THE NUDE INTERVIEW 25.06.87 RTE: Dave Fanning Show

Dave: Well I must say it's a hard life being a rock & roller, there I was in London yesterday talking to David Bowie, which you can see the results of in Visual Eyes in only two weeks' time, on now this band has come in, it's always coming in with their blinking demo tapes, sitting here with me; so I suppose since you're here you might as well stay. Ah, Adam, Edge and Larry, you're very welcome to the programme – where's Bono?

Edge: He's late as usual. He's probably listening to us now, will you get down here fast.

Dave: Here hold on a second, I've got to play the signature tune first, just before we're all here.

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Dave: .....and I still haven't um.....

Larry: Found what you're looking for.

Dave: ...decided yet. (laughs) Oh, God! Ah, wait a minute, what was I going to say? Yeah we're going to put on the phones here, we're going to let people make a phone call, but I haven't even thought about a number yet, and – ah we'll worry about that in a few minutes. So why did you pick the (laughs) why did you pick that to go in straight after U2, Edge?

Edge: Black Knight. It's one of Bono's favourites, and seeing as he isn't here I thought I'd play it in his honour.

Dave: He is coming, is he, yeah?

Edge: He is, yeah.

Larry: So's Christmas.

Dave: (laughs) Well it's now 12 minutes and 30 seconds past eight o'clock Bono, so if you get here – supposed to be cameras and things coming as well, is that right?

Edge: As far as I know.

Dave: Probably get in the way. Alright well listen we'll just keep going here with some music shall we -

Edge: I hope you're listening, Aislinn!

Dave: – Continue with your cup of tea – hi Aislinn, there you are! (laughs)

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Dave: ... that's the song, that's Lou Reed, and before we do anything and talk about that let's just take the first break in the programme.

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Dave: Um, what was I going to say – yeah we're going to give out the phone number in about 10 minutes' time, you can ring in with questions; I dunno where Bono is, so ah, doesn't matter at the moment does it?

Adam: Nah, we're doing fine.

Dave: There's a lot of whistling noises, that doesn't mean anything does it? – oh it's cans, it's those headphones over there Adam. It's Adam's headphones.

Edge: Get rid of the cans.

Dave: So tell us – there's more cans is there? No nobody else – (unintelligible) cans of tea! Oh there they are, of course they're not plugged in (feedback)

Larry: It's my mic actually.

Dave: Is it?

Larry: Yeah. How're ye Mike?

Dave: Ah Larry. (laughter) Leave it out. Alright anyway, listen -

Edge: Do you know any jokes, Dave?

Dave: Do I know any jokes, yeah; there was this sandwich walks into a bar – (laughter) oh God, that brings me back.

Edge: Here he is.

Dave: Ah Bono, there you are, how ya doing. Where were you?

Bono: (In distance) You slagging off my sandwich dog?(?) (Larry laughs)

Dave: Slagging off yer sandwich dog. Where were you? You're late.

Bono: (In distance) Ah now, a policeman wouldn't ask you that.

Dave: (laughs) Well take a seat over there beside Larry. Listen Bono, we decided to put the phones on, it was Larry's idea, he said how about putting the phones on and let people ask in questions, right.

Larry: Yeah we won't talk about politics, religion, sex or music; anything else is on.

Dave: Well then talk about Belfast, what was it like the other night, was it good fun?

Larry: It was great.

Edge: It was a bit scary, but it was also good fun.

Bono: Why was it scary, Edge?

Edge: Well I was scared.

Larry(?): Scared of me! (laughter)

Edge: Well you know, playing Belfast, Sunday Bloody Sunday, the whole – not that anything would have happened, but just that, y'know, this was kind of the test of whether what we were about ....

Dave: Well Larry just mentioned there, about a review in The Times this morning about the fact of the two flags and all that sort of thing. So everything went OK in terms of that, you were happy to play it -

Edge: Not just OK, but brilliant.

Dave: Did you have something to say before you played it, Bono, in terms of like something to the crowd, or did you just say Here's Sunday Bloody Sunday'.

Bono: No, there was no bullshit, just Belfast, just treat it the way we treat any other concert. It's just that... This was the best audience we've played, I mean Lou Reed was speechless after his concert. I mean this is it, y'know Belfast has thrown down the gauntlet now, Dublin has to rise to the challenge. We had a roof in Belfast to blow off, we only have the sky in Dublin.

Dave: (laughs) And the rain; it's been a bit wet at some of these outdoor shows.

Bono: Speaking of blowing off... Adam, would you just pass me one of those tins over there.

Adam: Ah, tins of tea! (laughter)

Bono: Oh yes. There you are, right.

Dave: Um, where are we, yeah. So what about the weather at some of these outdoor gigs, they haven't been great -

Edge: Well we've been applying for good weather, and we've been getting it most of the time, as you probably know Wembley, although it was raining in London, at Wembley Stadium it was dry, on the Saturday show. The only time it ever rained was the last show we did in Cologne, it rained for the beginning of New Year's Day and that was about it. And that I think was a visual effect more than anything.

Bono: We prayed for snow, we got rain; y'know, it's not bad.

Edge: Oh yeah, that's alright. (laughter) So we've applied for good weather for the Croke Park shows, so I'm sure it will be fine.

Dave: Yeah. So overall then, have you been having a good time over the last 4 or 5 months?

Edge: Touring is hell, Dave. (laughter) You should know that.

Bono: (in wonder) Edge is smoking!

Dave: Yeah I was just going to say that actually, I was going to say what's all this about Edge, is this the new leaf you're turning over?

Larry: Edge is not smoking, (unintelligible), sorry.

Bono: ... (unintelligible) taking the piss out of Larry, who can't smoke very well.

Dave: I thought Adam was the only one who took a cigarette, no?

Adam: Ah no, I've been converting these chaps to my ways.

Edge: We're really freaking out now Dave. (laughter)

Bono: Freakin' out, we're onto the (heavy accent) Churchman's.

Edge: Freakin' cigarettes. I mean I'm startin' on the Silk Cut, it'll be major next week.

Dave: (laughing) Oh God.

Bono: Oh shit. Excuse me, spilt this -

Dave: Alright. I dunno – ah yeah we're gonna give out the phone number – what was the phone number again, six-? 695544, OK. A number 1 if you're outside Dublin, and 695544 if you want to make a phone call and ask a question I suppose, or something like that. And I'm available for interview between now and ten. Whiskey In the Jar, OK I'll play that right there. Look I'll... We'll just get settled right, this is taking a long time to get settled so I'll play this song over here on the right hand side – no wait a minute, what was I going to play Edge -

Adam: You were going to play that CD player there.

Dave: Oh the CD is lined up, yeah, right. OK let's play the CD and see what happens.

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(laughing ) This is quite strange actually, because if this was on television this would be quite amazing. Ah, the only person without his top off at the moment is The Edge, everybody else has their clothes off in the studio in terms of trousers, and in fact Edge has nothing on from the waist down.

Bono: What about Dave Fanning there, I notice you're wearing a pretty psychedelic pair of undies yourself. (laughter)

Dave: Alright, this is getting ridiculous, wait a minute now. Ah we're going to get somebody on the phone, but before we do, Bono tell us a joke will you.

Bono: What joke?

Dave: The one you just told us.

Bono: That is a dirty joke.

Dave: Ah it's not that dirty, go on give us it again.

Bono: I tell you it's Gavin told me, on the way here!

Edge: Go on blame Gavin! Come on.

Bono: (heavy Oirish accent) Well it was Bernie and Trect (??) actually, Bernie and Trect in fact who were on their summer holidays as you know, and anyway, they wanted – I think it was Bernie wanted to bring back home a dog, you know? A pet dog. Anyway, so she's bringing it back, you know? And she bought a skunk by mistake, you know? And at the result, Tractor(?) said 'You know that's not a dog you've got, a little puppy, that's in fact a skunk!' She says 'Oh, I'll be caught at the Irish customs,' she says, 'I'd better hide it.' She says 'Where will I hide it?' She says 'I'll put it in me knickers'. So, 'Bernie' he says, 'Jeeze that's an awful smell!' She says 'If it dies, it dies.' (laughter) That is a bit dirty for the air.

Edge: That's disgusting, Bono.

Bono: It's just as well we're not on the air actually.

Dave: Yeah, alright let's see, it's now 25 to nine -

Bono: (in background) Are we on the air? We're not on – are we on the air?

Dave: – oh yeah, it's about time we took a phone call. There's been a guy waiting on the phone for ages. His name is Fergal O'Neill, and he's going to ring in. Hello? Fergal, are you there?

Caller: Yeah I'm here.

Dave: Good man yourself. Speak up a bit louder and Bob's your uncle. OK, fire away.

Caller: OK I wanted to ask the lads were they a bit anxious starting off again for the new world tour, and why did they pick Tempe Arizona to start off?

