Cat Deeley: Uh, saw the show last night. Fantastic, really really enjoyed it. How’s it all going? How’s the tour going?

Bono: (Looking at Cat’s boots) Saw the boots this morning. Faaantastic.

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Bono: The opening of the show is like a prize fight. Y’know? It’s a wrestling match, where you’re trying to wrestle the crowd to the ground.

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Cat: The thing is you’ve actually been quite lucky because you have undoubtedly grown, but you’ve all grown in the same direction, which I think is unusual for a band, and I think quite often people go off and go their own ways. What is it that links you inextricably together? What is it that’s made you stay together?

Edge: I think friendship is a big part of it, y’know. We haven’t done the thing that most bands do, that awful splintering and people giving up on each other, and just every man for himself mentality. This is still a band in the real sense, and has been pretty much consistently through the time we’ve worked together. There’s been one or two spells where that’s been challenged, but not in any way that I ever felt was gonna undermine the group.

Cat: But it’s never got to a point where you thought, actually, we all need to just take a break from each other, get out of each other’s hair and maybe do our own thing. It’s never got to that stage?

Bono: Daily.

Edge: The solo album, you’re talking about? I don’t know.

Adam: You wouldn’t want to be working – or I wouldn’t want to be working with anyone else.

Edge: You go through – I mean occasionally if things are really tough, which occasionally they are -

Cat: It’s just ‘cause we don’t have, really, people like you, you know. We don’t have these bands who have stayed together for this long and grown together.

Larry: I think one thing that happens a lot is that people think that because you stick together and you make music together, you – I mean the reasons we’re doing it are complex, it’s not simple. There’s lots of things like revenge (laughter), disappointment, deep-seated anger ...

Cat: Hatred ...

Larry: Y’know, hatred, unfinished business – all those kind of things, they all come into it. Em, but we don’t all move in the same direction, and that’s what separates U2. We’re not all moving – we’re not like a shoal of fish.

Bono: Like a herd of cats.

Larry: (laughs) We think differently, we don’t all agree on everything, so what we end up with is that the only thing that we sort of can agree on is the music, and even that’s challenged. So it’s kind of important that people retain their individuality, and y’know we do question whether it’s the right thing to do, whether we should continue, and we do it on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, after each record and after each tour.

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Bono: You could question the sanity of people who want to do this again and again. It is amazingly difficult to come down from being in a rock band, and I think we’ve figured out the best thing is to stay in a rock band, to stay great, don’t be crap, but cut some -

Cat: (laughs) Stay great, don’t be crap; those are two very good rules!

Bono: (laughs) They are different though, aren’t they? “Don’t be crap” means don’t embarrass your audience, right.

Cat: Don’t dance like that in front of your daughter.

Bono: (laughs) That’s it. So that’s our thing. Don’t be crap, stay great, and cut some slack for each other occasionally, and find some time. We’ve found a lot of time, why do you think it’s a while between each record? You know, we skip off to the south of France and, y’know, live the life of Riley.

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Cat: I’ve got a question for Larry. I recently read a quote saying that the band U2 would get by if Bono left, but they couldn’t get by if you left. True or false?

Larry: What do you think?

Cat: (laughs) Well if you plugged in a little tape recorder....

Bono: The trains would run on time. They wouldn’t know where they were going, but they’d run on time.

Larry: It’s easy to find singers. Look at AC/DC. Singers are interchangeable. They all come the same way, it’s the “Me me me me me” thing. (laughter)

Bono: How do singers tune up?

Cat: Huh?

Bono: How do singers warm up?

Cat: Don’t know.

Bono: (sings) Mememememe. Ha ha.

Larry: But they’re all the same. They all do the same.

Bono: Larry’s trying to do a Phil Collins. This is the moment, get it out. ‘Cause Phil’s a big idol of Larry’s, and he’s always secretly thought I’m the Peter Gabriel of this band. C’mon! Get it out!

Larry: I’m the Peter Pan of this group, I’ll tell you that for nothing. (laughter)

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Cat: Is there a transformation that takes place as you walk from the dressing room to the side of the stage? Do you suddenly kind of go, like we’re not just kind of ‘us’ anymore, we’re suddenly ‘rock gods‘!

