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Adam Clayton has been called the rebel of U2. From the time he was kicked out of school for what his professor viewed as his "obsessive" attitude towards rock and roll, the 32-year-old bassist has marched to his own beat. Over the years, Clayton may have mellowed a bit, but as we found out during this conversation, he's still one quick with an opinion on just about any subject -- especially U2.

RS: Let's start with some background. How did U2 get together?

Adam Clayton: We were all between 15 and 16 at the time and it was in school, in fact. We went through the usual stuff: getting bored and fed up with the normal school things. We sort of met up and decided to form a band. We spent a year trying to play one song, practicing about four hours a week. Then we decided that if we really wanted to learn this song, we'd have to practice two days a week. So we did that and were able to learn one song and half of another. Then we made it three days a week and we gradually got up to seven days a week. We ended up getting better and writing better songs.

Why the name U2?

What happened was when we were getting the band together, the guy who did all our album sleeves, drew up a list of about ten names. The note to him had been that the name has got to be graphically very strong and it had to imply that we're a band that is post '76, but without being associated with the punk thing. And it also had to be the kind of name that when people heard it, it aroused their interest to find out what it was all about. I think the name largely succeeds at doing that.

The spacey feel of The Edge's guitar has always been so critical to U2's sound. How does he get that sound?

It's mainly the effects that he uses. It depends on the length of his echo. We've been trying to get away from making the sound too "echoey." We wanted to bring it a lot closer and a lot tougher.

There always seems to be a "roughness" to the band, like you're on the brink of falling apart. Is that by design?

Yeah, I noticed that and it struck me that there is a sort of roughness, but it is in control. It never really falls apart although sometimes you think it might.

I think that's part of the band's excitement. Would you agree?

I think that's what makes it a live act. There is that degree of risk and excitement that's far more interesting than if it was a perfect set. I think perfect sets tend to get a bit dull because they just end up sounding like the record, and really there's no feeling between audience and group that the audience is experiencing something special, and I think that's important. I think at each show the people there must get bored. They must enjoy it and be fascinated by it from start to finish.

How important do you and the band feel the lyrics are to the music of the group?

Obviously they're an integral part of the group. If you separate each half it wouldn't be as good. I think, that for U2, the lyrics are terribly important because they have to be up to the same standard as the music, which is very, very high. There aren't really a lot of people writing lyrics these days that I have a lot of time for. I think Bono's approach to lyrics and what he actually says is very real and very valuable and a lot more worthwhile than all these schlocky cliché-ridden lyrics that you get from a lot of bands.

Are there bands that you listen to for a feel of what else is going on?

That's a difficult question because I listen to a broad spectrum of music. By and large, when I'm at home I listen to the radio because the radio is very good there. You do get all the new releases as well as all the alternative records. I do listen to alternative records just to check out what's happening on a street level. For my everyday listening I tend to stick to fairly staid taste. I listen to ZZ Top because I think they're a great rhythm section. I listen to the Stones. Then I listen to the Pointer Sisters and reggae on another level. I don't think anyone can channel their taste in one area because music tends to be universal. In a way it's irrelevant what arrangement it's in if the song is good. Whether it's being played on acoustic guitar or piano or with a big band, it's going to come through. That tends to be my attitude toward music rather than partitioning it, which seems very popular over here. I think it's a bit like apartheid in South Africa. It's not really the right way to go about it.

Do you think American radio has changed between your first tour and now?

I think it has changed, but I still think it's condescending, which I think is a terrible mistake. I remember when we first came over here. The radio was a lot tighter than it is now, but it was essentially dealing with old classics, and now it seems to have realized that dealing with old classics is actually going to mean that in another ten years it's going to have itself out of an audience. They have started playing new stuff. But unfortunately, a lot of the stations are playing stuff that's sort of equally as bland...I think that's immoral because radio should be stimulating people rather than actually killing them into a state of apathy, which I think has happened. Again, it goes back to this thing of partitioning music. People, particularly the youth, which are the lifeblood of any country, are stagnating because they have no stimulus. There's nothing challenging for them to get their teeth into. I think that's a terrible shame.



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