Edge: Have you got your clothes on.

Dave: Edge is asking if you have your clothes on, Fergal.

Caller: Ah yeah I have actually, it isn't hip I know.

Dave: (laughter) Good man, take em off!

Larry: Take em off before we answer there!

Caller: (unintelligible) just cos you took your clothes off.

Bono: Well anyway go on, Edge.

Edge: Um........

Larry: What was the question?

Edge: What was the question again?

Dave: What was it like starting off in Arizona and why did you pick Arizona, were you apprehensive starting off the world tour.

Edge: Uhhh! Ohhh! Haven't you got an easier one there, Fergal?

Caller: Um, where'd you get the hat?

Edge: Ask me one on -

Bono: Sport.

Dave: Where'd you get the hat, he said.

Edge: The hat? Um, where did I get the hat. I stole it from Bono, is the answer.

Caller: And Larry, who were you buying the flowers for, last Tuesday?

Larry: What's that?

Caller: Who were you buying the flowers for on Tuesday?

Adam: Ah, Lawrence! Buying flowers on Tuesday!

Larry: I actually, I was buying them for the girl who does our wardrobe, her name is Marian, and she's just had a little whippersnapper, and I was just going up to the hospital to buy them.

Bono: Lucy Bloom Webb-Smyth. (?)

Edge: Yeah we should play the next song for Lucy Bloom.

Larry: So that's what I was doing, getting flowers in the hospital.

Caller: I see.

Dave: OK, listen Fergal, thanks for ringing in, we'd better take a couple more, there's about a thousand phone calls lined up it seems at the moment, so thanks for ringing in.

Bono: Of course when Larry forks out a few bob we makes headlines, you know what I mean?

Dave: Ronan, are you there?

Caller: Yeah I'm here!

Dave: Good man yourself, we can hear you loud and clear, fire away.

Caller: What's your favourite U2 song that you've performed on stage?

Edge: Hi Ronan! Um, The Lost Highway is our favourite U2 song.

Bono: Ah give us a few verses there Edge.

Listen here: http://www.rte.ie/radio/radio75/audioclips/soundbytes/0703.ram

?: Yee-ha! (applause)

Dave: There you are Ronan, that's the favourite song.

Caller: Yeah, and is the Croke Park show going to be as good as the 1985 one?

Edge: Oh it'll be much better than that! As Bono said earlier, the Belfast show was spectacular, I mean the audience was fantastic, so it's now up to the Dublin audience; they've gotta outdo the Belfast audience.

Caller: Yeah.

Dave: OK Ronan, thanks very much for ringing in.

Edge: See ya, Ronan! We'll see you there!

Dave: OK listen, just tell us now, you just mentioned Belfast as well, and Croke Park, you're right in the middle of those two. So Belfast was the smallest venue, or the least amount of people at a gig of the whole 18-month tour probably, so did that bring you back to the old days, was it like being back at some sort of, you know, the Dandelion in Dublin almost, or something?

Edge: It was like the Baggot Inn really, but a little bit bigger.

Bono: Except this time we got served! (laughter) Yeah when we used to play these pubs we wouldn't be served. That was the thing, we were underage. We were 17, trying to, you know, we wouldn't even get the whiff of a pint! You know what I mean! Amos has just walked in with a camera.

Dave: Everybody is nude in the studio, this is completely ridiculous -

Bono: No cameras! I'm a modest man!

Dave: Nude radio, and Wilson's going to take a photograph.

Dave: It's a good thing nobody can see this, The Edge's bum, it's fantastic. What a bum!

Bono: Edge's mickey on the mic. (laughter)

Dave: Now, now Bono, it's a family show here.

Edge: A family show.

Bono: I don't know which one's the uglier!

Adam: (laughing) Which one do you talk to? (laughter)

Dave: I don't believe it! OK, OK, at ease. Wait just before I get somebody else on the phone, tell us about the weekend and the bands that are playing with you, do you, like, studiously look as well as the bands and say 'We definitely want these bands on', do you pick them, do you take a long time thinking about who you'd like to go with you on the road.

Edge: Actually, to be honest, that does take up a lot of time early on in the planning of a tour, who the support's going to be.

Bono: A lot of time. Also the fact that the shows, most of them have sold out before we announce even the people who are playing, so the people, it's just they're our kind of, they're the sort of music that we would like to introduce our audience to. Like Lou Reed is somebody we've looked up to for a long time, and The Pogues are just, you know, I think they're a. wonderful.... bunch of tossers; you know, Shane McGowan's a wonderful songwriter; I mean all – the Dubliners, The Pretenders – they're all people that we're into, and you don't have to be into them to be into U2, but it just so happens that the people in our audience have incredible taste in music! (laughter)

Edge: Also Hank Williams was dead, so he was out.

Dave: Well somebody said to me that Sunday's gig is going to be better than Saturday's, because by that stage you're sort of used to Croke Park, you've done one the day before, and just goes off further on Sunday, would that be -

Bono: Was that Jim Aiken that said that to you? (laughter)

Dave: No but seriously, seriously folks, like at the weekend will the sets change over the two nights? For all the people that – surely 20% of them will be there both nights -

Bono: They will. (accent) Edge'll be wearing the pink socks on Sunday, and the green socks on -

Adam: We're going to be moving the stage down the other end for the Sunday show.

Dave: (laughs) Oh yeah there is one thing I might as well get out of the way now, that is that people who have stand tickets are always saying to me Listen I want to go down into the crowd, I didn't mean to buy a stand ticket. If you have a stand ticket you can go anywhere you like, you can go down into the crowd, you don't have to stay in your seat up there. Then again if you have a pitch ticket you can't go up into the stand. But if you do have a stand ticket then Bob's your uncle and you're alright. Also to all those people who wrote in and said Can we come in and see U2, cause no doubt you'll be interviewing them this week, I didn't even say I was going to be interviewing them this week, and I'm very sorry to the hundreds of people that wrote in that wanted to come in here tonight, but there's a lot of security men outside, and -

Bono: It's just as well, after seeing Edge's bum on air.

Dave: (laughs) OK, listen -

Edge: Hold on, there's a card trick, Bono wants to show you a card trick.

Dave: Oh yeah, have you got a card trick Bono.

Bono: Oh sure, OK. Larry; pick a card.

Edge: Any card.

Larry: Right.

Bono: And put it back in the pack. OK.

Edge: Shuffling now folks, he's shuffling. (sounds of cards shuffling in background)

Bono: No problem, OK; think of a number between one and ten.

Larry: Right.

Bono: OK, Jack of Diamonds.

Larry: No. (laughter)

Edge: He was wrong folks!

Larry: Ace of Spades!

Bono: Oh!

Edge: Five years wasted, Bono.

Bono: (Funny voice) Next! Went to Philadelphia for one day and it was closed.

Dave: OK, next. We'll take a phone call, there's Michelle Keene is on the phone, Michelle are you there? Oh God you're very far away, can you speak up?

Caller: OK!

Edge: Hi, Michelle!

Adam: Stand nearer the telephone!

Caller: OK!

Dave: Fire away, Michelle.

Caller: Um, can I ask three questions?

Dave: Ah sure, why not.

Caller: What's their favourite track on The Joshua Tree?

Edge: Running To Stand Still is mine.

Caller: Yeah. Oh I love that, right.

Dave: That's The Edge's favourite track.

Caller: OK. What's Bono's?

Bono: Uh, Bullet the Blue Sky.

Caller: Um, when is Larry thinking of getting married? (laughter)

Bono: Oooooh!

Larry: Well, um, that's a good question. No-one's asked me yet.

Bono: He's already married to Adam!

Larry: I think it's when Ann decides, is the answer to that.

Caller: Who's Ann? (a chorus of Ooooooh!') Well just tell him I'm available, will you?

Larry: Oh yeah, well you can leave your phone number and I'll give you a ring later on, alright?

Caller: And I'm going on Saturday, so can I come up on stage with you?

Larry: No problem, if you just stand in the first, say, ten rows, and you just wave a little flag saying 'It's me'.

Bono: (or Edge?) (in falsetto) Ah Michelle, have you something against married men? (laughter)

Bono: Edge is looking very disappointed over there.

Caller: Can I really come up now, is that a promise?

Larry: That's a promise, no problem; if you're in the first ten rows, you wave a little flag just with 'Me' on it, I'll instruct Bono to take care of it, alright? That's a promise. (Bono laughs)

Caller: OK! Alright thanks a lot.

Dave: OK thanks very much, Michelle.

Caller: Bye.

Bono: That was only two questions.

Dave: That was only two questions, yeah, the third one got lost somewhere along the way. So what'll I do, will I play a record or what, what do you think?

Bono: Do you know when, ah -

Adam: Take off your shirt.