Larry: (laughs) It falls between two stools of excitement and, y’know, sort of the fear of excruciating pain.

Larry: We’re not virtuosos, so we don’t go up and just like, throw it out. So it takes a certain amount of energy. But the truth is that what you are concentrating on – for me, anyway – is actually “make sure you don’t screw up“.

Larry: I’m not a star drummer, you know the way you get them flickin’ sticks – I don’t do that stuff.

Cat: I was going to say, are you there in your dressing room just before you go on, doing paradiddles. Is that what they’re called?

Larry: I wish! That’s what they’re called, very good. That’s impressive.

Cat: Doing a little bit of paradiddling.

Larry: Yeah. No, no, I’m afraid I failed on the paradiddle front.

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Bono: I still feel like an impostor.

Cat: Do you?

Bono: Just a little bit, yeah. Just a little bit like an impostor.

Cat: At what moment?

Bono: Um ... like now when the light comes on. Never when I’m singing. Never when I’m in the song. Never.

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Bono: (Unintelligible) ...as the sun is setting, and it’s kind of raw, and very exposed in a way. And it’s good to see a rock band like us exposed. But then, you know, we like to try and cast a technological spell with all our expensive (flexes arm) hardware.

Edge: Yeeeaaah.

Cat: And what is it like, literally shifting that around? Because you guys have so many people working for you, you have all the stage and all the rest of it. Must be a bit like moving mountains.

Bono: Why do you think I’ve a bad back?

Edge: (sighs) Tell you what!

Bono: Larry – look, he’s got – taped up and all the rest.

Edge: Yep. Moving all those, filling all those trucks after the show; I tell ya, my hands are ruined.

Adam: Who would have thought, at the end of the day, you’d be driving a forklift. (laughter)

Cat: Well if it all went horribly wrong, you never know. Are you having trouble with your back as well at the moment, Larry?

Larry: No, I just, I, you know there’s always, things always fall off the vehicle as we go along. (laughter) Like you lose an arm or a leg or a back every now and then. No, it’s just these are occupational things and they ... but I‘ve been really lucky, actually.

Cat: Do you have to have any pre-show kind of treatments, or anything?

Larry: You know, just get a massage; a medical massage now, this is not like something you get down in Chinatown. (laughter) Unfortunately, this hurts a little. It’s great.

Cat: (laughs) You like it.

Larry: I love it.

Cat: Harder! Harder!

Larry: Yeah, that’s right. Hit me.

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Cat: So how do you feel when you’re playing a song like ‘Beautiful Day’, ‘cause ‘Beautiful Day’ kind of brought you back to the whole – a whole new generation started liking U2. How do you feel when you play that song to all those people?

Edge: It’s funny how certain songs will bring you back to a particular time and place, and -

Cat: ‘Cause it was, it was a real crucial moment, I think.

Edge: It was, it was a big moment.

Edge: There was a group of fans that used to travel round with us and sleep on the floor of our hotel rooms, and they were there last night! So it was this really funny feeling, how, like it felt like you were back in the Manchester Poly (Bono nods and smiles), playing to that sort of crowd. It was amazing.

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Bono: The reason we have always involved our audience, and brought them onto the stage, or else I have often left the stage and gone into the audience – it’s a way of communicating, y’know, to people. You do it by ... you use the songs, while singing, but then there’s opportunities that symbolise something bigger than the music.

Adam: Bono, in particular, likes communicating; he has a gift for it. And I think that’s taken us a long way.

Bono: That’s very kind of you!

Cat: It was nice, wasn’t it? Have you ever invited somebody up and they’ve gone, “Ooh no thanks, no thank you, ask somebody else”?

Bono: Mm-hm.

Cat: Have you!

Bono: Oh yeah, it happens. Or what happens is I find somebody kind of shy and interesting-looking, and somebody very boring and uninteresting but full of confidence just jumps on top of them, and they -

Cat: Oh no, that would make me want to get them even more!

Bono: I know, and I’m sometimes stuck, and then I look round and I look at the band and they go (mimes playing instruments and rolls eyes), Pfff! Like this.

