"It's a tune called 'Elevation.' It's in its raw form. I think it's gonna go off for us. It's got a really spongy sound. We've found that when you're men, the slower tempos can be funky." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2001.
"'Beautiful Day' has a directness reminiscent of early U2 but with Edge bringing a dizziness and futuristic quality so that it doesn't feel retro. The guitar chords were nothing special but they were my attempt to get the album airborne, the way a rock band like the Buzzcocks would. The lyric expresses amazement, really, that whatever situation you find yourself in, as uncomfortable and upsetting as they can be, if you're alive and you are awake, then you have perspective on it... Pain is evidence of life because it reminds you there are things in your life that aren't right. So you should be thankful for it really and celebrate that there is so much to live for." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
"The song was written at the same time as one of Ireland's greatest poets, Brendan Kennelly, was writing his great 'Book Of Judas,' a series of poems about the betrayal of Christ. It was an epic coincidence, because I was given the poems to review after album was finished. The whole Zoo TV tour that followed owes much to one of Brendan Kennelly's great lines: 'the best way to serve the age is to betray it.' That became our theme for the next couple years, to do everything U2 weren't supposed to do. We had a deep-seated belief that the spirit of the band was true enough and strong enough and imperishable enough to not rely on an obvious guitar sounds or signatures to come through. It would come through anyways. It would come through a thick prison wall." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
"When I hear 'New Year's Day' on the radio, I can't help thinking, 'What a great song. What happened to the drum part?' It's so uneventful and straight. With a little more time spent on that song, I might have been able to come up with something more inventive. I remember once sitting somewhere and the song came on and I overheard two guys talking (obviously drummers), saying, 'Those drums are so boring, duh-duh-duh-duh." - Larry, U2 By U2 2006.
On the drums, from the Artaine Boys Band, Larry Mullen Jnr.
And this is the Edge. I don't know where we got him.
Some might say it
I'm out of control
Big ideas
I'm out of control
Oh oh oh
My my, oh now, my oh my
There's some big ideas. Father, I need a lend of 500 pounds 'cause we're gonna go over to London. We're gonna score ourselves a record deal. And when we get our record deal, we're not gonna stay in London. We're not gonna go to New York City. We're gonna stay and base our crew in Dublin 'cause these people, this is our tribe. But I still need a lend of 500 pounds. What do you say, my old man? 500 pounds, I want to thank my old man for that 500 pounds. I want to thank Larry Mullen's father for 500 pounds. The Edge's mother and father for 500 pounds. Adam Clayton's family for 500 pounds. And by now, you've probably all given us about 500 pounds each, so thank you.
"We were trying to be the Who meets the Clash. I spent minutes on these things rather than hours. So 'Sunday Bloody Sunday,' which was supposed to contrast Easter Sunday with the death of thirteen protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday, didn't quite come off. And yet melodically and the suggestion of the lyrics stood up to the test of time. I've changed the lyrics when I sing it now just to make it more believable for myself. I don't think anyone else notices. But that's a great song - mostly Edge's song." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2005.
I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song
How long, how long
Tonight we can be as one, tonight
Broken bottles under children's feet
And bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
Puts my back up
My back up against the wall
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Alright, go
And it's true, we are immune
When fact is fiction, TV reality
And today the soldiers ride
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
How long, how long must we sing this song
How long, how long
'Cause tonight we can be as one
Tonight, tonight
Tonight, tonight, tonight
Lift yourselves up
Don't need anymore
Put your hands in the sky
Put your hands in the air
If you're the praying kind
Turn this song into a prayer
Put your hands in the sky
Put your hands in the air
If you're the praying kind
'Cause we're not going back there
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No more
No paratroopers
No petrol bombs
No Sarasin
No UDA
No IRA
We're not going back there
We put our hands in the sky
We put our hands in the air
We thank the brave man
Who made a brave choice
Wipe your tears away
Wipe your tears away
Three years after Omagh
We turn a song into a prayer
Three years after Omagh
Wipe your tears away
Wipe your tears away
Sunday bloody Sunday
Wipe your blood
Sunday bloody Sunday
Wipe your tears away
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
We're so sick of it
We've had enough
We've had enough
This battle's yet begun
There's many lost, tell me who has won
Though the battle's yet begun
To claim the victory Jesus made
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday bloody Sunday
Give it up
Compromise is not a dirty word
Compromise
Sunday bloody Sunday
Breda
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sean
Sunday bloody
Julie
Sunday bloody Sunday
Gareth
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sean
Sunday bloody Sunday
Geraldine
SBS
Jolene
Philomena Skelton
Gareth Conway
Breda Devine
Lorraine Wilson
Samantha McFaraland
Julia Hughes
Elizabeth Rush
Rico Abad-Amos
Fernando Blasco Baselga
Esther Gibson
Ann McCombe
Veda Short
Adrian Gallagher
Alan Rudford
Fred White
His son Brian White
Brian CcCrory
Sean McGrath
29 people too many
(Side note: so you don't think Bono's gone senile, in his initial listing of first names,
there were two different Seans that were victims of the Omagh bombing.)
