made it to the final album, complete with a trance-y bass line Clayton was figuring out as he played it - you can hear him imitate the bass part from Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" and then switch to another idea altogether - and Mullen's uneven high-hat work, thanks to a busted electronic drum kit. ("Adam is the star of the show on this album," Bono says. "No one knew he could move from his rock & roll pulse thing to the jaw-dropping bass part on 'Moment' or the sort of neo-Motown bass on 'Magnificent'") Eno fought hard to keep the band from messing too much with the original track. "These fucking guys," he says with a smile, "they're supposed to be so spiritual - they don't spot a miracle when it hits them in the face. Nothing like that ever happened to me in the studio in my whole life."
Eno's iTunes library is a U2 superfan's wet dream, with what seems to be hundreds of discarded songs and alternate takes. In some cases, Eno has written critiques in the "Comment" field, such as "This song needs faster and more urgent singing." He demonstrates the evolution of one potentional single, "Stand Up Comedy": It began as a tune driven by Middle Eastern-sounding mandolins, with Bono singing, "We don't know what the future's gonna bring." From there, it took on a "You Really Got Me"-like riff and a chanted chorus that revolved around the words "for your love" - a little too close to the Yardbirds for comfort. Then it shifted again: new riff, new melody and a chorus that retains only the words "for your love" - upstairs, Bono and LIllywhite are still working on it. "Get On Your Boots," which began as a Garageband demo by the Edge, went through a similarly complex progression. At one point, it was called "Four-Letter Word." And at some stage it lost its central riff, leaving it sounding like what Lillywhite describes as "a Beck B-side" that was in danger of being dropped from the record altogether.
Eno ducks the question of whether U2 have an artistic as well as commercial justification for focusing on potential hits. "You should ask the band that," he replies. And it turns out Bono has strong feelings on the subject. "We grew up on the rock & roll 45," he says. "It is, in an evolutionary way that Brian should, but doesn't, appreciate, the Darwinian peak of the species. It is by far the most difficult thing to pull off, and it is the very life force of rock & roll: vitality, succinctness and catchiness, whether it's the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, the Pixies, the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones. And when rock music forgets about the 45, it tends toward progressive rock, which is like a mold that grows on old, burned-out artists who've run out of ideas. We have a soundtrack/Pink Floyd side of our band, and it has to be balanced by fine songwriting. And it's an infuriating thing for me to see indie rock & roll give up the single to R&B and hip-hop. And that's why I love the Kings of Leon album or the Killers album: These are people who have such belief in their musical power that they refuse to ghettoize it." Bono pauses, and returns to the subject of his friend Eno. "What he's listening for is a unique feeling, a unique mood and a unique palate. And he doesn't get hits - I bet he told Coldplay to leave 'Viva La Vida' off their album. Brian would listen to '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' and say, 'I love that song, but can we get rid of the guitar bits? You know, the part that goes duhnt-duhnt-dunna dun?'"
