U2 is back in the studio again at Abby Road Studios – made famous by The Beatles and are working with producer Rick Rubin.
\nFrom U2.com:<\/p>\n
Tuesday, September 5th
\nLondon, Abbey Road Studios: birthplace to most of the Beatles records, and countless other classic albums from Pink Floyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDark Side of the Moon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to Radiohead\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcKid A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.
\nLarry and Edge have flown in from Dublin, Bono from France and Adam, already in the city, has taken the short drive across town. Waiting in the control room is the instantly recognisable figure of Mr Rick Rubin, a producer whose musical pedigree stretches from Justin Timberlake to The Mars Volta, from Johnny Cash to Metallica. Rubin met up with the band earlier in the summer down in France and word is that some of what was written and demoed then will be recorded properly in the coming days.
\nWhatever the heritage of the famous Studio 2, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the spirit of the sixties blasting out when U2 showed\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it was seventies punk. Barely had the band arrived than they were into a cover of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Saints Are Coming\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, a 1978 hit for The Skids.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe saints are coming, the saints are coming.
\nI say no matter how I try, I realise there’s no reply\u00e2\u20ac\u2122
\nLarry tells us they spent most of the day on this and were still working in the small hours of Wednesday. Green Day are arriving in a few days to work with them on a cover, a collaboration to benefit Music Rising.<\/p>\nWednesday, September 6th 06
\nBack in the studio this afternoon, a late kick-off but now working on a new U2 track. Taping, as we used to call it, is briefly interrupted when Paul McCartney and Beatles producer George Martin drop by. U2 and McCartney were last in a London studio together in the summer of 2005, rehearsing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSergeant Pepper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Then playing Live 8 to a billion people next day. Bit of a moment to see Macca sliding down the bannister of the stairway from the control room to the studio floor. This place is like his second home. Then U2 got back to making music\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and on into the night.<\/p>\nThursday, September 7th 06
\nU2 were again at work by early afternoon, this time on a track that sounds like a U2 classic with an instant hook and a mesmerising chorus.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBono had demoed it in Dublin,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 explains Larry. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThen brought it to the band and even in its most basic form you had the feeling that something special was going on.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIt felt that maybe this time we were not going to be pushing a rock up a hill as we do a lot of the time with new material.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122
\nAnother late night finish but the vibes are good.<\/p>\nFriday, September 8th 06
\nBono often talks of U2\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach to creating new material as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsongwriting by accident\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing accidental going on today. Adam, Larry, Edge and Bono are seated around the control room chatting to Rubin who sits on a sprawling leather sofa. They play back their latest take and go through it passage by passage.
\nBono has three quarters of the lyric written out on a large pad of white paper \u00e2\u20ac\u201c alternative stanzas scribbled alongside the main theme. Two key lines in the verses are missing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to which Bono is la\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ing and humming on each take \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and it needs some kind of pay-off at the end. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a song with no name at the moment.
\nLarry suggests hearing the first half of one verse segued into the second half of the next. Edge comes up with a missing line – using the world \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcapologise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a rap star, says Rick, who knows about rap stars, you get extra points for getting a four-syllable word in your song. Lyrical ideas fly round the room with Bono scribbling them down. Every now and then he goes to the mic, the engineer brings the track up and he tries out a new line. Edge lays down some backing vocals. Larry and Bono swap Oasis anecdotes while Rick talks bass-lines with Adam. Edge scribbles another pair of lines on the back of an envelope.
\nBy early evening Abbey Road has emptied of musicians, engineers and producers but U2 are on a roll. By ten pm many of the missing elements in the song have been added. Everyone listens back again. Nowhere near finished but now with a complete lyric, a new opening and a different ending.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a good day,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 says the singer. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThis is one that could take the roof off! Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s call it a night.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U2 is back in the studio again at Abby Road Studios – made famous by The Beatles and are working with producer Rick Rubin. From U2.com: Tuesday, September 5th London, Abbey Road Studios: birthplace to most of the Beatles records, and countless other classic albums from Pink Floyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDark Side of the Moon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to Radiohead\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s … Continue reading U2 at Abby Road<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-oP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}