Music Correspondent
Getty ImagesIt’s official. U2 are back in the studio making new music, after a gap of eight years.
The four-piece had been on an extended break, as drummer Larry Mullen Jr recovered from neck surgery.
Pompted by years of onstage damage to his “elbows, knees and neck”, it stopped him recording new material (2023’s Atomic City aside), and saw U2 hiring Dutch musician Bram van den Berg for last year’s Las Vegas residency.
“It was difficult being away because of injury,” says Mullen Jr, “so I’m thrilled to be back in a creative environment, even if I’m not 100% there and I’ve got some bits falling off.”
“It’s just the most extraordinary thing,” he adds. “When I was away from the band, I missed it, but I didn’t realise how much I missed it.”
The band are speaking backstage at the Ivor Novello Awards, where they’ve just become the first Irish Group to be given fellowship of the Ivors’ songwriting academy.
It’s the body’s highest accolade, placing them alongside former recipients like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading.
Bono, perennially laid back and loquacious, suddenly becomes energised when he talks about U2’s recent writing sessions.
“It was just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, ‘What’s that feeling? Oh right, that’s chemistry’.
“We had it when we were 17. We’ve had it over the years but you lose it sometimes, [especially because] the way music is assembled these days is not friendly to that chemistry.
“But isn’t it strange that it’s just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea.
“That’s where we’re at in 2025.”
The band have been in reflective mode for the last half-decade.
In 2019, they set off on a stadium tour celebrating their career-defining Joshua Tree album. Bono spent the pandemic writing his memoir, Surrender, prompting the band to revisit and re-record some of their biggest hits on the mostly acoustic Songs Of Surrender album.
Last year’s Vegas shows recreated their 1990s Berlin reinvention on Achtung Baby and they capped that off with an archival album of unreleased material from 2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
“We spent a moment thinking about the past – but you do that because you need to understand where that desire to be heard came from,” says Bono.
“And then you can get to the present and to the future – because the sound of the future is what we’re most interested in.
“It doesn’t exist yet. It’s ours to make, and that’s what we have the chance to do.”
Breaking up the band
Attending the Ivor Novellos gives the band another opportunity to retrace their story, for an audience that includes Bruce Springsteen, Charli XCX, Ed Sheeran, Brian Eno and Lola Young.
“When we gathered in Larry Mullen’s kitchen in 1976, this was unimaginable,” says bassist Adam Clayton.
“We never thought the band could be this old!”
Mullen Jr recalls the record company executive who advised the rest of the group to ditch his services, while guitar legend The Edge sings a modified version of My Way, to illustrate how he always gets the last word.
Bono isn’t impressed.
“I’d like to remind the room that The Edge the first one to break up this band,” he deadpans.
“We’ve all had it go since but in 1982, aged 21, that man there decided that he had enough of the music business with its inflamed egos and pumped up personality.
“I asked him, ‘Will you make an exception for me?'”
Presumably, the answer was yes.
Backstage, they talk about their beginnings in Dublin’s punk scene and how it gave four untrained, untested musicians permission to pursue their dreams.
“We don’t come from a tradition of great songwriters,” says Mullen Jr. “We didn’t have any of those blues chops, so we were starting from scratch, all of us.”
“A lot of early influences for us were bands like The Ramones, who were doing these three-minute pop songs, and Patti Smith, who was a bit more poetic, and had a bit more of a social conscience,” says bassist Adam Clayton.
“We knew that the bar was high, but we were just getting in at the bottom level.”
“Punk rock was like year zero for us,” picks up Bono.
“We didn’t really want to know, or be beholden to, the past. So we started with a blank page, really, which was just as well because we couldn’t play anyone else’s songs. We just started writing our own.”
Over the years, the honed and finessed those skills. Inspired by Bob Marley – their label-mate on Island Records – they realised that rock music could be more than sex and attitude.
“Bob could sing about anything he wanted to,” says Bono.
“He’d sing to God, he’d sing to his lovers, he’d sing to the people on the street. There were no rules for Bob Marley – so that was exactly the right influence for us, because that’s where we wanted to go.”
“Any songwriter knows that they have to write about things that they care about,” agrees The Edge.
“That’s when it connects and when it means something. Otherwise, it’s artifice.”
Getty ImagesThroughout the Ivors ceremony, U2’s decades-long friendship is apparent – albeit through relentless, good-natured taunting.
They try to goad The Edge into dancing for the BBC’s TV crew. Mullen reminds his bandmates of their 1990s penchant for cross-dressing. Bono dredges up Paul Weller’s scathing critique of their band.
“When asked, ‘Why don’t you like U2′, he said, “Because they wear cowboy boots.’
“‘I rest my case.'”
Thankfully, the cowboy boot era is ancient history (tonight Bono wears Cuban heels) and, Weller’s opprobrium aside, U2 became one of rock’s biggest bands, selling more than 175 milllion albums worldwide.
There were missteps along the way – Clayton famously disappeared on a drinking bender during the New Zealand leg of the colossal two-year Zoo TV tour (he’s now sober and appearing on Gardener’s World), while the band have repeatedly apologised for the misguided decision to pre-load their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, on to people’s iPhones.
“The free U2 album is overpriced,” wrote one disgruntled user.
In his autobiography, Bono said he took “full responsibility” for the stunt.
“I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it,” he wrote.
“Not quite.”
Noisy guitar album
But as they enter their fifth decade, the band are ready to “re-apply for the job of best band in the world”, as they memorably put it in 2001.
A year ago, Bono expressed his desire to release “a noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album”, citing AC/DC as an influence.
At the Ivors, I accidentally misquote this back to him as “an unassailable guitar record”.
“I’m really pleased with that adjective – unassailable,” he says, trying it on for size.
“I think he said, ‘un-sellable’,” shoots back Mullen Jr.
“But listen,” says Bono. “We have a guitar genius in our band, and the only person who doesn’t know it is him.
“We tell him every day, but he insists on playing the piano… and sometimes the spoons.”
“It’s blackmail,” insists The Edge, the famously unflappable guitarist seeming temporarily flapped.
“The fellas are all on about this guitar album we’re making, and I’m at home, going, ‘Okay, I’d better get on with it'”
The clock is ticking…
Leave a Reply