With the release of their latest LP, Rattle and Hum, U2 have once more garnered rock fans throughout the world into their loving grip. But has life at the top of the rock 'n' roll tree taken its toll on the band's creativity? As the music heads back to the roots of blues and rock 'n' roll for its inspiration, Jack Barron heads to Dublin to meet the Edge, Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton to discuss the pros and cons of world domination, Ireland, the arguments over their biography, vegetarianism, Patti Smith, rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley, Albert Goldman and ol' uncle John Lennon and all.

The fulfillment of any U2 project will always set tongues a-wagging in Dublin. Aside from being one of the country's major industries, the quartet are perhaps the best-known Irishmen of all time, Welshblood Edge and Englishblood Adam Clayton qualifying by residence rather than lineage. A measure of their impact is that the city's most famous eatery, Bewley's Oriental Café in Grafton Street, even has a Joshua Tree room named after the band's last album. It vies with the James Joyce in the establishment for popularity and specialises in fish and chicken...with chips.

In an opinion piece in The Irish Times, journalist Fintan O'Toole maintains that with the release of U2's latest undertaking - a double album, film and book collectively called Rattle and Hum - the band are doing a disservice to young Irish people through deliberately reactivating the mythology of the American Wild West. Rattle and Hum's mining of U.S. roots music, with the help of a host of luminaries from Dylan to B.B. King, together with the band's cowboy-cum-hobo imagery, O'Toole believes is pernicious. It perpetuates the ideal of the American dream and deflects the attention of young people away from the problems in their homeland.

What O'Toole has to say, and the conclusions he comes to, are debatable, especially since he reads so much into the image of the band and less into what beats at the heart of U2: their music. Certainly, Rattle and Hum is an odd beast. It's a double album, part live and part studio, that mixes new songs with live versions of old favourites such as "Pride (In the Name of Love)" as well as readings of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" and Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."

NME scribe Sean O'Hagan went into the genesis of the idea for Rattle and Hum in his Christmas report on U2; the band's need to immerse themselves in rock 'n' roll's gospel of heaven and hell after discovering - through being unable to jam with people like Keith Richards and Dylan, whom they met on their journey to mega-stardom - that there were areas such as blues, country, R&B and even rock that they knew little about.

Being one of the most famous bands in rock and not being able to play fundamental songs, must have embarrassed U2 no end. Rattle and Hum, which takes its name from a lyric from "Bullet the Blue Sky," a song inspired by Bono's trip to Central America which first appeared on The Joshua Tree, is the band's attempt to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of their craft.

The record's strange appropriation of musical and photographic images, both sacred and profane, in the form of Elvis, Billie Holiday, Hendrix and so forth, plus a stringent defense of John Lennon against his controversial biographer, Albert Goldman, on "God Pt. 2," adds up to a messy if immensely intriguing album. Later Edge will argue with indignance that the album isn't the result of U2 running out of ideas and settling for being a trad band.

Right now though the debate is of a different nature inside the Dockers pub on the Quays by the Liffey. U2 in Ireland are more than a music phenomenon, they are living national monuments everybody wants a slice of. Both Garrett Fitzgerald and Charles Haughey have invoked U2 in speeches. The band are a talking point in a country that loves to chat and rumour.

While I'm waiting for Edge - nobody seems to call him the Edge - and Larry Mullen, later joined by Adam Clayton, to arrive, I sup my Guinness and listen to gossip. A local chap, the owner of the tacky gold plastic brain trophy which hangs in the corner of the snug bar, is quizzing U2's production manager Timmy Buckley. How hard do the band work? How much stamina does it take to be Bono? Are the band nervous breakdown material?

Buckley, a loyal employee, is friendly but guarded. "With U2, if you open your eyes you're working, if you close them you're not," he reckons.

"Anybody in that sort of position could snap at any moment," continues Buckley. "There again, how well you can control your energies is the thing. It's like you know you're coming to the point where you need to back off and give your head some space."

At the moment Bono is doing just that. He's 10 miles down the coast from Dublin at his home in Bray, writing lyrics for the B-sides U2 are in the middle of recording. According to the band's press officer, the singer's telephone is off the hook. The shaman of the group has gone to ground and is refusing to do interviews because he believes he has nothing to say at present.