Bono: Do you know when the fairy godmother always arrived, and you're always after three quest – three, what was it – three wishes. You're always given three wishes. I always thought as a little boy that my third wish would be to have another hundred. I mean, has that thought occurred to anybody else? I'm sure it has!

Dave: No, there's a very simple way around that, Bono, I'll tell you what it is. If you get three wishes, your first wish is that you want ten million wishes.

Edge: Right.

Dave: And then you're alright.

Adam: Yeah you don't have to wait til the third.

Bono: Greedy!

Dave: It's like the three-part question. Do you know the three-part question in the football quiz, no?

Bono: Tell us that.

Dave: Which one do you want first, the third part or who scored the goal – no maybe we should just take an ad break.

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Dave: Brilliant. Larry you were brilliant – that was Larry Mullen singing along there, excellent. He didn't know all the words but it was good enough for me.

Larry: I did so, I just got confused a wee bit in the middle.

Dave: OK listen, we might as well take somebody else on the phones, so who are we going to go to first, how about Samantha Fitzgerald. Hello Samantha.

Caller: Hello?

Dave: Hello, she's there, yeah. Say what you want to say, Samantha.

Caller: I'd like to ask the band, what do they think about the publicity (feedback)

Dave: Is there a radio near the microphone?

Caller: Yeah (unintelligible)

Dave: Good, right.

Edge: Turn it down a bit. (feedback and shouts of pain)

Dave: Or turn it off!

Caller: (aside) He said turn it off. I'd like to ask, what do you think about the publicity you've been getting since The Joshua Tree?

Edge: Well I personally think that it's fantastic, but I'm also bored stiff with just the quantity of... trivia that's been written about the band. I mean it's fantastic, it's great that we get that much recognition but I don't know how people stick it, to be honest. I'm bored. So I don't know what other people -

Bono: It's not as if Edge's underpants aren't interesting. They are interesting. It's just, um -

Adam: He should put them back on again. (laughter)

Larry: Yeah, no you've got a good point there, it's as I said to somebody last night, that a lot of people think that it's us winding it up, or whatever, and basically it's just the Press going on their own initiative and that, and we don't have that much to do with it. Obviously a lot of it's good, but as Edge says, there's a little bit of saturation at the moment, and y'know, we're trying to live here, so the more press that we get here the more difficult it gets to actually be a human being in this country. But um, if I can say it without sounding like an arsehole, or a ...whatever, it's the price you pay, unfortunately.

Dave: Is that good enough, Samantha?

Caller: Yeah. Um, there's two more questions to come, I'd like to ask can I have an autograph?

Larry: Can you have an autograph? No problem, got a pen and a piece of paper?

Bono: I will sign an autograph for you, live, on Larry's chest.

Dave: (laughing) Oh God! I don't believe it.

Caller: Hello? I'm Ester and I'm from Bally(something) and I'd just like to know, there's a bit of controversy over your concert in Wembley, where you sang Maggie's Farm and you exercised your views on what you thought, who people should vote for at the general election. Do you think you had the right to exercise that view?

Bono: No, but we did.

Edge: That was just a bit of a firecracker thrown in for a laugh, you know, people took it extremely seriously, but in fact it was, Bono was...there was a bit of a wink involved in that. It's great to see that the, the Conservative Party taking it that seriously to actually comment in the press, I thought that was great.

Bono: I must say, in all fairness to you there Edge, I took it quite seriously meself, you know; and I said it!

Edge: Go on!

Dave: OK, listen Samantha, thanks very much cause we're going to have to go to an ad break now, we've got to earn some money here. So thanks very much for ringing in. Is it time to go to the ad break now? Sure, we might as well.

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Bono: (in reporter-type voice) Donna Trainer has in fact taken off her clothes, live on air tonight, RTE 2FM, how do you feel about that, Donna, tonight.

Donna: (takes deep breath) Cold. (laughter and applause)

Dave: Fair play to you, Donna.

Edge: I just want to complain, actually, about this film board thing. This is terrible.

Dave: Yeah, what's that about the film board, it's been taken off, yeah?

Donna: It's been abolished.

Edge: That's the pits. That is the pits.

Adam: And what are they replacing it with, Donna?

Donna: They are replacing it with a new tax incentive, so, anyone who has any money, well there you go, invest it in film.

Larry: Where are you from, Donna?

Donna: Where am I from?

Larry: Yeah.

Donna: Where do you think?

Larry: You sound very Blackrock to me, I must say. (laughter)

Donna: (in posh accent) Oh, of course!

Bono: Well I must admit I haven't got my cinecamera, Donna, with me; but we have got a Polaroid of you without your clothes, so thanks very much.

Donna: (laughs) Bye! (chorus of goodbyes)

Dave: Alright, we're going to take someone else on the phone? Brid on the phone, no? Oh hello Brid, from Blessington?

Larry: Have you got your clothes on, Brid?

Caller: (laughs) I do. (disappointed noises from band)

Larry: Sorry Brid, no questions will be answered until you take your clothes off.

Caller: No way.

Larry: No way, ah fair play to you.

Bono: Brid is cool.

Caller: I just, I have no question to ask, I just want to say hello to U2. And hello to Larry Mullen, I think he's a very amusing person.

Larry: Oh thank you very much.

Caller: He needn't worry, I don't want to marry him, I'm already married.

Larry: Oh, you don't?

Caller: So no, I don't want to marry you.

Adam: Oh he's worried now.

Caller: I'd say he is.

Larry: I'm disappointed.

Caller: So I hope your concert, anyway, goes well, at Croke Park. (the band says 'thank you')

Dave: Thanks very much Brid, alright. OK, bye! Um, what else have we got to do now, think of something to do, willya.

Bono: Red House.

Adam: Maybe you have to take your socks off.

Dave: Oh yeah, we were going to play Red House -

Bono: Jimi Hendrix.

Dave: OK we're going to play Red House by Jimi Hendrix, I hope.

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Dave: (laughs) So really, Adam lusts after Ann Doyle, yeah?

Bono: Really?

Adam: Watch the news, you see Ann Doyle.

Dave: She's on the cover of the RTE Guide this week, I'll give you a framed photo later on.

Adam: Ah, good.

Dave: Um, I've got to change the CD, I've got to put another one in, so while I'm doing that; Bono there was some mention, I don't know who it was, it was one of you said something about, you know the idea of like, every few years you bring out an album, you do a big tour and that, and just bringing out a few rock & roll singles and to hell with it, even cover versions or whatever. Do you ever think, I mean, is that what you want to do?

Bono: Well, I'd really like to just put out a few singles, rock & roll 45s, cause you think; when I was growing up I really got off on things like The Who singles, and Rolling Stones singles and things like that, and -

(?): And girls.

Bono: Yeah, and girls as well, but I mean (laughs and says something about Edge)

Dave: What a pair of boxer shorts!

Bono: I think actually it is better with them on. (laughs) But no, I would like, I just think that rock & roll's got a little too civilized in its own way and you know, you do, you put out your mega LP and then you have your mega tour, and then you have your mega silence for two years, cause it takes you basically two years to recover. But what we'd like to do is just, we're really into being in U2 at the moment, and we'd like to just keep writing songs. We've written some songs already, since The Joshua Tree, and we'd like to put them out at the end of the Joshua Tree trail, y'know?

Dave: But like, you had written a lot of songs before the – I mean what, you had like 24 songs – are they all going to turn up at some stage on b-sides and things?

Bono: Well they're turning up on the – every single we release has two originals -

Dave: Two singles, therefore four new songs.

Bono: I think the With Or Without You EP is an extraordinary ... I mean I would listen to that myself. You know, I think Walk to the Water and Luminous Times are two of the best tracks U2 has written, and they just didn't fit The Joshua Tree.

Dave: Well now, wait a minute now! Cause the first song I played on the programme tonight was Walk to the Water – this is ridiculous! We're all sitting here nude! This is absolutely ridiculous!

Edge: And talking seriously!

Bono: (laughs) Not only that, I think we have the World In Action TV -

Dave: Oh yeah, there's a television crew has just walked in, a World In Action television crew, yeah. But no, I just played Walk to the Water at the very beginning of the programme, and Edge was saying, 'Yeah, I wanted that on the album', so I mean, did you three say, No Edge, sorry, you're wrong?

Edge: These bastards!

Bono: To be honest, if we gave in to Edge the whole thing would be, you know what I mean; sound like it's a bleedin' soundtrack, wouldn't it! (laughter, then groans and something about boxer shorts)

Dave: Oh, Larry! God, look at the big mess. Have we anyone else on the phone out there, no? I don't know who it is, but hello, is there anybody on the phone? What's your name?

Caller: Christopher.

Dave: Christopher, how are you doing, where are you ringing from?

Caller: Poppintree(?), Ballymun.

Bono: Good man.

Dave: Fire away.

