Feast of Unissued Songs Rolling Stone
Feast of Unissued Songs Rolling Stone
Feast of Unissued Songs Rolling Stone
Feast of Unissued Songs Rolling Stone
ADAM07 APRIL 2002 1 MIN READ

Feast of Unissued Songs, Rolling Stone

'I hate to make predictions,' Adam tells Rolling Stone Magazine. 'If we getsix tunes, maybe that will roll into a project'...

07 Apr 2002
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'I hate to make predictions,' Adam tells Rolling Stone Magazine. 'If we getsix tunes, maybe that will roll into a project.'

"I hate to make predictions," U2 bassist Adam Clayton says with a softchuckle, as if he's afraid someone will hear him over the midday buzz in thelobby of his lower-Manhattan hotel. "If we get six tunes, maybe that willroll into a project." He pauses for emphasis. "Maybe."

As you read this, U2 are at work in their Dublin studio, where they plan tostay until June, jamming, writing and revisiting outtakes from their latestalbum, the Grammy-winning All That You Can't Leave Behind. Their intention:to start, and possibly finish, a new record this year. Clayton, singer Bono,guitarist the Edge and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. have already been in thestudio twice since their last U.S. show on December 2nd, 2001, and Claytonclaims that, even after a year of touring, U2 are anything but toast.

"One advantage of playing arenas is that the band is playing much betternow," he says cheerfully, dressed with quiet style in a dark-red T-shirt,loose khaki slacks and a gray hooded jacket. "We can actually hear eachother onstage. So the band sounds good." The same, he adds, goes for thefeast of unissued songs from the sessions for Can't Leave Behind."Everything we had left over was finished, which was unusual for us. Thereare maybe another ten pieces that are more immediate, slightly poppier,tunes that I know will turn up." Clayton smiles. "Because they're good."

He then explains what happens behind those studio doors: "Nowadays, Edgetends to do his homework and discipline some chord sequences. Then, as agroup, we find an interpretation, a unique way they fit together. Or a soundwill get thrown out from a jam, and we figure out a melody to go with it."Clayton cites two examples from Can't Leave Behind: " 'Elevation' came froma sound, that abrasive guitar: 'We've really got to do something with that.''Walk On' was two songs that both had great chords but weren't great songs."He laughs. "We sewed them together."

Clayton - the oldest member of U2 (he turned forty-two on March 13th) -remains amazed by the sustained power of Can't Leave Behind. It was a recordwritten, he says, "about the journey we'd been through as a band, as men inrelationships, as sons of mothers and fathers. It was about the baggage thatyou have to live with, the sense of loss, like the fact that Bono's fatherwas terminally ill through that whole period."

September 11th changed that. "Suddenly, this happened to America as awhole," Clayton says with lingering shock, "which means people reassess yourrecord and music in a totally different way." When U2 pulled into New York'sMadison Square Garden in October, "it was like when we played Sarajevo [in1997], where the act of the band being there was just a reason for everybodyto come out. At the Garden, everyone turned up because they knew the bandwould be onstage at nine o'clock. But as crazy as those shows were, it wasthe audience taking us on a journey, not us taking them."

U2 are done with the road -- for now. But even with another record looming,Clayton does not fret about Bono's manic commuting between U2 and his twincrusades: third-world debt relief and the AIDS crisis in Africa. Forinstance, Bono spent most of his Super Bowl weekend, between rehearsals inNew Orleans for U2's halftime show and the game itself, in New York at theWorld Economic Forum.

"We wouldn't get any more of him if he wasn't doing this stuff," Claytonsays, noting that it's great fun to watch Bono turn his acuity and Irishcharm on politicians and CEOs. "These guys don't expect him to have a graspof the subject matter. He's able to go in with the facts and figures, talkcircles around them, and suddenly, where they thought they were just goingto get their picture taken with him, he's gotten something out of thembefore the picture.

"You can't deny the penetration he has achieved," Clayton says. "And itmakes the rest of us realize that what we do is important to the group. Weneed to keep it going forward, to allow him to come in and out. Bono has alegitimate reason not to be around all the time. And we have a legitimatereason to make sure that the time we are all together is used wisely."

Full story in Rolling Stone dated April 25th

More at www.rollingstone.com

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