It’s the first U2 song to feature Bono singing in a confessional lower register and Larry Mullen experimenting with an electronically enhanced drumkit but the key ingredient was once again The Edge, whose use of a prototype of the Infinite Guitar he’d just received in the studio added an EBow-like haunting quality that elevated its sound. The Edge began exploring the Gibson model catalogue beyond the Explorer and Les Paul in earnest during Achtung Baby and One also features The Edge’s 1959 Tobacco Sunburst ES-330, which can be seen in one of the song’s three videos.Īnother song, like One, that came together in the studio while the band were harbouring fears of creative drought, sonically speaking, With Or Without You was a great leap forward for U2. They achieved their goal, with The Edge wrapping the song in layers of Gibson-branded cotton wool for its intro before adding a layered, heartrending soundscape of lachrymose Les Paul bends from Daniel Lanois and a series of modulated licks, forever building to the song’s anthemic outro figure. One began life as a proposed middle section for a different song, but underwent further transformation when producer Brian Eno persuaded them to deconstruct it Daniel Lanois and Edge removed the acoustic parts and instead added more aggressive guitar to undermine the “too beautiful” overall sound. However, they got over it when a song descended on them in a jam session to uncover their old chemistry and reunite them. Bono and The Edge wanted to experiment with dance elements, while Clayton and Mullen wanted to return to the old sound, and they disagreed over the quality of their new material. Reconvening to record the follow-up to the bloated misstep Rattle And Hum at the Bowie-haunted Hansa Studios in Berlin in October 1990 (the month Germany officially reunited), the band found themselves stalked by the dreaded cliché – musical differences. Here, we choose 20 battles he most definitely won, some against all the odds, among an exhaustive back catalogue of sonic explorations.īy the end of their first all-conquering decade in music, U2 may have been the biggest band in the world, but all was not well. The Edge has often referred to being “at odds” with the guitar and has characterised his playing as a “struggle or a fight” with the instrument. But even as his gear stash has grown from a couple of guitars, a handful of pedals, a Vox and some gaffa tape to become a touring rig that looks like a Guitar Center warehouse, he’s stayed a step ahead of his imitators, managing to refine but never jettison the simplicity and directness of his playing. READ MORE: Pearl Jam’s best live guitar moments, rankedĪt the heart of their sound, U2’s guitarist has undergone his own process of constant reinvention.Since then, the band have gone on to conquer the world’s airwaves and arenas in a number of different incarnations, ranging from earnest, politically charged new-wave flagbearers to wide-eyed art-rock musicologists to purveyors of irony-laden alt-rock and ever onward. It’s four decades since U2’s debut album Boy introduced the world to the angular, delay-soaked guitar lines of The Edge.
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