Caller: OK, I'd just like to ask Bono, how long did it take him to write the music for The Joshua Tree?

Bono: Ah, a little bit too long. You know you – what's your name again?

Caller: Christopher.

Bono: Christopher. When you – first of all you've made the record. By the end of the record you've learned how to write songs. Then you go on the road and you learn how to be on the road. By the end of the, being on the road you forget how to write songs again. And so it took us about six months to, y'know, just being, playing in a rehearsal room and playing in Larry's back room and Adam's room, just playing around for about six months before we got any good. And then after we got tuned in it only took us about three months to write the songs and three months to record the songs for The Joshua Tree.

Caller: And what did you actually use for inspiration?

Bono: For inspiration?

Adam: Joshua.

Bono: No, for inspiration you just pick up on everything that's going on around you. I mean that's it you know, you just – are you in a band, Christopher?

Caller: Would you believe it, I am; well it's not exactly a band, it's a pop duo.

Bono: A what?

Caller: A pop duo.

Bono: A pop duo.

Caller: Uh-huh. We're not really heard of yet. Our name is Déjà Vu.

Bono: Oh, that's very deep.

Dave: I've heard of them before!

Bono: Bad joke.

Caller: We've actually got, at the moment, about 40 songs.

Bono: Of your own?

Caller: Of our own. With lyrics, and we've demoed five.

Bono: That is amazing. You know Bruce Springsteen, for his records, sometimes he writes 50 or 60 songs, and he even records them in different keys and everything. We haven't got to that – you sound like you're much better organized than we are, actually.

Caller: I wouldn't say that yet, we haven't actually got a contract yet.

Bono: You haven't got a contract yet – out on you? (laughs)

Caller: I was just wondering, as a matter of interest, how would U2 actually, say, help along a pop duo in the music business?

Bono: I don't know much about – the only pop duo I know is Larry and Adam, and I don't think they'd have 40 original compositions between them.

Adam: Oh we've got 40 different positions between us. (laughter)

Caller: At the moment we actually have an American interest.

Bono: An American interest – you have an American girlfriend, is that it? (laughter)

Caller: Yeah, well. At the moment we've gotten about three people interested in us, in America. Um, in California.

Bono: They live in America, and they're interested in your band.

Caller: At the moment. Well it's not exactly a band, there's just two of us. Actually a pop duo. I play keyboards, and (unintelligible), he plays guitar and writes lyrics.

Adam: Ah.

Caller: We actually get all the music out, would you believe, in our bedroom.

Bono: Well that is...

Caller: We don't go into rehearsal studios.

Bono: Well, I know, rehearsal studios are very hard to find in this city. But you know the Grapevine Arts Centre is opening rehearsal studios, and there's some good rehearsal studios round town at the moment. I think it's amazing that you've got some American people who are interested in you.

Caller: Mm. Well at the moment the people who are supposed to be listening to it, one comes from (?) Capitol Records in America.

Edge: Capitol are good, they're a good label.

Caller: We don't know yet, we received a letter from Paul's friend over there, Deirdre. She just wrote back and said she was passing on the package.

Bono: Mm. Well I wish you well in your pop duo, and Larry's just said to me that if he does get married, you can play at his wedding, which I think is a great start out in life. So God bless you!

Dave: OK. Thanks very much for ringing in. Somebody else has just walked into the studio: Gerryyyyy Ryan!

Gerry: I've seen everything now! (laughter)

Edge: Gerry, take your clothes off!

Gerry: I think they should know -

Larry: Come on, Gerry!

Gerry: – they're all in the nick. (laughter) And it's disgusting. It's contagious, that's what's so bad about it.

Bono: You're disgusting, and you're not in the nick. (laughter)

Larry: Come on Gerry, rip em off! Rip em off there, Gerry. Take them off, come on! Come on, there!

Gerry: Alright, we'll take (unintelligible) take them off. (applause)

Dave: Like lambs in sheep's clothing, Gerry.

Bono: Oh, no jokes like that, no.

Edge: Oh Gerry, Gerry, put them on again. (laughter)

Dave: Oh, he's got boxer shorts as well! Very good, Gerry. Alright, what are we doing now, do you want to talk to somebody on the phone here, Gerry. Claire Hogan – no wait a minute, I think we've talked to her, haven't we?

Caller: No, you haven't!

Dave: Oh we haven't! Claire, how are you doing?

Edge: Hello Claire, long time no see! How are you?

Caller: Oh I'm great; who's that talking?

Dave: Edge!

Edge: This is Edge!

Adam: Ah can't you tell, that husky voice.

Caller: Oh hey, do you remember me?

Edge: Yeah!

Caller: Do you?

Edge: Course I do!

Bono: Do you know her, Edge?!

Caller: That's a surprise, cause I've never met you!

Edge: Do you remember me? – Which Claire Hogan is it? (laughter)

Caller: (aside) Are you taping it?

Edge: Where are you from, Claire?

Dave: Are you taping it?

Caller: Mulhuddart, out here in Mulhuddart.

Edge: Mulhuddart? Go on now, and you don't remember me. That's terrible.

Caller: No, I – when you had your short hair, do you not remember?

Edge: I do.

Bono: He's trying not to forget! (laughs)

Caller: I was at Windmill Lane last year.

Edge: Last year.

Caller: You were walking in with a bottle of champagne.

Edge: That's the one, yeah. (laughter)

Dave: That's the same Claire Hogan! So Claire, have you got a question?

Caller: Yeah. Um, how do the band feel about the Irish music scene at the moment?

Edge: It's very good.

Bono: It's very professional.

Edge: Extremely good.

Bono: Very professional.

Edge: There's a lot of bands, and I mean, well Ireland's always been hot on, um -

Bono: Very professional.

Edge: On being professional. No, but there is a lot of good groups around, and ...

Bono: (?) I mean come on!

Gerry: I believe the Hothouse Flowers were signed.

Edge: The Hothouse Flowers, the Subterraneans, Aslan – a brilliant band – Light A Big Fire, The Kid Sisters, plug, plug.

Caller: Are you joking me!

Edge: No, no, there's a lot of good groups around.

Caller: Well what about the younger Irish bands?

Larry: Like who, like?

Caller: Like Guernica, The Babysnakes, Large On White.

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Caller: Summerhouse, and Our House.

Edge: Well it sounds like you've come across a few groups that we haven't.

Gerry: Summerhouse are good, yeah. They're very good.

Edge: Stars of Heaven are good as well.

Bono: I went to The Babysnakes.

Edge: MicroDisney. No there's a lot of good groups, and sooner or later somebody else is going to come along and knock us off our pedestal, which we're looking forward to, cause we want to retire, really, that's what we want to do. We've had enough of touring.

Bono: Actually we're very lonely. It's lonely at the top.

Dave: OK, Claire, thanks very much for ringing in. Good luck, thanks. Bono, I was just going to say, that you say you're very lonely; what's it like on the road these days? Like I mean in the old days you used to be able to go down – I remember doing a tour of Ireland and like after Cork, after the gig you were in the dressing room for about 20 minutes, and then after the gig you went out and did your half hour of talking to people and signing autographs and that: can you do that anymore?

Bono: Did last night.

Dave: Ah yeah, but that was the smallest gig on the tour.

Edge: The only restriction is the number of people that you have to talk to. So what we tend to do is try and find manageable numbers of people and talk to them. So, it's not always outside the gig, but it's wherever we can find them, like outside record shops, we did that in Belfast when we did The Old Grey Whistle Test, or if we can find people maybe a few hours outside the gig. It's just if you've got like five thousand people outside a venue there's no way you can go out and talk to them. It would be a pointless thing. So if you find, like, 30 people or 10 people then we go and do that. So it still happens, it's just it's not quite as easy as it used to be.

Bono: There is an element where you get, we are getting a bit cut off. We are being cut off and kind of separated. We are separated a little bit more now, and I don't like it, but you've just got to live with it. I mean we have to play these big gigs because if we play the small gigs the ticket touts charge, they make a fortune on our fans, and we don't want to have it like that. So we play the big gigs, and it's just the way it goes. We're just going with it. And it's not important that you might meet ten thousand people, it's important that you meet one person that has something to say to you that's relevant. And often we do meet those people with something to say, but I don't think...you know...I mean I – I miss it. I miss being able to meet somebody after a concert and go back to their place and have a cup of coffee or sleep on their floor, or something like that. I miss all that. We used to have people, I mean I had thirteen people staying in my room at one stage, when we used to tour through England and people used to travel, come out for the week or come out for the tour, and they'd be travelling and staying in all of our rooms, it was amazing. Now we're getting a bit cut off from that, cut off from that, but in fact you know that is just the way of it, and I suppose we've accepted it, reluctantly.

Dave: Well we have Gerry Ryan on the phone now. Gerry, do you have a question to ask?

