“We are turning the amps on.”

It sounds like Songs Of Surrender was a simple idea that got complicated?

“That’s fair enough. It was very much a Bono and Edge project. It started out being, ‘How could we do something that mirrored the chapters in Bono’s book?’ The songs had to show some sort of perspective and development. So, something that may have been maybe better conceived as 15 or 20 songs started to mushroom into these 40 tunes.”

There are quite a lot of tracks without drums and bass…

“I just put tracks down. I didn’t know whether they were going to use them. Some of the songs, I thought of them as how those Simon & Garfunkel records were made… essentially acoustic guitar tracks that there were some rhythmic elements added to…”

Larry has said he can’t play live with U2 this year due to imminent back surgery. Would you go out with a different drummer?

“We have to wait and see what the doctors tell us and what he feels comfortable doing. We are itching to get back out there. It will, of course, be very sad if we don’t have our lifelong friend and drummer with us.”

Bono has been talking about the next U2 record being a “noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable” rock album.

“We are turning the amps on. I certainly think the rock that we all grew up with as 16- and 17-yearolds, that rawness of those Patti Smith, Iggy Pop records… that kind of power is something we would love to connect back into.”

This will be distinct from your long-touted ‘Songs Of Ascent’ album?

“Well, ‘Songs Of Ascent’ is a much more meditative, spiritual record. This will be ‘Songs For Fighting’, I’d say (laughs).”