The Edge ponders the position of a band called U2.
"We've gone through the media blender," he says, "and the media is about headlines, and I think we've been caricatured a little bit. At times it's a little tiresome, a pain in the arse to be honest, because it's not what we're about."

U2 and the media image of U2 are inseparable subjects these days. After huge world tours their When Love Comes To Town double headline-format of U2: BB King is something of a holiday for them, a fun gig, but even in a faraway isle like New Zealand they're struggling under the yolk of headlines like "the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world." In part that title is a round of applause from the masses who have embraced the band's anthemic songwriting and rousing, do-good sentiments, but it's also as good as a death-knell for many who see such "greatest band" accolades as a major step towards the posturing, dinosaur blandness associated with stadium rock.
As usual, meeting people face to face serves only to highlight the distance between media musings and the band themselves. It's quiet backstage at Western Springs after the concert and midnight before I find my way to a dressing room for the interview. I'm directed towards a table and chairs especially stacked with flowers, Dame Edna style, for the purpose of doing interviews; the offer of more flowers is made "in case you want to take photographs." Declining the offer of more foliage, I sit down at a corner table covered with food and drinks for the band and crew - a preferable interior decoration, in my late night, after-show opinion - and start rewriting my questions. When Adam Clayton and the Edge arrive, they also skip the Dame Edna experience in the centre of the room and come and sit with their white wine at my side-table.
U2 held a press conference at Auckland Airport when they arrived in the country to start this tour and it was obvious right from the start that they share the legendary Irish charm. The Edge is slower and more thoughtful in his answers to questions, but no less affable. Adam Clayton is known for a quicker wit and more all-round sense of humour - which is good, considering his history of tangles with the Irish MOT and, more infamously, his local drug enforcement agency. He was charged with possession of a small amount of cannabis earlier this year, found guilty by a Dublin court and fined 21 000 pounds. In the same week Shane McGowan was also found guilty of possessing cannabis and charged 150 pounds.
"Yeah, that was hilarious," Adam says of the contrasting fines. The way I look at it is that I don't have a problem with drugs, I have a problem with the police."
You've been getting more press for drunk driving than your bass-playing lately.
"[The press) have to find some hook to hang it on. The reason my driving is being scrutinised is because I'm in a band. If you can't do anything in private, then you have to accept that it's a public act. I don't agree with drunk driving, I think that's bad. I wasn't particularly drunk but I got pulled over for it and that's the law. I think I was one drink over but who I was attracted attention. It doesn't bother me, because what I like doing is playing bass. I can give up driving!"

Bono has grabbed headlines with some of the things he's said on stage - does he ever surprise you with what he's said?
Adam: "Surprised, no. We live with him."
Edge: "I'm surprised sometimes, really blown away."
"I'm surprised when people call him Bone-o," Adam cackles.
(Henceforth I pronounce it their way: Bonn-o. )
Bono's very concise and clear on what he says on 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' in Rattle And Hum, when he attacks the IRA.
Edge: "Nobody knew what he was going to do - I don't think he knew. In a funny way, when we were putting the film together, we wished - well, he wished he'd never said what he said. That's the way he felt at the time."
Adam: It's the way we all felt. We were sickened. These things happen too often. We're constantly arriving in places two hours after the news of some atrocity being committed. I remember we arrived in London after the Harrods bomb, and okay it's all well and grand when you're sitting in your house and you're cosy in Dublin and something like that happens, but you really feel fucking exposed when you're halfway around the world and there are people dragging your name and your nation through the dirt and murdering people. It hurts and you have to say something."
You have retained your idealism - do you have to work against cynicism within your own organisation?
Edge: "That's a very good question. I'd say that in the Greek sense, I'm cynical - realistic, not negative about everything. I don't think U2 are naïve anymore but I think we refuse to knuckle down and accept the life that, unfortunately, a lot of people are forced to accept. Just going with the flow is what a lot of people have to do to survive."
Adam: "They're working for their mortgage."
Edge: I really think we are lucky to be in a position to call the shots. We're not fools, we see what's going on around us and not all of it's good but that doesn't mean that we roll over and die. Often people say to us, 'What's this thing, what are you trying to do with your music? You think you can write a song like 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' and solve the Northern Irish problem, you think because you write a song like 'Pride' you can deal with racism?"
"But it's much more than that. You don't write a song because you think you can solve the problem; you write a song because it's worth writing, it's worth saying something." Adam: "The media has treated us a bit harshly. The media has labelled us Serious Young Men rather than saying, okay, these are people who are involved and they want to stay being involved."
Don't you think they've picked on you because of your very idealism?
Adam: I think they've idealised our idealism."

You're a band of four different people -do you often have four different views on one matter?
"There is only one brain between us," Adam quips.
"There has been some tension," the Edge admits, but I think that sort of tension has been very creative and positive. Joshua Tree was born from the tension of two very different directions and two different opinions and Bono was very clearly trying to make an album that was rooted musically and lyrically in America - very obviously in the lyrics."
"Edge was taking the other side," explains Adam.
"I felt that was all very well," says the Edge, but I was aware that fundamentally our root was in Europe, and that on Joshua Tree that we had a chance of making a real statement, of really putting on record what we were and what our whole thing as a band was. With [producer Brian] Eno, his interest was with the atmospheric side of the band, so that tension between directions and opinions resulted in an album of great variety and contrasts, and great depths."
Would the need to reconcile those differences take much time?
`We would spend a lot of time talking," says Adam. "We'd get to rehearsal, spend six hours talking and rehearse for two."
Edge: "Eno and [co-producer Daniel] Lanois are too well able to enter into these debates. It was probably the most talked-about record during its making."
"Great talkers, lousy players," laughs Adam.

