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ONE love, blood, life
Getting close to The Edge
By Russell Baillie
The Edge rings to say he's in Miami. It's the daily lull between soundcheck and showtime for U2's 75th show on the Vertigo tour. After he's finished talking to TimeOut he'll have dinner while trying "to remember how to play whatever new songs we are playing".
The tour will be well past the 100 mark by the time the Dublin-born band play in Auckland on St Patrick's Day, March 17.
"We promise we won't do a traditional Irish set," he quips when reminded of the date's significance.
Can't speak for everyone, of course, but we promise not to request any jigs.
Miami is an interesting place to be talking to the man who is still the biggest musical brain in the biggest band in the world. There was a song called Miami on 1997's Pop - a half-baked album moving U2 furthest away from the U2 rock which has made them stadium-fillers since the mid 80s.
After reinventing themselves in the early 90s on Achtung Baby and Zooropa, on Pop they embraced all things mirrorball and nightclub. The Edge sublimated his trademark guitar sound into the electronic barrage. It felt like one sidestep too many. It remains a downward drop on their sales chart.
"Yeah the Pop album probably was a lesson learned - don't book the tour before the album is out. But I think we were on to something.
"There are ideas on that record that are still very current and dissecting the group and taking it from a completely different point of view was an exciting idea at the time.
"We didn't quite pull it off, but it was still a valid thing to do."
It's little wonder then that on the subsequent albums (2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and last year's How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb) the band largely embraced the sound they established throughout the 80s - the one largely led by The Edge's guitar.
To be sure, that singer fella does a fair bit - lyrics, singing, being rock's greatest actual elder statesman on on his days off.
But the guitar of the man born plain old Dave Evans has been what has always defined U2 as U2.
If Bono shouted it from the mountain-tops, then The Edge conjured up the rest of the landscape - the wide horizons, deep valleys, lightning storms, the occasional civil war.
The pivotal U2 songs have invariably started with The Edge's guitar churning, chiming, reverberating.
The band's early singles like I Will Follow and 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had him taking the twitchy, trebly energy of the post-punk era and turning it into a clarion call.
In the mid 80s songs like Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name were shaped by his guitar echoing off the stratosphere in layers of digital delay.
While 1991's Achtung Baby - arguably the band's best album - had The Edge at his wildest (the chainsaw buzz of The Fly) and his most sweetly restrained (One).
There are Edge moments aplenty on the band's two 21st century albums.
To read the entire article, please go here.
By Russell Baillie
The Edge rings to say he's in Miami. It's the daily lull between soundcheck and showtime for U2's 75th show on the Vertigo tour. After he's finished talking to TimeOut he'll have dinner while trying "to remember how to play whatever new songs we are playing".
The tour will be well past the 100 mark by the time the Dublin-born band play in Auckland on St Patrick's Day, March 17.
"We promise we won't do a traditional Irish set," he quips when reminded of the date's significance.
Can't speak for everyone, of course, but we promise not to request any jigs.
Miami is an interesting place to be talking to the man who is still the biggest musical brain in the biggest band in the world. There was a song called Miami on 1997's Pop - a half-baked album moving U2 furthest away from the U2 rock which has made them stadium-fillers since the mid 80s.
After reinventing themselves in the early 90s on Achtung Baby and Zooropa, on Pop they embraced all things mirrorball and nightclub. The Edge sublimated his trademark guitar sound into the electronic barrage. It felt like one sidestep too many. It remains a downward drop on their sales chart.
"Yeah the Pop album probably was a lesson learned - don't book the tour before the album is out. But I think we were on to something.
"There are ideas on that record that are still very current and dissecting the group and taking it from a completely different point of view was an exciting idea at the time.
"We didn't quite pull it off, but it was still a valid thing to do."
It's little wonder then that on the subsequent albums (2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and last year's How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb) the band largely embraced the sound they established throughout the 80s - the one largely led by The Edge's guitar.
To be sure, that singer fella does a fair bit - lyrics, singing, being rock's greatest actual elder statesman on on his days off.
But the guitar of the man born plain old Dave Evans has been what has always defined U2 as U2.
If Bono shouted it from the mountain-tops, then The Edge conjured up the rest of the landscape - the wide horizons, deep valleys, lightning storms, the occasional civil war.
The pivotal U2 songs have invariably started with The Edge's guitar churning, chiming, reverberating.
The band's early singles like I Will Follow and 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had him taking the twitchy, trebly energy of the post-punk era and turning it into a clarion call.
In the mid 80s songs like Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name were shaped by his guitar echoing off the stratosphere in layers of digital delay.
While 1991's Achtung Baby - arguably the band's best album - had The Edge at his wildest (the chainsaw buzz of The Fly) and his most sweetly restrained (One).
There are Edge moments aplenty on the band's two 21st century albums.
To read the entire article, please go here.