"'Wake Up Dead Man' was something Edge had from the Zooropa sessions. It was a big Gothic rock song, which didn't seem right for this album. Towards the end of the sessions we dusted it off, stripped it down and did a very sparse, electric version of it. It's a very hard-hitting song." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
"I think other people who have lost a mate to suicide will all tell you the same thing-just the overpowering guilt that you weren't there for that person. As anyone around here will tell you, friendship is a thing that I hold very sacred. Cocteau, I think he only wrote one serious essay in his life, and it was on the subject of friendship-friendship is higher than love... Can you really be that busy that you don't notice your mate on the slide, as it were?... I just remember feeling this overpowering sense of guilt. And then anger. and then annoyance. That song is an argument. It's a row between mates. You're trying to slap somebody around the face, trying to wake them up out of an idea. In my case it's a row I didn't have while he was alive." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2001.
Hey yeah, yeah now
Love song
Soul
I'm not afraid of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find a decent melody
A song that I can sing in my own company, love
Never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere, baby
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
I will not forsake the colours that you bring
But the nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted by a light you brought to me
Still listen through your ears
Through your eyes I can see
You are such a fool to worry like you do
I know it's tough and you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now, my oh my
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment, now you can't get out of it
Oh love, look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment, now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment, now you can't get out of it
"I had a bit of a fright, basically, and the song Kite comes out of that too. I hadn't been around for a while and was determined to do the proper Dad thing. I took the kids to Killiney Hill in Dublin county to fly a kite. Up it went and immediately down it came, and smashed to smithereens. The kids just looked at me: 'Come on dad, let's go and play some video games.' How cruel is that?" - Bono, Q 2001.
"We landed in JFK, and we were picked up in a limousine. We had never been in a limousine before, and with the din of punk rock not yet faded from our ears, there was sort of guilty pleasure as we stepped into the limousine. Followed by a sly grin, as you admit to yourself this is fun. We crossed Triborough Bridge and saw the Manhattan skyline. The limo driver was black and he had the radio turned to WBLS, a black music station. Billie Holiday was singing. And there it was, city of blinding lights, neon hearts. They were advertising in the skies for people like us, as London had been the year before. And it was snowing." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
"'Desire' is a little classic, a little 45. Edge took the beat from The Stooges' '69, which was their take on the Bo Diddley beat. The rhythm is the sex of the music. I wanted to own up to the religiosity of rock'n'roll and the fact that you get paid for them. On one level, I'm criticizing the lunatic fringe preachers 'stealing hearts at a travelling show' but I'm also starting to realize there's a real parallel between what I am doing and what they do." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
On the drums, Larry Mullen Jnr.
Bass guitar, born to have it and have it he shall.
Lover, I'm off the street
Gonna go where the bright lights
Big city meet
With a red guitar on fire
Desire
She's a candle burning in my room
I'm like a needle, needle and a spoon
Over the counter with a shotgun
Pretty soon now, everybody got one
And the fever when I'm inside her
Desire
Desire
Burning
I'm burning
Dollars, she's my protection
She's a promise in a year of election
Oh sister, I can't let you go
Like a preacher stealing hearts at a travelling show
"'Staring At The Sun' was another great tune that never became a great record, for whatever reason. I don't know why we didn't quite nail it. In the end, when we were playing it live, we just sang it with acoustic guitars and the song came through much better." - The Edge, U2 By U2 2006.
