ELEVATION TOUR PROGRAM

Before we begin, I have an interest to declare. I love U2. When I was 15 years old I had a U2 T-shirt. It was white and red and black and I wore it all the time, or at least on occasions when it was important to look cool - which, when you are 15, is all the time. I wore it until the hem and collar stitching unpicked and it seemed to crystallise beneath the armpits. I wore it until it was no longer white and red and black but grey and pink and grey. I wore my U2 T-shirt until the day it died.

I never owned another U2 T-shirt but in the 18 years between then and now I have come back to U2 again and again and found new things every time. When I was earnest and defiant, they gave me a flag to wave. When I was lustful, adrift or disillusioned they offered not solutions but a mirror in which to examine how I felt. When I started to think harder about what rock'n'roll could achieve and what it couldn't, and what it perhaps should on no account attempt, I found that U2 had got there first, wrestled with the arguments, had a lot of fun and confused themselves royally.

Along the way - and unlike most artists who aren't Dylan or Springsteen or Scott Walker or The Flaming Lips - U2 became more and more interesting and wrote better and better tunes. The proof - their latest album, All That You Can't Leave Behind - is a collection of beautifully simple, beautifully frank songs that embrace and incorporate every previous U2 incarnation with boldness and melodic craft. On one level it is a record for lovers that have come through bad times and may even have strayed; on another, it's about forgiveness on a global scale; on a third it's a superfine kick-ass rock'n'roll record for milkmen and linemen and stockbrokers and waitresses to take with them into their everyday lives and whistle on the bus. On this rich kind of form, U2 could write and sing about gardening or yoghurt or handball and the result would be the Pet Sounds of gardening and yoghurt and handball. Only better, because it would be Pet Sounds by U2.

"Clever is not as high up on our list as soul," Bono has told me. "You have to remember that people in Japan who don't speak English, are listening to your spirit, the feel of what you do, not so much the cerebral stuff." Whatever they will say, most Western bands don't care very much what people in Japan think. U2 do. Which I think is why they continue to hit the road with gusto when so many have given up bothering. U2 tours are global art events. They are also "about" something. This one is about coming home, and embracing your past, and realising what you've got before it's gone. We know this but - shhhhh - don't tell the band, because they might not suss it until they get to Denver, or Prague, or Sydney or Sarajevo or Tashkent or wherever they're going next, and even then they won't be sure. Tonight, like every night, they'll be working it all out for themselves right there in front of us, and there's never a right answer, just different degrees of getting quite close.

The following is a distillation of conversations I had with the band as they rehearsed for the show you're about to witness. These conversations touched mainly upon All That You Can't Leave Behind, what it means to be U2 in the 21st Century and why they adore playing live. I can't claim I know the band any better than you do, barring enough to say that Edge is not of our planet, Larry is a warrior, Adam has seen things we may never dream of and whatever you do, don't get in a car with Bono. Enjoy their company. They will enjoy yours.

Danny Eccleston
Editor, Q4music.com

WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HAVE FOR SOMEONE READING THIS BEFORE THE SHOW?
Bono: Do not fasten your safety belt. We are about to get airborne.

WHAT'S IT LIKE WHEN A LIVE PERFORMANCE SLIPS INTO "THE POCKET." IS IT TRANSCENDENTAL? IS IT LIKE DRUGS?
Bono: It's the moment all musicians live for. The out of body experience is really about realising - or rather, having the chance to realise, because there is so much going on - that the music is working you, not the other way around. Most of the time you're working it. But you're absolutely right to describe it as a drug in that it's addictive. So you'd have to say [laughs] that this group is strung out on some very, very expensive drugs.

SO IT'S: "WANNA GET HIGH, MAN?" "OK, YOU HIRE THE 18-WHEELERS AND I'LL BOOK THE NEXT SIX MONTHS OFF?"
Bono: That really is it. We're not just happy getting our rocks off and having a good time. We have to tramp the globe with a multi-nation dollar multimedia spectacular. For a year. We're lucky; what we do for a living happens to be absolutely the top of the pyramid of experiences. We all aspire to the condition of Music, because it's the language of the spirit. I don't know of any other experience like it... other than being in love, because music is a force of love. Even when music is angry and agitated, if it's ringing true then it's a force to love. If somebody is coughing up their real experiences in order to make sense of them, then that's an amazing thing.
You know, U2 are like the Quakers of rock... except we don't wait silently for the spirit, we kind of embarrass the spirit into turning up. That can't happen all the time, but it has to happen once a night with us or someone's gonna pay.

