U2's The Edge Meets Negativland

INTERVIEW BY MARK HOSLER, DON JOYCE AND R. U.
SIRIUS

[INTRO]

 MONDO 2000: So you had some stuff you wanted to talk about?

THE EDGE: Well, I just like the magazine. I've seen a few issues. And
it's just so boring, the usual magazine kind of angles, so well-trodden.
I just thought you might have an interesting angle on what we're
doing which would be a little bit more imaginative.

NEGATIVLAND: I was wondering was the whole band really
involved in the design of the Zoo TV tour, or has that been more just
yourself and Brian Eno, or is there a whole other crew of people that
are doing that?

E: Well, it started really with "The Fly" video. It started when Bono
walked into the studio one day with those fly shades. He said that
when he put them on everything became very clear. We were working
on the lyrics of that song, and it was like a turning point in the making
of the album. It was like a whole moving into a more ironic point of
view. The lyric development was kind of interesting. It started out as
being a list of truisms, and then we all instinctively felt that it was too
on the nose, so we started having fun with it. All these untruisms
started entering in to the lyrics. So when we were doing the video, we
worked with a guy called John Kline, who was a partner of Mark
Pellington's in a thing called Buzz TV. We took the text idea a bit
further with John. He started adding other lyrics and using them in the
context of a video on big monitors. And we started to really get off on
this. So when we were putting the show together for the tour, we really
liked this idea of text. So Mark Pellington did some stuff for us, and
the whole thing started taking on a momentum of its own. We got
Brian involved, and he was really instrumental in refining the thing
into a real clear idea, both technical and what have you. And between
Brian, Pete Willings, who's our lighting guy, and the members of the
band and Mark Pellington, it kind of started to take shape. It's really
a state of mind more than a single show. It's constantly changing.
There's new ideas coming in all the time. It's really hard to describe
where it's headed or the ideology behind it_

NL: You're doing the small club venues for this first tour. And then
you're coming back and doing the stadiums. So is it like you're
shaking down the whole thing and getting to try out a lot of different
ideas?

E: We have to do the indoor show first, because we would have had
to wait a long time to go outdoors. Nobody really wanted to go out of
the stadiums, but we just started saying, "Okay, let's just see what
we're going to start indoors." We wanted to do this thing. We wanted
to start introducing visuals and making it like a whole multimedia
thing. So then we looked at the actual touring thing and realized that
if we were going to do indoors shows in every town and supply the
demand, we were talking about at least a dozen shows in every town.
So we quickly figured out that that would be unbearable. So what we
decided to do is not even attempt to supply the demand, but just
literally go around North America and Europe as quickly as possible,
one night or two nights maximum in each town, and then go home
and decide what to do. So halfway through the indoor tour we started
to think it was working and that maybe we should do some big shows.
So we started to put an outdoor show together, and that's what we're
going to do next. 

NL: The Zoo TV outdoor broadcast? 

E: We call this one outside broadcast and it's the same ideas, but
applied to the context of a stadium, which is of course completely
different and, on one level more problematic, but also, the potential
for complete information meltdown is_

NL: Are you physically scaling up the size of the screens and the
images, the letters, everything?

E: Yeah, it's going to be quite a different production. 

M2: It's very hard to do a high-tech show without a roof.

E: But we're hoping that the technologies that do more or less the
same thing. What was really good about the indoor show was that it
was flexible. Although we had all this high- tech equipment, and there
were a lot of images set to music, we designed it in such a way that we
could really mess around with the arrangements of the songs. That's
a really important part of what we do live is being able to improvise
within the structures of songs.  It took a little bit of thought, but we
ended up getting to that point where we weren't really that tied down,
which was great. And we're trying to apply the same principles
outdoors.  It's a little more difficult, but it's important for us. It's that
sort of spontaneous thing that really makes it work for us, keeps us
from nodding off. Songs can actually on the spur of the moment be
changed.

NL: In the show are you doing what's interesting to you, or are you
also trying to bring out some things about technology and culture? Is
it an intuitive thing or are you trying to suggest something to the
audience?

E: It started out as a kind of feeling like the stuff here we can really
play with. It was more like we saw for a start that the technology was
there to do this for the first time. But we weren't quite sure at the
beginning which way it would go. But it's been such a lot of fun to put
the images and sections together. And it was almost like once we built
the hardware, once we'd actually put the system together, ideas just
kept popping up, and ways of using it. And it took on a life of its own.

NL: How do you as the band members experience what you're doing?
Do you watch films of it? How do you know what the actual impact
or how it looks or how it works? 

E: Well, at the beginning of the tour in pre-production we had about
a week in Florida where we put most of the software into place, the
images and the ideas, and we watched videos back of the songs to get
some sort of feel for what was going on. And then the first couple of
shows we'd also watch videos back. And_ it's not something_ you
can't turn around and have a look in the middle of a song. To really
understand what's going on you have to watch it back on video laser. 

