And going back a few pages re: Winter v 'The Middle Three'.
You need to use your imagination a bit with Winter. It's the same as with the old Atomic Bomb alternate versions. They're not what would have made the album. They're work-in-progress versions. "Daily's", really. It should be pretty obvious to anyone/everyone that Linear Winter, just like something like Native Son, is not ever going to get dropped on an album sounding like that. They are working versions.
You can tell on Winter that it's a quick job in terms of editing and mixing, not meant to sound great and perfect, just good enough to playback and rough-judge. You can hear in things like the transitions between verse and chorus, moments that would surely have been marked 'needs more work'. It's clearly a skeleton, yet to get the many extra Edge/Eno/Lanois layers they painstakingly build into every corner, especially on that style of track. That's definitely not an album worthy vocal take from Bono. So, use your imagination. Try and imagine how U2 would have taken that sketch, and fleshed it out, molded it, for an album.
Given that, I've always said it has loads of potential to have been a brilliant track on No Line. Not a standout, but on an Alternate No Line that sticks to a mood and thematic 'thing', where there is no middle three and instead Winter + the other left over, originally 'SoA' destined tracks, get a look in, with a different tracklisting... it works, probably very well, almost certainly better than what we have.
Other 2011 music will keep me busy until U2 is ready.
