...We started by asking Bono about his recent charge of 'malicious mischief', for spraying graffiti on a fountain during a concert in San Francisco.

Bono: It is fair to say that we over-reacted a bit - we're all a bit wounded because of the fact that the free concert that we put on in San Francisco seemed forgotten about, in the light of my own action. And I wish I could sort of stand up as the great graffiti artist of our time, and be pinned to a cross for my action, but actually I'm a bit of a scrawler, and it's not really worth defending my action. I did it in the spirit of the concert and I thought I did it in the spirit of the artist's work - he agreed; but in fact he didn't own his work any more, as us artists are prone to do he'd sold it, and the city of San Francisco owned it and they didn't like what I did at all. And worse than that, they were afraid that, y'know, U2 fans would be going around putting moustaches on the Mona Lisa and things like that. So we got into a bit of trouble, and - it was against Mayor Feinstein's campaign to sort of whitewash graffiti artists' work. There's a five hundred dollar reward in San Francisco for turning in graffiti artists. There is a fine line between vandalism, an act of vandalism, which I'm completely against and I would not want to stand by that, and, uh.... But that's what I, I got caught up in all of that, and that was my mistake, my mistake was to try to get involved in that situation, really.

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Bono: It's a really wild thing, you know, you're in a rock'n'roll band and you happen to sell millions of records: people therefore think that makes you a responsible citizen. Um, this is not true! (Edge laughs) In fact being held in a hotel rooms for months and months at a time can in fact inspire you to be a very irresponsible citizen. And I think this is one of the more mild actions of tour madness. But tour madness is a part of rock'n'roll, and it was actually a fun thing - I did it in a spirit of fun, I thought well, if they don't like it they can take it off. And they did, but God they made a big thing of it. And they really gave a lot of publicity to vandals.

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Bono: ...so many people. And, uh, and sometimes you actually, it appears like people, they won't - you can't own up to that. You can't own up to that because you're (wags finger) a band with a conscience. And of course we have a conscience, but I'm now starting to see the um, starting to.... I'm going out today and I'm going to buy some lurex pants, I'm going to grow my hair long, and I'm going to write a song about, y'know, "sockin' it to mah baby". (laughter) And then I think life would be a lot easier for U2. It's just... people just.... We are - it's the music that makes, it's the music that is magical with U2, and it's too easy, y'know, to just stretch - You know politics and religion are the two things you don't talk about in Ireland, and they seem to be the two things in U2 we're always talking about! (Puts face in hands) And y'know... I'm just saying that it's a bit of a pain in the arse sometimes.

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Bono: ... and I do regret what I did, I really do regret it; it was dumb. Plus my old man, apparently, has been onto it. The papers in San Francisco quoted my father - my own father! - has got in on this, and said "He deserves everything he gets, (laughter) and I've been telling him for years". And this guy's a painter! Yeah, and he's been calling my own paintings graffiti. So he was delighted.