George: That's called 'Blaze of Glory' by the Alarm.

Bono: That is a blaze of glory. You're talking about Number One or nothing.

George: I hate to tell you, Bono, but you're going to have to move out if he keeps this up! Gol-ly, Mike!

Bono: It couldnt happen to a nicer guy. (laughs)

<snip> Mike talking about the Alarm's new album, with apologies to any fans of the Alarm!

George: OK, now you are on the Rock & Roll Alternative. Yes.

Caller: Hello? Question to the band member. First mention(?) is I appreciate the music, especially the last album.

Bono: Thank you.

Caller: Question is, you didn't accept being labelled political rock a few minutes ago, I think those labels are a pain, and you mentioned the word personal. And if you're talking about personal, conflicts and things like that, on the album -

Bono: Mm-hm

Caller: I guess I'm saying is kind of where are you going with the music, how's it addressing the concerns that you mentioned.

Bono: I'm not sure I fully grasp the question, um -

George: Can your band make a difference through music.

Bono: Yeah, ah... right. John Lennon says, You say you want a revolution ah, kind of, I don't feel - a lot of people talk about changing the world, and yet they refuse to change themselves, y'know. And I was never into using the stage as a soap-box, like I never believe in pointing the finger at anybody other than yourself. Or, it's a We, I never go, You, it's always a We.. And I think if people change, and music has changed me as a person, I'm sure it changes other people, if it changes people then it can change places, 'cos people are places. So I do believe it can change it, 'cos I think sometimes a lot of the problems in our society that we see are symptoms of something much much deeper. Y'know we look at poverty, and we look at maybe the political system, we feel it's unjust or unfair, but a lot of that is they're just symptoms of greed, or maybe of people who when they take control of power can't handle the power. And so I'm interested in music, 'cos music touches, it reaches deep into people's hearts, and me, when I put on the headphones or when I listen to a song like 'Blaze of Glory', it affects me, and it changes me and it really - I wanna go out and I wanna change the world, I'm naïve and I'm an idiot enough to want to, you know? So, music is the soundtrack to change in a lot of ways.

George: Your concerts are such joyous experiences, so uplifting - 

Bono: Yeah! They're an explosion, and they should be. Rock & Roll should be a release, y'know, it really should. I don't like people lecturing to me though, in bands, I never liked that. I always figure its like the preachers on television, I feel sometimes if they stick their finger out of the screen they're pointing at you, I feel well why don't they point at themselves as well. 'Cos y'know, I mean you get good and bad preachers I know that, but I feel its the same in music. I dont like a singer getting on the stage and going, You! You've a lot to answer for! I go hey man, you've a lot to answer for. (laughs) Hey then I just said, Man. That's the effect this country has on me. I like it! I'm going through Wah! and Man!

George: You're turning into an American.

Bono: I, I, I'm, I dont regret that at all. It's very hip to knock America in Europe, because, maybe, of what is happening y'know, with the kind of bombs being planted over there. But um, I'm here 'cos I want to be here. Actually I can hear somebody on the phone. Hello?

George: Yes we've got someone here! Hello? Who's this?

Bono: Hi there!

Caller: This is Michel.(??) I'm the younger brother of Josh, Bono.

Bono: You're quite a family!

George: You people must have an inside line!

Caller: Not really, we just call long distance.

Bono: Where are you calling from?

Caller: Ah, we're calling from Denton?

Bono: Where's that?

George: About 20 miles north of here.

Caller: Actually 40, but -

George: 40, you're moving away. What's your question, Michel?(?)

Caller: Well I was just, I'll get to it later, but I would just like to say that U2 is a very, it has grown on our hearts and it's a very big part of us, and every time we listen to it, it takes us back to the age of, y'know the time that we had purchased the first album, Boy. And I just turned 16 and at times I, every time I listen to the album, I've been going through a bunch of changes and I used to listen to it every night before I'd go to sleep, and at one point I just couldn't listen to the album anymore because it brought back such nostalgia that it just upset me a whole lot, but finally I gave into that and I still listen to it, and I worship it and love it, and I guess here's my big question; and I was wondering if tomorrow in Dallas if we could possibly get together for lunch and everything, 'cos Josh and I have so much, (Bono's laughing) so many questions that we would just love -

Bono: Yeah, Josh and yourself are obviously very special people, in the sense that you're willing to, on the radio, in front of a lot of people, say what the music means to you; and I appreciate that, I really do. I also appreciate your offer for lunch, um, and I - maybe I will say yes, actually.

Caller: 'Cos we have so much to say and we find you a lot like us in certain ways, and -

Bono: What, hey what - where are we playing tomorrow? We're playing Dallas, so how, I mean -

Caller: We would come to Dallas.

