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""We were also annoyed at the word rock." -- Bono, on coming up with the album title Pop |
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""We were also annoyed at the word rock." -- Bono, on coming up with the album title Pop |
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'...Only Now Do We Look Cool' (Part One)But that's not all that's changed. Yes, you read it here first...U2, those hoary old rock behemoths, have gone dance! Sort of!
NME,
March 08, 1997
In the first of a two-part special, Keith Cameron meets the new high priests of postmodernism on the eve of their non-more-big PopMart world tour.
The Net is most unambiguously bulging. Six million global hits since the broadcast began some half an hour ago. In the past three minutes, they're recorded 40,000 hits from users in Ireland alone. Speaking simultaneously online, on-air and on-one-of-his-lengthy-state-of-my-union-addresses, the singer from U2 explains to RTE DJ Dave Fanning that his band are the same overblown, precious, pretentious, pompous bleeding-hearts they've always been: "Only now we look cool." As the cyberspace foams, Fanning plays a track from the new U2 album. "How are the kids, Bono?" he asks, removing his headphones. "Fine, fine," Bono smiles. "I came in at seven the other morning and Jordan was just waking up. And she's so polite! She said, 'Are you just getting in?' I said, 'Yes, I am.' Then she goes, 'And how was your work today?' Haha! My work! I told her, 'My work went fine but I think I need to get some sleep now..." ONE WEEK earlier, in a New York restaurant, another net bulges, this time courtesy of Gianfranco Zola's goalmouth guile. U2 have arranged to meet pals here for some afternoon drinks and to watch the England vs. Italy match. Yet, due to unavoidable commitments ensuing, from the press launch this lunchtime of the forthcoming PopMart world tour, Bono, the Edge and Larry Mullen have actually missed the crucial strike. As indeed, as Adam Clayton, though, as a fully subscribed soccerphobe, he never intended to show up at all. "What's the score?" the Edge inquires, showing his colours as he sips on a generous cappuccino. "Whoops!" Clutching a glass of Chardonnay, Bono has checked the giant screen and perhaps also sussed that the restaurant is filled substantially by English businessmen, imbibing stoutly and with increasing frustration. "It's not that big a deal to me," muses the Edge. "But if you're an Irishman you simply can't deny getting a kick out of seeing the English getting their arses kicked at football." Bono smiles and winks, presumably in the assent. "C'mon!" he demands, as the final whistle sounds, and Celtic hearts lift quite perceptibly. "More drinks!" Fair play to the man: when Bono gets to work, he puts the hours in it. If it's Ash Wednesday then he's in New York, singing in a supermarket to representatives of the world's media. If it's the following Thursday week he's in Dublin, juggling tour rehearsals around a relentless interview campaign, of which that evening's live radio/worldwide web meltdown is the main event. Much later that night he's gassed in the Kitchen, checking out the Propellerhead's DJ set and blethering with the Edge and Gavin Friday, formerly of the Virgin Prunes. At 5:00 a.m. the morning before the Manhattan press conference, he's talking to Abel Ferrara about the King of New York director's next film; Ferrara wants Bono to be in it. Then there's the meeting with Allen Ginsberg; the Beat legend is recording a version of his favourite new U2 song, "Miami." Then there's the piece he wrote for the NME....You heard. "Did they get that thing I did for Bowie's 50th birthday?" inquires Bono, pacing the dining area of U2's Hanover Quay studio complex. "I do actually admire Bowie's tenacity to just go, 'Right, I don't care.' He's reduced his ambition to personal ones. I'm a lot more interested in older people a lot of the time than our contemporaries or people younger than us. I am fascinated by Frank Sinatra or Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson or Lou Reed. I think there's a power in actually not being dead and not giving into that slide which you must feel when you go through the peaks and troughs, and actually thinking, 'I am a working man, this is what I do, I'm going out to do it.' Like Dylan's 'eternal tour,' or Neil Young. "But," he counsels, coughing a little on his cheroot, "these people are 15, 20 years older than us. We're just on the mezzanine floor of this issue!" Oasis are checking in downstairs. "Yes. And I think they know the way to the lift." A source of constant irritation to pop aesthetes for almost 20 years, the world's biggest band have once again put aside any thoughts of checking out of their, by now, very comfortably appointed hotel suite. In throwing the brick that was Achtung Baby through the window of their past, U2 somewhat belatedly acknowledged that it was no longer sufficient to look back to where rock had been in order to glimpse the future. And six years on from that remarkable artistic volte face comes proof that, though their hearts may no longer be worn so blatantly on their sleeves, a quest for some meaning amidst the madness continues. U2's discovery of the postmodern world was remarkable only in as much as the flabby expanses of Rattle and Hum anticipated imminent fossilisation in the overworked silt of rock history. As the '80s ended, U2 seemed poised to settle for being the ultimate Hall of Fame jam band, regarding each