Gerry: Do I have a question to ask? Yeah. Ah, they are actually almost completely in the nick. (laughter) I'll just give a quick description. Ah, Bono -

Larry (or Edge): Oh, Bono!

Gerry: Bono's now actually going to stand up and he's going to produce -

Dave: He's going to reveal his blue underwear.

Gerry: Yeah, and Adam's very very close to him, and when Bono was speaking there about being separated he wasn't joking, we are having a lot of difficulty separating them here at the moment. I've been getting very worried about them! (laughter) I mean, after all Fanning's programme has been up to now a family show!

Bono: Did you know that Dave Fanning had a hairy chest, cause I didn't. And it's extraordinarily hairy! It looks like the sort of jungle you got lost in a few weeks ago there, Gerry! (laughter)

Edge: Tell us about that one, Gerry.

Gerry: Ah well, it's a long story.

Bono: That's what we were saying when we were looking at Edge! (laughter)

Gerry: How did you blokes hear about that, anyway?

Edge: I tell you, a good job Chrissie Hynde isn't here, she'd have you for lunch.

Gerry: No, she wouldn't! Not if she knew the real story.

Dave: Oh yeah, she's a vegetarian.

Edge: A vegetarian, yeah.

Gerry: Well she wouldn't have me for lunch, then. (laughter)

Dave: OK, we have somebody else on the phone, Angela Walsh in Santry, Angela are you there?

Caller: Yeah! How are you?

Dave: Ah sure, God I'm fine, how are you?

Caller: That's great, Dave, that's great.

Dave: OK, well fire away.

Caller: I was just going to ask the band, are they going to release another two songs from The Joshua Tree? To kind of make up a 4-pack, if you know what I mean, as they had The Edge on the first cover and then they had Larry. Are they going to kind of make it a 4-pack, if you know what I mean?

Dave: In other words, will Adam and Bono be on the cover of the next two singles?

Adam: If we get a camera in here, no problem.

Larry: Yeah, it's not something that we thought about, we'll put the four members on each single. It's just the way it happened. The next single might not necessarily have either Adam's mug or Bono's mug on it. It's just one of those things, you know?

Caller: It's just, it seems (unintelligible)

Larry: Seems what? Do you have a radio on behind you?

Caller: No I haven't, no.

Larry: Alright. Go on then.

Gerry: It may be Bono's headphones or something.

Bono: I don't have any headphones on.

Gerry: Oh.

Caller: It's kind of (unintelligible)

Gerry: It's very what?

Caller: Kind of fitting, you know you had The Edge on first.

Gerry: Oh, yeah.

Larry: Yeah well basically it's sort of we're sick of seeing Bono on the cover of things. Myself and Adam are feeling a little bit bad at the moment, we felt we'd been making cameo appearances in the videos (laughter) and y'know, basically just to put this rumour aside of, y'know, it's Bono and Edge's band.

Bono: It's a revolt in the backing band.

Larry: (laughs) Basically.

Dave: OK, listen thanks very much, Angela, for ringing in, cause we have loads more calls to take. This is Tracy Parks ringing in from Birmingham, Tracy? Hello Tracy. Is Tracy there, no? (beep) No... Colin Doolan, is that right? (beep)

Larry: No.

Dave: No, Colin was lost as well. Is Colin there?

Edge: Is there anybody out there?

Dave: Is anybody on the phone?

Caller: Hello?

Dave: Hello! Who's that?

Caller: This is still Angie. Now what I wanted to say, would Larry say hello to Tracy. She's here from Birmingham, she's come all the way and we're both going to see U2.

Dave: Oh I get you now, right.

Larry: And her name's Tracy, is that right?

Caller: Yeah.

Larry: Hello, Tracy. How are ya.

Caller: Thankyou very much.

Larry: You're very welcome.

Dave: OK thanks a million; see ya Angela, good luck. OK now we might have Colin Doolan on the line, from Clare, do we? No -

Caller: (sounding very young) Yeah, hello!

Dave: Maybe it's Colin in Doolan from county Clare, maybe. Oh Clane! He's from Clane, right. Hello Colin, how you doin'?

Caller: Is this Bono?

Dave: Is this Bono, no this is Dave Fanning, Bono doesn't have headphones on.

Bono: Hold on, I've got them on now.

Dave: Here he is now, are you ready?

Caller: I want to ask him, did his personality change since he started?

Bono: (very strong German accent) Vell, since I started I've found zat a great deal of things haf changed in my life. (laughter) And vat is your name, little boy?

Caller: Pardon?

Bono: Vat is your (laughs) vat is your name, little boy.

Bono: Sorry.

Edge: What's that in English, Bono?

Bono: Sorry, I'm back now. Back to normal. Personality crisis! I have one every day! I have one every day, I don't know who I am, and that's why I write songs. I think that's why any songwriter writes songs, cause he doesn't know who he is. So he tries to find himself in the songs he writes. There's a deep answer.

Dave: Is that OK, Colin?

Bono: The shallow one didn't work.

Caller: Yeah. Have you got any free tickets? (laughter)

Bono: Haven't got any pockets, no I don't have any free tickets.

Larry: No, there are no free tickets at the moment, Colin, but they can be bought at HMV. (laughter) Is that alright, Colin!

Caller: Yeah, alright.

Dave: OK, thanks very much, Colin.

Bono: God bless, Colin, see ya, bye.

Dave: Good man yerself, fair play to you. Listen, there's one thing Bono, or any of you, I don't give a damn who answers this, um -

Bono: Oh. Thanks a lot.

Dave: There's one thing that Eamon Dunphy has said, which is that -

Bono: (funny voice) So much fer being a figurehead!

Dave: (laughs) That is that you've all shared your success with Ireland, as opposed to a lot of the rock stars of the past, I mean certainly Bob Geldof hasn't as much, say for instance. So, do you -

Bono: (lightly) There's only a few of them Dave, that's why were -

Dave: Agh! I shouldn't be asking these stupid questions! God! Forget it! Do you want to hear some music or something? (agreement)

Bono: Ask us another stupid question. (laughs)

Dave: (laughs) Have you any more jokes, Bono?

Larry: Tell the one about Ronald Reagan.

Adam: Edge has got some good ones.

Bono: Edge has got some good ones.

Edge: Um...hmhmhmhm, short ones, that's the only problem. Did you hear about the -

Larry: Three bears. (laughter)

Bono: Tell the joke about the three bears there, Lawrence. Lawrence, Larry Mullen's going to tell the joke about the three bears.

Larry: The story of the three bears. You've got Mammy Bear, Daddy Bear and Baby Bear, and y'know, the usual rap, and they come downstairs and they eat the porridge and the porridge is too hot, y'know, so they all go for a walk and then they come back and Daddy Bear says, Who's been eating my porridge?' And Mother Bear says, Who's been eating my porridge?' And Baby Bear says, Feck the porridge, somebody just stole the video machine!' (laughter and applause)

Dave: Oh my God, it's a contemporary Daddy Bear joke. All right. So what'll I do, will I play a record, yeah? OK, I'll just press this button. I can't remember what's on – oh yeah, it's Perfect Day. This is for Edge. Lou Reed.

*****************

Dave: From the news room, ladies and gentlemen, it's Donna Trainer.

Bono: It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am -

Donna: Pleased to meet you. Clothed!

Adam: Hiya, Donna.

Donna: Pleased to meet you. (unintelligible)

Bono: Was it good?

Donna: Very good. I like the way you (unintelligible) flag business, y'know? Very very good.

Larry: What happened to your neck?

Donna: Pulled muscles on the right-hand side.

Larry: Oh right. So how can you get that from reading the news? (laughter)

Donna: I've heard every story connected with that! My story is, I was in a draught. (laughter)

Edge (or Larry): Was it a smell extractor, or Heineken? (laughter)

Donna: Heineken!

Dave: OK, we'll go back to the record, thanks very much Donna, for coming over, anyway. I'll just press that button and see if it'll work again, I dunno what's going on here. Is that working?

********************

Dave: Play number five, OK. That was Perfect Day – is it going to be a perfect day at the weekend? Oh of course I never read the weather forecast, I don't know where it is.

Edge: It's actually very good, apparently; the long-range forecast is for sunny day'.

Dave: Really? Sunny day on Saturday and raining on Sunday, is that it?

Edge: No no, both days.

Bono: I don't put my faith in weather forecasts.

Dave: If anyone wants to ring in it's 695544, and another 1 before that if you're outside Dublin. Ah, which track do you want from this, Bono?

Bono: Number five, want to play it for Ali.

Dave: Number five, play for Ali. Great, OK.

Gerry: Number five, like a takeaway; Number five for Ali, please!'

Bono: Have you got the right one, there?

Dave: Yeah, I do have the right one, hold on, one, two, three, four... Five, OK. So, are you into John Lee Hooker, Bono, yeah?

