Getting close to The Edge

The Edge rings to say he's in Miami. It's the daily lull between soundcheck and showtime for U2's 75th show on the Vertigo tour. After he's finished talking to TimeOut he'll have dinner while trying "to remember how to play whatever new songs we are playing".

The tour will be well past the 100 mark by the time the Dublin-born band play in Auckland on St Patrick's Day, March 17.

"We promise we won't do a traditional Irish set," he quips when reminded of the date's significance.

Can't speak for everyone, of course, but we promise not to request any jigs.

Miami is an interesting place to be talking to the man who is still the biggest musical brain in the biggest band in the world. There was a song called Miami on 1997's Pop - a half-baked album moving U2 furthest away from the U2 rock which has made them stadium-fillers since the mid 80s.

After reinventing themselves in the early 90s on Achtung Baby and Zooropa, on Pop they embraced all things mirrorball and nightclub. The Edge sublimated his trademark guitar sound into the electronic barrage. It felt like one sidestep too many. It remains a downward drop on their sales chart.

"Yeah the Pop album probably was a lesson learned - don't book the tour before the album is out. But I think we were on to something.

"There are ideas on that record that are still very current and dissecting the group and taking it from a completely different point of view was an exciting idea at the time.

"We didn't quite pull it off, but it was still a valid thing to do."

It's little wonder then that on the subsequent albums (2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and last year's How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb) the band largely embraced the sound they established throughout the 80s - the one largely led by The Edge's guitar.

To be sure, that singer fella does a fair bit - lyrics, singing, being rock's greatest actual elder statesman on on his days off.

But the guitar of the man born plain old Dave Evans has been what has always defined U2 as U2.

If Bono shouted it from the mountain-tops, then The Edge conjured up the rest of the landscape - the wide horizons, deep valleys, lightning storms, the occasional civil war.

The pivotal U2 songs have invariably started with The Edge's guitar churning, chiming, reverberating.

The band's early singles like I Will Follow and 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had him taking the twitchy, trebly energy of the post-punk era and turning it into a clarion call.

In the mid 80s songs like Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name were shaped by his guitar echoing off the stratosphere in layers of digital delay.

While 1991's Achtung Baby - arguably the band's best album - had The Edge at his wildest (the chainsaw buzz of The Fly) and his most sweetly restrained (One).

There are Edge moments aplenty on the band's two 21st century albums.

They are records which he sees as having connections to their early efforts and coming at a time when many a younger band is quoting U2's early sound.

Songs from the band's early years have found their way back into the Vertigo tour setlist. Having tried to embrace the future throughout the 90s, now it seems they've reconciled themselves with their past.

"It's something that we felt appropriate because it felt fresh to go back to those early songs and early albums and we found a connection with what we are doing right now in terms of the sound of the last few records."

The band has something of an anniversary coming up in the New Year - it will be 30 years since the four North Dublin teenagers first played together in drummer Larry Mullen's kitchen.

As punk raged across the Irish Sea from Britain, the band took what it needed from rock's new burst of energy and started to forge its own sound.

"There was a feeling that we had to tear up the rule book and find a new voice in what was at that point a well-established form," he says of those early U2 days, even before they had seen inside a studio.

"We drew a lot of inspiration from a lot of the groups who were around at the same time as us - the Skids, the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, the Fall, the Associates, Magazine, Buzzcocks, the Clash - bands who were our contemporaries and they, like ourselves, were trying to do something new.

"The big throw-down for me as a guitar player was to not sound like bad white blues, which was the most common approach to guitar playing at that point. [New York art-punk outfit] Television were a big inspiration, and Patti Smith, because they similarly didn't rely on those approaches to guitar playing and song structure. And Brian Eno - they all helped in a sense to show there was another way to approach this which wasn't that real cliche white blues, which I really wasn't interested in.

"As time went by, it became kind of interesting and novel to explore the blues, but not do it in a way that everyone else had done before."

What would the young teenage guitarist of 11 O'Clock Tick Tock think of the 44-year-old bloke playing Vertigo these days? "I think he would probably like most of the things I am doing now.

"It's interesting, because listening to most of the early records and playing those early songs it does bring you back to that time and the aesthetic sensibility of that era.

"I am actually extremely impressed by the guy who played 11 O'Clock Tick Tock and the rest of his band.

"Even at that time there was an awful lot we didn't know and a lot of mistakes were made in terms of songwriting and structure and production, but there was so much that was innovative and breaking new ground and mixing it up in a great way. People, I think, were right to like those early albums."

Those quickfire early efforts - Boy in 1981, October in 1982, War in 1983, the live set Under a Blood Red Sky and Unforgettable Fire in 1984 - set up the band for their world-conquering biggest-seller, 1987's Joshua Tree.

That album included the track One Tree Hill, inspired by U2 crew member and New Zealander Greg Carroll, who was killed in a motorcycle crash in Dublin in 1986.