Maybe Bono is going through one of his periodic crisis points. Eamon Dunphy, the controversial and somewhat inaccurate biographer of U2, cites in his book, Unforgettable Fire, many occasions when Bono has felt his spiritual beliefs have not squared with the lifestyle of being a pop star. And when the sacred is at odds with the profane, the singer tends to go into seclusion.

On the other hand, perhaps Bono simply fancies a holiday from being the ringleader in the biggest media circus to hit the crumbling town of rock 'n' roll in the late '80s. Biggest as in the amount of column inches written in magazines about U2 in the past couple of years rather than simply sales. After all, as Larry Mullen later tells me, "Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet outsold The Joshua Tree."

That U2 in their climb to world stardom have not had to succumb to cheap titillation, that they have not had to resort to wrapping their products up in women wearing drenched T-shirts, unlike Bon Jovi, is another reason they're fascinating to the media. This doesn't mean U2 are any less calculating or carefully manufactured and marketed. The latter is what I hoped in part to probe when Edge walked in the Dockers.

Clean-shaven after his recent grizzly hobo image, hair worn in a ponytail, Edge is wearing a cowboy hat with jeans and cowboy boots. I immediately like him. Twenty minutes into our interview he says he's going to walk out unless my questions "deal with the music."

Larry eventually arrives, feeling queasy after having been watching a TV programme on heart disease, in which Ireland is top of the league. Larry's film star handsome and dressed in denim.

Talk turns to the subject of vegetarianism, for the simple reason that I got food poisoning from a veggie pie! Neither Edge or Larry are of the herbivore persuasion.

Edge: "I reckon it's okay to eat something you're willing to kill. I haven't had to kill anything up to now. But I know if I had to in order to survive I would."

NME: You could take on Ted Nugent's mantle! (Nugent being a rock guitarist type who used to shoot his food with a bow and arrow).

Edge: "Hahahahahah! What I object to about meat eating is we're so removed from it now. It's fine when you live on a farm, the animals are there, and there's something honest about the fact that when you want chicken you go out and kill it. But it's like when it arrives in a nice designer package which you stick in the microwave and zap, and you don't even have to look at it until it's on your plate, that's when it's horrible. I can understand why people get freaked out."

One thing that has struck me is that you're now going back to American roots music for inspiration, and there are hardly any young Irish bands that tap into the local traditional music. Why's that?

Edge: "What about In Tua Nua? There are bands playing around in those Irish traditions. But to be honest, when I grew up I wasn't listening to the Chieftains. I was listening to rock 'n' roll. I was listening to Radio Caroline, not the Radio 1 traditional hour. And it's only been in the last three or four years that I've started to appreciate the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers."

Larry: "We flirted with it on War when we used pipes. There was Horslips as well."

Edge: "It's a question of inspiration and mood. It's the same with blues. For years I had not time for it. Well, could you blame me? All the stuff when I was growing up was such absolute shite. Sure, there was Hendrix and the odd other thing. But I grew up with Irish pub blues, which was so bad I wanted no part of it. The music that had a bit of spirit and had something to it when I was first getting into music was things like Patti Smith, Television, that sort of thing, not the blues. So now having got to this stage we're starting to look maybe at music that we passed over. A part of that is Irish music as well."

Albert Goldman comes in for a slamming on a song, "God Pt. 2," on your new album. Also, you aren't exactly happy with the biographer Eamon Dunphy. What are your specific criticisms of Dunphy's book?

Edge: "Just the glaring inaccuracies, such as the Buzzcocks were a local band, a lot of inaccuracies, too much to go into here. But there's varying degrees of seriousness. The book was full of half-truths embroidered into phantasmagorical conclusions bearing no relationship to the truth. A certain amount of poetic license I can live with. But when somebody is putting two and two together and getting 198, that's when I get to thinking this guy is trying to do something other than portray the facts."

Taking on board that Dunphy is a sports writer, it could be expected that he wouldn't be an authority on music, though I guess he could have checked out the Buzzcocks.

Edge: Well, that's the point, he didn't check. Nor did he check a lot of the other stuff. Not because he didn't have the opportunity, but because he was a bit stuck for time at the end."

So it was stupid errors of fact -- as opposed to personal things -- that upset you?