Bono: John Lee Hooker, yes. I am.

Dave: Because I remember you said that, like, Listen, we're fed up with "Blah blah blah," we're gonna have a rock & roll album this time around,' and -

Bono: No, I didn't say that about The Joshua Tree. I didn't say that about The Joshua Tree.

Dave: Oh, did you not. Well, I stand corrected. (laughter)

Bono: Do you want me to draw on you.

Dave: (laughs) Yeah, why not. Give me your autograph on my chest. OK, I wonder should I play a song while this is going on – oh my God, he's coming over, and look at his blue underwear! Bono's wearing blue underwear with a white top, and good old jockey shorts.

Larry: (laughs) With a white top!

Dave: I think – no, the white top and the blue underwear. Ah, what're you doing, there you are. What? Are you going to do this on my back. Oh gosh, that tickles. (laughs) Do you want to spell it, B-O-N-O, yeah? Have you got it, yeah? OK, got it. Have you got the camera there, Adam, yeah?

Larry: Spin the record there, Dave!

Dave: Will I play the record, OK. This is John Lee Hooker – it's probably not queued in properly, that could be the end of the last track for all I know. No, it sounds all right.

*******************

Dave: Bono and Larry have gone to the loo, so what are you two up to, there?

Adam: I have to check it out.

Dave: You want to check out the loo?

Adam: Yeah, in a minute.

Dave: Yeah, alright. Listen, Edge, I remember -

Edge: What's the worst job you ever had, Dave?

Dave: The worst job I ever had.... I worked in a factory in Germany, where I made hinges for BMW cars. I made one million hinges in one three-month period; and I'll tell you one thing, I haven't eaten a hinge since.

Edge: You haven't eaten a hinge since. I was once lowered into -

Dave: (voice high in surprise) Oh, no! I don't believe it! (laughter and shouts)

Edge: Oh my God.

Dave: I don't believe it! Bono is completely naked. Go on, yes Edge, what were you saying, sorry?

Edge: I once worked on a farm, I was lowered into a grain hopper. (laughter) That's absolute gospel. And my job was to shovel grain from the sort of perimeter of this hopper into the centre, where the hole was. So I didn't last long in that particular job. The working conditions were too bad.

Dave: Bono, the worst job you ever had.

Bono: I worked in a petrol station.

Edge: Fuel Injection Technician, Bono.

Bono: I was a petrol pump attendant, and proud of it; and I wrote a lot of songs whilst waiting for the traffic to come my way. Of course then they had the oil crisis, and -

Dave: You were out of a job!

Bono: People queuing up, actually, yeah, they were queuing up -

Dave: Killing each other.

Bono: Which was no good, if you were trying to write songs and be a petrol pump attendant. And so I gave that one up. And I became a storesman, in P. O'Reilly's out there on the Howth Road; wasn't very good at that (laughter), wasn't very good at that at all! And (accent) I then joined U2, you know? -

Edge: He used to give medical advice out at P. O'Reilly's.(?)

Bono: And what was it Eric Stone used to say, there?

Edge: Well Eric Stone was – in fact Eric, if you're listening; fair play to ya – Eric had a band called -

Bono: Gave Edge and Larry their first gig.

Edge: – The Drifting Cowboys, which was a country band, and I bought my first guitar and amplifier from Eric; and Eric used to bring myself and Lawrence out to the odd gig when the rest of the band were on holidays, and we used to do a few session gigs for Eric.

Bono: Fourteen and fifteen, God bless them.

Edge: Eric used to give me a lot of advice on the way to Howth or wherever we were going, and I remember one gem, which was, he used to say, Now, I'll tell you this. There's no money in the Rock. There's no money in the Rock. Get yourself together with a group o' lads, if you do country songs you'd be working seven nights a week on the gigs we have to turn down.' (laughter) And he was right! He was absolutely right.

Bono: And what did he say about the foxtrot? What about the foxtrot.

Edge: Oh, that was true. He said, Now, a few foxtrots, now.' I'll just give you this example. We were down in the Ring of Kerry, playing down there, and we couldn't get anyone up. And we were getting desperate -

Bono: You tried the rock & roll?

Edge: We tried everything. We tried the waltz, we tried the jive; we hit a foxtrot, and within two minutes the whole place was black with people dancing. Absolutely right, the man was right; we've been trying to get a foxtrot together for years!

Bono: It's interesting; Malcolm McLaren's next record, which he's doing with Jeff Beck, is based around the foxtrot, or the waltz. That's just a little aside.

Gerry: The Joshua Trot. (laughter)

Dave: OK, I think we'll take a break and earn some money, and then we'll probably take somebody else on the phone.

*****************

Dave: Before I take somebody on the phone I just want to remind people to make sure they watch at half six tomorrow, on RTE 1, Visual Eyes, the first of a ten-part series. We have three specials; it's tomorrow U2, and next week it's at 7 o'clock , on the Friday we've Paul Cleary, and the following week David Bowie, an interview that I did yesterday in London with him. And then we have seven programmes from the studio. I thought I'd just sort of throw that in.

Adam: And don't miss any of the Dave Fanning billboards around town. (laughter)

Dave: Alright.Yeah, is there somebody on the phone, hello?

Caller: Yeah, hello?

Dave: Oh Cosmas, is it?

Caller: Yeah, that's it.

Dave: Listen, is your name Cosmos? Wow, that's a weird name!

Caller: C-O-S-M-A-S.

Dave: Oh, A S. I was thinking it was O S.

Caller: Yeah, a lot of people make that mistake.

Dave: Cosmas, you're (unintelligible), in County Kildare?

Caller: Yeah, that's right.

Dave: So, fire away.

Caller: Is Bono back yet?

Dave: Oh yeah, they're all here!

Caller: I was just wondering, is there any particular reason they're having the concert on this weekend? Cause it's a good choice, really, cause a lot of people are after finishing their Leaving Cert., and most of them, I think, are going to it. I'd say that's who's going to fill up Croke Park.

Edge: The weather wasn't that great, that's why we didn't decide to have it this weekend.

Caller: (laughs) Is that a joke? (laughter)

Bono: Good man, Cosmas! I tell you, the Edge thought he knew everything about the cosmos. I don't know why – we played – this was the same weekend we played two years ago, wasn't it?

Edge: No, it was last weekend.

Larry: I think it was just a question of fitting it between football matches, basically. Yeah, there's no particular rhyme or reason for doing it, y'know? But it is great that it is on when the Leaving's finished.

Bono: Are you doing your Leaving, Cosmas?

Caller: Yeah, I'm just after finishing it.

Bono: Ah, God bless you. Well, how did it go for you?

Caller: Em, it was fairly hard, y'know, it was OK. I s'pose I just have to wait and see.

Bono: What sort of subjects did you do?

Caller: Em, I was doing Business (unintelligible) Accountancy, Art, and the other, Maths, English and Irish. That's it really.

Edge: What was the Maths paper like?

Caller: Maths, the first paper was very hard; the second paper, well I recognized the questions, I'd seen them before. (laughs) Seen ones like them before.

Bono: Mm. And how did the old Trigonometry go?

Adam: It's gone.

Bono: Is that gone?

Caller: Trigonometry. I thought that was the Greek paper. (laughter)

Dave: OK, Cosmas, thanks very much for ringing in.

Caller: OK, fair play to you, Dave.

Bono: Bye, Cosmas.

Dave: And we have somebody else on the other line, Yvonne, Fay and Somebody Flemings. (beeps) Fiona, is it? No, they're gone, are they? Oh gosh, they've gone.

Bono: That Cosmas sounds like a cool guy. I like him.

Edge: They're pretty cool, down there in (unintelligible)

Dave: Anyway, the question was; Is Bono ever going to return to Virginia in County Cavan again?

Bono: Am I a virgin. No.

Edge: Fair enough, Bono.

Larry: That wasn't the question.

Bono: Oh, I've been to Virginia, County Cavan! I was up visiting a good friend of mine, who was spending a little time behind bars, and we stopped in Virginia; which is the most beautiful little town. Went in there -

Dave: It won the Tidy Towns a few times.

Bono: Is that right. It was pretty untidy after we left it, I must own up to that. I dunno. I dunno, I'm sure we'll be passing through – I miss, actually, one thing I miss is travelling through Ireland; in the early days of U2 when we used to yonk round in the van and play, y'know, a lot of the small halls around. I miss that, I miss... I feel like we've missed out a bit of Ireland. Because everyone talks about Dublin and Belfast and Cork, and we're most guilty of that, but out there there's the smaller town, which is fascinating to me, and I love the west, I love the southeast. I mean, it's just, I think we're a bit deprived of that. I mean I would like to play just a few, y'know, just turn up and play a few pubs. If that was OK. But trying to convince people to do these things is unbelievable! I mean you come up with an idea like, Can we, let's just turn up and play.' And then there's always a hundred reasons why you can't do it. People will get hurt.' Will you announce it?' Well we'll just tell the radio an hour before we arrive. What if too many people arrive?' I mean, you just wouldn't believe it. There you go.