Bono: Oh sorry, I thought you meant we were playing somewhere else. I thought, no 'cos, umm, yeah OK. If we're playing Dallas I'll tell you what to do. Come down to the soundcheck, alright?

Caller: Before the concert?

Bono: Yeah, and don't tell our road manager that I told you this -

George: He's listening you know.

Bono: But come down about half four, and maybe we -

Caller: George - ah, Bono?

Bono: Yeah?

Caller: George knows our number, if you wanna keep it a little more intimate, we could call you back or -

Bono: (laughs) No no, soundchecks intimate enough!

George: Not being very intimate at the moment, with about all of Dallas and Fort Worth here.

Bono: Yeah, I mean no, if you want to come down to the soundcheck do come down.

Caller: Before the concert tomorrow night?

Bono: Yeah. Come down at -

Caller: What time?

Bono: About 5 oclock.

George: Thanks for calling.

Caller: OK, thankyou.

Bono: Thankyou, see ya.

George: Boy it's going to be an intimate soundcheck tomorrow, I can tell already.

Bono: They're great words to be used, actually... so...

George: Do you get a weird feeling when people say they worship an album? I mean it's just a piece of plastic.

Bono: Yeah but they don't worship it, it's just, this is just a word. I mean you find people say Oh they worship it, that's really terrible, but they don't. Its mutual respect, I like to think. You know, you're on stage, I'm the singer, and I receive a lot of applause. And it comes back. And those people, they give you a lot, they give you everything they have usually, for the hour and a half you're on stage. But the next day if I asked somebody to kiss my feet, they'd say - (lowers voice) y'know, kiss my arse - they'd say Go away. And if I was walking down the street and I saw one of the people in the audience, and they were drawing on the pavement - say they were an artist, they're drawing on the pavement - I'd stop, and I'd throw down my dollar or I'd say, Wow that's really good and I would give them MY applause. And I do think its mutual, and when somebody says they worship it they mean that in the best possible sense.

George: You're very genuine on stage, on a lot of the recordings we've heard - we've had your live concerts on the air - between the songs and I've noticed this actually in person this way you're going, Thankyou! Thankyou! While the song's fading out you're going thankyou, while the band's gearing up for the next one, and I feel it's a very sincere, Thanks, folks!

Bono: Yeah the band sometimes, they say, Will ya ever shut up? (laughs) I do lose myself on stage, and I do do some things that I afterwards when I hear on tape I really kind of, it flips me out.

George: But it's for the moment.

Bono: Yeah, I live very much for the moment on stage.

George: Lets see what else somebody has to say here. OK, you're on the Rock & Roll Alternative this time.

Caller: Yeah, um, I just want to tell Bono tomorrow night's my first concert, 'cos my mom knows how much I like the band?

George: Well this is a good one to start it out with.

Caller: Yeah, I'm real excited, and I also wanted to ask what inspires them to write their work.

George: Mm-hm, what's your name?

Caller: Anne-Marie. Bono I saw you downstairs, just like half an hour ago or so, you signed (unintelligible) for Anne-Marie?

Bono: Oh right. Pardon? What was that last sentence? Oh yeah, I remember signing to Anne-Marie, I remember you in fact. Its your first concert, wow -

Caller: And I want to know what inspires them to write their work, and how they first got started, what first inspired them.

George: OK, thanks for callin'. Do you get inspiration from any one place?

Bono: There's no rules, I mean whenever there is rules you try to throw them out. We write songs in lots of different ways, sometimes we don't write songs we just write pieces of music. Um, I mean it could be through improvisation. Often somebody just sparks off somebody else, and we're working in a group and we'll play like ten minutes, and out of that ten minutes there'll be two minutes that's of interest. And we listen back to a tape or maybe a soundcheck, ah we've been talking about soundchecks earlier on, and we listen back to a tape that we didn't think was any good, and we'll hear something that will be strong in it, and we'll develop that. A song like 'I Will Follow' was written in about ten minutes, the same with, say, 'Party Girl'; even '40' was written very quickly. 'New Years Day' was the opposite, it was long, the music was structured, and then I improvised both melodically and lyrically over the musical structure to try and get across what I had to say. And the images then came, the images I had in mind came from film that I had seen, as I said, documentary footage of ah... and I tried to get this across in the music. There are no rules. Sometimes it will be written on an acoustic guitar, sometimes it'll be written on a bass, sometimes it'll be written on the toilet, y'know. (laughs)

George: I heard you had a habit of going in when you do your vocals and just kind of extemporaneously letting loose with verbiage and then just letting Steve chop it all together.