WHEN DO TOURS START TO ENTER SURREAL TERRITORY?
Edge: That starts pretty much with the first show. There's something that kicks in when you stop thinking too hard about what you're doing - shit happens. Especially for Bono, there's a point where he starts to go on instinct. And when you're in that place, you can really start to fly on stage. The catalyst of having the audience there can give you the inspiration to take the music somewhere else. It's hard to explain, but if you tried to do it you probably couldn't. Suddenly things just fall into place. It's the same thing when we make records. All our junior engineers are told the same thing: the time when it seems obvious that you shouldn't be in "record," those are the times when you should be in "record." The times when it seems obvious that you should definitely be recording something, then don't bother. The really special moments sneak up on you, and our best shows are always a surprise to us.

WHAT ARE YOU LIKE IN THOSE MINUTES BEFORE YOU GO ON?
Edge: I don't know what it's like being in any other band, so I don't know where we differ. There are nerves, yes - there's the anticipation of getting out there and doing the show. You definitely have to be in the right mental state, so there are no distractions, no meetings for at least half an hour before the show. I don't suppose we're quite as uptight as we would have been on the first few tours, because there was such a lot at stake in those days in terms of whether we were going to succeed or not. But there's always a sense of jeopardy whenever we go on stage. Because we're playing to the limit of our abilities and beyond there's always tension, it's always volatile.

DO YOU TACKLE EACH OTHER OVER MISTAKES? ARE THERE GRIM POST-GIG POST-MORTEMS?
Edge: We don't care about mistakes. The worst crime would be not being "in it." There's a spell, and you can fall out of it for a minute or two and I think everyone in the band knows when that has happened to someone. For a U2 show to connect, with the numbers of people that we play to, then everyone's got to be on form, everyone's got to be present. You don't have to be having the best show of your life, but you can't be thinking about what you're going to order for breakfast.

A LOT OF BAND USE SUCCESS TO JUSTIFY STOPPING TOURING. DO YOU FIND THAT STRANGE?
Bono: Everyone looks at the Beatles and says, "They couldn't have made the records they did if they were out on the road, so I'm hanging up my road boots." But that's a mistake. U2 on its own is a very interesting group and all, but U2 with its audience is a culture. There are a lot of ideas in and around the band. It's not just the music, and it's only when you get out on the road that that starts to come alive. You get to meet the people who've given you this great life and you have to prove yourself in front of them. They get charged up by that and do mad things like join Amnesty International, start their own Web site, or join Direct Action. If you stop meeting your audience you can start mistrusting them and they you. And you cease being a cultural entity, just a musical one. So you could still put out a great record and people might buy it but it's not the thing, the wave that carries you like we're used to.

WHAT ARE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COSTS OF TOURING?
Edge: The thing about touring is this: the day that touring feels really comfortable and the lifestyle makes sense to you is the day you know you've got to go home. The worst for us was on the Australian leg of the Lovetown tour. We were doing indoor venues and the demand for tickets was such that we were doing, I think, ten nights in Sydney and eight nights in Melbourne. I think not having the momentum of travel made people go crazy. There was a certain look in people's eyes. People were staying up really late, drinking heavily and playing poker with B.B. King and his band. It was a little bit of a worry. Even the hotel staff seemed to be going crazy.
At the very least, I think, just getting away from the tour organization from time to time is a safety valve because otherwise you end up feeling like a piece of hand luggage. There are times on tour that we run away from the circus, so to speak.

THERE'S A FRESHNESS TO ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND THAT SEEMS TO COME FROM...
Larry: ...from four people being in a room and being U2. Yes, that was a bit of shock to the system. We'd become so used to Howie B coming in, and I think it's been a while since we were in a room together as a band. It is the most important thing about this record. The thing that makes it sound the way it does is because it's played.

AFTER THE TECHNOLOGICAL COMPLICATIONS OF POP AND THE POPMART TOUR, IS IT REFRESHING JUST TO GET OUT THERE AND PLAY? ESPECIALLY FOR THE RHYTHM SECTION?
Adam: Absolutely.. There was a time when Larry and myself would have been more insecure about technology replacing the rhythm section. But in a sense, technology created rhythm sections that didn't previously exist. Looking at it now, I can recognise that what Larry and I do is pretty unique. The simplicity of what we do, the chemistry... how you create a dynamic to absorb the melody and the guitar parts, that's something you learn over many years. And it's an amazing thing.

