U2 Interviews

MAX Interview Part 2

© MAX magazine, 03/97

Edge: This our first interview about the record.

MAX: Wow! Then let´s go! First of all congratulations to your album.

Edge: I'm glad you like it. I'm still getting to know it myself. In some ways. Most of the real work of finishing the record happened in the last two weeks. A couple of the tracks we did the singing and the mixing. I probably only heard the final mix two or three times. There are some tracks that I lived with for a while but others that I really getting to know now.

MAX: I was wondering, one year ago you claimed that your next album will be a real rock ´n´roll record. So what happened to this plan?

Edge: HahHahHah: Well I think it is a Rock ´n´ Roll-Record in some ways. If you see rock ´n ´roll in the way we do, which is music that has an energy and vitality and it´s guitar-driven with stronger, in a simple form that´s what we have. But it´s not a conventional rock ´n´roll-record that´s for sure. But I don´t think we ever intended to make a conventional rock n´roll-record. To us it is a spirit rather than a formula.

Adam: I think the challange for us has always been to kind of push against what rock ´n´ roll is traditionally thought it would been. To take that spirit and push it into terrotories where people don´t expect it to be.

MAX: Through what musical stages and directions did you move while recording?

Edge: I think the record is very diverse and I think within the songs on the record you probably can hear the different musical styles and statics that we were opening up to and were playing around with. Obviously the Trance, Techno, TripHop-Music has been something we were enjoying a lot and alowing in into our own music. You can hear that on the first three tracks particulary. And as Adam was saying alot of the time we spent in the studio was pushing up the boundaries and trying to find new things to say with our guitars and Bono with his singing and Larry with his drumming - allowing really no restriction on that exploration just going as far out there as we could and then having done a lot of experimenting then trying to be disciplined about making these ideas into songs. Because ultimately that´s where you either succeed or fail - it´s on the content and on the way these pieces become finally focused and into something that peole can really comprehend.

Adam: Even if it seems that we spend a year in the studio we had some very definte goals. At the beginning Edge was very keen to write melodies that didn´t really need much musical support. So they were structuring and focusing on those melodies and then it was like how do we support these melodies. We had to learn a lot of new techniqes in the studio. We had a new production team in. We had Howie B. helping us out we had Nelle Hooper helping us out. We were learning how to program how to use samples and how they work with what we were doing. For every song we almost had to learn a different genre of music in order to make that song come alive.

MAX: Why weren't you working then with Brain Eno?

Adam: He is more analog than you would think. He kind of has a mistrust of -- he thinks computers waste a lot of time and he may be right But we wanted that sound and he didn´t really like that sound anymore. Also he didn´t want to get into a year long project because at the time we were planning this project he said he really wanted to go and work on his own music. He had a record that he was doing at this time. So it was a by mutual consent that we didn´t work together on this record. We'd done the Passengers record together which to some extended us... It just felt like the right time for each of us to go off and to do different things and get some new blood.

MAX: What have you learned from Howie B.?

Adam: How to listen.

Edge: Howie is coming from a completely different area of music. He is a DJ principaly and also runs a small label called Pussy Flood. And he is just plugged into this really interesting area of music which we were aware of but not really immersed in. He was spinning records as we were playing and introducing really strong loops sometimes. The access I suppose that he gave us to the other side of what was going on was really important and interesting and I think it did have an influence. When I listen back to the album now I can hear the sounds that we were going for on a lot of the songs. And the arrangement styles were definately inspired by music that we were playing in the studio that Howie was bringing in. He was really fantastic to have in the studio because he was full of surprises. Whatever we were trying to do whether it was up work up an arrangement for an existing song or improvise on top of some beats to create a new song, Howie was always throwing curveballs at us - different rhythms coming in, really dynamic changes in rhythms -- you know suddenly you hear a string sample or something wierd that would completey throw us. But in recovering and taking on board these new ideas sometimes we got in this really mad improvisation and whatever.

