Oh Joy Unrestrained

NME (1998-11-19)

U2 have began work on their new album in Dublin with BRIAN ENO and DANIEL LANOIS producing. Speaking at Queen’s University as part of the Belfast Festival, Eno said: “It’s too early to say what new ideas are coming up, but the only thing that is appearing as a theme, as an idea, is an attempt to do the most difficult thing in music, which is to create joy. That is extremely hard.”

He continued: “It’s actually dead easy to make melancholy. It’s easy to make energy, its easy to make cleverness, it’s easy to make intrigue, it’s easy to make glamour. But it’s very very hard to make joy. To make music that really grips you and lifts you in some way. That’s hard. So that’s what we’re trying to do in some way.”

Eno’s remarks echo comments made by THE EDGE to NME recently that the band’s next album will be their most optimistic record.

During the talk, Eno also said that his most memorable moment with U2 was during the Popmart tour’s visit to Sarajevo in 1997.

“It was probably the most moving show I’d ever been to,” he said. “At one point U2 dedicated a song to the British UN soldiers, who had been very demoralised at this point. The whole audience applauded the peace-keeping force. These troops were in tears. The crowd just applauded on and on…It’s a stupid thing that pop music lets people take their defences down.”

U2 will auction BONO’s lyrics for the band’s current hit ‘The Sweetest Thing’ on March 24 next year. The pop auction, being held at the London WC1 Sound Republic, aims to raise more than ’500,000 for the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy charity and Norwood Ravenswood charities. ALANIS MORRISSETTE who has donated the lyrics for current hit ‘Thank U’.

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