Dave: OK, Bono, listen tell us something about people that you've been reading, for instance lately, like Walker Percy, Robert Hayden, Jim House. Who's Jim House?

Bono: Jim House. He's an Indian poet, actually, yeah – North American Indian poet. Very interested in North American Indian poetry, and indeed some of the black poets in America. I grew up, y'know, I went to school, there were some good people at school teaching us and everything; a feller called Brian Grimson(?) was really a very imaginative guy, but I'm really rebelling against a lot of poetry, I find it really pretentious sort of crap, it doesn't talk about the sort of things that are relevant to my life, to quote Morrissey. I mean, I just find myself attracted to the writers that write about real life. A lot of the European writers are a little too highfalutin for me, and I find I'm much closer to American writers, and particularly American Indian writers, I really get off on, really like them.

Dave: Well what about Flannery O'Connor, Bruce Springsteen said to you that you should read his book Wise Blood'?

Bono: Yeah, well I think when we were doing the Leaving Certificate we had Steinbeck on our course, and I read all of his books, and I was really well into that. And I thought, y'know, when I listened to Bruce Springsteen I figured he'd obviously read Steinbeck, and of course he had. But he told me actually, I've read Flannery O'Connor, too.' So it sounded like an Irishman, turned out to be an American woman. But there you go. And she was writing from a Catholic point of view about the Protestant-dominated southern states of America, and the do-it-yourself religion, and I could, I was very interested in that, interested in that subject. And I read her, and there's a sort of black comedy; she's a funny writer, made me laugh. Like Joyce makes me laugh. And I think Irish writers have just got a, are just looser. I find a lot of the European writers and the English writers a little too up-tight. So that's why I started listening to American Indian writers, I've got a great book called War Cry and A Prayer Feather', it's really a fantastic collection. Another one which is – what is it – The Turtle'. Not The Dream of the Blue Turtles'. Something along that line.

Larry (or Edge?): It's a good name for an album.

Bono: Yeah, it's deep. I can feel a Jazz phase coming on. Next question!

Dave: Um... America. Do you see America differently now than you did, say about five years ago. Like, I mean you go there a few times you get, what, television and radio and hamburgers and all the rest of it; but you see it differently now, do you?

Bono: Yeah. We've been introduced to, y'know, different sides of America. I saw a different side of America when I went to Central America, when I went south of the United States into Salvador and into Nicaragua. Y'know, you see the result of a lot of American aggressive foreign policy. But I don't want to get into that now! I love America, by the way. I love the American people, and -

Edge: The thing about the American people is that they're naïve, in a sense, because of their media. Because American media is not like European media; you don't get world news appearing in American newspapers, you get local news. So people in America, all they get is the same bullshit day in, day out, about local politics and what's going on; the murders, the rapes; all just that sort of stuff. But, actually, if you – as we have done – go to America and start to get close to these people, you discover that they're not only naïve, but they're really open. They're incredibly enthusiastic, much more enthusiastic and open than Europeans, with the possible exception of the Celtic Europeans, which I think are in the same sort of way as the Americans. And it's very refreshing, cause you go there and you see that people are open to new ideas. And they don't sort of, they're not smug, they don't sit back on their preconceptions and stop thinking about what's going on. If you hit them with a new idea they're inclined to think about it, instead of thinking that they know it all.

Gerry: What do they think about us, do you think? One of the things I think that U2 have done – forget the topping of the charts, and the mega stadiums – I think the smashing of the shillelagh is one of the big things they've done in America. What kind of vibes do you pick up on that, what do they see us as, now?

Edge: Well a lot of the Irish people we meet in America are actually old school friends, or people we knew in the pub three years ago, who've actually gone there to work, and that's the big change. We've seen so many contemporaries of ours who are now having to go to America to find jobs. And a lot of these people are very bright, very together, and they do very well in America. So as well as the kind of third or fourth generation Americans who think Ireland is all about leprechauns and whatever, we meet a lot of people who've just left. So the Irish in America, y'know, it's not – the cliché of the Irish going there in the sort of 19^th century is not true anymore, people are still going there.

Dave: Well there are two types of people going there, I mean there's the brain drain and then there's everybody else's friend, who goes along because they can't get a job here, right? So if you have directed a lot of your songwriting towards American foreign policy or whatever, what about the next time around? Is there any way that you might direct it towards what's happening in Ireland?

Bono: Well I just, America is something that I'm still, y'know, a little obsessed with. I, personally, I mean I would like to finish what I've started. And we've written some songs about Ireland, we've written songs about immigration, they're just not ready to bring out yet. We're working on them. But America hasn't just affected our lives, it affects everybody's lives. These missiles that are in Greenham Common and the missiles that they've planted in West Germany, this affects our life. Y'know, we have this dream that because we're an island, we're in the middle of the ocean between Europe and Russia and America, we're not. We're directly affected by what goes on in both those continents. And so we've a right to ask questions. And some of those questions, y'know, they don't have easy answers. But we've a right to ask them in the first place. I must tell you a story about The Mothers of the Disappeared, which is the last track on The Joshua Tree. I wrote the song based on my experiences with the day I spent with the Madres, they're called. They were set up by Archbishop Romero. Archbishop Romero was a fairly right-wing guy, a member of the Catholic Church, who was brought into Salvador to sort of quell the masses and stop them asking uncomfortable polical questions; but when he saw the poverty, and when he saw the injustice of the state of Salvador he complained and gave out. And he eventually was gunned down while giving Mass in Salvador. They just walked in, and they just shot him down. But before he died he set up the Madres, which is the Mothers of the Disappeared. And I spent a day with them; you'll see them if you go to see Oliver Stone's film, Salvador'.

Dave: It's in that, yeah.

Bono: You'll see all about them. Well, I just had call a few days ago, it was about last week or so, just to tell me that those very people had in fact, had been... Well, they planted a bomb in the toilets of the building, and they blew that building up. And there's nothing about it in any of the papers, there's nothing about it in the West. And there is this conspiracy of silence, and, ah... Y'know. That is the reality of American foreign policy. That's separate from Americans, this is, we're talking about one administration, under Ronald Reagan. And that is something that you start to see: when you go to America first, you just, I'm taken up with it, and excited by it, and I love it, and I love to be there. But you start to, you dig further, scrape beneath the surface and you see that a lot of the prosperity depends upon y'know, other countries, and what's going on in those other countries.

Edge: Yeah, like America is the best and the worst all rolled into one. When I think of America I don't think of Ronald Reagan, I think of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, people like that. I mean the actual, the idea behind that country originally, was incredibly positive, and very open, very liberal. What's happened to America is the tragedy. But I mean that can be reversed, that's the thing about America; people are incredibly positive in their thinking, and there's no reason why things shouldn't change. The reason that things are the way they are is lack of information. People just don't know what's going on, there.

Bono: There is something preposterous, I must say, about me sitting here completely naked; with, in fact, my knickers on my head -

Dave: (laughing) Yeah, you do!

Bono: – talking about Ronald Reagan's American foreign policy! (much laughter) I'd just like to point that out.

Gerry: (laughing) It's the only way that you can talk about Ronald Reagan's American foreign policy!

Bono: I just thought I'd interject that, just to...

Dave: (laughs) You mentioned the conspiracy of silence – what about the Conspiracy of Hope tour, which was the only thing you did live-wise, say, between... Besides of course the gig in Cork for (unintelligible) Radio 2.Now, you sort of adopted, if that's the right word, about six specific prisoners; and a lot of the pressure that you put on, or because of your gigs or because of what you said, got about three of those released. And one or two of them actually wrote to you and said thanks.

Bono: We actually met the Russian political prisoner, and it was her second day in the United States, and she came to our concert. She'd never seen a rock & roll concert before. That was quite something, wasn't it?

Edge: Yeah.

Bono: Just meeting somebody who had been -

Edge: That made it all a bit more concrete; because Amnesty International, it seems like a lot of people with good intentions getting together and writing notes, but when you actually see somebody who's been in prison for the last ten years, actually free, and can talk about it, and y'know, a real human being, flesh and blood; that really puts it in a different context.

Bono: But Amnesty International's just the beginning, I think, for a lot of people.

Dave: Well you had the address for Amnesty International on the album sleeve of The Joshua Tree, and when I was in Italy there were more banners for Amnesty International than there were for U2. So what do you want people to do? Do you want people to say (sic), Look, this is what we feel, and you do something about it, rather than listen to us all the time', is that it?

Bono: Yep.

