Bono Vox is pondering the remainder of a nearly empty bottle in his hands. "You know," he says, holding the vessel at an arm's length, "touring can really turn you into an animal. You find yourself drinking maybe two or three bottles of Orange Crush a day."
So much for behind-the-scenes tales of decadence. In fact, U2's lead singer is looking the picture of health in his grey athletic sweatsuit, lounging around backstage at Detroit's Grand Circus Theatre after the soundcheck for tonight's sold-out show and offering me candy ("Do you Doublet?") with a mock-genteel air.
We are examining the cover photo of U2's previous album, October. Bono runs his finger along the image of a row of waterfront buildings that stretch in the distance beyond the jutting faces of the U2 bandmembers: Vox, bassist Adam Clayton, guitarist the Edge and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.
"I find this a particular base of interest," Bono explains, "the Grand Canal Dock, where the Grand Canal meets the River Liffey and the sea. I'm very interested in the port of Dublin, the portside, the docks, the quay area. The Grand Canal is where all the poets of Ireland used to sit beside. 'The Lazy Acre' was an area where a lot of artists went, but that was in the fashionable area. I like it when it hits the real rough industrial area, and that's where we chose as our setting."
Indeed, like that dockside district, there was nothing particularly flashy or fashionable about U2 when they came out of the relative backwater of Dublin in 1980 and strong-armed their way to the top of the English charts with their debut LP, Boy. Having spent two years honing their craft in virtual privacy -- literally "wood-shedding" in the Edge's backyard at one point -- U2 carried their unique sound-and-vision to London, where producer Steve Lillywhite helped to transmit to disc the textural layers that are U2's stock-in-trade.
Since then, the band has garnered both respect and radio airplay on both sides of the Atlantic. With their new album War being propelled into the charts on the strength of the video and single of "New Year's Day," U2 have embarked on their third American tour.
Presently, bassist Adam Clayton ventures into the room, armed with a bottle of wine. Opening it, he offers it around, helps Bono spill wine on himself, and graciously joins the interview.
Creem: I sense a great deal of respect, by yourselves and Europeans in general, for the past, the men-of-letters, artists and such. People over here don't seem to appreciate that as much.
Adam: If you want to break out of your environment here it's not the arts so much. It's rock 'n' roll musicians, actors, football players, ice hockey players. Whereas in European culture, for a long time the only way of breaking out of your environment was to go into the classical arts. I think that's part of our heritage. When you're in America, particularly for us as a rock 'n' roll band, there's so much rock 'n' roll history in this country. It stimulates you in that way. You see places like Louisiana, all these references in songs that you've heard. In Ireland, you've all the references to in poetry and literature, and you live them as you walk around.
Do you feel you're part of an Irish tradition, coming from someone like Van Morrison, who's a rocker of a more classical stature?
Bono: I would feel we had a lot more in common with Van Morrison than with many Irish artists.
Adam: Yeah, I think, definitely Morrison. I think a lot of it's an attitude as opposed to what you produce. To actually come out of Ireland and take on the world...there's a particular sort of fighting spirit. You've got to be prepared 24 hours a day instead of 12.
Bono: The Irish have an inferiority complex, you see. The term "a prophet without honor in his own land" really makes a lot of sense if you live in Dublin. People don't walk up to you and put a guitar around your neck, give you a blow dryer and satin jeans and say, "Son, you're going to be a rock 'n' roll star." They give you a clip 'round the ear, a kick in the pants, they flush your head down the toilet, and they say, "Wake up!" That's very much the Irish way. If you can break out of Dublin, you can break out of anywhere.
Adam: There's a peculiar thing about the Irish. Because Ireland is a social country, like sitting around in pubs talking, work is frowned upon and you try as hard as you can to avoid it. To take the Irishman out of that comfortable element and put him in New York, like at the beginning of the century in this country, he'll build it! He'll actually get out there and prove himself and work twice as hard as anyone else and end up running the place.
Bono: He'll end up being Mayor Daly, or every police officer in the U.S.
It's your third tour over here. What have you found positive or appealing about this country?
Adam: There's a lot of energy. I think that generally there is an attitude within America to do things. There is a work ethic.
Bono: There's a degree of cynicism that's enveloping Europe which we don't find over here. It would sound like a cliche to say that people here really love the music, but they really do love the music. There are people who really believe in what we're doing. We have college professors doing theses on the Edge! The difference between the two continents, I think, is that the trend in the U.S. is to applaud work done, to applaud achievement. It's the whole American dream, the man who comes over and builds the railroad and then gets to own the train. He receives a great deal of applause. Now, Omar Sharif says that over here, people will see him and whisper, "There's Omar Sharif!" But if he walks in Paris, he'll hear someone say, "There's Omar Sharif!" and their friend will say, "So what?" There isn't that sort of applause for work done. There's, in fact, a jealousy, a bitterness.
OK, what are the negative things you've found?
Adam: The morality. And advertising. I think that's where a lot of Americans get their cynicism. I see so many ads on television here. I don't want to buy anything, 'cause I'm not sure I'm going to get what I'm paying for.
Bono: The level of television and radio in this country is frightening, really frightening. Like terrifying. I lay awake at night shivering from the television and what it does to me. It's commercial enterprise. And that is why rock 'n' roll, to break out in this country, has to be very extreme. That's why a group like Talking Heads or the Patti Smith Group or Television had to separate themselves, remove themselves. And they're accused of elitism, but they have to in order to get a breath of fresh air. You cannot underestimate that extreme. But who are we to knock this country? We're guests of the nation. The people have been extremely generous to us in their applause and their love of music. It's very hip to knock America and it really bugs me. We go back to England and people try to knock it.
