July 27, 2004, Boston: After Senator Kennedy's party, Bono, Ali, Paul McGuinness, Bobby and Maria Shriver, and assorted friends and associates all hang out in a private suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the Fairmont Copley Plaza. I turn on my tape recorder and ask Bono how he balances his political work with the band. "It's classic rock-star syndrome," he says. "I want to have fun and I want to save the world. The band has been incredibly tolerant. Let's face it, [political activism] is pretty unhip work; some of these people are just so uncool. [The band] is occasionally frustrated and annoyed, but they're also very proud, and, therefore, they financially support my work. Because it takes two years to make a record that should take one, that's two years of their lives too that they are investing in this other stuff." Why did the album take two years? "Great hangs back until good gets tired. Who wants a good, or even very good, U2 record right now? What's the point? We need 11 great reasons [new songs] to leave home." You're all very rich; how do you keep things in perspective? "The bubbles might go to my head occasionally. And the altitude sickness...it's called vertigo," he says (referring to the title of the band's first single from the new album). "I think it goes back to what we've said about punk rock. You're shaped at birth, your DNA is in place. For us, coming out of punk rock, we despised bands who thought it was just enough to turn up. That fat rock 'n' roll thing...they got the house and the car but lost everything else. Imprinted in us was that the only justification for success is not being crap. There's a deal with your audience: we have this life and we don't have to worry about the things they worry about - medical bills, where the kids go to school - and in return, don't be dull, don't give us your second best.

We order food. Bono, who has an allergy to red wine, drinks white wine and eats pizza. I tell him I cannot think of another band who have remained intact for so long, with, for example. no drug problems. "Not interested," he says. "I mean, the people in this band who abused alcohol...we've made mistakes. The right to be ridiculous is something I hold very dear, especially when you're dealing with serious stuff a lot of the time. Also, I've noticed this not just with bands but with men as they get older: they rid the room of argument, they want to be lord of their own domain, and they eventually push out of their lives people who challenge their points of view. I noticed this with my father, cousins, uncles, brothers. They end up in a room where everyone agrees with them, which is like going solo. I think that's a mistake. It's really evolved to want to be in an equal partnership, because the friction keeps you sharp. I would say I need the band more than they need me, especially as a musician - because I haven't got the sophistication to play the melodies I make up in my head. But I also need them emotionally. A lot." Celebrity - good or bad? "I understand the power of having a famous face, and I'm not being disingenuous about a certain celebrity status that I might have - it comes in handy here and there, and it's an annoyance here and there. But I'm not sure I'm very good at it." Who is? Jack Nicholson? "Jack Nicholson is a master at being in the public eye and giving absolutely nothing away. We don't get the paparazzi, we don't get all that kerfuffle. When the guys go back to the New York Post and say, 'Here's a picture of Bono,' they don't go 'Wow.' " That's because you're out so much. (Laughter.) "It's because it's not our world," he says. "There was a time when we were playing with celebrity - we tried it on like a party dress, and I enjoyed it actually, but it is not the way people relate to us."

He talks about Ali, his wife of 22 years, who I note seems cynical about all the fuss. "I'm glad you spotted the cynicism," he says, "because she is serene, but she is also a great skeptic. Ali doesn't need the favor of anyone. She's very complex." Also beautiful. "I know this sounds like a line," he says, "but she doesn't see herself that way. I met her when we were 13, and she was an academic. Her mother made her clothes; she wore Wellington boots, and I found that absence of vanity very attractive. She understands that thing that men find hard to understand, which is mysterious distance. A lot of the relationships I see are like the 'Where were you? Who was there?' type of thing." That choking thing... " 'Choking' is a very good word. She's the least choking person. It's sometimes unnerving, because we'll be about to go away on a tour and she's standing there [at the door] with the kids with a big smile on her face, waving. Whatever it is, it's immensely attractive. And sometimes hurtful. You know, performers are not the most secure people in the world. Why would you go on a stage if you were of sound mind? In a very, very, very deep place, I'm secure. And on the surface, secure. But somewhere in there I need 20,000 screaming people a night to feel normal. How sad is that? I mean, a secure person, of sound mind, is not aware of conversations going on in the other corner of the room. You're always expecting...where the next blow is coming from. In the early days, if somebody was going to the bathroom or talking at a U2 show..." You feel the room. "You feel the room. You know where it is...it's over there...no, now it's over there...So I'd push over a bunch of speaker stacks, or climb up, or set fire to myself."

- Jimmy Iovine, 2004

August 2004: Bono and Adam are 44, Edge is 43, and Larry 42. They have released 11 albums since their 1980 debut, sold 125 million records, and performed in 26 countries (including war-torn Sarajevo in 1997), and their 2001 Elevation tour grossed $115 million. Their new album, titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, will be released on November 22. It has 11 soaring, melodic, complex, strong songs. There are plans for a yearlong, worldwide tour to start in March 2005, around the time the band will most likely be inducted (they're considered a shoo-in) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Unlike the Who - who seem to have never written a song that hasn't been in a commercial - or the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Led Zeppelin, Dylan, and others who've rented their music to ads, U2 has not allowed its music to pitch cars, cameras, or cruise ships. "Beautiful Day" has, however, been played at John Kerry rallies. (Next year's tour may well be sponsored by an information-technology company; the debates among band members about that have been going on for years.)

* * * * *

Bono's hair is lighter these days than the dark black of the last few years. ("You said I was starting to look like Roy Orbison," he told me, laughing, last spring.) Except for Adam - who has none - each band member has between three and five children. Every summer they decamp from their native Dublin, where they all still live, to houses they own in the South of France, where Edge married Morleigh Steinberg two years ago. They have spent 25 years reading, learning, traveling, recording, raising families, performing. What has kept them together? "Each other and self-criticism," says Paul McGuinness, "mutually relentless self-criticism. It's true that there are four equal voices, and it makes the meetings very long." According to Adam, "Sometimes I think being in U2 is being in one long meeting. Your own life is just a tea break between meetings."

Larry, who looked like a Bruce Weber model when he started the band and is still gorgeous, says, "I want to retract the statement I made to you in 1987 about not wanting to be known for my looks. Now I absolutely want to be known for my looks." Larry has been with Ann Acheson since he was 13; they have three children but "never got around to getting married." Was this a problem with religion? "For me, no," he says. "Other people had conflicts with it and lost sleep about it. I certainly didn't." In another conversation, I ask Adam about bands like Radiohead and Coldplay, who have obviously been influenced by U2. "Well," he says, "I think it's great that Coldplay is a band that admits it."

© Conde Nast, 2004.