NL: I got the idea from talking with R. U. that you were also
interested in talking about the impact technology is having on people
and cultures. 

E: Our position is a very unique one. We are a very big band. We have
access to technology, access to the airwaves, be they TV, radio, or
whatever. We're a little more relaxed at this point in time about being
a big band, because we've turned it into a part of the creative process.
We're actually using our position in a way that gives us a certain
amount of amusement. It's turned it into part of what we do. A few
years ago we were almost uncomfortable with the idea of being a big
band. It seemed like maybe coming from where we did and being
interested in the things we were interested in, it seemed like a bit of an
anomaly, a bit of a contradiction. 

NL: Was it like you were trying to reconcile what you were trying to
do when you started and what music was to you then, and then look
what it's turned into?

E: It was so different. When we started out we very influenced_ this
was '76_ by the whole punk thing of start again, wipe the slate clean,
and vitality was where it was at. No one was really thinking very
much. It was really about making the statement now. 

NL: If you look at the equivalent, you're the next big thing that a
bunch of kids could say, "Turn that down. What's the next thing
coming up?" 

E: And I think that's part of the whole regenerative thing of rock 'n'
roll and I think that's really important. We were that then, and now
we're in a position where we are big, and we want to do something
with this position that's imaginative and interesting, and has the right
amount of irreverence. We're not taking our position seriously in that
sense. We're actually being kind of subversive, and just manipulating
it. The whole TV thing and the access, but being where we are gives us
a lot of enjoyment. We're playing around; we've got TV specials
coming up that are really hilarious. We did this satellite link-up to
MTV where we beamed our show into somebody's front room. The
possibilities are only beginning to present themselves. 

NL: I think what you're saying sounds great. If you get to a position
where you've got the power, the money to do something, and you still
maintain this idea of exploring and doing something interesting and
fun, that's really great. But it seems like when you get to be a certain
size_ you're an international cultural phenomenon_ and it seems like
a lot of what you're doing, when you look at it and analyze it, is pretty
subversive, but it ends up being lost on such a huge number of the
people who 

are following what you're doing. They're more following it as a
surface thing: What's the new top 40 hit from U2? I don't know if
that's something you just realize, and it's part of what it is.

E: Yeah. We're not shy about being big anymore. I think rock 'n' roll
should be big. It's about mass communication. The idea that it's kind
of a cult thing and that it's underground is all very well, but it's shame
if that's all it ever is_ that the majority of the airwaves are dominated
by music that's purely commercially motivated and does not go
beyond that, but is essentially one-dimensional. We're in a position
where we can do some more wild things and I would think it would be
a shame if we just accepted the standards and the way that most bands
go about their business, and didn't use this position in a different way.

NL: One thing I really liked a lot was a lot of the production on
Achtung Baby, the whole sound of it. When you put the record on,
that first thing, it sounds like the drums are over-loading the input
amplifier on the mixer or something, and it sounds like everything's
totally fucked up. I thought this was great.

E: Yeah, we had a lot of people bring their CDs back and their Hi-Fis
back to the shop.

NL: It's all relative, but I thought that for the position this band has,
to start out their CD like that was terrific and unexpected. You're
generally used to the idea that the larger someone gets and the more
successful they are and the more money they make, the more
comfortable they become in a certain position, and they spin their
wheels. 

E: We could never relax to that extent. The only thing that really
keeps us going is when we're out of our depth and we're not really sure
what we're doing and we're working on instinct. So, for this album, we
started out not sure where we were gonna head, but for our own
survival as people within the band, we had to do something that was
different and that challenged us. We listened to a lot of industrial
music and pretty extreme sonic things.  And Jelad(sp?), who's worked
with a lot of more techno bands, was working on the album. And we
just started getting into abusive technology, and that's how some of
those sounds came. That's what we did with some of the drum sounds,
overloaded the inputs on the channels.

NL: Well, it sounded like you were playing drum tracks through
guitar amps and putting a mike on the other side of the room_

E: We did that with Bono's vocals as well. We used the studio like an
instrument. It's just as creative a process as writing a song or
anything. When you're actually recording, there are so many things
you can do with the studio if you give yourself the time to experiment.
We did a lot of experimentation with sounds and approaches to
material. It was a lot of fun. We set up and didn't quite know where
we were headed, but when we got something good we'd follow it down
the road a bit. We didn't have a fixed agenda, just keeping ourselves
interested and doing things we liked. 

NL: I guess you can be in the public eye so much that you have to shut
off all the noise that's telling you to make an album like this or that or
"We're your friends and we expect you to do this or that_"

E: There are a lot of people a bit surprised by the album. It was hard
for our record label to really figure it out, and I think a lot of people
thought we'd completely lost it. But when we were working on the
album, we didn't ask anybody what they thought, we just wanted to
do something for ourselves, something that was a representation of
where we were at the time, that was reflecting what we were into. 

NL: One thing I read about Zoo TV that was never really clear to me
if this was really happening, was that you had a satellite dish so that
you could take stuff down live off of the various television
transmissions around the world?

