Bono must be the world’s most ubiquitous celebrity. Look! There he is meeting Barack Obama. Hey! He’s hanging out with Brad Pitt! Wow! He’s bonding with Bill Gates in Africa! It’s a wonder he has time to single-handedly save the entire planet from destruction, much less put together a new U2 album. How on earth does he find the time to do it all? ‘There’s a Bono factory,’ he laughs.
‘The band, when they saw me getting busy, opened a factory. It’s just there at the back of [Dublin suburb] Tallaght. There’s various different ones, and they’re being used for different occasions.’
The Bono factory will be working overtime now that the band’s latest album, No Line On The Horizon, has been released, after two years of recording in France, New York, Dublin, London and Morocco. In fact, it was in Morocco that the album really took form, after a songwriting session with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who met the band at a religious music festival there. ‘I remember clearly at least two or three songs being born in that location, and very quick,’ says The Edge. ‘Like, maybe three or four hours. We’d start with one little idea – it might be a rhythm or a chord progression, or a guitar or a keyboard sound – and then very quickly, through a series of ideas thrown in, a song would come together.’
It wasn’t all serendipity, though, as an aerial bombardment from some rather unappreciative avian menaces made clear. ‘It was just one of those great moments, you know,’ says Larry Mullen Jr. ‘This idyllic place, everything is just perfect – or not perfect, but it’s pretty close. Brian Eno’s on one side, you’ve got the rest of U2, you’ve got Daniel Lanois doing his thing on his guitar. The roof is open, the sun is shining. And suddenly the birds are s****ing on you! So that brought us back to reality!’
Reality being a place that Bono has largely vacated for this album, choosing instead to write from the point of view of French traffic cops, war correspondents and drug addicts. And we thought he was supposed to be a goggle-eyed egomaniac. ‘It was just a way of getting a fresh starting place,’ the man himself explains. ‘I’d just kind of worn out my own autobiography. The last two albums were very personal. And I’m not sure if I could bear it anymore, let alone anyone else. The irony is, of course, as Oscar Wilde taught us, that the mask reveals the man. So you end up in fancy dress revealing your true self.’
So if the autobiographical well is drying up, could this be auf wiedersehen baby? Or will they keep going, like the Stones? ‘Do I see myself doing this into my seventies?’ mulls Mullen. ‘No, I don’t. There will be a time. Whether that’s on an individual basis or a band decision. But right now, I just think it’s very exciting to be out there making music. Why would you give that up?’
On the line
No Line On The Horizon has divided critics. Here’s what some had to say
‘No Line on the Horizon [is] U2’s first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991’s Achtung Baby.’
David Fricke, Rolling Stone
‘It’s U2’s least immediate album – but something about it suggests it may be one of their most enduring.’
Andrew Mueller, Uncut
‘You can’t help but feel that when U2 stops trying to deliver what they think people love it for, they may be a really sexy proposition again.’
Sophie Harris, Time Out
‘U2 might try to pass Horizon off as atmospheric, but it’s really just a grab bag of underdeveloped ideas that never seemed to command the band’s full attention.’
Steven Hyden, The Onion A.V. Club
Interview Olaf Tyaransen. No Line On The Horizon is out now