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Cat: How the hell have you managed to put up with those terrible four for so long?

Paul: Well, that’s quite an interesting question, yeah. It’s very unusual for five guys to work together for 27 years, which is how long it’s been.

Cat: A long time.

Paul: A long time. And I think we’re as good at staying out of each others’ way as we are at being together. That’s probably it.

Cat: Because you have been described as the fifth member of U2.

Paul: I would put it different way: fifth member of the board. There are only four people in the band.

Cat: What would you say is the key to their success?

Paul: Talent, ambition, and stamina. The records seem to take a very long time to make, they don’t make – it’s not getting easier to make the records, and I think that’s probably the key to why they’re still relevant. They really really put the effort in.

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Cat: So, Live 8. Are you looking forward to it?

Edge: I don’t know much about it. I mean I’m looking forward to – as far as I’m concerned, if Sir Bob says “Can you be part of this”, we are absolutely there in whatever way we can. So there’s a lot of unanswered questions, like what are we going to do, what’s the thing going to be like, but I don’t care. It’s one of those events that’s just, it’s gonna be great, no matter what, and we’re happy to be part of it.

Cat: What does Live 8 mean to you guys?

Edge: The chance to do the song that we couldn’t do the last time, maybe. (laughs)

Bono: We were supposed to play three songs. In the second one, which is called ‘Bad’, from The Unforgettable Fire, we got distracted, or I got distracted, jumped off the stage. And ... saw someone in the crush, and sort of created this moment, we held on to her, she held on to us, and the world held on to each other. It was just one of those moments. The band were pissed off that we didn’t get to play the hit, and maybe we’ll play it this time.

Larry: Well we didn’t know what you were doing, you jumped down and I mean you could have been off having a cup of tea. (laughter)

Cat: It’s started again, I think I’ve opened a whole can of worms. But are you excited about -

Larry: Y’know, if you’d told us, if you’d in fact written to us and asked permission – (laughter)

Edge: I’m scarred.

Cat: Let it go, it happened a long time ago. Let it go, just release.

Larry: (unintelligible) to hurt by it.

Edge: Larry’s poor arms now, they were so tired from having to play that beat for such a long time.

Larry: Yeah, that’s why I –

Cat: You could have just put the drumsticks down, sort him out.

Larry: What I’m doing this time is, I’m taking precautions this time, I’m bringing a little tape recorder (laughter) and what’ll happen is, if he disappears I’m just going to press “go”.

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Bono: It’s going to be very difficult to get real change out of Gleneagles and this G8 meeting. I know enough about these G8 meetings now, I’ve been to enough of them to know that it’s the last few minutes, it’s the deals they cut. They’re sitting in that room saying, “How are we going to go out and face the public unless we agree on this, this, this and this”. And the French will say (mimics accents and characteristics of each nation in turn), “Ah, but we want to do this!” and the Germans will go, “Yes, but ve vant to do zis!” and the Americans go, “You gotta do what we wanna say”, and then the British will say, “No, no no no.” They won’t agree, and they’ll say, “We’ll put it off”. And the only thing that will stop them walking out the door and saying, “We’re putting this off until next year” or “We’re putting this off until September” is a deafening roar of people saying, “Get back in there till you’ve got an agreement”. It’s the only thing that’ll do it.

Bono: Live Aid in the ‘80s was about charity. Live 8 in the zeros is about justice. And it’s amazing, the world has woken up to this, this idea of, oh yeah, it’s not just enough to put your hand in your pocket. That helps, we should always be generous when we see people stuck, but it’s more important that there’s a reason why these people are stuck. I mean outside of corruption and natural calamity, both of which you find on the African continent. But there’s other reasons that we’re involved in, why these people can’t, um, get up off their knees. And there’s trade justice issues, we flood their markets with cheap produce but don’t let theirs into us. There’s the debt burden, and we’re going to turn up in Scotland, Gleneagles, surround these eight men on a golf course – can you believe they’re on a golf course? – and we’re going to tell them it’s unacceptable.

Cat: And how do you guys feel about his political campaigning?

Edge: Seems to be working! (laughter) That’s the scary thing.