Bono: Yeah, Steve and myself worked out a kind of, an interesting relationship. It was a nightmare for him, I should say; actually last week he was over, he's been over in the U.S. with us, and he was saying, Don't stop working like that, even though I feel like I want you to stop when I'm working with you, don't stop. 'Cos he realises that out of that improvisation can come great moments that you wouldn't normally get. Yeah, sometimes we just leave, there's 24 tracks and leave maybe 6 tracks open for vocal. And I'll go in and I will have a few images, a few words on my mind, a few images, a few lines; and I'll sing those lines, and then other lines will come and other melodies will come. And then I'll fill up another track and another track and another track, and we listen back to them and we'll see that throughout the 6 tracks, if there were 6, a train of thought. And I'll say, Wow! I can see now. And people will say Wow you're piecing it together. And really what you're finding out is what's really in your subconscious more than what's at the front of your brain. If you know what I mean, its what's really bothering you, or what's really, you're excited about. Whereas if you sit down with a pen and paper, y'know you write - y'know people write poetry, I was kind of, when I was 13 I used to write poetry, but it was very self-conscious, the words, because -

George: You had to rhyme, too.

Bono: I was writing and I had to rhyme and I just, it's like a straightjacket. But when you're just set on fire by a piece of music, and you're just screaming and you're just singing, and you just suddenly, just the music becomes much more important than the sum of its parts.

George: In 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' you had the line How long must I sing this song. It turned up again in '40'.

Bono: Yeah, they're like bookends to the LP. I consider '40' to be the refrain of 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. 'Sunday' starts the album and '40' closes it, and again, it was just emphasising the point, y'know, we don't have to continue in the way we're continuing in our homeland. It was a message to the people of Ireland, really.

George: Talking about extemporaneous vocals, last time you were through -

Bono: That's a very big word by the way George. (laughs)

George: I paid a whole quarter for that one, and I'm going to use it all night. You played a tape for me of 'Trash Trampoline and the Party Girl', before it was recorded.

Bono: (almost whispering) Yeeaah, that's right!

George: It had the weird vocal to it, that was just kind of this mish-mash of words.

Bono: That's great.

George: I wanna play the other side of that, which is 'A Celebration', since we have no hope in the world of hearing this tomorrow, since the band's forgotten it we're gonna play that. This is a terrific track, is it ever going to appear on an album?

Bono: No...(laughs) I don't think so. It ah -

George: Do you not like it?! 

 Bono: No I do like it actually, I'm... sometimes I hate it, I mean it's like with a lot of music, if I hear it in a club it really excites me, and I think it is a forerunner to War and a lot of the themes. It was great in Europe because... A song like 'Seconds' people thought was very serious - on the LP War 'Seconds' - it's anti-nuclear, it's a statement. They didn't see the sense of humour to it, it's sort of black humour, where we were using a lot of clichés; y'know It takes a second to say goodbye, blah blah, and some people took it very seriously. And it is black humour, and it is to be taken sort-of seriously, but this song had the lines in it, I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, I believe in the powers that be, but they won't overpower me. And of course a lot of people they heard I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, and they thought it was some sort of, y'know, Hitler Part II. And Europeans especially were (puts on outraged French accent) Ah non! Vive le France! and it was all like, all sorts of chaos broke out, and they said, What do you mean, you believe in the atomic bomb? And I was trying to say in the song, I believe in the third world war, because people talk about the third world war but it's already happened, I mean it's happened in the third world, that's obvious. But I was saying these are facts of life, I believe in them, I believe in the powers that be BUT, they won't overpower me. And that's the point, but a lot of people didn't reach the fourth line.

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George: 'A Celebration', U2, on the Rock & Roll Alternative. In the studio with us tonight, Mike Peters from The Alarm and Bono, from U2. And I really wanna thank you guys for dropping by, we've got a few more moments and were going to take one more phone call here from the Metroplex.
So lets see what this person wants. Yes, you're live on the air.

Caller: Um yeah, I was just wondering, when U2 were preparing this album War, did they just, when they started recording it did they just suddenly realise about the things that were going on in Ireland, or was it just like they just felt like this was the time to start expressing themselves about it.

Bono: Yeah. I sort of answered that question when I was saying about; when we released the LP Boy, and we left our country for the first time as a band, that's when the process started. And the song 'Tomorrow', on October, we were allowing it to come through, a lot of our feelings were coming through but it's.... um... That's another story, that song, it's a special song. But on War we did, as you well put it, we felt the time was right, because we felt that a lot of the music was wallpaper music that we were hearing on the radio, and we felt that people were saying nothing, and saying it all the time. And we felt that now it was important to say something strong. I mean, and by the way earlier on when I was talking about new music and old music, I didnt mean to knock what is new in favour of what is past. I was just knocking anything thats not good! (laughs) I mean it's like -

George: Seems reasonable!

Bono: Yeah, I'd just like to make that point. That not all music of the '80s is bland and pap; to the contrary, I think that the '80s are going to be very exciting, far more exciting than the '70s.

