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Improvisation And Instinct Keep Vitality In U2’s Music

Posted by Ed and Lois

By Robert Hilburn Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK—“It’s one of the most banal couplets I’ve ever heard,” Bono says sheepishly about the words he wrote for one of U2’s best-known songs. “`I want to run, I want to hide….’ That’s not very interesting, but you know what? People don’t hear the couplets when we play the song. 

“They hear something else in the music. They hear a band talking about a special place, a better place, and asking if the audience wants to go there with them.”

Bono, who writes most of U2’s lyrics, is keenly aware that the music’s power often comes less from his pen than from the sweeping sonic foundation built by the band.

“Feelings are stronger than ideas or words in a song,” he says, pacing the floor of his Central Park West apartment, offering a contrarian view of pop songwriting. 
“You can have 1,000 ideas, but unless you capture an emotion, it’s an essay.”

The comments are surprising from a man who devotes so much of his time to ideas—from the spiritually tinged themes that underlie many U2 songs to his high-profile crusade to get wealthy nations to forgive Third World debt.

“Songwriting comes from a different place,” he says. “Music is the language of the spirit. I think ideas and words are our excuse as songwriters to allow our heart or our spirit to run free. That’s when magic happens.”

It happens so often for U2 that the group has come closer to matching the quality and mass appeal of The Beatles over the past 25 years than any other band.

This is pop music at its most ambitious—personal and independent enough to satisfy discerning listeners, yet open and accessible enough to pack stadiums. Although the group has experimented with electronica and other contemporary sounds, the essence of U2 is classic rock ‘n’ roll.

You won’t find lots of humor or party toss-offs in U2. The Irish quartet’s flurry of Top 40 hits, including Pride (In the Name of Love) and One, mostly are soaring anthems built around the same message of brotherhood that characterized The Beatles’ later years. Yet U2 arrives at songs in a much different way.

John Lennon or Paul McCartney usually came up with songs and then taught them to George Harrison and Ringo Starr. But U2 collaborates to a degree that is rare—a process that depends on the singular chemistry of the four musicians.

Bono and guitarist the Edge bring ideas into the studio—a title, the trace of a melody or a catchy riff—then bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen join in the construction of the songs. The grueling give-and-take sometimes stretches for weeks as the musicians toss ideas back and forth, equal partners in the search for an emotion that seems fresh and deeply rooted.

When the marathon sessions are going well, Mullen says, the rehearsal studio feels like a playground. When they’re going badly, it feels like a boxing ring.

“We’re tough guys,” Clayton says. “We know we’ll get there eventually. A lot of it is perspiration. You just have to put in the hours and do your time.” The Edge is fond of repeating the band’s private joke that it’s “songwriting by accident.”

“It’s more like Miles Davis than The Beatles in a way,” Bono says.

Only after the band finds that powerful emotion, be it blissful or melancholy, does Bono begin applying lyrics. Sometimes he’ll draw phrases or lines from the notebook he carries with him. Occasionally, he’ll work from a finished lyric.

His improvisation in the studio often starts with him just muttering sounds that seem to fit the flow of the music being created—“Bono-eze,” his bandmates call it.

“When Bono starts going through his Bono-eze, it can change what we’re playing and take the song in a different direction,” Mullen says. “If he’s doing something very intense, it might not even be what he’s saying, but the way he’s behaving, the way he’s throwing the microphone around. The energy and intensity helps shape the song.”

Gradually, Bono begins changing sounds into words and lines, trying to articulate the feelings the music stirs in him.

Unlike many great songwriters, he doesn’t spend much time editing his words. He even declares that “craft and taste can be the enemy of songwriting” because they encourage you to follow certain rules, rather than simply following your emotions.

“At various times, we’ve tried to stick to conventional songwriting,” Mullen says from Dublin. “But after a few months we see it’s not working. We need to dismantle the ideas and start again.”

Adds the Edge: “My worst nightmare is sounding ‘professional.’ I think we work best when we keep moving into the unknown.”

U2’s unorthodox songwriting style was born out of necessity.

When the band members came together in high school, they weren’t good enough at their instruments to play convincing versions of the hits of the day. To hide their inexperience, they came up with their own songs.

“From fairly early on, it became clear to us that we had no idea about songwriting technique,” the Edge says. “Our way into songwriting was to dream it up. ... Instinct was everything for us, and it really still is.”

While he sometimes wishes the band’s songwriting process gave him more time to write the lyrics, Bono still thinks the system comes up with the best songs.

“When I look at our first 10 years, I just hear unfinished work, lyrics we never finished because we ran out of studio time,” he says of his contributions. “I hear Bad, and see what’s not there. I just see a list of failures.”

Still, he wouldn’t change way U2 works. For all his personal frustrations and the band’s uncertain moments, they all know they’ve found a way to connect with audiences.

Although Bono and his family live most of the year in Dublin, he enjoys the energy of New York.

He still takes delight in pointing out some of the landmarks as he sits in the passenger seat of a van headed to a meeting on easing world hunger. As the driver navigates through traffic, Bono shoves the new U2 album into the CD player and pounds his fist on the dashboard as the music blasts through the speakers. There’s a driving, rock ‘n’ roll vitality to the music, which is due out this fall; a freshness that you hardly expect from bands in their third decade.

But U2 has been able to remain both current and relevant. They get airplay on college and alt-rock radio stations and find their Beautiful Day at John Kerry campaign rallies.

As the vocal starts, he sings along. But it’s so noisy in the car you can’t really make out the words. Bono’s expression, however, tells you he’s very proud of this album. He suddenly stops singing and begins chuckling as he turns down the volume. “Did you hear that last verse? ... You never write a verse like that. That was definitely improvised. But there are other lines in the song I wrote ahead of time.”

When the songs are finished, Bono looks at the disc.

“Lou Reed is a friend, and I once asked if he had advice for a young poet, and, in his usual cryptic way, he summed it up, ‘Break rhyme occasionally.’”

Bono laughs as the van pulls to a stop.

“You know, songwriting really is a mysterious process ... because we’re asking people to expose themselves. It’s like open heart surgery in some way. You’re looking for real, raw emotions, and you don’t find that by sticking to the rules.”

Comments:

1. Try reading this article and substitute the word church for the word songwriting.

   Ed

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  08/29  at  08:54 PM