The band had recruited him during their first playing visit here in 1984 where they played two nights at the Logan Campbell Centre right underneath the hill.

Four years later, the band - as well as playing Wellington and Christchurch - played two nights at Western Springs with BB King in support.

The last time they played in New Zealand was in 1993 when they brought the multimedia riot that was the Zoo TV tour - complete with Bono in his devilish Macphisto guise - to the Springs.

By comparison the Vertigo tour production, says The Edge, isn't as much of an extravaganza. But it still has a point to make.

"There are some people who come to the U2 show and think, 'I preferred it when there were more devils involved. It was more of a fair fight, this is too one-sided as a debate. We liked Macphisto, we liked all that debate'.

"But I think if you come from an appreciation of U2 the soul band, this tour - and the last one - is the one that will really connect on that level.

"It's more about the songs and the spirit of the band. The theme of the tour, aside from the songs, is trying to include the political aspects - particularly of Bono's work and the band's work over the years in the context of the shows, in a way that seems organic and natural, without trying to jump on a soapbox."

The perception, though, is that Bono never actually jumps off the soapbox. That he's the political conscience of the group and the rest leave the talking to him. They're the players.

"That's probably fair enough as a description right now and the band has always been political. I've always had aspirations to use our band as a platform to do things that are worthwhile.

"The opportunity arrived a few years ago for Bono to do that and take it up a few notches. Almost by necessity that meant the rest of us had to pick up any slack of him not being around. So, yeah, that is probably a fair enough assessment right now.

"He's found a whole new approach to combining rock'n'roll and politics - rock'n'roll's role was always to be outside the meeting, the role of the activist. Bono has taken that activist idea inside the meetings and it's working out very well."

The Edge's role in the U2-biz is being the guy who puts his stamp on the music from early song sketches to finished product.

"Early on in an album project my role is mostly to generate ideas, get everybody inspired ... and in the end it's about whether everybody else can find their way into those ideas. So I suppose I am mostly caught up with the music itself and occasionally with lyrics if the song is a song that I can write for. But it changes a lot, with us there's no demarcation or the sense that 'this is what I do'."

Still, when he's on stage playing guitar, fiddling with his effects units, playing occasional keyboards and singing harmonies he looks busier than the rest of them.

"Sometimes I look over at Adam [Clayton, bassist] and think, 'How did I get this gig?' But I do love it and I do love singing as well and playing guitar - that is what I do."

What role does U2 play in his life? Can he wake up in the morning and not have to worry about being in the biggest band in the world?

"Yeah, definitely. Particularly when we are not doing anything. Sometimes when we are in the middle of a tour because there is so much focus on us right now, it's hard to forget and when you are out you are quite self-conscious. But when you are not touring and there is no push in the media it's quite easy for us to kick back, zone out of the whole thing and just really have quite a normal existence ... particularly living in Ireland, it's just not as intense there, that whole culture of celebrity."

Still, it's nice work if you can get it. The Edge has played guitar in a band which has had one of rock's most remarkable runs. There are not many bands who, after a 25-year run, can generate both vast ticket sales and genuine interest in their new albums.

"People still seem to like our current records. It's not like we are selling a couple of thousand of the new record and everybody just wants to hear the old songs.

"I think the reason that is, is we're interested in the culture and we evolve as music evolves. We are just absorbed in it. It's not a conscious thing.

"But we don't want to ever become a caricature of ourselves so we'll keep changing, keep developing and keep moving."

Even if much of the movement is done by private jet and motorcade?

"Yeah, but I appreciate it. All of that stuff, the motorcades and the aeroplanes, are unfortunately a necessity to get from one place to the next.

"But it's the privilege to be able to play in front of a U2 crowd that really knows and loves what we do. We all relish that and we never lose sight of how lucky we are.

"There are certain dangers being pampered rock stars, but so long as you keep it in perspective and don't lose sight of the fact that there is an aspect that is very silly about it all. You've got to have a giggle at that and not get too uptight about it and not take it too seriously."


LOWDOWN


WHO: The Edge, U2 guitarist.


BORN: Dave Evans, August 8, 1961, Barking, Essex (he shifted to Dublin when he was an infant).


KEY GUITAR MOMENTS: I Will Follow, Pride (In the Name of Love), Bullet the Blue Sky, With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Desire, The Fly, One, Numb (not a guitar song but he sang lead on it), Vertigo. CONCERT: Ericsson Stadium, Friday, March 17.


TICKETS: On sale December 5. Prices - standing/GA $99, A reserve seats $199, B reserve seats $130, C reserve seats $99.


TRIVIA: Since releasing their first album Boy in 1981, U2 have sold more than 850,000 albums in New Zealand alone. Their biggest local seller is 1987's The Joshua Tree which sold 210,000 copies.