Little Billy One Way Street

22 Aug 2007
Never heard of him ? Edge clears up some early biographical misunderstandings in the September edition of Q. Here's some highlights.

Let's clear this up once and for all: where did you get your nickname? And what was wrong with Dave Evans anyway?
You can blame my friends. MY first nickname was (Dublin suburb) 'Inchicore' and that became 'Inch' and then 'The Edge'. All three are a reference to my angular chin. We had this whole thing of name-giving: expressing our friends' physical characteristics in an onomatopoeic fashion. So we had Little Billy One Way Street, Bono Vox of O'Connell Street, Mr Burns The Jam Jar. Bono himself gave some great names. Some of the stuck. And some of them didn't.

It's the first night of the Popmart tour, you're stuck inside the giant lemon and the doors aren't opening. What's going through your mind?
Well, it actually happened to us, but not onthe opening night. It was in Norway. You know, the lemon was alway very amusing. Part of the thing we wanted to do, in our attempt not to be boring fucking rock stars, was to try and outcool Spinal Tap. So when it malfunctioned it was even more Spinal Tap. It was fantastic. It opened just enough so you could see our feet. We had this music cue which was kind of an 'abort mission' sound. We retreated down the ramp and climbed out of the escape hatch. Did we see the funny side ? Ah, we were killing ourselves laughing. Some people got upset cos they hadn't see 'The Full Lemon'.


What happened to your 'leather daddy' Village People costume from the Discotheque video?
I never saw it again actually. I think that video cost us a few fans in Middle America but earned us a lot of fans in Sydney. It's swings and roundabouts, yeah.

Have you found what you're looking for yet?
No and yes. The perfect song, the perfect album... we always feel like we can improve, learn, get better generally. I think we are still capable of our best work. But I feel like I'm one of the luckiest guys alive, so in that sense... no complaints. I'm in a great situation: fantastic wife and kids and bandmates. The chance to still make music. I couldn't be a happier guy.

More here


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