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Around the interview grounds

After a brief lull, members of U2 have been interviewed on more radio stations across the planet. The most high profile interview was with Dave Fanning on Sunday on Ireland's RTE 2fm. This is a more in-depth interview than any yet conducted after Songs of Innocence dropped, and Dave gets beyond some of the cliches and repetitive questions of standard interviews. However, there is no tour news to report. Perhaps most interesting is Bono's statement at the 24 minute mark that "Invisible" will be "on [Songs of Innocence's] physical package in some which way".

Some tour news emerged when Edge was interviewed by Radio FFN in Hannover, Germany. FFN have conveniently presented the interview broken into separate audio files for each question. In response to a question about tour plans (the second-last one), Edge was not as explicit as Bono was to a different German station last week. He emphasised that "we are talking about [touring] and have no announcement to make but we are definitely making some serious plans", adding that "I would not be surprised if I have to buy some new luggage in the early part of next year". Also note his response to the third question, that U2 "actually had an album that we could've released almost a year ago ... [but in taking more time] we've come up with an album I'm really proud of now". What about Songs of Experience? The answers to the second and fourth questions are enlightening: he explains they still need to write a couple of songs and there is a long way to go, but they have a lot of material and hopefully its release won't take as long as Songs of Innocence. The two albums are companion pieces, "part of an overall creative project".

Bono gave a few more interviews, and the one with the most interesting answer tour-wise was his Absolute Radio interview with Christian O'Connell. At the 10:10 mark, he said that when U2 tour next year they will "try and play at the O2 [Arena, London] and places like that, more indoors than outdoors this time, but we'll see where it takes us". Is Bono looking forward to playing Songs of Innocence material live? "These songs are songs that I think will play themselves." At 6:50 he explains that he doesn't know yet which songs will become singles.

The smaller venues theme also emerged in an interview with Brazil's Rádio Cidade 102.9 (another one handily broken into question-by-question segments). Bono gave away little regarding a South American tour, but emphasised that "we've just got to get those venues right ... get some good venues to play; I'd love to play some small venues if we could as well. If it wasn't too elitist I would like that." Later in this interview, Bono again alludes to "Invisible" appearing on the physical edition of Songs of Innocence.

In an interview on Portland, Oregon's KINK FM, Bono spoke (at the 43 minute mark) of the band's ambitions when performing live. "We try to spend a lot of the ticket price on the show ... if we keep looking after our audience, they will keep looking after us." This is part of a broader discussion in which Bono looks back on ZooTV and Popmart (the Eugene show referenced by one of the interviewers is this one on Popmart). Finally, in an interview on San Francisco's KFOG 104.5, Bono didn't give away any new tour information, but at the start you can hear him sing the title line of The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renée" - and then jokingly claim it as his own song!

If you want a full list of interviews with links to audio, U2Wanderer is maintaining a handy list. We will continue to report on tour news in interviews, but we will generally not cover interviews that lack tour-related content.


Posted on by Axver


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