U2: Audio Interview

Sitting next to 'NSync, Destiny's Child, the Backstreet Boys, and Eminem on the pop charts, U2's 11th studio album, the multiple Grammy nominee All That You Can't Leave Behind represents a rare modern-day triumph for veteran rock and roll warriors -- not unlike Santana's Supernatural sensation of the past two years, but without the guest stars -- and has reminded audiences just how vital a band U2 is when it's hitting on all cylinders.

While All That You Can't Leave Behind is being rightly hailed as a return to the group's roots, it's also a disc that advances the group's craft, incorporating all the lessons learned along the way into a stirring collection of songs that knits together unrepentant emotionalism and rich, textured musicality.

CDNOW sat down with Bono recently to discuss teen pop, Nirvana, and why he doesn't mind being unhip.

CDNOW: So what is all that you can't leave behind?

Bono: You know, it's about if you've been through something where you just feel that you, gosh, you just want the essential things. The only thing that you want in your life is things you can't live without. I think I got to that place … the noise and all the other stuff was just drowning me out. But then I felt it about the music, and I just said this has got to be about the essence of who we are as a band. This is not about assimilation, [but] actually about our difference, what makes us different.

And what are those things?

When Adam [Clayton] plays that heavy finger on a 4/4 bass thing, and it's like punk rock, but it doesn't sound like anybody else. And [drummer Larry Mullen Jr.] has a way of not playing a roll when everyone else would, and it doesn't sound like anyone else. The Edge is the Edge, of course, and me ... It became in every way, I was just looking for something, wanting to get the essence of what we were about.

"We're always about tearing down the old to put up the new; we've been doing that for so long that, in a way, it's become predictable."

And the rest of the band shared your enthusiasm for this?

Oh, yeah. Adam had a birthday recently, and he just kind of said -- shocked everybody, 'cause he's normally so wry -- he just said, "I'm really glad you're all here. A few years ago, I didn't know that I'd be here." And I thought, "Wow, yeah ..."

So seeing Edge rediscover his love of the guitar and still finding freshness ... It's funny just watching everybody come out through something and to want to be in the room, because there was nowhere else they wanted to be -- not because there was nowhere else they wanted to go, but because there was nowhere else they could go. That's the first feeling that you have in a band, so it felt like a first record in that regard, like, "This is where we want to be."

Do you buy into the notion that this album gets back to a style that U2 left behind, particularly on Zooropa and Pop?

There were some real songs in there; we just didn't get to bring them out. And we've been thinking more about songs over the years. Edge and myself have written songs for other people and [have been] just kind of getting into that as an idea as opposed to just improvisation, which is how we used to write songs in the past. Now we're actually writing in the old-school [way], just real songs, even though some of the arrangements are very modern, very contemporary. But the approach to them was very sort of Brill Building. We thought, it's not time to be hip; it's not the time to be groovy; and the time is right to write songs with melodies that you can hear across the road, through the walls -- those kinds of songs. And to limit our options by just making it about that and about the dying art of the single, 'cause it's the era of pop.

But, of course, all the great rock bands were pop groups, too, including Nirvana; I remember Kurt Cobain saying, "We're a pop group. That's a pop song," talking about "Smells Like Teen Spirit." And he wasn't just being funny. And you think of the Clash or you think of the Stones, or the Beatles, where you have to be disciplined and distill your thing into four minutes. We wanted every song on this album to be a single and went at it like that -- make it like a Beatles album, not try to be the heaviest or the funkiest, or the grooviest. Just to have the best tunes.

The Beatles comparison is pretty apt. This album has the same kind of sweep and feel of their mid-period work, like Beatles '65 or Rubber Soul.

Rubber Soul's a great blueprint for this album in its dimension, for sure. And we thought about Tamla-Motown; Brian Eno had been listening to this BBC Radio 4 documentary on Tamla-Motown and how they spent all their time on the songs and a tiny amount recording, because recording was the expensive bit when you had the orchestra and the brass.

Has it been odd hearing U2 on the radio next to all the teen pop acts?

I sometimes get cross when I think things have just gotten too sweet; you feel like your teeth are rotting, just listening to the radio. But the guy from Sweden, Max Martin, he knows a hook, and I just wish more rock bands had an ear for a hook. We knew this was a record that was against the odds, and a lot of people would be thinking, "U2, they've gone all arty, and they can live off their past now, or else they'll come up with some esoteric idea of the future." And we thought, "We gotta make something that feels really present, that's not about what's fashionable this week, but what's about the moment we're in right now."

We were up against it, and I think there's a feel that rock music isn't up to what's going on, the challenge of R&B and hip-hop. And we just want to say "nay" to that, and, "Write better tunes than us, then, whoever you are." That was sort of the attitude of the record.

"You feel like your teeth are rotting, just listening to the radio."

Is there still a tendency to keep your guard up, to not sound too much like what you'd consider the old U2?

It was just a feeling of, "We better get to the bones of what we're about, or people are gonna forget." You know, Edge has that kind of silver sound; when he first came out with that, we just told him to put it away; it sounded too much like U2. He was staring at us going, "What are you [talking] about? We are U2. This is how I play guitar." He was right on.

You can get too caught up in reinventing yourself. We're always about tearing down the old to put up the new; we've been doing that for so long that, in a way, it's become predictable, and we just had to say, "Let's just not interfere with this process now. Let's just let it come, and if something comes out, and it's really unhip, if it serves the song, we've got to go with that." There was no embarrassment.