I'M SURE I HEARD ADAM REFER TO LARRY ONCE AS "THE WIFE"...
Adam: Well, yes. When I look at the balance of the relationships in the band, it looks like that. In the songwriting partnership of Bono and Edge I feel that Edge is the man and Bono the woman, and in the rhythm section, Larry is without a doubt the man. He wouldn't have it any other way, and neither would I.

ARENAS RATHER THAN STADIUMS NOW, WHY?
Bono: We'd have done it before if we'd been allowed to have the floor section free of obstacles. That's hindered us for ten years. We've wanted to play arenas but they won't clear them for us. You see, the problem with seated venues is that whatever you do, the scalpers get in there and somehow they get hold of the front tickets and what you end up with is two rows of wealthy Wall Street types. Now I don't mind them in the building - rich people have feelings too - but you want the house to ROCK up the front. Now we're going to get that and I'm really excited.
Edge: What we always thought about this album has also become true of the tour, that it was always going to be about great songs and great performances. The visuals are part of our vocabulary now, so we wouldn't feel fully dressed without them, but they're not what the show is centred on. And with arenas, we're looking forward to the intimacy, as mad as that sounds.

THERE WERE RUMORS THAT THIS WOULD BE A STRIPPED-DOWN, LO-FI, T-SHIRT AND JEANS TOUR...
Bono: You've been listening to Larry again, haven't you? No, we can't let Larry have it all his own way. Again we've got some really mind-bending ideas. You see, it's our job to blow our own minds, as well as everyone else's. And while that can happen in the internal sense of singing and playing together, it can also happen in terms of the gig's design. Current thinking is - and don't take this as gospel 'cos everything can change - that we've found a way to move amongst the audience, and stare at them, in the middle of the show. The whole design is based on the principle of the heart, but not in any chocolate box or camp way. It'll be a very manly heart.
You know, Bruce Springsteen told me after he saw Zoo TV that the hardest thing in the world on stage is being able to surprise people. So I think we have a few things up our sleep that will do that. I don't think anyone will think this show is a swizz actually.

WHERE IS THE POPMART LEMON NOW?
Edge: Our manager Paul McGuinness has been handing the Lemon issue. At one point I believe he was trying to sell it to the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. That would have been perfect. As a vehicle I'm afraid it has its limitations, it probably wouldn't get you to work and back. But it could make someone a fantastic cocktail bar.

WHAT'S THE BEST ROCK'N'ROLL SHOW YOU EVER SAW?
Bono: I saw an extraordinary show by Jane's Addiction in Los Angeles in 1990. It was really for all the sense, a carnival. And I saw The Clash in 1977 at Trinity College, Dublin and that kinda set the course for me. I saw Bruce Springsteen's show at London Wembley Arena on the River tour which had me in tears - I didn't think that could happen at a rock show. Then there was a mesmerising Simple Minds show around 1984 where, really, everyone there was in a trance. It was absolutely, certifiably the beginning of the rave scene - a hypnotic, dance-rock thing. And the Pixies in 1989, that was amazing. Frank Black's combination of inspirations - stamp-collecting, astronomy, The Bible, Dada - were completely thrilling. What an extraordinary spirit he has and they had...
Edge: Bearing in mind I've never seen U2 live. I'm happy to go with Bruce and The Clash, but I'd add The Waterboys in the Top Hat in Dunleary in 1986 on the This Is The Sea tour. That was amazing.

WHO ARE THE UNSUNG HEROES OF A U2 TOUR?
Bono: Well, part of the physical experience of coming to a U2 show has always been down to the Murphia [aka the sound crew], particularly Joe O'Herlihy the audio engineer. There was an incident in Brussels specifically on a previous tour when Adam's bass registered on the Richter Scale. I'm not messing - there was an earthquake in Brussels, it was on the TV news, people were pointing at the cracks in the walls of their houses. It was recorded, they investigated it, and it turned out to be Joe The Hurley Stick putting his foot on the loud pedal.
Edge: I think we have the best crew going. Many of them we've worked with for years. They try and make sense of our crazy ideas and make them fit in a truck. Without that backup we wouldn't be able to do what we do. Then there's my own guitar technician, Dallas Schoo: he's even more relentless than me when it comes to guitar sounds and getting it right. I've got Cape Canaveral at my feet and Dallas makes it work. And Pete Williams is the best show designer in the business, having done Lovetown, Zoo TV, PopMart, and R.E.M. and Bowie. A very smart guy and luckily happens to get a big kick out of making rock bands look great.