"Van Dyke Parks came into the studio, listened to what we'd done, went off and wrote this absolutely gorgeous and incredibly haunting arrangement which lasts two and a half minutes. It was a great way to end the album. 'All I Want Is You' is probably the best of what we were trying to do with that album, in that it has a traditional basis but it was a truly U2 song." - The Edge, U2 By U2 2006.
I would like to dedicate this song to my beautiful wife. To Ali.
You say you want a diamond on a ring of gold
You say you want your story to remain untold
All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You say you'll give me a highway with no one on it
Your treasure just to look upon it
All the riches in the night
You say you'll give me eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbour in the tempest
All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You say you want diamonds on a ring of gold
Our story to remain untold
Our love not to grow cold
All the promises we break from the cradle to the grave
"We can be in the middle of the worst gig in our lives, but when we go into that song, everything changes. The audience is on its feet, singing along with every word. It's like God suddenly walks through the room. It's the point where craft ends and spirit begins. How else do you explain it?" - Bono, Los Angeles Times 2004.
It's Paul, it's Paul
Sing this song for him
I sing this song for him, for him
I want to run, I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me tonight
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see that rain cloud disappearing without a trace
"'Pride' started out as an ecstatic rant. We looked for a subject big enough to demand this level of emotion that was coming out. We had discovered nonviolence and Martin Luther King, not just in relation to his use of the Scriptures and his church background, but also as a solution to the Irish problems. There was a lot of emotion there, but to be honest with you, as a lyric it's daft. No, not daft. It's just not deft. It's a missed opportunity. I even get the time of Dr. King's assassination wrong. I said, 'Early morning-April four.' It was early evening." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2005.
"I was angry with what I saw as the bullying of peasant farmers by big aeroplanes supported by American foreign policy and dollars. In Nicaragua, seventeen families ran the country before the revolution; all of the wealth was in the hands of those seventeen families. In Salvador it had been similar. In Chile, a democratic choice had been overthrown by a CIA-backed coupe to impose a killing machine called General Pinochet. There was a lot to despise about America back then, there was shameful conduct int he defence of their self-interest... They were bad times. I had described what I had been through, what I had seen, some of the stories of people I had met, and I said to Edge: 'Could you put that through your amplifier?'" - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
In the howling wind comes a stinging rain
See it driving nails into souls on the tree of pain
From the firefly, a red orange glow
I see the face of fear running scared in the valley below
The sky
The sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
In the locust wind comes a rattle and hum
Jacob wrestled the angel, the angel was overcome
You plant a demon seed, you raise a flower of fire
"So that song is about torment, sexual but also psychological, about how repressing desires makes them stronger. The most important line is probably, 'And you give yourself away.' It just flipped it and it releases all the mental tension, which is when the 'Aah-aah' comes out. That is what giving yourself away is, musically." - Bono, U2 By U2 2006.
"It's a father-and-son story. I tried to write about someone I knew who was coming out and was afraid to tell his father. It's a religious father and son... I have a lot of gay friends, and I've seen them screwed up from unloving family situations, which just are completely anti-Christian. If we know anything about God, it's that God is love. That's part of the song. And then it's also about people struggling to be together, and how difficult it is to stay together in this world, whether you're in a band or a relationship." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2005.
"If you've ever had a fright in your life, someone close to you dies, or whatever, things come into sharp focus and you just...suddenly some people become more important to you than others. Some ideas become more important to you than others. I think the Dalai Lama says, 'Begin with death, start from there, and you won't go far wrong.' I don't think he was just having a bad day. Christ says, I think, in the sermon on the mount, 'If you love your life too much, you've already lost it.' Which is an interesting one. As a younger man I remember I didn't understand what he meant, because I loved life. You're holding on so tight to it that you're incapable of doing anything with it. It's about fear." - Bono, Rolling Stone 2001.
And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for one second you turn back
Oh no, be strong
Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight
You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom
Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it or buy it
Walk on, walk on
You stay safe tonight
And I know it aches, how your heart it breaks
You can only take so much
Walk on
Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