Adam: I think within DJ Culture its kind of replaced the culture of the musician. Somebody like Howie knows all the best groups on all the records of the last twenty or thirty years that musician can´t possibly keep up with in a way. Also Howie when he is DJing in front of an audience on a nightly basis and he knows what turns them on and what works and for us as a live-band it was very very intersting to have someone who knew the club-scene and who knew music in that way and have a love with music and can turn us on to things. It was very refreshing compared to the kind of MTV-approach to music that you can hear everywhere else. And I think that is why we got into a lot of club music. That´s why we got excited by Underworld, Leftfield and Prodigy and people like that.

MAX: Why did you entitle the album POP?

Adam: We were betting how long it would take until someone would ask us that.

Edge: Well I think in some ways it is Pop. Because it´s music that is dedicated to the moment and it´s dedicated towards what´s going on: It´s not really about being designed for AM-Radio around the world. It´s just music that celebrates the moment and we were drawing on a lot of music that is like that-- dance music and also some of the great pop-music and great songwriting that is going on around at the moment we suddenly-- I suppose it made us feel like being a little bit more hard on our own songwriting because I think we can do that we can work our material into that diciplined sort of thing which is ultimatly song formats. We can also allow us to be very abstract. On this record we wanted to strip it down and to be quite simple we didn´t want to be too abstract.

MAX: It doesn´t sound simple to me. There is a lot going on --

Edge: There is a lot going on sonicly but if you look at the chorus on a lot of the material it´s quite simple songwriting structures. Sometimes I think quite interesting but we didn´t allow ourselves to be too indulgent we wanted to be quite stripped to be quite pared back and quite tight.

MAX: Was there a lot of fighting over the music or did you want to go all in the same direction?

Adam: I think it was a very very smooth record. Compared to others it was fantastic. But it was very much a group record where everyone kind of pulled together and kinda knew where we were going. There were maybe little disagreements along the way which particulary parted the tank. But I think we were all going to the same place and we got that and I think it comes across in the record. I think it´s a very democratic record I think you get a feeling of four instrumentalist four personalities going somewhere together and kind of rejoicing in that and enjoying it.

Edge: And the music really tells us where to go. That´s the thing about this band. In the end we all have the same aim - we just want to make the best record we can make. When the material starts to become songs and when they start coming to focus it becomes obvious which is the right thing to do with the music and all of the considerations are way down the list to priorities so if it´s really great no one argues we start arguing if something is mabe not where it quite should be. And then the discussion is about where it should quite go and trying to resolve the problem - those are not serious arguments.

Adam: I think we sort of allowed ourselves a bit of distance after the Zoo-TV-Tour, because we had been through Achtung Baby, we had been through Zooropa and we had been through a tour that last over a two year period and we had allow ourselves to take a little bit of a rest and when we got back together after that rest, we realized we were all still excited about the same kind of things we all found out that we were listening to the same kind of music which were mainly new music we´re not listening to the music people probably expect us to be listening to and think that we realize that our great love was actually the U2-thing and music and doing what we do best and that was a great thing to find I think there is a bit of a celebration on that record.

MAX: Why did you choose Miami for recording?

Adam: Because it is hot.

Edge: Well in a sense it´s the capitol of instant gratification. Miami -- is like candy floss. You know what I´m saying? The culture of Miami. We were determined to kind of explore that and see that up close and kind of inject a little bit of fun into that recording. We´ve been in studio for quite a while and we thought that it would be good to get away from Dublin and do some recording elsewhere and Miami seemed like a good place to blow away some copwebs and just open ourselves up to something else. And we had a great time. It wasn´t a very long session but it was fun and we actually got some good inspiration out of it and some really good recordings done in that time.

Adam: Part of the Pop idea was to look at these instant shiny things and enjoy them and not take it too seriously and Miami represents all that

MAX: In what way is Miami or other places you worked in direcly reflected in your work? Besides the song Miami.