The Edge's statement that Bono wanted to write music based in America touches on their most recent album Rattle And Hum, a scrapbook of songs that reach for the spark of American rock, blues, folk and even soul. It was a contentious enterprise for the band. Some found it fawning and adulatory, the work of tourists; others saw it cementing some kind of bond between, say, U2's Irish heritage and those of the Irish-American immigrants.
"When we went to the States the first time we didn't like it much," the Edge reveals, a little surprisingly. "America had spawned all this great music but we couldn't find any of it when we first went. But over the last four or five years we've discovered this other side of America. Maybe ifs just our own mythical America, and it doesn't exist at all, but it's been something we've been drawing from a lot."
Adam: I think what people also fail to respond to is that rock'n'roll, which is what we're into, was invented in America in I956 by a fella called Elvis, so inevitably if you're interested in rock'n'roll, you do find your way to America, there's no two ways about it - no matter how hard you try and resist it."
Was Rattle And Hum a personal pilgrimage?
Adam: "There was an element of that."
Edge: "I think a lot of people misunderstood the content of the album and film. It was U2 working it out for ourselves, going to Memphis. We were wide-eyed fans having a good time. What would you do if you were in a band? Wouldn't you go to Sun Studios and record some songs if you had the chance? For me that was such a kick. And finding that gospel choir to sing 'Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For', that was such a complement."
"They really opened themselves up," agrees Adam. 'Wherever we went in America, whether Memphis or Nashville or New Orleans or New York, there was this great brotherhood of music, there was great communication. To have this relationship with people who are interested in music is great because when you become a band that is as successful as we are, suddenly you're talking to business people all the time and you lose touch with the music, and the music is what it's all about. So it was us trying to hold on to our identity."
Is travelling part of the whole music process?
"There's a strong argument for it," says the Edge. The alternative is settling down in a middle-class suburb, so at least if you're still on the road you're keeping moving, you're in contact with the street. You find your own level and the people you want to be with. I think music is a risk, so you've got to be on the road, you've got to be moving - you've got to be singing from the heart."

Did you incorporate BB King into the show because you needed a change in the band's live format?
Adam: We wanted to have fun. We've had enough of these serious long tours where you're kind of beating your head against the wall. We needed this to lighten up. We didn't want to come down here and be serious young men."
Edge: "BB is the living link to the music tradition we're exploring at the moment, so it made perfect sense to have him on the tour."
Adam: The blues started with Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, then BB, and the rest of it is Chicago blues. BB is the last of the Delta bluesmen."
Edge: "He tours all the time, too - 300 shows a year! That guy is incredible - the more I find out about him, the more I admire about him as a musician and an artist."
'When Love Comes To Town' is one of his few successful modern songs....
Adam: "I haven't heard his version."
Edge: I played it with him - that was brilliant. He played Dublin about eight weeks before we came out on the road. Bono and I went down to cheer him on and went backstage after the show just to say hello and he said, come on, we'll do 'Love Comes To Town' for the encore! So I said, have you got another guitar, and he said no but he'd sort something out.
"Halfway through the song, BB beckons me out, takes off Lucille and hands it to me!"
Adam: "Then you dropped it."
Edge: "It was like someone handing me their baby. So I played the rest of the song with Lucille. Elvis Costello was in the audience and I met him later and he just said, 'You're a very brave man.' I knew what he meant!"
Does U2's live set vary much? It was different for the two nights you played Western Springs.
Adam: "That's about as much as it varies. Like completely different every night..."
Edge: "We've been experimenting on this tour with different running orders, especially when we've been playing lots of shows in Sydney. We decided a few years ago that we wouldn't do more than five shows in any one town purely because our show is pretty much the same every night. But for this tour we wanted to work different shows - I'm glad to say that in Melbourne and Sydney we did different shows every night."
Adam: "It is very experimental for us. We're here for musical reasons. In the past we've been out there promoting an album or whatever, so you put the set together the best you can and try to create the same energy every night. But we're not on that treadmill anymore. We wanted to stretch the band and I think we've succeeded and we're not going to let go of that. This is an attitude that we want to take into the 90s with us, of just playing the way we feel and believing in the strength of the music."

Have you found a favourite NZ beer, or are you wine drinkers?
Adam: "We're not really beer drinkers on tour- wine is more reliable."
Edge: "Speak for yourself. The old Steinlager isn't bad."
Adam: "You can't beat a good pint of Guinness."
Edge: "Guinness is like a living, breathing thing. It doesn't travel well and really, to get the best pint of Guinness, you have to be in Ireland. Some would say, preferably the West Coast."
Not even on tap in London?
Adam: "That's way too far away from Dublin."
Can it be on tap or does it have to be in a bottle?
Adam: "It doesn't travel at all."
Edge: "In fact there's a particular establishment ...I mean, the thing about Guinness is that real Guinness drinkers will travel miles to a particular pub for their pint."
Adam: "You'd never expect the Guinness to travel, but the punter would travel."
Do you drink it at room temperature?
Edge: "Still today in Ireland you would find your 60 year-old Guinness drinker who will find a pub that serves it warm but generally I feel that it should be chilled."
Adam: "That's the malten Guinness. Real Guinness doesn't need to be chilled."
What do you have in Ireland in place of Irish jokes?
Adam: "We make jokes about everyone."
MURRAYCAMMICK