TOURS TAKE ON A LIFE OF THEIR OWN, DON'T THEY? SOMETIMES A FAINTLY SINISTER ONE. THE ROLLING STONES TOUR '74 HAD THAT VIBE, AND ALSO ZOO TV, WHICH I ALWAYS THINK OF AS HAVING BEEN HI-JACKED BY MACPHISTO...
Bono: ...And an album came out of it, too, which emphasises that idea of the tour having its own life. Oh yes, there was definitely a sense of Zoo TV of rock stars running amok with more than a little loose change and some very big ideas: satellite links with Sarajevo and a singer dressed as the devil calling the Archbishop of Canterbury and saying, Don't you people work for me? In the middle of it, there was a day off in Rome and I remember tooling down to the Vatican in the gold flares, crimson dress shirt, full make-up and horns. So I walked across Vatican Square carrying a walking stick, shooing children out of my way and shouting, One day this will all be mine! Maybe it is already! And we filmed it, for nothing other than our own amusement. What were we on?
I suppose there is a kinetic energy that propels you through a tour. Because you rely on your own energy and you don't do drugs then you're not gonna make it to the end. So our version of drugs is those really ridiculous ideas that run away with themselves, and us. That's what keeps us going.

HOW RADICALLY DO YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT SONGS CHANGE WHEN YOU TOUR THEM?
Bono: Funny you should ask that, because in the rehearsals for this tour I rediscovered The Fly, I made a real breakthrough. This was a song we didn't play on the last tour and it was more of a visual than a musical experience on the Zoo TV tour. Basically, I've found a chorus for it, a beautiful one that we never quite got on the record. And we've changed the key of it and you can hear it now, rather than it being... breaths. And the lyrics are just ridiculous. [Sings] "It's no secret that the stars are falling from the sky / It's no secret that our world is in darkness tonight / They say a sun is sometimes eclipsed by a moon / You know I don't even see you when she walks in the room / It's not secret that a friend is someone who lets you help / It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else / Every artist is a cannibal, every singer is a thief / You kill your inspiration and you sing about the grief..." I suddenly realised that it was a much more soulful song than I recognised before, when you take away its industrial packaging: this desperate, sad, freaked-out fucker spewing out these little gems. I think it's gonna be one of the highlights of this tour.

BEAUTIFUL DAY HAS BECOME A TRIPLE-GRAMMY PHENOMENON. DID ANYONE ENVISAGE THAT?
Larry: I never thought Beautiful Day would even end up sounding like that. The chorus and the verse are from two totally different songs and it's ended up a classic single, a classic U2 single. In this band you just don't know. Things fall by the wayside - sometimes brilliant material doesn't even get on the record. We look at it and go, "The verse is great, the chorus is great, don't like the middle eight, don't like the drums, the bass is good, there's a great guitar hook and lyric is amazing" but unless we can make it all work as a whole then it's rejected.

BEAUTIFUL DAY HAS SOME QUINTESSENTIAL EDGE GUITAR ON IT...
Larry: There were some arguments about whether it was too backward-looking, whether it was like "Classic Coke." There we were in the studio, Edge doing his stuff and us going, "But it sounds so Edge-like!" But of course it does! That's what he does! He invented it! He invented it and we're embarrassed about it because we don't want him to use it! Thank God we got over that rubbish.

I SAW YOUR SHOW AT THE ASTORIA THEATRE IN LONDON IN FEBRUARY, WHERE YOU PLAYED BOTH 11 O'CLOCK TICK TOCK AND I WILL FOLLOW. THEY SEEMED TO FIT IN REMARKABLY WELL.
Edge: I felt the same way. I guess you have to be bit careful what you choose from the old albums, but it's nice when you realise that some of those songs can slug it out with the current record. Some of those older songs have ceased to have the resonance that they had when we wrote them. Now we can appreciate them in a different way. We've even been toying with playing Sunday Bloody Sunday again. Time has erased the connotations that we were for a while uncomfortable with.

CAN YOU LISTEN TO YOUR LIVE ALBUMS AND APPRECIATE THE PERFORMANCES? OR ARE THEY LIKE BABY PHOTOS: TOO EMBARRASSING TO CONTEMPLATE?
Edge: A combination of the two, I'd say. All of those recordings captured something of what the band was about at the time. The spirit of the haircuts, the staging... the little details that give us a great deal of amusement looking back.