Caller: OK. George, I was just kind of wondering, are they going to keep putting you on on Sunday nights, like at 10.30?

George: That's the way its been for a little over 3 years.

Caller: And they're not thinking of changing it now, 'cos I think youve gotten a little more popular lately.

George: Well, that just takes time I think. Bono you know about being popular in an underground, and suddenly breaking through.

Bono: I think if enough people write in, and if enough people ring in and say this is the best rock & roll show on the planet, things start to happen, y'know?

George: I'll settle for hemisphere, actually.

Caller: Alright, well that's all I had to say. Bye.

George: Thanks for calling.

Bono: Thankyou.

George: We're going to take one more here. Yes.

Caller: Hi, George. Am I on the air?

George: Yes; quickly! Whats up?

Caller: Ah, my name's John, and I just want to say to Bono, and I guess to the entire band, don't think you're idiots because you'd like to change the world, a lot of us would like to, and I think its great and I think your music has a great way of saying that, you know what I mean? I just think that its terrific that there are some bands left that would like to say the world can be changed. And even if it can't, its worth a try, yeah?

Bono: Yeah, and you say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

George: Right. Is there anything you've always wanted to ask the band.

Caller: Um, who are your influences, who are your musical influences, I'm curious.

Bono: What time is it? (laughs) Um, I'm curious as well, I think our biggest influences are each other, actually. Um, i.e. The Edge, Adam and Larry.

George: He cuts a mysterious figure.

Bono: The Edge?

George: Larry. Never really see him out in the forefront much.

Bono: Well... Larry.... Larry's like a brother, in many ways, to me; well the whole group are as well. He's a lot to say, but he's not into saying it just every day, y'know. (laughs) And I respect that in him. He doesn't like to be put on the spot to explain something that he can't explain, which is music. And I can't explain it either, but I try. (laughs) 

George: I wanna play something really unusual. Would you mind if I play a track of yours called 'The Fool'?

Bono: Yeah, well I, I can't even say that I mind, because I can't remember the song. This is the first song that was ever built in that improvised way, I think this is probably 5 years old, we were 16 when we made this. In fact 15, Larry may have even, yeah Larry was 15, I was 16.

George: Produced by the member of Horslips, ah Devlin...

Bono: Barry Devlin, yeah, half produced by him. Larry had his, ah, he broke his leg - or, well he actually ran over his foot with a motorbike (laughs) - and he was in the studio, and he was 15 years old, and we were trying to make a demo. And I remember Larry's old man - that's Larry Mullen Senior - was like knocking on the door of the studio, saying, I want my son back! (laughs) I want him to be a jazz drummer! Y'know, He's cut his hair!

George: So this is a very young -

Bono: This is a very young U2.

George: 'The Fool'? That's the right title?

Bono: That is, I think, yeah. Can I hear this, actually?

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George: That is a song called 'The Fool', and a very young, very frantic U2 there. So you do have Garage roots!

Bono: Oh yeah! Were the original garage band from garage land, if we can do it anyone can do it, believe me.

George: You've come a long way since then. An awful long way.

Bono: I dunno, I listen to that and sometimes I think we should go back! (laughs) It has got a lot of dynamic to it.

George: I want to ask you one more thing before we break up class here, and that is; I understand you're writing a music score for the Royal Dublin Ballet?

Bono: Yeah, its a long way from 'The Fool'... or is it? Um, yeah, we are actually. A lot of piano work, some sort of metronomic-type work as well. Um, using machines, ha ha; it's the big sell-out folks, here it comes. No, I've nothing against machines, its the machines that work the machines (laughs) that bother me. No it's just something that we're working on, at the moment more myself and Edge, and I think when we get back Larry and Adam are gonna get into it more. It's a lot of, some movies want us to do soundtracks as well, there's two on offer at the moment which I can't really say what they are.

George: Right. Is this something we'll see on vinyl shortly, perhaps.

Bono: Well I dunno. I think there will be something out before the end of the year that's new, and I'll make sure you have a copy.

George: Terrific! Mike, Bono, many thanks for coming and joining us on the Rock & Roll alternative tonight.

Bono: Yes thank you, actually.

George: We're gonna close out with a beautiful song, 'Tomorrow'.

Bono: Thankyou.

George: This is just a marvellous track, from the October album; the much-maligned, much-ignored October album; you need to check this one out if you like War, buy all the others. 'Cos they're just, they're worth it. You bought them, didn't you?

Bono: I don't have them actually, I wish I did, in fact I think October is probably the bravest of the three in its content and what it was trying to do. I think it should have proved to people that we weren't about just trying to make just Boy II, or 'I Will Follow' Part II, that there was more to the group. It came out awkwardly, but it came out in a spirited way. And this is one of my favourite songs, of all time.

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