Edge: "No. We knew he was going to find out about U2. That's why we decided to do a book with a guy outside the rock field. There were certain aspects of the book that maybe we didn't expect to be so weighed on the personal side. But, I mean, that was fair enough. I can't complain about that. It's anyone's job as a writer to write the book he wants to. I just wish he'd spent that little bit of extra time trying to get it actually right as opposed to nearly right, because nearly right is nowhere."

Larry: "The whole thing has been blown out of all proportion. There were some inaccuracies which go right through the book and that's the simplest answer. Apart from that it's fine. But again, it has been out of proportion. This is Ireland, a small country, and we live here."

Edge: "What I appreciate about Eamon is he has stared out the Irish begrudgers because he has to make a fortune out of this book and he's rubbing everyone's noses in that. He's going in television and telling people how much he's made from the book. And I think that's great, somebody had to start doing that. 'Cos in Ireland, like, it's the same with England, people are scared about success, they don't like to admit to it. Everyone's wandering around pretending they're penniless. That's as bad as the ostentatious attitude of L.A., as far as I'm concerned."

So how much are U2 worth then?

Edge: "I'm not telling you, hahaha! It's none of your fucking business, hahaha!"

To return to "God Pt. 2." What sparked off the sentiment of the song, which is so topical with the publication of Goldman's biography of Lennon? Why attack Goldman whose only crime, as far as I can see, was painting a clear portrait of John Lennon being a talented but fucked-up human being?

Edge: "It just felt right. It was in the newspapers and we wrote a song about it. I think Albert Goldman is...I dunno, I didn't want to say anything about Albert Goldman."

Have you read Goldman's Lenny Bruce biography?

Edge: "No, I have read the Elvis one though. I didn't like it and it's fairly obvious why. Do you like the book?"

As a vicarious read I think it's entertaining. Goldman had a good critical appreciation of what was good and bad in the music that Elvis made.

Edge: "But that wasn't the point. The book was basically trying to make as much money as possible. And I think it has tainted a lot of people's views as well. Sure, Elvis was fucked up. Sure, John Lennon was fucked up. I certainly knew that, but it doesn't take away from their music for me.

"But for a lot of people reading that, it's going to ruin their appreciation of the music. The books are one-sided. From what I've read of people who knew both men, neither of those books painted an accurate picture. It's like, sure, I like reading The Sun. I have a good laugh. Either you're not honest or you are honest about it.

"People are interested in that kind of bullshit, but that's not to say that it's good. It's like I'm interested in guns. I don't have a collection, but I'm drawn to a lot of things that I avoid, as is everyone, as I'm sure you are."

Okay, one last question of this ilk before we deal in detail with your new music. Paul McGuinness, your manager, commissioned Dunphy to write the biography. I heard that when it was published it caused quite a rift between the band and Paul?

Larry: "Not at all. Paul talked to Eamon first. And we said, 'Yeah.' We'd read Bruce Springsteen's book by David Marsh. The reason Eamon was picked was because he wasn't a music journalist in Ireland and maybe he'd give a different side to U2. We all made the decision."

A few years back U2 headlined the Self-Aid unemployment concert, whose basic message was don't wait for the government to help you, help yourself. Very Tebbit-like in its get-on-your-bike philosophy. For Dublin radicals this was heresy. A bunch of pop stars letting the Irish government off the hook of its responsibilities to the jobless. One journalist, John Waters, editor of In Dublin magazine, was particularly critical of U2's involvement. Do U2 think the criticism was valid?

Edge: Yeah, any criticism is valid because it's a personal opinion. What we objected to in that situation was the criticism of Waters' approach. He was quite entitled to say what he did. But he basically sold his magazine by pretending there was an interview with U2 in it. There was a big cover with Bono on the front, then inside, if you read it, it was just a big slag off of the whole event."

Larry: "Most journalists in Dublin criticised Self-Aid. We were unsure about it ourselves."

Edge: "Sure we fucking knew what it was when we went into it. But we decided to do it because we thought, 'Fair enough, somebody's having a go at this.' It was a fucking hare-brained scheme from the beginning. It was so obvious to us. You'd have to be a total idiot not to realise that, most of the people going into it did."

That raises two questions: are you naive?

Edge: "No."

And do you think you're still idealistic and if so, do your ideals get you into a certain amount of bother?

