In 2006, U2’s collective halo was tarnished when the band moved their publishing company to the Netherlands, thus avoiding a tax hike. But Ireland can’t hold a grudge against its favorite sons, even during an economic crisis.

“People complained at the time,” says Owen Durgan of the Ministry of Finance. “But we have companies moving here from the rest of the EU, so it all evens out. We wouldn’t make an issue of it.”

 

THANKS TO RAMPANT real estate development that revitalized the city starting in the ’90s, Dublin has been something of a canary in a coal mine with regard to the global financial meltdown— the credit crunch hit here early and hard. A project along Hanover Quay would have forced U2 to leave their longtime home, while plans were made for a gleaming, 400-foot-tall U2 Tower that would have provided swanky replacement digs; both projects have been delayed indefinitely.

It is very much in U2’s nature to view the crisis as another opportunity to establish themselves as vital, to remain the people’s champs. Where their last two tours were arena affairs engineered to

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reconnect the band with their audience and, to a certain degree, with each other, this summer’s in-the-round stadium outing will attempt to transpose that intimacy into a more affordable setting, without skimping on the LEDs. Bassist Adam Clayton, 49, who in his fitted shirt and slacks more closely resembles an art dealer than the band’s resident ex-hellion, sees music’s relationship to outside economic forces as a constantly mutating cycle.

“Think about the big bands, the big orchestras that used to tour,” he says. “Then the stock market crash came and they slimmed down to quartets, because that was cheaper.”

Initially, U2’s interest in business was a matter of self-preservation. “I always want to know the forces that are going to fuck with me,” Bono says. “I didn’t want to be someone who was given a little label to run. I wanted to be sitting at the table deciding the fate of my and other musicians’ lives.” Since then, it’s become an increasingly personal and politically driven pursuit for him; he teamed up with Grateful Dead advisor and entrepreneur Roger McNamee to form the venture-capital firm Elevation Partners. Bono

bristles against the notion that he’s less audacious or credible an artist just because he has a rooting financial interest in, say, the new Palm Pre phone. To his mind, his musical and nonmusical ventures are part of the same body of work, and audiences have grown to understand that.

“People are smart; they’re also interested in commerce and other forces that shape the world. They don’t need the ‘let’s pretend’ game we used to play,” he says. When Bono latches on to an idea, which he does often and easily, he stands and paces. He started wearing sunglasses around 1992 to help get into character as a rock star, to create “a little bit of distance” as he says, and he’s barely taken them off since. When he does remove his custom Armani shades to lock eyes and make a point, the effect is not unlike John Belushi finally shedding his Ray-Bans to arch a brow at Carrie Fisher in The Blues Brothers. “One of the most misunderstood words in the lexicon of pop culture is authentic,” he continues. “‘Okay, somebody certainly can’t be ambitious for material things if he is to be an artist—let’s establish more ground rules!’ Being fucked-up on smack looked like authenticity to a lot of people, but guess