U2: Trying To Throw Their Arms Around The World
They’re the biggest band left on Earth, but for U2, that’s not nearly enough. Inside their impossible quest
It’s never been easy to produce a U2 record. Iovine quit working as a producer altogether after the brutal experience of Rattle and Hum in 1988. “They exhaust you,” says Iovine. “You’re wrestling four guys coming in rotation and then all together at the same time. I mean, it’s unbelievable how they work. It made me go start Interscope. I’m not kidding! I love them, but I would never go into a recording studio with them ever again whatsoever!”
This time around was no different. “MakÂing a U2 record, it’s like trying to get worms back in the can,” says Epworth. “You think you’ve wrestled them in, and then suddenly they’ve all popped out again. Their process is very much ”˜Find as many good ideas as you can and make the best ones fight it out.’ ”
It didn’t help that the band was disapÂpointed in the performance of its last album, 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, which dilutÂed underrated U2 classics (“Moment of SurÂrender,” “Breathe” and the title track among them) with what Clayton and Mullen, at least, now see as weaker choices: the lyriÂcally clever but musically inert “Stand Up Comedy,” the energetic but cluttered “Get on Your Boots.”
“ ”˜Boots’ was an absolutely catastrophÂic choice for a single,” says Mullen, still seething about it, five years later. “It was madness, but the decision was made, and that was the beginning of the end. We never recovered from it.” The acÂcompanying 360° Tour was the highest-grossing tour ever, by anyone, but as it went on, U2 kept playing fewer and fewer HoriÂzon tracks. “It was a little bit of a defeat,” says Mullen.
The Edge in 2010, the year the band started work on Innocence with Danger Mouse | Photo Credit: Julian Lennon
After setting aside some early experiÂments on a “club” record with Lady Gaga collaborator RedOne and other pop-leanÂing producers (“The work we did with RedOne was very, very exciting, but I’m not sure it was the essence of what U2 is good at,” says Clayton), U2 met up with Brian “DanÂger Mouse” Burton in 2010. “It was a realÂly inspiring time, those first sessions with Danger Mouse,” says the Edge, “that moÂment where you try to find out if you can work together. We started a couple of tunes that ended up on the album in the first few days.” He laughs. “Of course, they went on a bit of a journey.”
As song after song emerged in the early sessions, the band dared to dream that it might be easy this time. “I was feeling really good at the beginÂning,” says Mullen. “ ”˜Shit, this is going to really work out. We’re going to f ly through this stuff.’ Boy, oh boy, was I wrong.”
If anything, they became suspicious of how smoothly it was going. “It had an amazing freshness,” says Clayton, “but what happens in our process ”“ and this is the difference between, say, us and the Rolling Stones ”“ is that perhaps the Stones would say, ”˜We could finish it in six months, but let’s do it in the next two months and get out and tour.’ And that’s not disparaging to them. WhereÂas we look at it and go, ”˜Six months, finish it? Nah, we’ll take a year.’ ” He laughs hard. “And as you keep layerÂing on the material, things that soundÂed fresh start to sound a little bit too innocent, a little bit unsophisticated.”
Danger Mouse’s favorite U2 albums are Pop and Achtung Baby, and he seemed to push the band in that experimental vein: “There’s a part of U2 he’s not interÂested in at all ”“ anyÂthing he feels he’s heard before or is orÂdinary,” Clayton told me early in the sesÂsions. By last year, the band had a set of songs that could have been released ”“ apparently guitar-light, electronics-heav y, with uncharacteristically subÂtle choruses (the Zooropa-ish “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” is probably the most characteristic survivor).
“We love taking risks and working with new collaborators, because that’s how you carve out the next chapter in the story,” says the Edge. “But then we realized, ”˜OK, we’ve actually not delivered what you might call the hallmarks of our work ”“ the big music.’ We were mixing in New York and going, ”˜This is good, but we’ve still got some work to do here.’ ”
Iovine agreed. “They needed to get themÂselves in a place where that intensity was in the room,” he says. “And that’s not easy to do.”