YOU CAN'T HEAR THE MULLETS, THOUGH.
Edge: You can if you've got the video.

CRITICS HAVE ALWAYS THROWN STONES AT U2. HAVE YOU BEEN SURPRISED AT THE EXTENT OF SUPPORT FOR ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND?
Bono: We weren't expecting it to be so unanimous. I personally always have my fists in front of my face, and I'm ready for the blows, always expecting them. I was surprised by what seemed to be this genuine affection for what we do. And I also got no sense that it wasn't contemporary. There was a feeling out there that this was in amongst our best work. When you've been around a few years, you don't often get that. We've played club shows where people were singing Elevations like it was Desire, or like it was Number 1 five years ago. That's amazing.

I READ SOMEWHERE THAT YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO GO STRAIGHT HOME AFTER A TOUR. YOU HAVE TO MOVE INTO A HOTEL ROOM TO "DECOMPRESS."
Bono: It's Ali's idea: "Just add a week to the end of the tour, love, because I don't want the children to see you like this." You see, it is strong stuff, moving at tour speed. And I know the aftermath is where people come apart. I heard Keith Richards started doing drugs not on tour but when he came off tour, because there was such a big hole in his life without the music.

YOU'RE RENOWNED FOR GETTING "OFFSIDE" ON TOUR, SLIPPING THROUGH YOUR SECURITY AND HAVING ADVENTURES. CAN WE EXPECT "WHERE THE HELL IS BONO?" PANICS THIS TIME ROUND?
Bono: [Twinkling] Oh, I should think so... But I'm having to look after my voice a little more these days, so I'll have to live something of a Trappist existence. The upside is that it'll place even more emphasis on my singing the songs, since that'll be my only avenue of expressing myself. But you know, my whole education has been through the windows of planes and trains and blue buses going down Freeways and M1s and Autobahns and coming into a city first thing in the morning and checking out what's going on. Going to see a Caravaggio in Rome. Conversations you have with people when you're high in the air. Bits of books that you cling to like they're the mates you left at home. It's extraordinary to be in, say, Mexico City and looking out of the window and realising how like China it is. It's mad. But then there's a marvelous museum of anthropology in Mexico City and if you go there you discover that the native peoples of South America migrated form Asia across the Bering Straits.
On tour, you're having your head turned around like that all the time. I love all that stuff. It's an incredible privilege. And to have an air hostess hand you a glass of champagne on your 727 and Huey from the Fun Lovin' Criminals comes on board and says, "Bono, you guys chill like the Caesars." Well, that is the life.

WHAT DRIVES YOU ON?
Bono: I think that coming in and out of hipness, as we have done since the very beginning, has been a spur. Being dreadfully unhip and then sometimes hip - and it's always at different times in different countries, has done us a lot of good in that we do always feel like we've got a lot to prove. When Edge finally forced me to listen to the Greatest Hits I was obliged to concede for the first time that we had achieved something that there were some colours there that we owned. Very few artists own any colours. You're lucky if you get one. And I saw the ecstatic music, and with a wise beat I could see that naïveté had produced something special, however gauche.
You know, a lot of other groups have everything, but they don't have it. I can see that now, but for years all I could see was what we lacked. But with All That You Can't Leave Behind, I feel I could walk into a room and not have any explaining to do. I could put it down and say, Right. Fuck off. And of course that's only ever addressed to a few people, because in the end your imagined audience is only a few: they are a few people whose work you admire and there in the shadows in the corner, your old man. That's the scary thing. It probably gets back to that. Essentially, though, only God knows the reasons why people push themselves. I guess all art is an effort to identify yourself, but for us it seems to have been particularly difficult, and we seem recently to have made a feature out of personality crisis.

WHAT IRRITATES THE OTHERS ABOUT YOU?
Bono: My temper.
Adam: I'm slow.
Edge: I spend too long on the computer.
Larry: I'm the "negative" one.

WHAT IS U2'S JOB?
Bono: One of the things we've always tried to do - rather like comedians, although we we never funny - is say the thing that no-one else in the room will say. I think it's our job to stick our heads over the parapet.

WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HAVE FOR SOMEONE READING THIS AFTER THE SHOW?
Bono: As the preacher says, "Make that call" whether it's your mother, Amnesty International or your best mate. Do the thing that came into your head when we were playing.