How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

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“[Brian] Eno described me as the ‘Mother Teresa of the rough mix’,” The Edge tells Apple Music Radio’s Zane Lowe. “I would not give up. If I felt there was something in this rough mix, I would hold onto it.” So when the U2 guitarist returned to his CDs of demos and rough mixes for this 20th anniversary edition of 2004’s <i>How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb</i>, there was some confidence that he might find a few ideas worth pursuing. However, the making of U2’s 11th album had been protracted and, at time, frustrating. A first round of recording had produced a set of songs that left a feeling of “good but maybe not good enough” hanging over the band in late 2003 until Steve Lillywhite, who produced their first three album, arrived to urge them towards “Vertigo” and several other big-hook, no-BS anthems that helped make <i>…Atomic Bomb</i> a U2 classic. So, as The Edge rummaged through his archive, expectations would have been a little tempered. When he put the CDs on in his kitchen though, he discovered more than good idea. There were good song, complete song. “It was amazing to go back and hear some of these tracks that we had played as a band so were always kind of fond of—you know, they’re your friends—and to feel that not much more needed to happen to them,” says bassist Adam Clayton. “It was all there.” In fact, there was the material to add 10 unreleased tracks to this anniversary edition. Some have been heard in other form, live renditions or leak. Others are completely new to our ear. And they do sound new. Take the glam-disco stomp of “Happine,” which ripples with the electro experimentation of ’90s albums <i>Zooropa</i> and <i>Pop</i>. “We didn’t change, really, any of the lyric, we just filled in a couple of missing lines and it feels like it could have been written last week,” says The Edge. “That was one of the songs that got me excited. It felt so prescient, about the here and now. The references are really being made to the military campaign around Desert Storm and what was happening in Iraq. Today, we can apply them to what is happening in Ukraine and Gaza. It’s just bizarre that things have kind of gone full circle.” The strength of these songs is underlined by how little work was needed to be done to them today, but there were always refinements and changes that could be made. “Bono was so complimentary of my singing and so down on his own singing,” The Edge say. “And when we did ‘All Because of You 2’ [a rawer, little more frantic rework of the <i>…Atomic Bomb</i> track], I was like, ‘Bono, this is the absolute best vocal, we’re not having to resing thi.’ He’s like, ‘No it’s not going to work, you’ll have to double me.’ So I did and that’s the formula that worked. It’s like the combo of the two voices gave him the cover to be singing at the top of his range without feeling self-consciou.” .

via Apple Music

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