approbatory nod from the usual cast of legends as proof of their own painstakingly annotated authenticity. Yes, they had become the Ocean Colour Scene of the time (postmodernly speaking -- a bit of a headshrinker for ya there.) But the sordid spectacle of four still young(ish) men acting twice their age was aborted. All things being relative, Adam, Bono, the Edge and Larry got happy. With the Zoo TV technobinge, U2 went glib and equivocal on fans who had grown accustomed to the sincerely wrought compassion of religious firebrands. When once He was the answer, according to this new model U2, God was now but one of many questions -- not least of which being whether He existed at all. Apparently enthused by their Brian Eno-assisted relocation to pop's paradox-strewn stratospheres, U2 chose to explore their new environment more expansively on '93's impromptu tour document, Zooropa. By the advent of Original Soundtracks Volume 1 in 1995 it appeared that U2 had strayed so far from the middle of the road that they were up to their hips in ambient fairy dust, and could not bring themselves to credit the album as an official U2 work, adopting the pseudonym Passengers instead. As Oasis set about re-lighting the torch for anthemic, heartfelt, guitar-stoked rock 'n' roll, the band that had once represented similar values were now increasingly content with a delicately raised eyebrow and the textural conceits of the avant garde. Who would have thunk it? Sales were modest. So it is that Pop, the 11th U2 LP, has been heralded with no little intrigue. If Zooropa was the bedazzled offspring of Achtung Baby, and Original Soundtracks an extracurricular trip through time and space, then Pop is the first "proper" U2 album in over five years. And seeing as it will be sold to the world via the marathon PopMart tour, by all the usual criteria the biggest of its kind ever, one rather doubts whether U2 could get away with merely a further exercise in aural channel surfing. Stadium bollocks traditionally demands a bit of ballast. The problem with Zoo TV was that, once it began playing to the concrete open-air bowls, all the artful conceits and sly comments were blown to the winds. Fans literally stood and watched TV for the first hour before gratefully mental to "Where the Streets Have No Name." Would Pop attempt to resolve this dilemma, of how to sell irony a mass market? If the advance murmurs of the new U2 album's musical tone were founded on anything like the truth, the answer to that was a less than definite "maybe." Gathering up a stray quote here and noting the continued presence there in the studio of Passenger Howie B., self-appointed sources began confiding late last year that U2 were making a trip-hop album. Or perhaps a techno album. Conceivably a trance album. No one could rule out the possibility of a trance-hop-trip-techno album. At any rate, there seemed no reason to expect evidence of a creeping rock element to their dance music, especially when a single arrived bearing the title "Discotheque" with a video featuring U2 dressed as the Village People. So much for subtlety. The techno police manned the barricades. U2, it was alleged, were leeching off dance culture in much the same way as Everything But the Girl had, sucking out the vitality and treating themselves to a mid-career makeover. To which dedicated followers of Zoo TV would surely say, "So what if they have?" and cash another bunch of chips at the Bank of Cultural Criticism. It's not, however, what U2 say. U2 say, "But we haven't made a dance album." As it turns out, they're right. "If we had, I think that criticism would be valid," says the Edge. "If we'd done a techno or drum 'n' bass record and gone after that and actually been taken over by the form. Sausage roll?" The guitarist in U2 might be raising his right eyebrow as he passes the plate, but this isn't a case of one Eno made earlier. Lunch at Hanover Quay is straightforward, wholesome fare, and that much goes for Pop at its core. True, it's grounded in the cutting-edge technology of today -- i.e., most people's tomorrow -- and has a surface sheen as initially impenetrable as the layers of mustard with which Adam Clayton is smothering his meat pastry, but, in terms of songwriting discipline, Pop heralds a return to a more traditional U2 album, as latent and laden with emotional baggage and religious imagery as October. Only 15 years older and a good deal wiser. "Somebody said it was the first time we'd referenced the past and also been pushing forward at the same time," says the Edge. "See, we're into cell division," Bono announces with his customary drama. "You take a song and you let it be interpreted by somebody you respect. Like David Holmes or David Morales or Howie B., they're doing mixes of these tunes, which is the dance aspect. That's what jazz used to be. The songwriter would write the melody and then somebody else would interpret it in a different way. Except we're not just farming it out, we're collaborating by choice, or sometimes by being in the studio. If we'd made a full-on dance tune and called it 'Discotheque' it would have been a bit obvious, I think!" Certainly, but there doesn't appear to be too much sleight of hand at work on Pop's initial calling card: "You just can't get enough of that lovey dovey stuff." It's about drugs, right? "No," says Bono, "I think it's an earnest little riddle about love. That's the funny thing. We had to trash it up in the video, camp it up, to get people off the fact that it's a f---in' Paul McCartney