Edge: That is probably the most obvious thing on the record that represents Miami. Just the attitude of the album -- of this sensive just doing stuff in a very quick way that is not overly angst-ridden -- just -- I wouldn´t say throw away but it´s kind of allowing ideas to come out without second-guessing yourself too much. I think Miami as a city gave us encouragement to just not to take it all too seriously.

Adam: We do kind of associate with certain cities with our records and work. And there was a period when we thought this record was much more about Miami then just one song and the title of the record was even kind of going in this direction cause we wanted that kind of superreal colour turned up thing but gradually moved back away from that. We went there for about a week and explored it a bit and then went back

Edge: I think in this case you can call it a creative tourism. We went, we saw what´s happening and then we took what we could from it and then went back.

MAX: What are the themes of the album?

Edge: Puhhh... You know I am still getting to figure that out. As the songs were written we were not really thinking of themes. But as it coming to focus now, I think ironically it´s probably one of our most spiritual records. Even though it´s dedicated to the moment, it´s dedicated to things that are more instant, in a weird way it became a spiritual record. I don´t quite know how that has happened but that´s what it started to feel.

Adam: The lyrics do have a specific point of view and in some ways there´s a realism to them and to where they coming from without neccessarily painting big pictures.

MAX: In the lyrics there are many religious hints.

Edge: That for me is some kind of perfect . We went to make a very simple instant record and it ended up becoming a very spiritual record. And I don´t know. I haven´t even got any theories why that is but it blew my mind when I realized that it happened. It wasn´t really our intention. It´s maybe there is some kind of connection there when you get pared down , when you pare things down to their most instant and essential in some ways you are almost at a very religious spiritual level, somehow - I don´t know.

MAX: Have you ever thought about putting some interactive software on the CD?

Edge: We looked at that a while ago and we felt that what we are about is music although the CD-format has those capabilities we wanna keep the concentration really on the music first and we haven´t had an idea that turned us on enough to take that seriously.

Adam: It´s so easy to become disstracted with all these other possibilities. Again on this record we found we really did have to say `Look, It´s about the songs it´s about the music` it would be nice to do these other things, and we did try to do that with Zoo-TV, to go somewhere else. I don´t know if somebody comes along to collaborate with -- maybe there´s a possibility.

MAX: Do you already have a visual concept for your music?

Edge: We are taking the feelings and the ideas that are in the music and starting to put things together slowly. It is too early to show how the shows will be or whatever. I think we will probably develop the pop idea the instant.. the moment..I think that might be the feature. `Capturing the moment`.

MAX: Artists like Prince or George Michael fought for years to get out of their record deals. You also signed a new record deal and have to deliver five more albums. Does that bother you?

Edge: No, because they pay us a lot of money for each one of those so it is not a problem. We´re are quite happy and we get along well with our record company because we´ve always been esentially been left to ourselves. We don´t have much interference from the record label and therefore it´s just a straight kind of business and arrangements and someone has to release our records so why not Island Records since we get on so well with them and - no we never had a problem - they are a great label we always wanted to be on island because they had the bands that we thought that were really cool. I don´t think we don´t want to be with anyone else.

MAX: Adam. Wasn´t the success of Mission Impossible a great satisfaction for you. An acknowledgement that you and Larry can also be successful without Bono and Edge.

Adam: Well, yeah I mean that was great. It was a moment. It was a great tune and there was an awful lot of things that went into that but I don´t think that was just about the particular point but it is a way of looking at it that we can do things on our own and that´s great to be able to do things on your own. But I have to say it does take a lot more time and a lot more effort than you ever imagine so at the end of the day it is actually more fun to do something with U2.

MAX: But it was worth it...

Adam: It was a great thing to do. It was great experience.

MAX: And after that you were happy to be with the guys again.

Adam: It was never really an issue. We thought we had time to do that and that it would be great fun and it was a great success but I don´t take it totally serious I see it for what it was which was a little bit of fun and it never was meant to be more important or less important than that and it was fun.

