Smash Notes
Bono
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Notes
The Interview · 50 Years In, What's the Point of U2? Bono and the Edge Have Answers.
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Why Does the Edge's Exit Plan End With Bono Singing?
The Edge talks himself out of leaving by hiring the same people back. He starts an inner argument about getting out of the band, then answers his own questions until Bono is the singer, he stays on guitar, and the rhythm section is the one he already plays with. He says that lineup basically redesigns the band, and there is no doubt about where he belongs.
The questions run in order. He asks what he wants to do with his life. He is a creative person and music is his main thing, so he stays in music. On singing, he says he really wants to be the singer, and he is really happy being a guitar player. The singer he most likes to work with is clearly Bono, so a solo thing still has Bono on vocal
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Why Does U2 Sell the Best Seats Cheap?
Bono says U2 has very little say over prices in the live business. The band takes the best seats in the house and makes them often the most affordable.
The affordable seats are the ones up front, within the heart or within the circle. Bono says U2 has done it all their life and always finds a way. The band also has no problem separating rich people from their money. Speaking to the Edge, Bono says rich people have feelings, and if they want to pay very high prices, U2 has no problem with it.
In America, Bono wants people to feel really good about the choice to pay a ticket to see U2, even when the price is probably too much. The show will challenge them, but not on the obvious.
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What Did Tim Cook Say About the Free Album?
Tim Cook, when the idea was pitched, asked why anyone who spent a whole life getting people to pay for music would give something away free. After the then-new album landed in people's iTunes without asking, the giveaway turned into a debacle people were mad about, and the same objection came back.
Bono says the band was experimenting. They wanted Apple, or another company, to pay for the music and then distribute it the way a record label does, because fixing music is going to take experimentation. Pay for other musicians is astonishingly small and frightening. Bono sees it in his son's band, Inhaler, a really successful outfit, and it is still very hard to imagine how a young band like U2
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Why Did Bono and the Edge Pivot After Joshua Tree?
The Edge says the pivot after the Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum happened because they were being robbed of aspects of who they were. The work did not reflect them, and neither did people's understanding and perception of them.
They can get very heavy and very deep. When they are together working they have a lot of fun, laugh a lot at each other and at themselves, and fail a lot. The Edge says they are comfortable with failing, because you do not get somewhere great unless you are prepared to fail.
He feels a little bit of a responsibility to address what they see going wrong with the world, but they cannot do it incessantly. On the album they touch the subject lightly and skip names, beca
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Why Does Bono Call Stealing America a Real Heist?
Bono calls the moment the most extraordinary moment and the greatest heist in the history of the world. He says the heist is stealing America, that it is real, and that it is happening. He says it is not a caper movie.
Bono says a discussion about the administration is fine once it stays separate from a discussion about the left and the right and conservatives and liberals. He does not want to put off good people who vote conservative and who vote Republican. He says their party has been hijacked in an aggressive takeover of the GOP. People vote conservative for all kinds of reasons that are okay, and Bono wants to invite them back.
He says the problem is serious, and the dealings are pers
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Why Did Renee Good's Father Own People of the Lie?
Bono says the album is about evil, and that people should be grateful because evil is out in the open. On Days of Ash, the songs name names. He is not sure the conversation has been public, but he spoke with Renee Good's family. Bono says she was killed by ICE agents in Minnesota.
A week later they wrote a song about her. The lyric says America will rise up against the people of the lie, and Bono also speaks it as America will rise against the people of the lie. The Edge had given Bono M. Scott Peck's book The People of the Lie 30 years ago. The book is about the nature of evil and a study of malignant narcissism. Bono asked the family for permission on Zoom before using the lyric. He descr
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How Did Bono and the Edge Pick Names?
Bono always saw U2 in some sort of mythological sense. The names came from a wish to escape suburbia and discover other selves. They gave the other selves names. The Ramones were the key, and the Ramones are really well drawn characters.
David Marchese asks why Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. did not take stage names too. The Edge says that at that age they laughed a lot, at each other and at themselves. The deal was that you could laugh at others if you were prepared to allow them to laugh at you. The Edge says the names were not necessarily designed for a heroic aspect. Bono's very first name was Steinrich van Heyschen bang, bang, bang. The Edge went by another name for a while before b
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How Did the Edge Hear Bono Was Mental?
David Marchese asks the Edge what he thought of Bono before they played together. The Edge says Bono's reputation reached him before the two of them ever played together. Shane Fogarty, one of his best friends and a year ahead at Mount Temple, called a student named Paul Hewson a mad head: mental, and still good fun.
The Edge first agreed with the line in Bono's memoir, Surrender. As teenagers, he and his brother had a name as pleasant weirdos. He says some neurodivergence was there, maybe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism, so they sat a little on the fringe, and they were fascinated with explosives. They ran a lot of experiments, and he knows more about blowing things up t
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Why Didn't U2 Sell Their Faith?
David Marchese asks whether U2 knew that closing concerts with 40, an adaptation of a psalm, brought a crowd sing-along rooted in religious feeling. Bono says they were aware of that feeling. They were not seeing it as a selling point. They were seeing it as the thing they have to speak about, because it is where they come from as people. Leaving that faith out of the work would have been hugely dishonest.
People have said U2 is the band that people who do not know they believe in God like. Bono says the line is personally true. Faith sits in the work in a natural way, with no polemic. It is their search and their inquiry. U2 is not part of any religious movement, doctrine, or sect, so the