U2start.com | Songs Of Experience - General album discussions

Transcribed as best I could from the photos:

In the wake of U2 controversially releasing iTunes freebie Songs of Innocence in September 2014, Bono was already talking up the imminent arrival of its [counterpart?] in a letter to fans on the band’s website: ‘It should be ready soon enough… although I know I’ve said that before.’ Three years on, Songs of Experience is finally to be released on 1 December, created during an intense and turbulent period where progress was delayed by Bono’s New York bike crash in November 2014 (in which he suffered numerous fractures that required months of recuperation) and U2 subsequently completed two major tours, Innocene + Experience and The Joshua Tree 2017.

At the beginning of this year, guitarist Edge said work on Songs of Experience had been put on pause so that the lyrics could reflect the political changes in the world following the election of Donald Trump. A month ago, though, he admitted that there was an additional reason why the project had to be put on hold: [namely?] that Bono had in 2016 suffered a ‘brush with mortality.’

‘Edge wasn’t fibbing when he said we had to stop and take account of what was going on in the world,’ Bono tells Q now. ‘He just didn’t want to mention what was going on in my world.’

The singer, however, refuses to be [drawn on?] the specifics of his serious health scare. ‘I don’t want to get too into the details of it, for fear of the melodramatic reality TV kerfuffle,’ he laughs. ‘A lot of people have these moments. I’ve had a few. Not quite at this level.’

‘It was serious enough that he genuinely had a major fright,’ says Edge. ‘But where that brought him [to as an artist?] was an amazing place.’

As a result, Songs of Experience — which sees Bono following the advice given to him by Irish poet Brendan Kennelly to ‘write as if you’re dead’ — is largely conceived as a series of final letters to [his?] family and friends and fans. ‘It’s just one of those moments when nothing else matters,’ he says. ‘[So?] what [do?] you have to say for yourself, and what do you want to say to the people that you love?’

Recent single You’re the Best Thing About Me an the dreamily atmospheric Landlady are addressed to Bono’s wife Ali Hewson, Get Out of Your Own Way to the singer’s daughters, and the closing There Is a Light to his sons, and, like much of Songs of Experience, to the singer himself. The opening lines of the [?] blues of The Lights of Home are starkly [confessional?]: ‘I shouldn’t be here cos I should be dead, I believe my best days are ahead.’

The album is still obliquely political — in Get Out of Your Own Way the Statue of Liberty gets a ‘smack in the mouth’ — but is overall far more personal than anything Bono has previously written. ‘The personal and political apocalypse came together,’ he says. ‘But I think, if we’re honest, the personal elbowed the political out of the way.’ Edge explains that the musical plan for the record was to capture the band’s live in the room chemistry and colour it with 21st century production techniques. Bono’s voice in opener Love Is All We Have Left, singing to himself from the imagined perspective of his younger self, is enhanced with digital effects as he sings, ‘Now you’re at the other end of the telescope/Hey, this no time not to be alive.’

'It’s so poignant, your innocence singing in you,’ he says, ‘It’s really very hard for me to listen to it.’

Recording locations for Songs of Experience included a [mansion?] in Killiney, Dublin, Ireland, Electric Lady Studios in New York, and even Bob Dylan’s former tourbus, now planted in the garden of Shangri-La Stadium in Malibu. [Returning?] to the U2 production team are the band’s long time studio stalwart Steve Lillywhite, Songs of Innocence collaborator Ryan Tedder and Jacknife Lee (2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), while the new faces include Jolyon Thomas (Royal Blood) and Andy Barlow (Lamb).

As for guests, Kendrick Lamar makes a cameo in the segue between Get Out of Your Own Way and American Soul as what Bono calls a ‘[cracked?] preacher,’ while Haim lend their voices to the gospel chorus of The Lights of Home — not least since the track’s main riff is based on a [bass?] breakdown from their 2014 single My Song 5.

‘I said to Edge, “well, sample stuff is you want. Why not?”' Bono recalls. ‘Sampling stuff is great freedom. Freedom to have fun. To make it a playground again where you have access to a wider palette of colours.’

Other highlights include the Bo Diddley-[via?]-The Clash Red Flag Day and the beautifully melodic, ‘60s echoing Summer of Love, both indirectly tackling the Syrian refugee crisis. ‘We weren’t trying to write a war story of a song,’ Bono stresses, referring to the latter. ‘We just wanted to write a romantic song with really dark clouds overhead. They’re both related to being down in the beautiful bay of Eze (in the south of France where Bono and Edge have houses] and just knowing when you’re having your vacation that on the same sea people are fighting for their lives, attaching themselves to bits of wood and rubber tyres.’

Though the making of Songs of Experience was eventful and sometimes difficult, the songs spark with energy and vitality. ‘What I love about the album is that it’s got that energy,’ says Bono. ‘It’s not punk rock, but it’s got the defiance.’

There’s no sign of U2 slowing down either — the Innocence + Experience Tour is due to resume in the late spring/early summer of 2018. ‘We’ve had a hell of a year,’ Edge [grunts out?], meaning the five month long [workload?] of The Joshua Tree tour. ‘I don’t think any of us wants to try and rush out. But we’re really excited to get back to that format.’

Proof of Bono’s enduring stamina [meanwhile?] came recently by way of Noel Gallagher, who admitted that he couldn’t compete with the singer’s drinking prowess when he opened for U2 on The Joshua Tree Tour. Gallagher confessed, ‘I was gonna do a runner. I mean, I was in a mess.’

‘Look, I would never have outed him as a lightweight,’ Bono chuckles. ‘I’ve so much respect for the man. But when I go out… yes, I do go out.’ And as for Bono’s general health now? ‘I’m way better. I’m on top form. I’m singing like a little girl.’

Or, more accurately, a man with more ‘experience’ due to his recent troubles than he really could have expected.

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6 years