MAX: After three years of domestic life you must look really forward to tour again.

Edge: I´m gettting to this point now. We´ve had a really good time over the last threee years. I haven´t up to now missed being on stage at all, but I´m starting to really get excited about playing these new songs live. I think the next tour gonna be really amazing and I can´t wait to get out there. The Zoo-TV-Tour was such an amazing event and such an exhausting thing for us to do that at the end of that tour we were all looking forward to a long break from touring and that break is coming to an end now. But I would say just at the right time, I don´t think I would have been ready to do it again untill now.

MAX: After ZOO-TV what will be next? Is there any chance to top this multimedia-show?

Adam: Well, we will try.

Edge: We don´t think of terms in topping it, because I think naturally you tend to create an imitation which we never want to do but just to do something as exciting for us, we definately want to do that and I believe if we succeed in doing something that we are into that it will just as exciting as Zoo-TV for everyone else.

MAX: Do you already have precise ideas?

Edge: We are starting to get ideas together but it´s so early at this point.

MAX: What are the differences?

Edge: I think we will continue to use moving images. We haven´t figuered out excactly how but...

MAX: So will you take along your vidioscreens.

Adam: A version of those screens, but we are not quite sure what we gonna put on them.

Edge: The screens themselves are just hardware, that´s kind of easy in some ways, it´s what you do with them is the difficult thing.

Adam: Another thing that is gonna be difficult this time around is figuring out how to get the kind of sound quality that we want. Because there are a lot of restrictions particularly in Germany about the kind of decibel level that you can run at and you know the sound of this record is very important for us, we are up to reproduce that live.

MAX: Will there be again just the four of you on stage or are you considering getting more people on stage. A DJ for example?

Edge: We are actually talking about that. We don´t know yet because it´s a very complicated record from the guitar point of view. In some songs there are two or three guitars at the same time so I am faced with either sampling certain guitar parts so that they are on samples or maybe getting somebody else in. I don´t know yet I really don´t know. I think that both valid solutions.

Adam: I think we are looking for a female guitarist.

Edge: In the past we used samples to fill up the sound and the discipline that applies there is that you end up trying to find a way of minimizing the numbers of samples you use because you are trying to get away with whatever. But if you bring in another musician you might end up doing the opposite. You might end up trying to create parts for this new musician to play. So you might end up taking the emphasis a little bit of just the four musicians but I think with samples the emphasis is still very much on the four musicians and then you just fill up the sound with samples.

MAX: Until now you never had a tour sponsor. What about this time?

Edge: We haven´t decided. What do you think?

MAX: On the one side, it´s like inviting people to your home and then trying to sell them tupperware on the other side with a sponsor you can build up an amazing show and keep the ticket prices low, so I don´t know.

Adam: The thing that we´ve kind of learned now is that you end up whether you like it or not when you play the big stadiums you end up putting on big public events for 60.000 people and there is a cost in developing the technology to do something like that -- the cost of producing that show on a nightly basis and if there is a way of having a sympathatic sponsorship that allows you to put more money on the screen if you like in movie terms then it´s something you should do. But again it´s a gray area for us because we haven´t figured out what the show is gonna be yet.

Edge: In a wierd way it should be our audience decision because they are the ones will have to pay more if there is no sponsorship. In a sense they are the ones that are exposed, they are the people the sponsors are trying o get to so. I don´t have a moral problem with it I have more a aesthetic probelem -- I don´t like the idea of rock´n´roll bands bending over you know being associated with branded goods, something about that just doesn´t feel good to me. But I don´t have any problem with bands doing it. I think in the end people don´t really care that much as long as they don´t see their favourite artist doing something embarrising. A lot of bands nowadays sneak off to Japan and do a quite wierd commercial.

MAX: Would you ever do a commercial?

Edge: No.

Adam: Never say never.