E: Yeah, the system is we've got the big screens onstage, which are the
final images created. Down by the mixing board we've got a vision
mixer which mixes in, blends the images from live cameras, from
optical discs, and from live satellite transmissions that are taken in
from a dish outside the venue. So the combination of images can be
any of those sources. We've also incorporated telecommunications.
We've got a telephone onstage that Bono occasionally makes calls
from the stage, occasionally calling the White House or ordering pizza
or whatever, and phone sex. 

NL: So you can kind of sample whatever is out there on the airwaves. 

E: Yeah, it's kind of like information central, whatever that is,

NL: There's been lately in the music press more and more controversy
about copyright issues and sampling. I thought that one thing you
were doing in the Zoo TV tour was taking television broadcasts, which
is copyrighted material, and re- broadcasting right there in the venue
where people paid a ticket price. I wonder what you thought about
that and whether you ever had a problem, whether it came up that it
was illegal.

E: No, I questioned early on whether it was going to be a problem,
and apparently it isn't.  In theory I don't have a problem with
sampling. I suppose when sampling becomes part of another work it's
no problem. If sampling is stealing an idea and replaying the same
idea, changing it very slightly, that's different. We're using the visuals
and images in a completely different context. If it's a piece of live
broadcast, it's a few seconds at the most. So there's very little_ in spirit
there should be no real cause to be upset.

NL: So you would say that a fragmentary approach is the way to go.

E: Yeah. Like in music terms, we sample things; people sample us all
the time. I hear the odd U2 drum loop in a dance record. I don't have
any problem with that.

NL: This is interesting, because we've been involved in a similar
situation.

M2: I should interject here. The folks that you are talking to, Don and
Mark, aside from being occasional contributors to MONDO 2000, are
members of a band called Negativland. I knew that they had been
sued by your record label, but they hadn't been sued by you. So I
thought we could engage in a conversation. 

NL: We were sued by Island for a very fragmentary sample of one of
your records, and we were terribly offended by that. We ended up
sending some packages and letters to you, and I don't know what kind
of communication you ever got about it. 

E: From what I can remember, as it was presented to us, it was
"Here's the record, here's the album sleeve; Island's on the case here."
They've objected because they feel because of the artwork-this is at a
time where a lot of people are expecting a new, huge record- they felt
that from a pure business point of view, nothing about art, they
thought there was a chance that people would pick up the album and
say, "Here's the new U2 album." 

NL: In the context that you're in, you have an idea of doing
something subversive, and we're scurrying way down low in the
underground of music, and we're doing things that we also think are
somewhat subversive. I actually have always liked the music that you
do. I've listened carefully to a lot of what you guys have done, and
really think especially the new record is terrific. But the thing that we
did was_ the lawsuit from Island dealt with us like it was a consumer
fraud, like it was intended to rip off innocent U2 fans, and that we
were going to make millions of dollars by selling these records. It
didn't acknowledge that there was any_ they may not like the artistic
intent of the record_ maybe even the members of the band might be
offended by what we did_ but no one ever acknowledged that the
record was anything else.  And yet, actually, when you look at the
cover, listen to the record, look at the whole package, there's a U2 spy
plane on the cover_ it's pretty obvious that this is an artistic statement
about something. 

E: I didn't have any problem with it. I think Casey Casem did more
than we did. The problem was that by the time we realized what was
going on it was too late. Once we did approach the record company
on your behalf and said, "Come on, this is really very heavy." But at
that point, on a point of principle, their attitude was, "Okay, we are
not going to look for damages, but we're not about to swallow our
own legal costs." The way it ended up is what they were looking for
were costs, not damages. 

NL: But we didn't get a phone call from Island saying, "Look, we're
pissed. We don't like what you did. Our band has a new album
coming out and you'd better pull this thing or we're gonna smash
you." They didn't give us any chance to do anything. The first thing
we heard was 10 days after the record was out there's a 180 page
lawsuit. So it was like there was no negotiation. They went ahead and
were spending_ they've got $400/hour lawyers. You're quite right
about their main concern being the cover rather than the content. We
always felt that. And I think it was obvious from the way the lawsuit
was worded. But they never came to us and said, "Change the cover."
Instead they just smashed the whole thing including the content, which
is really a shame. We were naive, because we were a little worried
about Casey Casem, but we actually thought we're a tiny band; we sell
5 to 10,000 copies of a record. And we had a distinct impression that
U2 had a sense of humor, and that someone coming along and taking
the piss out of them a little bit was something they would find
amusing.

E: I think we would have reacted in a different way, but the lawsuit
was not our lawsuit.  Although we have some influence, we were not
in a position to tell our record company what to do.

NL: We were always wondering if that was really true? If U2 sells 14
million copies of an album for a label an album for a label, and they
are the main thing that keeps Island records in business economically,
then don't the artists_ or do they not? You could see from our
position how we would think that you would certainly have the
leverage. Why can't the artist have more influence over the label, do
you know?