From the Sky Down Page #3

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"Let's introduce you

to your music. "

That's such a shame, really.

We had unbelievable amounts

of laughs,

except when you put

the camera on.

Then we just were like... Woosh!

It was gone.

He went through miles and miles

and miles of takes,

and there's no joy in it.

What's the deal with the camera, Phil?

Do we just pretend it's not there,

or get on with it?

No, you can do what you want.

Yeah, this is just like whatever we...

it's for fun.

So, you know, man,

if you want to talk...

It's fun for him, guys.

I know, I know.

The good thing is, it's your camera.

As post production started,

they involved themselves in the cut,

and got to choose which way

they really wanted to be seen.

The film is entirely shot in America,

showing U2 in America, why is that?

Why is that?

We let people see

the sort of naivete.

And what came out the other end

was a slew of reviews saying

these people

are f***ing megalomaniacs.

Backstage footage shows the band being

deliberately inarticulate in interviews

and pretending that's cute.

But it's not cute to giggle

and pretend you have nothing to say.

Everyone was kind of

a little shell-shocked.

You start to believe...

what people are saying about you.

You start to think,

maybe this is the end.

I was sitting with Ali, she said,

"You've gotten so serious.

"You've gotten so serious.

"The boy I fell in love with

was so full of mischief,

"so full of madness.

"You were a much more

experimental character -

"what's happened to you?"

A group is a sort of

collective ego in a sense.

And that ego is very easily offended.

We found out

that he had left the group

when we got copies of the letter

from the record companies.

Of course, popularity is a great ruiner

of friendships in a way.

That makes me feel like sad,

you know?

That's like somebody

taking you out to dinner

and you think

you had a great time

and at the end of the night

they go,

"Hey, you know what?

I had a really lousy time.

"And you know what?

You're lousy too! But thanks for dinner. "

It's to do with personalities,

you know what I mean?

I didn't split. I didn't do a walk,

Noel did, so ask him.

Apparently

I was a nightmare to work with.

I had to have my own dressing rooms

and stuff. I don't think so, mate!

Well, I'm going home!

This... I was explaining to people

the other night,

but I might've got it a bit wrong.

This is the end of something

for U2-

that's why we're playing

these concerts.

We were physically exhausted,

and creatively felt

we'd run out of steam.

It's no big deal,

it's just we have to go away...

...and just dream it all up again.

Stop it!

Hang on,

wait until I put me hat on.

Anyway, we are going...

going very shortly

to The Point Depot in Dublin,

where U2 are playing.

This didn't become us,

this kind of band we had become.

We looked like a big overblown

rock band running amok.

The Irish sons

returning home triumphant.

Irish people go, "Who?"

First of all

they look like some American band.

And not just American,

but like some American show band.

You left here as an interesting

post punk phenomenon...

...you go to America, fine,

we'll run with you on The Joshua Tree,

but now you've actually become this,

you've come back,

and by the way,

you're not very good at it.

When we were kids, 16/17 years old,

going to see The Clash in Dublin,

this was the enemy.

Have we become the enemy?

We hadn't committed any great crimes

against humanity or art -

all we'd done was been

a little self-conscious and overblown.

I'd like to thank Edge

and Adam and Larry

for letting me be in their band.

They started out, as do most bands,

by saying we don't want to be that,

and we don't want to be that

and we don't want to be that,

and then they carried on by saying

we don't want to be what we were either.

As an artist, your biggest enemy

is your own history, actually.

Couldn't make corrective adjustments

to put it right -

the limb had to come off, you know.

Let's get a big f***ing chainsaw

and cut down the Joshua Tree.

Great, good, thank God for that.

So, now, let's go and figure it out.

However,

that was the end of the conversation.

Bono made that statement, that was it.

Next time we met, I think, was

not long before we turned up in Berlin.

We were running away from Lovetown

and Rattle And Hum as fast as we could.

I was listening to bands like KMFCM,

Einsturzende Neubauten,

the Young Gods.

Machine age music is really what it is.

It's about the use of repetition,

and taking the humanity out of things,

to a degree,

so that the humanity

that you put in there means more.

Something about

that new decade, the '90s,

something about

the fall of the Berlin Wall,

a new Europe emerging,

that's what we were focussing on.

There was a lot of experimental

avant garde kind of music,

that was coming out of Berlin

and coming out of Germany.

Berlin was all about texture.

Manchester was about rhythm -

rhythm that could only be created

using computers and machines.

I mean, the kids in Manchester

don't know about that -

they just instinctively know that

that stuff is uncool,

this is a cool direction.

It was at that moment when

rock and roll and club culture

had sort of come together -

records being made for dancing.

You could really trace it back

to German theory,

Stockhausen and these ideas about

what modern composition

should be about.

German music had a huge impact on us,

from Kraftwerk.

When I was 16, one of the first records

I bought for Ali was Man Machine,

for her 15th birthday.

This is soul music from Europe.

This is the invention of electronic music.

And they had a big influence

on Joy Division,

which had a big influence on us.

It was just an education in rhythm

going on that you couldn't ignore.

How were we gonna absorb that,

and allow it to just make us better?

After the New Year's Eve gig,

there wasn't a lot of communication.

Bono and Edge took themselves off,

and decided to try and find a new way

of writing and developing ideas.

There was a little bit of abandonment,

and a lot of that abandonment, for me,

I spent in not good places.

I took some drum lessons and listened

to music I hadn't listened to before.

Cream, and Ginger Baker

and stuff like that.

You have to reject one expression

of the band... first,

before you get to the next expression,

and in between you have nothing.

You have to risk it all.

The height of technology

was the DAT player.

So I rang Bono and said, "I've got

this idea. See what you think. "

He came in and he heard it and said,

"I think it's good. Let's try it. "

So we recorded a few takes.

Yeah, all right.

C'mon now and give me

that chocolate mousse.

- Ready.

- So high...

Bass guitar.

All right, Reggie. Give me

that chocolate mousse.

Thank you.

A rhyme.

Oh, it's the bass part

from Mysterious Ways.

It's like trying on

a new leather jacket.

You're just like...

"Yeah, this can work, like. OK.

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