Edge: We talked to Lou Reed about this because Lou did this commercial for Scooter and he used "Walk on the wild side" and we said" Lou how can you do this" and he said "What are you talking about, I got a new AMS for my studio for doing that, I don´t care, I wrote that song."

Adam: I think to some extent that is the world we live in. It is a world where advertising is a part of everyday life and you just can´t take too strong a position on it. If you think of the early days of rock ´n´roll when radio was sponsored by people who made bread or flour or whatever. It is a part of it now and I think it is a dangerous position to say never or not at all. A lot of the techniques that were developed in advertising are used in promotion videos now , that is were those directors come from and that is where the photographers come from . It is all mixed up, art and commerce is all mixed up and I think it´s a good friction, I think it works.

MAX: If someone would like to book U2 for his birthday party what would the price be?

Edge: I don´t think we could do that. I don´t think this would work.

Adam: I think depending on who it was the question would be what would we expect doing it for them. Going to one of these wierd places and seeing what kind of an audience would be there. I think we would be the voyeurs not them.

MAX: Just give me a number:

Edge: I don´t know, where is my agent. I don´t think any money would be enough to make me actually play at somebody's birthday. I would feel so wierd I don´t think it's what we do. That´s not our world.

MAX: Are there certain songs you will never play live again.

Adam: The ones we can´t remember. Maybe a version of "I Will Follow". At some point I suppose you have to go back to the very beginning, it´s like Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" at the age of seventy. I think we can always go back to old material. I don´t think it´s a case of you can never touch them again. I think depending on the time in which you go back to it it has a different meaning so you can alwys take from your own past and recomodify it and make it mean something else. But I don´t think you can ever say `Can you go back to an old song` and it has the same meaning that it had then.

MAX: So can you just name some songs.

Edge: I think `I Will Follow`is a song we could do because it´s a great song. I suppose a great song is one that you can keep going back to and find that it still holds true it still works for you and I think this is one of those songs. With other songs from the first album, I don´t know. I would have a hard time with `Sunday Bloody Sunday` simply because it was so particular to that moment in Ireland and things have changed since then. There is a lot more hope around, I think people are looking forward a lot more now then they were. One of the great new things that are happening in Ireland is, that people beginning to stop thinking about history and the past and starting to think about the future more and that´s good. There is a lot of stuff from the Unforgettable Fire"- period. The song `Unforgettable Fire` I like a lot.

Adam: In a two hour show we want to play at least an hour of the new album or close to an hour of the new album so you are sort of limited in terms of what other material you can go back through. We are probably gonna want to play some pieces of Passengers like "Miss Sarajevo" or "Your Blue Room". There are some songs on Zooropa that we didn´t do last time and they maybe fit better with whatever way we decide to present these new songs and I think the songs from Achtung will still be relevant, I don´t no how much further we will be able to go back.

Edge: And Joshua Tree as well has some great songs. A great song is a great song. Sometimes you get burnt out on something because we just played it solidly for such a long time that you just need to get away from it but if it is a really good song you can go back and it will still be fresh.

Adam: We will probably try to avoid a greatest hits type of show. We are not interested in doing that. We wanna breathe some live into theses songs we just spend the last year with and see what they grow up to be.

MAX: Have you ever thought about doing another live album after Rattle and Hum?

Adam: It did come up. But we put out the video cassette after the last tour. We kind of felt like asking fans to pay twice for something that is available if they want to. Those things you have to do when it feels right. Often peole come to us and say `All the B-sides are very popular can you not put them together on one compilation-record`. Because we are always sort of moving on to the newest and latest thing we are excited about it seems to us like it´s the wrong signal to put compilations together. Luckily that is under our control at the moment because of the deal we have with Island. I don´t know what will happen in the future and we will do a different deal with someone else and then we will not be able to control it. But at the moment nobody has the right to repackage anything what we do or put a greatest hits together without our agreement.

MAX: Life on the road is very irrational. You got two highly exciting hours when you perform in front of 60.000 people but the other 22 hours are just airplanes and hotel rooms. How do you get along with that schizophrenic situation?