Danger Mouse went off to work with Broken Bells, his duo with the Shins’ James Mercer, and U2 reached out to Epworth and Tedder, along with ZooroÂpa c o-producer F lood a nd I rish e ngineer-producer Declan Gaffney. Past U2 alÂbums benefited from opposing perspecÂtives, pitting, say, Brian Eno’s ear for atÂmosphere against Steve Lillywhite’s radar for hits. Intentionally or not, they re-creÂated that dynamic for Songs of Innocence: Danger Mouse has cast himself as an “auÂteur” producer, but the band and its new collaborators didn’t hold back on changÂes to his tracks. “I have the utmost respect for Danger Mouse,” says Tedder. “Bono was very straightforward. He was like, ”˜This is how we work. You’re going to do whatevÂer you do and get it as good as you can, and then more than likely your s tuff i s g oing to get messed with by somebody else.’ So I hesitated for, like, five seconds, and then Edge was like, ”˜Man, tear it apart. Do what you want.’ ”
Tedder did some of his most radical surÂgery on “Every Breaking Wave,” which had been a lyrical but meandering No Line outÂtake. “It’s about how hard it is to give yourÂself completely to another person,” says Bono. “And the two characters in it are adÂdicted to sort of failure and rebirth.”
“I just asked them, ”˜Is it cool if I just butcher this thing?’ ” says Tedder, who alÂternated between joining U2 in the stuÂdio and working remotely on the tracks. “And they were like, ”˜Do your worst. Go for it.’ ” He added a new chorus melody, turned the old chorus into a bridge, and sent it back to the bandmates. They reÂworked it on his model, ending up with a tight, hooky pop song, albeÂit one with lines like “Every shipÂwrecked soul knows what it is/To live without intimacy.”
On the 360° Tour in Michigan, 2011 | Photo Credit: Tribune Content Agency LLC/Alamy
As they traveled t he worldto record, the band members found themselves sharing living quarÂters, which helped them reclaim some of the intimacy of their early years ”“ sometimes perhaps too much so. “In Malibu, it was Adam, me and Larry,” says Bono, grinÂning. “And the sight of Adam in his dressing robe in the morning ”“ often open ”“ is enough to put you off your poached eggs. My daughter is still traumatized! But, you know, he’s there with his cup of tea, going, ”˜How are you this morning? How do you think that all went?’ And then Larry didn’t seem to get up in the daylight. He turned into Dracula. He was doing drum takes at 2:00 in the morning.”
Rick Rubin, who produced a pile of mostly unreleased U2 songs a few years back, had a major influence on this album, despite not actually workÂing on it. Rubin told Bono that U2 use their skill at sculpting unique soundÂscapes “to disguise the fact that you don’t have a song.” He pushed them to write traditionally structured tunes that would work with, say, voice and piano. “Someone like Adele makes better reÂcords than everyone else because her songs are better,” says Bono. “In a great song, you can be as naked as a streaker singing a capÂpella. I’m embarrassed next to someone like Carole King, unless I can come up with something that’s as raw as some of her great songs. So that was it. Songwriting school!”
In the end, the Apple deal gave U2 what they needed most: a deadline. Many of the songs made major leaps in the final stretch. “It was quite a thrilling ride the last few weeks,” says Gaffney. “All the pieces start to fit ”“ it gained a certain level of clarity that you didn’t see coming, and then it was right there in front of you, finished.”
Burton returned for some final sessions; Mullen suggests the producer was taken aback by what he heard, but he stuck around to help them finish. “To come back in and hear things that he started, being changed around,” says Mullen, “and feeling that it maybe should have been done slightly difÂferently ”“ that takes a certain amount of huÂmility. He was very gracious ”“ he took the lead and went, ”˜If this is the way that you’re going, there is a different version of this that might work better.’ ”
“They’re not my tracks,” Burton says, via e-mail. “They’re U2’s tracks. I’m not happy about a song if they’re not happy. Even after years of working on stuff, the guys won’t stop trying to make a song better all the way up to the end, and I admire that.”
Bono is finishing up at the pub, but before he leaves, he has to pose for all the photos he promÂised to fans who tried to interrupt us. “I’ll be Bono,” he told one young woman who double-checked his identity. “I can be anyone you want me to be.” He’s crestfallÂen to learn that another patron, a German woman who wanted to “make a photo” to send home to her estranged U2-fan dad, has already been tossed out of the pub. “Her dad is a U2 fan,” he says. “I have to look after the dude.”