song. Y'know, implication, it's about the counterfeit of what you can't find. People take second best because it's hard to get the real shit." Exactly. So you're sure it's not about drugs? The Edge: "Hahahaha! It's about drugs as well." Bono: "Yeah, that's one of them, but it's not just drugs. There's lots of counterfeits out there." "Ornithology." "What's that?" Bono looks over to Adam Clayton, now sprawled on the sofa and hitherto contemplating an early afternoon snooze. "Ornithology," the bassman repeats. Bono shakes his head. "Ornithology. Tell them Adam went down in the third round. He's had one word to contribute and it's 'ornithology!' " "Well," Clayton protests, "you'll be on to football next!" Of course, it was Adam's enthusiastic pursuit of bird watching that led to U2's solo dalliance with tabloid notoriety, when he briefly consorted with Naomi Campbell. In manfully shouldering the band's hitherto nonexistent lad aspect, Clayton also missed a show near the end of Zoo TV, due to unspecified "over-indulgence." But all four members agree that the last U2 tour pushed everyone to the brink. "It was really important after Zoo TV to just let the air out of the balloon and really relax for a while," says the Edge. " 'Cos I think other parts of our lives were beginning to show the effects of the strain. I don't think anyone was really questioning that we would stay together and continue. We've got a record deal with a few more albums left to run on it! Not that we would have to fulfill that, I suppose, but there was no reason to think that we wouldn't carry on. We're still having a great time. We were completely mad by the end of that tour." "It was a grand madness," agrees Bono, fondly. They turned off the telly, waved goodbye to the Fly, MacPhisto and the rest, and took a year's sabbatical "As in Sabbath," says Bono. "We wanted to live out that Morrissey idea that every day is like Sunday. And we did! I do love Sundays. Drinking in the day is a great thing. I actually wrote a tune with a mate of mine called 'Drinking in the Day.' At the same time, we did loads of things, we just didn't do them at the same level." Soundtrack business got taken care of. Adam and Larry did the Mission: Impossible theme, Bono and the Edge wrote "Goldeneye" for Tina Turner and 007, while the band as a whole contributed "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" to Batman Forever. "You need this period before you make a record of just playing," says Bono, "as in playfulness. I think big groups have to make space for themselves to mess. 'Cos everything can't be important. And soundtrack music's a license to be very self-indulgent." Which brings us to the Passengers project. It began life as the next U2 album, but somewhere along the line the plot changed. Larry is on the record as saying he hates it. "I loved doing it," he says, "and it's nothing to do with the quality of the music. But it is unfinished and it was meant to be for a movie and it's none of those things. I just thought, 'How far can you push your audience?' And they responded with their feet! They stayed at home! And I'm not proud of that." "The record company didn't want it to sell, 'cos they were scared shitless," says Bono, flatly. "And the record company don't have any sway with us particularly, but they found an ally in our manager on this one! I think the vibe was, 'F---ing hell, now they're going too far.' I thought we could control how it came out and just not make a big deal out of it." "And that's just not possible," says Larry. "Everything we do is so scrutinised." "Well," snorts Bono, "maybe it might have been possible if they'd agreed to what we said." Even in U2's exalted realm, pop's financial imperatives maintain their supremacy. They've done their fair bit for charity, but the bottom line appears to be you've got to make money to give it away. If the Zoo TV sums hadn't worked out to their advantage, things could, the Edge says, "have got a little messy." From the humble punter's perspective, they don't seem to be taking too many chances with PopMart. At an average of 30 quid a throw, the tickets are hardly what you'd call cheap. "Yeah," Bono agrees, "it would be nice to play for whatever it was, 30 bucks instead of 45, but it's up to people whether they want to stand at the back of a muddy field, like they do, and never raise an eyebrow. Doing this thing without sponsorship is also f---ing madness, but we're prepared to do it and I think we're worth it. We do want to actually make some money out of it ourselves, too." "We also told Paul (McGuinness, manager) and the promoter that we wanted the ticket prices not up to what they felt we could charge, but below it," Edge continues. "So it's not like we're pitching the ticket price at the most expensive it could be. It's less, I think, than the Stones went out for last time. There's very few comparisons you can make." Oasis played Knebworth for Ł22.50. The Edge: "But it was a muddy field. And I doubt their production costs really compare." True, they haven't gotten to the inflatable Bonehead stage just yet. The Edge: "We live in hope." Bono: "I think Bonehead's an underrated man in that group!" AS VIABLE a definition of pop as any is the marketing of art to the masses. It's a game U2 have been playing from the off, though it's been a little easier for them to admit as much since they made their tactical side-step into the arms of scepticism. Which partly explains why Pop is such a smart record. Its immaculately nurtured organic groove sensibilities lend it