Edge: There is always a lot to be taken care of. Especially when you do something like Zoo-TVand it´s a constant development process where the show really evolve. When you look to the first Zoo-TV show and to the last one it´s so much different. A lot of the imagery was different we were constantly updating and changing things around because that was the idea of it, it was a little bit like that Pop-idea we are dealing with now, it was very instant, it was very much catching what was in the air, we had to keep turning it around. I have to say that anytime that we were not working on the show itself there are always songs to be written there are always things to be done. We are alwys doing something. I don´t mind being on the road, the only thing I find is the dislocation emotionally from your friends and family it´s quite hard. And after a while you get into mind-set where it becomes your normal life which is not great but it´s a way of getting through it. The difficult thing is when you come home and suddenly you are back to real life that can be difficult, that readjustment.

MAX: What about the debauchery side of touring. Is it still happening or are you too long in this business?

Edge: It still goes on I´m sure but in the end it´s kind of boring after a while. It´s not really what it´s about. When you look at all these young bands in the first flush of their success and they think it´s all so fantastic, good luck to the them. You have to realize that in the end you are flesh and blood and you got to put your energy into constructive things because if you stay out every night and get wasted every night and in the end catches up with you. You have to make sure that you have fun on the road and that´s a different thing.

Adam: There definatey is a twilight-zone out there and you can slip into it from time to time. And I think with each time that we have been out and that we have toured although there is an emotional price that you end up paying it tends to be the music and the show that becomes your stability and we always trying to write while we are on the raod and stuff gets in the way. More then any other time we are determined to use our time well on the road and use it constructively. It´s a two hour show that we wanna develop and you are fiddling with it all the time. There is a mood that you have to catch at the beginning of the show to bring it to the end of the show. That is what we gonna put our time in.

MAX: Do you argue a lot while on tour, because you are so close together?

Edge: The good thing about this band is that we started out as mates and we still are. We actually see quite a lot of each other when we are on the road in more social situations. We go out to clubs or whatever. It becomes a kind of a family when you are on the road and you end up doing a lot of things with other memebers of the band or with members of the crew that you particulary seem to klick with. It seems to get you through it. It´s like a small village that travels around.

Adam: You do learn a lot of stuff about how to give people space how to read people strong to your own needs and to their needs. If you were a sort of travelling psychologist I´m sure you can come up with some theory of what you go through. In some ways it´s like going through any kind of intense emotional experience together that takes place over a year or so. By the end of that year you´ve been through so many things and got so many shared memories, that it does mean something more than just a nine to five existence.

MAX: Will you play countries, you haven´t played before. Will you play Bosnia?

Adam: We are trying to. That is definately on the agenda.

Edge: We also trying to do some shows in South America and the Far East in places we´ve never been to before.

MAX: Are there any countries you looking mor forward to play in than others?

Adam: This time around we had a lot of encouragement to go to South America which is something that we never felt we could do in the past just in terms of time. And we always had a kind of feeling the cost of getting there and getting back are immense and keeping the ticket price on a obtainable level. But we are trying it this time. We´ve heard the audiences are great. I think the whole kind of Eastern European clubs, I don´t think this is the right time to go there yet but I think as the East opens up those are places we like to go to. But it is one of those things, everyone can buy the record but you can only play so many shows and not everyone is gonna get to see a show.

MAX: What are new bands you really like?

Adam: Well I saw Prodigy and I saw Radiohead recently...

