womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Goddamn, this is an astute observation!
Working up interesting sounds and arrangements requires them to be locked up together, but focusing on "the craft" gives them an out. It lets them have more rounded lives. Or it lets them be lazier artists. Depends on how charitable you want to be.
Do they really think the songs on SOI/E are better written than Achtung or the Joshua Tree though? I think that their best songwriting occurred when they had the coolest sounds and most interesting arrangements.
I think they may be technically "better written" if you are going by whatever benchmark that Rick Ruben is talking about. But not to sound lame, U2 seems to have always been about capturing the magic. And that magic only happens when you have the band together to push, pull, inject new ideas and sounds, argue, hit a stride, go off on a 10 minute piece of some trash and some treasure, all in real time.
Not, one person sending a bass line to another, who says, yeah, maybe this guitar riff would work with it, and I've got some lyrics from last month that might fit... And then have several producers try and piece it together.
So when DeVaul said, that they are making good music now, but not as often great. I think that is what we are talking about. I mean, can God walk in the room when they are all in different rooms most of the time?
I would hope that now hitting 60ish, with kids grown, that maybe they might see "getting the band back together" as an adventure and new creative journey that takes them away from their day to day. We shall see.
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