currency, yet the restless soul at the centre of most of the songs allows for a universality of emotion that simply did not exist on its two immediate predecessors. So it restores U2's market potency while vindicating its creators' proud claim that they're continuing to intensely challenge the essence of the band. Pop is short for popular, after all, but just because you're talking trash, hanging out in Miami, dressing like pimps and smoking cigars, it doesn't automatically follow that your art must be crap. Does it? The Edge: "The only reason we can get away with what we do is 'cos we actually have a bit of common sense and realise that there's a commercial world out there. Not that it's your enemy, just that it has to be taken into account. Bands like Oasis aren't scared of that." Bono: "Yeah that annoys me, actually, about the way they're portrayed as the 'lout-rock' lads. It's a hard-working band, to write tunes like that, and Noel takes care of business, too, he's keeping an eye on the numbers. In a way, I feel as if the media actually prefer this distorted picture because it's less threatening than the fact that there's actually some conscious people at work making great pop music. One of the attractions for me of the word 'pop' was that it was always a term of abuse." It's the great guilty secret of the white liberal rock establishment: a lot of people make obscene amounts of money from this game. "That's the deal," says Bono. "And then you look across to the hip-hop community, and it simply doesn't exist as a problem. Taking care of business is part of the fight. There was a piece in the New York Times on our friend the RZA, about how the RZA is working the Wu-Tang thing and on a business level talking about the sense of pride there. And I think it's partly papers like NME that were to blame for this mood. It was almost like Mao at one point, with people having their eyes gouged out for having ambition. It ate a lot of talent and it made it very boring for everybody. We were hung from a tree for very early on declaring our intentions. When we were 17 and 18, we were like, 'We want to be in a big band, we wanna see how far we can take it, we are about to lose the run of ourselves!' It was just very uncool." And he's right. It was and they were. Still are, too. If Bono was really as disingenuous as many allege, he might realise that citing a member of the Wu-Tang clan as his "friend" actually looks a bit naff on paper. Yet he can't help it. He's at work, on a roll, having fun. "Fun is where it's at for us right now," the Edge confirms. It didn't always look that way from the pictures, did it? "AH!" Bono now nearly chokes on his cheroot. "Well!" the Edge laughs. "That's one of the reasons we went to Miami. We decided we wanted to go someplace warm where we could actually enjoy the sunshine. We always ended up doing photo sessions in the snow or somewhere cold and really miserable. So that was nice. We suddenly realised Duran Duran must have had an awful lot of fun making those videos!" So how exactly did U2 discover irony? "We actually hated irony for a long time," says the Edge, right eyebrow perching just beneath the brim of his now nonexistent hat. "We didn't like it at all. I remember discussions with Brian Eno during the sessions for Unforgettable Fire where we were actually very anti-irony. Not because we didn't have the ability to be ironic if we wanted to, but we thought it was so easy at the time. Everyone was being so ironic with everything, nothing was in any way attempting to hit anything head on." "We were coming almost from gospel music with that point of view," adds Bono, evidently unironically. "And Brian was interested in what was coming from U2, the emotional life of what we were doing. He thought that was smart. I think we took that as far as we could. Part of it was like judo. We actually had to learn to defend ourselves using the energy that was coming out. And we've developed a protective layer now, which plays on the humour of the band, which has always been part of us, while the music stays as precious as it always was, but it's just dressed up. "There is a snobbery in music that the guy who has a nine-to-five job or the girl who works at the supermarket checkout doesn't have real depth, and so they don't really understand what U2 is on about, they just buy it 'cos we're a big group. And that could be true on the fringe, but you go to these stadium shows and that's not a manufactured feeling, there's very real feelings there. I guess because we hadn't worked out the veneer of cool that we might have now, it was like this open road we had left to ourselves. I think we still have that line of conversation, it's just as you get more confident you can have a laugh about your success and enjoy it at the same time." IT'S THE Thursday night in Dublin after the week before in New York, Bono's getting merry at the RTE studios. "It's the first time I've been nervous since the New Year," he frets. "Why would I be nervous about doing a live radio interview?" Perhaps because he realises Dave Fanning has known him too long to be fooled by all this multi-textural flimflam U2 are pouring over every last detail of Pop. As Bono sips champagne, Fanning details the excessive PopMart stage set. "Is this not Spinal Tap?" he finally demands. "I hope so," says Bono. "I really hope so." Nineteen years ago, Larry Mullen gave him his one and only job: pop star. The hours seem reasonable. (Continued in Part Two)
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