U2’S BACK! On Dublin’s south side

PrOdu CtiON by JN PrOdu CtiON; SPeCial thaNkS tO the ClareNCe hOtel

tive and confused as I was for a few years.”

“I think part of people’s frustration with U2 has always been: Where’s the shit?” says Mullen. “Our transgressions just weren’t as interesting as coke and hookers. You want scandal; that’s good shit. Everyone’s had their moments, and there are skeletons in the closet, but we’ve been very lucky. We may have gotten away with murder. This thing we have is so well protected, but being inside it, I look at it and think, ‘If only you knew how dysfunctional it really is.’ ”

shouts over the railing in a thick, shrill brogue:

“Bono! I can’t believe you’ve come back to the spot we met! I want you to meet your son!”

“That’s my boy!” the singer beams backs. When the shoot is done, Edge, Mullen, and Clayton make their way through the looky-loos, ducking into cars that will take them to the studio for more rehearsal. Bono follows close behind, signing autographs and posing for pictures. One fan thanks the band for staying in Dublin. “We’ll never leave you,” Bono replies.

It’s late on a frigid January day, and U2 are huddled along a canal beside a housing project in the Dolphin’s Barn neighborhood on the south side of Dublin, having their photograph taken for what must, to them, feel like the 342,676th time. A boisterous crowd has gathered on the bridge above them, snapping shots on cellphones. If Bono thinks Dubliners are bored with him, he can’t mean these people. A ruddy-faced bleached blonde in (I hope) her 40s clutches her child and

 

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ULTIMATELY, THE EXPLANATION as to why U2 are able to thrive, to even want to thrive, where so many others have faded may be the simplest: They have embraced the inconveniences of success and of dealing with one another as expertly as they’ve reaped the benefits, and if that were so easy to do, we’d be heralding the Police’s 12th album in 30 years. (U2 celebrated the end of the most publicly aired source of intraband tension—Bono palling around with George W. Bush—at January’s inauguration.) Whatever the reaction to No Line on the Horizon—and Bono acknolwedges the single “Get on Your Boots” confounded some listeners—it embodies the band’s coexisting polar opposites: experimentation and commercialism, artifice and philanthropy, what

Bono calls, “real intimacy and real scale,” all at a cultural moment that hasn’t proven tolerant of nuanced duality. U2 feel properly galvanized.

“The world has become a bigger place for us,” Clayton told me earlier. “You become comfortable flying off to different places and doing shows here and TV or press there. Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? Why not be a contender?”

“We’re very lucky egos didn’t break up this band,” says Edge. “And there’s an element to it that’s ridiculous, still being in a street gang in your 40s. But what’s the alternative?”

With a massive tour, Bono and Edge’s music for Julie Taymor’s Broadway-bound SpiderMan, and very likely another album all coming up in rapid succession, Bono concedes that U2 have indeed approached rarefied territory. “You might despise the band or the music,” he says, “but there’s a phenomenon that continues to evolve, still alive, taking risks. I would hope it’d bring smiles to faces seeing us not broken by the industry, not just still standing, but running down the road. The guitar player is on fire, the singer’s voice might be 100 times better than it was in 1985. How? And then people come back at you with these—ugh—dishwater arguments.” His face reddens.

“Authenticity, my arse. Isn’t it interesting?”

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