Coming to terms with America

Press, 7 December 1988, Page 28

Coming to terms with America

Pop performers

In the second part of a tivopart interview, COLIN HOGG spoke to U2’s charismatic singer Bono in Los Angeles about what continues to drive a rock band that has already driven to the top.

Question: Where did the idea of the “Rattle and Hum” film spring from because, in a way, making a rock ’n’ roll film seems at odds with the U2 philosophy? Answer Why ... why would it be at odds?”

Q: It propounds the stardom thing — to see yourself up there on the big silver screen.

A:That is true. Yeah, the vanity of it. It didn't feel very vain, let me tell you. It’s like, there are no good angles ... Sometimes I forget why we made a movie. I think it was a reaction to playing stadiums, the big outdoor shows. We felt there was a big distance between us and our audience. And a camera is about as close as anyone’s ever going to get.

Would we allow them in? The four of us had to decide. Does our ego allow people that close? And maybe there are good reasons why we shouldn’t. But we decided to allow it. But yeah, I thought many times this is a big mistake. I was very very confused about it. I kept thinking, “What are we doing this for?” But now it’s only $5 for people to see U2 up close.

When we were playing on the last tour, some people were paying $3OO to see us play. It’s insane. I’m in the band and I know that we’re not worth ... $lOO.

This is a real soul movie. Some people prefer style. But this is a real soul movie. It’s not about personalities. We’re not personalities. We don’t want to be. That’s show biz.

Rock ’n’ roll’s something different. Our kind of rock ’n’ roll is anyway. Q: Surely in the end you can’t help but be seen as a personality. You’re analysed and reanalysed. Everyone has a vision of what you’re like.

A: I don’t mind our work being analysed, but I don’t like myself being analysed. I don’t think I’m worthy of it. I think it’s a bit boring. But in the end a lot of people aren’t interested in the music. They much prefer personalities. There’s a caricature of me out there where I’m painted in real broad strokes which bears no relationship to the person I know and my friends know.

But I recognise that it suits people. To be shaded in is too difficult. We love characters like that. "Oh Marilyn Monroe was like this, Jimmy Dean is that and Sean Penn and Madonna are the other.” Show biz loves cartoons and caricatures. It’s the media. I’ve probably played into their hands in some respects and I regret it. I regret opening up as much as I have done.

I’m trying to close up much more. That’s the reason I haven’t done any interviews recently.

Q: There’s been a lot of talk about the fact that the film and the album look back to rock’s roots. BB King performs with you, there’s a tribute to Billie Holiday, who wrote one of the songs with Bob Dylan and — before this project — you’ve worked with the likes of Keith Richards. In the early years of U2, that sort of thing would have been regarded as incredibly uncool wouldn’t it?

A: Yeah. We had no past. Our music just came out of nowhere, out of the blue, with very few influences.

On the “Boy” album (U2’s first in 1980) the sexuality and spirituality all mixed up was all quite new — five years before Prince. It was a bizarre record of its time. And then we were in America and we just dropped our guard, we allowed it all in. We listened, we overheard music. Suddenly jazz made sense in America, in the big cities, in a way that it never did in Dublin. Jazz just doesn’t even make sense there.

People said to me, “You’re so obsessed with America. You don’t live in America, you live in Dublin.”

I said, “Wrong, I live in America. Everyone lives in America.” Like Wim Wenders said, “America has colonised our unconscious.” Any artist must come to terms with America at this point in time.

So as well as fighting against America (y’know with a “k”) there was another America that was really alluring that we just wanted to explore.' As a word writer. I’ve found so much in American literature — much more than European. It reminds me of Irish literature in that it seems to be more roots — its head in the clouds, but its feet

in the sh —. There seemed to be so much there for us. You remember hearing Billie Holiday on the radio. It starts making sense to you. Do you deny this? We wrote all these songs, like “Love Rescue Me” and you start thinking, “We can’t do this, we’re U2. U2 can’t do these songs. Why should we be in U2? Let’s break up the bloody band then.” So it was literally either break up the band or make the band big enough to be able to do a gospel song, or to be able to allow these influences. Some bands have really clear manifestos. We don’t. We want it every way. It must be greed. Q: That attitude is very different from the punk philosophy that U2 came out of which said that the past was dead.

A: That attitude might have been necessary, though. Without punk there wouldn’t have been a U 2—2 — no chance on earth.

Before it was all jazzrock, musicians ... musos, remember those words? You looked around you. And here were we, these four guys in a garage playing and thinking, “We’ve got three chords, what can we do with them? Not very much.”

And then we heard a record by The Radiators From Space, an Irish punk band and they had three chords that they turned into a tirade. God, wow! Y’know, it was amazing. This great wheel of rock ’n’ roll slowed down just enough for us to jump on. It was like a life saver. We still haven’t become those sort of musicians. We still struggle to stay in time. It’s still a struggle to record ...