Edge: Last Night On Earth is typical of U2-songs. The verse part was written on acoustic guitar in France before we even started recording but the chorus was written on the last day of the album (recording). The whole thing was mixed in a about four hour period. Our methods are so unique, I think they are pretty unique to us, but we have this kind of pathalogical fear of making decisions on songs too early so if something isn´t really blowing us away we won´t finish it and we wait. And sometimes it takes to the very end ot the project before something will klick and it is all coming to focus, so often the last two weeks of an album are so frantic because all these things are just coming together. So the record took from the beginning to end about nine month in the studio. A lot of the songs really came togehter in the last two or three weeks. So it sounds very fresh and some of the mixes, I think there are only three or four mixes that are done with the computer most of the mixes are hands-on, which is old style mixing you literally like two or three people up the board and at their perfomance mixes. So a lot of them are really rough. So I´m listening to the album back and go like `Shit`, I wish the guitar was louder or not so loud or the backing vocals aren´t loud enough, because literally is a real performance thing and I think that´s why it still sound fresh it doesn´t sound overworked as an album, because it really came together quickly.

Adam: I suppose from start to finish there where at least 40 musical pieces that we were pulling down to work on and as I said it was the last couple of month where we said ok, these are the tweleve that we wanna finish´

MAX: How many songs have you actually written?

Edge: We had parts of songs we had ideas for songs. We probably had 20 songs that we were serious about. There has been at least another 10 or 15 that we started playing around with and just rejected at a certain point. Some of those ideas we just never develop because we felt they weren´t right for the record. There is always this bunch of ideas floating around that we can draw from.

Adam: There are even ideas left over from Passengers that we went back to and said `Are these things that we can bring forward with us´?

Edge: One song from the Zooropa session as well like Wake Up Dead Man was actually...

MAX: This is an excellent song and it´s a very rough mix.

Edge: Yeah, it´s very very simple, very rough but we wanted it this way. The original version which had a whole other section which we just took out. It was a much more full on, guitar driven song and this is a much more strip down. We basically said `Look we have the beginning of a great song here let´s just record it in its absolute bare essence and just see where that brings us. So just acoustic guitar to begin with and then we develop it from there.

MAX: What about the story that Prodigy turned down your offer to remix your single?

Edge: They did, but that was more, because they hadn´t finished their album.

MAX: So, no personal thing

Edge: No, no, no

Adam: In fact it was unfortunate because it would have been interesting in two ways because they wanted us to help them finish a song for their record and we wanted them to remix a song for our record and we were both under pressure at that time.

Adam: What have you been listening to recently?

MAX: I´ve been listening to a lot of Oasis. So you think that they have got a future or will they burn out quickly.

Edge: Well, I think they got a lot of ambition. That´s true of both Noel and Liam and they got a lot of talent.

Adam: I wouldn´t underestimate them.

Edge: I think they will be around. I think everyone is fascinated by the sort of high-wire-act that they are showing us.

Adam: They got very big very quickly in public. They are the first success story of English music in 10 or 20 years so naturally it´s been amplified to this kind of fever pitch but I think they ´ll come back with an interesting record.

Edge: And they write great songs. A lot of people critizise them for stealing from the past. They do but they do it so well. Their songs are just great songs they are as good as the stuff they are stealing from. So I don´t care, hahaha, it´s just good. We'd love them to do a remix if schedule works out, because I think Liam's got a really interesting angle on things he´s really got some good stuff going on there.

MAX: Do you see any band that has the potential to be as big as U2 or even bigger?

Edge: I think Oasis have a lot of potential to be a very successful band but it´s really just whether they´re interested in exploring all the possibilities of being a big band, I think they are because for years in England it seemed like the cardinal sin was to be successful and to be big and I think what they done which is great for British music that they kind of kill that idea because now all the journalists in Britain are celebrating Oasis success.

They killed The Smiths and they killed a lot of great english groups for becoming big and for daring to try and break America and they killed us, so they tried to kill us for doing the same thing. It was such a stupid idea that suddenly if you sold a few records and played big venues that you somehow kind of no longer valid. That really doesn´t hold of. I think stadiens are often not a particulary rewarding experience to go through a stdien show, but I think they are the biggest challenge for a band to try and do something interesting. And if you can do it, surely that´s the big kind of price is to try and do something that´s successful in that size of venue.

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