Edge: "I am idealistic, but I'm not a fool. And yes, I do think our ideals get us into trouble, but that's fair enough. You don't do something because you know you can win, you do something because it's worth doing."

Adam, a very amiable man whose creased face tells you he has been through a lot, not all good, arrives and joins in: "It's a question of taking a risk. You know that you can sit at home in an ivory tower, but it's better to get out there and keep whatever it is that you like about music alive and kicking."

Larry: "You should talk to Christy Moore about why he did Self-Aid. He's the ultimate socialist who writes about the working class in his music all the time. He did it. See what answers you get from him."

One particular part of Unforgettable Fire, the book, that interested me was the essay by John Waters where he's quoting Gammon Mecca. The gist of it is that the music of U2 is so spiritually uplifting, it metaphorically takes fans' feet off the ground and that this can undercut any messages you may be putting across. Is that something you can talk about?

Edge: "You write a song because you want to write a song, come on! It's not our responsibility what people leave the gig with. I write a song for me. I'm not into politics. If we make pronouncements they're personal pronouncements and they're nothing to do with politics."

But aren't they very often in the sphere of political issues?

Edge: "I'd say they're in the sphere of personal politics as they affect individuals. I wouldn't say they have anything to do with party politics. I think rock 'n' roll at times suffers from shying away from things that it should be right in the centre of. And we as a band say, 'Well, why not write a song about Northern Ireland?'"

Adam: "Music has always been mixed up with politics. Whether it's folk songs talking about emigration or the land or whatever. Politics has always been there in songs. And I think if you shy away from it just because you don't know where you stand, you're actually ignoring something the audience is aware of. The audience is living a different life to you and they're seeing this stuff happen, it has to be in the songs. Somebody's got to say it. And, okay, we're not politicians, we're not journalists, but the songs have to be real to what's going on."

U2 have aimed some of their songs at many injustices in the world, apartheid in South Africa for example. I may be wrong but I seem to see a reticence on the part of U2 to talk about what is on their own doorstep. Is that because it's easier to deal with a subject that's a long distance away?

Edge: "I don't think we're reticent to deal with what's on our doorstep. We write songs about what hits us at that time. We wrote a song about Northern Ireland on the War album ('Sunday Bloody Sunday') and I wrote a song called 'Van Diemen's Land,' which touches on that on the new album.

"I was interested in the history of this character, John Boyle O'Reilly. I was out one day with my wife Aislinn and we came upon his monument in County Meath. At the entrance to it was this faded brown newspaper clipping which gave the history of his life. How he was a member of the British army in Ireland. He left the army and became a Fenian and wrote Fenian poetry.

"He was arrested by the British government and was charged with writing material that was liable to undermine the government and was deported to Australia for 20 years' hard labour. He was, to me, a prisoner of conscience in a way. He was not a man of violence and he was sent away for 20 years, so I wrote a song about that."

The last verse of the song fades out. The lyrics remain on the sleeve insert, however. They read: "Still the gunman rules and the widows pay/A scarlet coat now a black beret/They thought that blood and sacrifice/Could out of death bring forth a life."

Edge: "Yes, the lyrics fade out. But that was for time reasons more than anything else because the lyric is on the lyric sheet. And there I'm just really asking a question I've been asked: What's the difference between men of violence on both sides? In this case this guy O'Reilly was sent away for 20 years by the powers that be. In Belfast today you're liable to get executed on the spot by men of violence, men with power. What's the difference? There's no freedom in either situation. Freedom of thought or freedom of conscience. People are either blown away or sent away. What I'm saying is that it's the people with the guns who are ultimately in power and I seem them all the same."

Are you saying it doesn't matter who is wielding the gun, they're both wrong?

Edge: "Well, I'm asking the question really: what's the difference between the people in power in the ghettos of Derry and Belfast now, because they're the people in power there, and those who were in control of Ireland at that time? It's a question of myself as much as anyone else. But my question is, what's the difference?"

Adam offered to get the stout in. We were beginning to get somewhere but still had a bumpy ride ahead...

Two hours later when Edge leaves for the sanctuary of Windmill Lane studios, he departs with a smile and says, "I'll give you a good kicking in the bollocks next time." This, I think, is a joke, since one doesn't shake hands before promising an act of violence.

Next week: U2 hit back at their critics...

© NME, 1988