Cat: But do you manage to get him back in the studio, and you manage to get him working on stuff as well, sometimes?

Edge: Definitely. Gives us a chance to do some homework when he’s not around.

Bono: Homework. Can’t escape it. Even in a rock band. You have to do your homework.

Edge: We do.

Adam: I think it’s amazing that so much has been achieved in that seven years since Bono first started his activism, so, I think it’s fantastic. It’s great.

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Edge: It’s [‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’] a very emotional song, so as we’re playing – well, as I’m playing it I’m thinking about what I can do to help our singer. You know, because to go into a tune, to really deliver it, you’ve got to get lost in it. And so our job is just to try and create the background, the platform, for Bono to go and get into that character, get into that song.

Edge: You know, the best shows you are lost. The music takes over and you just, you’re in the zone. And if you think about it you don’t get there, it’s almost when you stop thinking and just surrender to it.

Cat: Is that not incredibly emotionally draining, though, to be that emotionally open? Isn’t it incredibly tiring? And don’t you sometimes almost have to go through the motions to get –

Bono: I would really love to go through the motions, and if I figured it out I’m sure I would. I don’t think – it’s not any high-mindedness, it’s just I actually, physically, can’t sing the songs unless I get inside them, just because there’s some very high notes. I’m just not trained enough as a singer to just, y’know, to just knock that out. So I have to go to that place.

Cat: What is that like, when you go out there and you feel that – there must be a huge feeling that’s almost indescribable, but can you somehow try and put it into words?

Edge: It’s an energy. Isn’t it, Bono? It’s an energy. It is actually this unbelievable feeling when you go out there, and it gets the hairs on the back of your neck up. It’s just ... it is, like, electric! It’s mad! If we didn’t have the U2 crowd I don’t think we could play the way we play. It’s very much the combination of the band and the crowd.

Bono: We do have the rock crowd, don’t we. They are the men that you can rely on.

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Bono: ‘City of Blinding Lights’, sometimes I’ll bring a little boy up on stage – it’s not to be sentimental, but it’s a song about innocence, about naïveté. It brings you closer to the song. These are little symbols, is I suppose the word I’m looking for, they’re symbols that give clues to the song, or that break down barriers between the stage and the audience. That’s always been the thing about our band – breaking down barriers. Hence the big production, which goes right to the back, the screens; y’know, hence the mirrorball spaceship lemon we took on the road; ZooTV, going back to climbing up on speaker stacks or pushing into the crowd and having a go. That’s always, all the same thing, breaking down that barrier between stage and audience. And if you think about it, you can be in a club with some band, it’s not a physical proximity, you can feel it a million miles away, depending on how the band are thinking or feeling. So that’s what we’re always trying to do, that’s your job, y’know, to shrink size down in these big venues. Turn football stadiums into clubs. That is what we do for a living.

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Cat: How do you feel about ZooTV and PopMart now? What were the good things about it and what were the bad things about it?

Edge: I think the good things about both those shows we kind of retain in what we’re doing now. The songs, obviously, are still relevant. But they both came out of their era, y’know, and the technologies that were available, and the ideas that were current very much captured by those shows. And things have to move on. You know, a show comes out of its era, and it felt fresh for us now to really kind of re-explore the essence of being a rock‘n‘roll band. And the music, in a weird way, that we’re interested in making now, connects directly with our first few records. For both ZooTV and PopMart we were out exploring completely different things at that time. We’re still hungry and still actually feel like we’ve things to learn – and I know that might sound weird since the four of us, it’s the same guys in the band, it’s not like we’re bringing in a bunch of different musicians, but every one of us in their own way, I think we’ve explored and grown and found new things to do with our instruments, and Bono with his voice and lyrics. So I think we’re writing better songs now, and we’re just better at it. If you think about visual artists or film directors, y’know, there’s nothing unusual about somebody through their thirties growing and becoming better, but I think in rock’n’roll it seems that the main kind of energy seems to be in the late twenties and then most groups just kind of ... drift off? I think maybe because it’s, they’ve made their mark and they’re kind of happy to just retire. But we’re not happy to retire; we still feel we’ve our best work ahead of us.