Edge: I mean the basic message of U2 is, Look, this is what we think, but don't let us dictate to you. You know, we throw up a few ideas, we turn over a few stones, but make up your own minds.' There's a lot of people out there who probably think Amnesty International is all very fine, but what about what's happening in Dublin City, what's happening in Europe? And I would agree with them. You know, we're trying to do what we can do for Ireland, and I think those sort of feelings are good, but don't just sort of sit there and do nothing. Just think about it and do whatever you can. That's the basic idea.

Dave: OK, well listen we have somebody else on the phone. James Devert (?) in Cashel in County Tipperary; James, are you there? Oh, speak up. Hello James – get your radio out of the way, first of all.

Caller: Is it in the way?

Dave: I've no idea, that's what Gerry Ryan says when he does an interview, I feel I'd just better say it now. (laughter)

Edge: Gerry's very proffessional, he should know.

Dave: Have you got a question?

Caller: Yeah. How long is the actual U2 performance? How long are they onstage?

Bono: It depends on Edge's boring lead guitar solos. It depends probably on my boring rants from the stage. I think we last about an hour and a half, an hour and forty-five, what would you say, Edge?

Edge: I'd say about an hour and forty-five is about average now. Sometimes it's a bit more, sometimes a bit less.

Caller: And will you have all your clothes on? (laughter)

Larry: Definitely not. We'll be asking everyone in Croke Park to take their clothes off.

Edge: Well, rumour has it that Bono will be naked underneath all his clothes. (laughter)

Bono: Do you know what; you think this is bizarre, us asking you to come to Croke Park in the nude – I just heard Prince is asking people to dress in peach or black.

Larry: Why not?

Dave: He just cancelled his concerts in London this week.

Bono: I didn't know that!

Dave: Yeah, he cancelled them all because, he cancelled the concerts last Monday, and the reason was – and even though they didn't start til tomorrow – the reason was because of the weather. As if he would know what the weather was going to be like tomorrow!

Larry: Have you never heard of weather forecasts? The long-range -

Dave: (laughs) The long-range weather forecast!

Dave: Oh wait a minute, Gerry, I think we should just get the news and then we'll hang on for a few minutes. We'll just go on til about five past ten or so.

Gerry: I'll switch on the studio, is that OK?

Dave: Oh sure, Pat'll do that. It's alright, no problem. (laughter) OK, listen thanks very much, James, for ringing in. Oh, he's gone.

Edge (or Bono?): Could somebody ring in with a joke?

Dave: Yeah, a joke. Oh, we have somebody else on the phone; Jane Sweeney from (?) – Jane, do you have a joke?

Caller: Ah, no, sorry; not on me at the moment.

Bono: Nothing on you at the moment? I see!

Dave: Ah, good, you're getting into the spirit of it.

Caller: Yeah. Um, I'd just like to ask the band – anybody in particular – what would you say to people who dislike both you, listening to you, and your music? Do you think that they're unfairly subjected to listening to you on the radio, seeing you on the telly, y'know in the newspapers all the time?

Dave: Right: Larry.

Larry: I don't think there's any argument with anyone who dislikes us or dislikes our music, that's never been a question; if you don't like it that's fine. I mean, what is the question, as such? You know what I mean, like I mean if you don't like it that's cool, I mean what can we do about it?

Caller: Yeah, but I mean it's all the time, it's kind of a U2 diet.

Larry: Well have you been listening to the programme?

Caller: Yeah.

Larry: Oh well, I stated earlier on that an awful lot of it's got nothing to do with us at all!

Caller: Yeah, but I mean it's constantly, I mean everywhere you go it's U2!

Larry: Yeah I know, but that's got nothing to do with us; the press decide what they want to do themselves!

Caller: Yeah.

Larry: You know what I'm saying? Like I mean that we would prefer that that was not the case.

Caller: Yeah.

Larry: We're sick of reading it, we're sick of hearing it as well. And basically, you know, there's nothing we can do. We're trying to live here, we're trying to live in this country, you know what I mean? And the fact that it's on the radio – I know people are sick, even I'm sick of it! We're all sick of it, you know what I mean?

Caller: Yeah.

Larry: And unfortunately people do end up saying, Well,' people end up saying, yknow, So what. We don't want to hear any more about U2, we're sick of them.' I mean, that's fair enough!

Caller: But do you think that that would damage things for you? I mean I know that you've a huge following and whatever, but it comes to a certain stage when you just turn it off, and say, No way, no more!' Do you think it's going to damage your following -

Bono: It does damage our following, it does damage our following; y'know it's just because in Ireland, there – y'know, let's face it – there aren't many success stories in Ireland, we're just one of those success stories so people tend to shine the spotlight on us. But when we go to America we're just one of another hundred rock & roll bands, and when we go to Europe; and that's the way we like to be treated. It's not the way we're treated in Ireland, but at the same time we are proud that we're Irish, and that the Irish are proud of us; and I think there is something special there. And I think, fuck the begrudgers.

Caller: Yeah. OK great, and one other thing, and this is more towards Dave Fanning; why don't you play the Babysnakes record for us?

Dave: Why don't I play the Babysnakes record?

Bono: Yeah well, play it now!

Larry: Play it now!

Dave: Oh yeah, I got it today, you're damn right. I don't know where it is, it's buried under all these albums here, I haven't a clue where it is. OK if I can find – hold on a second, we've very little time, Jane, so look, what we're going to do is we'll take an ad break, then the news, and we'll be on for about abother five minutes or so. And if I can find it in that time I'll play it. Thanks, Jane.

Caller: OK. And best of luck to the band for next weekend.

Bono: Thanks a lot.

Larry: Thanks Jane. Fair point.

Bono: God bless you, Jane.

Dave (?): Fair play to you.

************************

Dave: Donna, fair play to you, how's the neck?

Donna: The neck is doing fine, thank you very much, and you have lovely bodies, lads.

Dave: (laughs) Oh, we've all got lovely bodies. Ah, Bono at the moment is signing Adam's bum – what does that say, there? Oh, Magoo -

Bono: You've done it again. (laughter)

Dave: You've done it again. Give us your impression of Paul McGuinness, Bono.

Bono: That was it! I just did it!

Dave: Oh, that was it, there, was it?

Bono: Who else could I be?

Dave: Um, what do we do now?

Gerry: I think a sing-song might be appropriate.

Dave: Oh yeah, give us another song.

Dave: Brilliant. OK well listen, all I can say is, Bono, Adam, Larry and The Edge – (excited voice) Oh here they are! It's Bono Adam Larry and The Edge! – have a wonderful time at the weekend, and have a good show.

Larry: Thanks a lot, Dave.

Dave: We never even talked about the support bands or anything like that.

Gerry: You can talk about that as I'm going up to my studio.

Dave: Oh, yeah, Gerry's going up to do a programme, so – (the band says Seeya' and Thanks, take care' to Gerry)

Gerry: You're a lovely young band. (laughter)

Bono: Go on, ya sheep. (laughter)

Edge: I think, we mentioned the sheep once but I think we got away with it. (laughter)

Dave: Um. I can't think of anything to say.

Larry: Some of the support bands.

Dave: Oh yeah.

Bono: We had Lou Reed.

Adam: Will Dave take off his shorts. We haven't got that much further to go, and there's not much time left. I think you've got to go for it.

Gerry: (From other studio) Yeah come on, Dave, take off the shorts!

Edge: Come on, Dave!

Dave: Hold on, there's somebody very important outside who says I'm fired if I do! (sounds of derision)

Larry: Go on, Charlie, piss off! (laughter)

Bono: (?) (in hippie voice) Hey man, you don't have to be really oppressed, y'know what I mean?

Larry: Go on, Dave. Go for it.

Dave: But I'm not a member of a kick-arse rock & roll band.

Larry: Doesn't make any difference.

Adam: (unintelligible) – if you took off your knickers.

Bono: Live! On RTE 2, Dave Fanning; take your trousers down.

Gerry: Go on, Dave, go for it.

Adam: Dave; you took off your beard, let's see the rest of it.

Dave: I've got a hole in my sock, look!

Adam: Oh, the naked toe! (laughter)

Dave: Alright, well listen it's about time I think we gave it to the next programme, so Gerry, are you there, Gerry? No? Can Gerry talk to me on this -

Gerry: Yes, yes, have you got it there? Has he really taken them off?

Edge: Yeah. It's not a pretty sight, Gerry! (laughter)

Gerry: Well then I feel that it can't get any worse, and I think that it's time to say goodnight to those young men of rock & roll.

Edge: (or Larry): Indeed. Thankyou, Gerry.

Gerry: All five of them. (laughter) Goodnight to you! Take care! And ah, I've just come from Studio 2, where the Rock Show is, in a sense, being broadcast; and they are absolutely and utterly starkers. A new high, or indeed possibly a new low, has been reached in Broadcasting. Good evening.

THE END