Q: Still a struggle to keep the singer onstage? A: No, we’re doing better on that front.

Q: It must be a struggle staying in touch with your roots back home in Dublin?

A: Oh yeah, but I’ve got a lot of people around, smart people, artists I’ve grown up with, house painters, singers, carpenters. Still the street gang thing. I’ve still got half a dozen of those people who I’d call close friends.

Q: They must see you differently though?

A:Not really. A lot of them are characters and they actually think of me as the one who’s straight. Q: It must be difficult though being described in Dublin, as I’ve read, as "a living monument”?

A: It’s a problem of scale, that’s all. It must be a problem for people living in Dublin to have this U2 thing. The rise of U2 is directly in proportion to the collapse and the demise of our own generation, who have had to leave for Australia and New Zealand and America.

Everyone wants to hang on to something that looks as if it’s O.K. — and that’s U2. It’s annoying, because it’s nothing to do with the music.

They want us to be an example. And we’re not an example. We’re a very bad example. There’s a lot more going for Dublin than U2, a lot more.

It’s insulting to the people of Dublin that they put so much emphasis on U2. I think they’re right to be proud of the music and the band. It’s as relevant as a sports team or as a writer, but that’s where the line is drawn.”

Q: I heard someone say after the premiere of “Rattle and Hum” last night that U2 had the most brilliantly planned career of any band they’d ever seen, that you hadn’t made a wrong move. It’s almost as if people are waiting for you to make a mistake.

A: Oh they are. I’m expecting a massive backlash. I don’t mind. I think it will probably be a good thing. In some respects I don’t blame people reacting to the image of U2. All I’m saying is that image of U2 is not the reality. It really isn’t. They are worlds apart.

There is order in the way we do things. There are reasons we make decisions. There is some

kind of method to the madness. I don't quite know what it is. I remember the times when people said, “No you can’t do that.” And we said, “Yes we can.” And they said, “If you do that will be the end of U2, it’s very bad for you as a group.” But they usually turned out to be the right thing. Using (record producer) Brian Eno was one such instance. Our record label head Chris Blackwell came to us and said, "Please, don’t use Brian Eno. He doesn’t understand rock ‘n’ roll, he’s an avant garde producer. You can stretch him as far as the African rhythms with “Talking Heads,” playing synthesisers with David Bowie, but he doesn’t understand what you’re about.”

We said, “We’re interested in working with him. We will work with him.”

We’ve committed socalled suicide many times. For instance, "Love Rescue Me” or the traditionalism of “Desire.” People were really shocked when they heard it. they said, “What is going on?” But it’s always the right thing to go with your instinct. We’re very instinctive. We’re not intellectual about U2. We intellectualise after the event.

Q:At moments like this? A:Yeah, exactly. I think that’s another reason I do, on occasion, agree to do interviews. It makes me think about what we’ve done.

Q: It almost seems strange that a song as passionate, not to mention as loud, as “Desire” can make it to No. 1 in 1988?

A: It’s a fluke. The way I see it, our duty is to abuse our position, to mess up the radio. People thankfully are playing our records on radio. So let’s not give them records that they’d play anyway, let’s take risks. We can afford to. The great thing about being successful is not having to worry about being successful.

The irresponsibilty of being in this band is that we can just do what we want. We have money, so we don’t have to worry about money. We never have worried about money. It does create really exciting possibilities about being completely irresponsible. I’m just looking forward to getting away with it — really pushing our music to the edge.

Q: Isn’t that just a little terrifying as well?

A: It’s the essence of it. And right at the centre of it, it’s such good fun as well to see how far you can take it. I want to really stretch it on the next few records. I think that’s one thing The Beatles had that I looked up to . was their ability to stretch their music. They never thought they’d get “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the radio, but they did.

“Rattle and Hum” is a wonderful mess. It’s all mixed up, past and future and present, all in a big bundle not even with a knot on it.”

Q: When you were last in New Zealand, more than two years ago (for the tangi of U2’s Maori roadie Greg Carroll who died riding Bono’s motorbike on a Dublin street), you promised to tour “soon.” We’re starting to get a little tired of waiting. A: You’ve got every right to be. We had planned to go. Originally we planned to open the "Joshua Tree” tour in New Zealand, but the record was delayed and we missed the start. So then New Zealand was put at the end of the tour and after we’d been through Europe and America we were just out of our minds. Helter skelter had taken place. We could have gone. We could have played Australia and New Zealand, but there was the danger that, for the first time in our lives, we’d end up going through the motions.

' We’ve never done that. We’ve always either gone for it or not. We decided that we couldn’t survive that.

We needed to make some more music. We needed to get back. If we’d played New Zealand at the start of the tour, we’d have cancelled the end of the American tour.

The good news is that when we do get there, it will be because we want to be there. We only do things we want to. We want, for many reasons, to play New Zealand. Obviously because of Greg, but also because of the response the last time we were there.

It’s something to look forward to next year.”