Adam: They say, "Hah! Did your three month's exile in the States, did you?"
Bono: We just say, "Go away." I enjoy touring over here, probably more than touring anywhere else in the world.
The band's religious perspective has come into focus in a lot of recent articles on U2. Do you feel you've been put on the spot by the press?
Adam: We don't have to justify anything. If we choose to justify it, that's a different thing. I mean, it's there, in the records, it's in the music, and if somebody wants to ask us about it, well, we can choose to reply or not.
Bono: A lot of people have nothing to say, and they say it all the time. There's a lot of people flying flags, wearing badges, all over this country, when they'd do better just shutting their mouths. Look, everyone knows that when music reaches that crescendo, it's like an arrow that cuts through you. It's in music that people realize there's more than just getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home, beating the wife, taking the kids out for a walk, and going to sleep again. There's that great richness. Music expresses what's great about man.
Adam: The change is emotional rather than intellectual, and I think that as long as that perspective is held to, you do more good to let the emotion lead the personality than trying to intellectualize and convince somebody.
Bono: People have been trying to put their finger on us for a long time, calling us a punk band, calling us a psychedelic band. They're trying to grapple with this, you know, "There must be a box! (snaps his fingers) Maybe they're fanatics!" People are always trying to make us something. Why won't they accept us a being four people? There's no plan for the group. The music's a reflection of four people, who are influenced in many ways you can name. Why apply a tourniquet to an aspect of your life so that the blood refuses to get to your fingers or your head? That's what all the people seem to do. They block aspects of their life that they feel don't fit in or are unfashionable or awkward. That's what made or makes John Lennon great. That's what made or makes Bob Dylan great. That's what made or makes Jim Morrison great. They're people who put themselves on the line, whatever the consequences. They said, "This is me, without the clothes." And people want singers, especially, to take off their clothes in public. I do it every night. Maybe I have to do it, maybe I'm just that type of person. I have to do it because I'm trying to understand what's going on in my life.
You've mentioned in the past that you feel that U2 is a "special" band in the varied ranks of rock 'n' roll. Care to elaborate?
Adam: Most musicians in this country start playing when they're 15 and don't get into a band until they're maybe 25. They've spent years studying their heritage, playing other people's licks. Then, when they have to start producing something as themselves, their influences are those people they've studied. We never did that. We formed the band and then bought instruments. We had to define our own terms. That's what makes us special.
Bono: In that sense, it's the tradition of the Beatles, the Who or the Stones. We're four people, you see, we're not four musicians. People have misunderstood that in earlier interviews.
Adam: What you lack in technique, you substitute with personality. The soul is much stronger than any technique. That's what we have.
Bono: There is an "X" factor. I have this theory about the "X" factor. It's what separates great music from not-great music. Not new music from old, but great music from not-great music. We meet a lot of kids from garage bands that come up to us afterwards and say, "It's going to be great in two years time -- I'm going to have the latest in MXR effects, I'm going to have the latest amplifiers." Everything's technology, everything's technique. I think, throw it all out the window. Pete Townsend had the right idea when he rammed his Rickenbacker through the speakers. He was making a point. Guitars are only wood, steel and plastic. The same with drums, that's all they are. There should be no worship of the instruments. I mean Edge, who is, I think, obviously an exceptional guitarist, an innovator, only takes his guitar out on formal occasions. He hardly sleeps with it, or polishes it, no real respect for the instrument.
Adam: And he polishes himself a lot!
The new album War seems to have less of the shimmering qualities of the earlier work in favor of a funkier, chunkier sound. How'd it happen?
Adam: I think having been over here in America much of the time, a lot of the white rock 'n' roll bands that you hear were very dull and unstimulating. I think Larry and myself, and indeed the rest of the band, have discovered that the only really progressive music happening over here is R&B. We were listening to a lot of R&B and it made us more aware of the role of the rhythm section. I think these are our tentative explorations into the field of R&B.
Bono: It's also reflected in the subject material. A lot of the songs on side two of the album were inspired by New York and the friction of the city, the whole claustrophobic thing, how people were living on top of each other, how it affects them, their way of life, their characters. "Surrender" and "Red Light," in particular, and even "Two Hearts Beat As One."
Do you see yourselves as having abandoned some of the earlier sound in favor of something new?
Bono: We see ourselves as changing. Stripping down. We're shedding, like throwing off clothes. We're like a clown who comes off from the ring in the tent and is taking off his clothes and putting on more. It's still the same clown, he's still trying to express a lot of the same things and make people laugh, but if he was out there in the same costume, then it gets boring. What bugged us, though, was that a lot of people started ripping off our clown outfits. There were people regurgitating "A Day Without Me" for an entire LP, um, like flocks and Flocks of Stealers. Lots of people are playing just like the Edge, to the extent that he was being asked if he was being influenced by them! He was in danger of parodying himself. So we sat down for this album and said, "Look, we must strip the sound bare." As Edge says, people can rip off the style of this group, but they have nothing. They have only the clothes. They're not the personality. More important to the music is what's behind the music, I think. It's the spirit of the group that's important, and they can't rip that off.
© Creem, 1983.
