In June 2004, I went back to Killiney for the first time in eighteen months. My ambition to “sit down together and read through the manuscript” with Bono had been conjured up several times, but always postponed. So it was looking good. After a quick cup of coffee in the kitchen, Ali left and the house seemed deserted. Before we got started, Bono was anxious for me to listen to a few songs the band had just completed. One of them was “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” which he’d previously sung at his father’s funeral. Neither CD system, either in the kitchen or in the study, seemed to work. So we eventually listened to the unfinished studio CD through his daughter Eve’s ghetto blaster. I made the predictable joke about the shoemaker’s children who always go barefoot. It had been the same at Elton John’s place, Bono revealed.
I remember Bono telling me that U2 fans knew him better than his best friends, because he sings through his fans’ headphones directly into their ears. Well, may I contradict him? Hedoessing in the ears of his friends. As the song was playing and I was sitting next to him, he kept on interrupting, singing over his own lines like an annoying passenger in a car. Except, it was not annoying—it was moving. The three songs I heard made a huge impression, especially “City of Blinding Lights”: here was the original sadness and pounding melancholy of old U2, shot through with the same desperate craving. The band sounded twenty-five years old but at the same time reborn.
Anyway, things—and that didn’t exactly come as a surprise—didn’t go according to the plan. Sure, Bono was available for a couple of hours, but the idea of “reading through” the manuscript was out of the question. I was the only one to bring a text all scribbled through with question marks and incidental questions. Bono had no idea where his copy was and did not seem to really care. I found one of the chapters lying next to the phone, one of his answers covered with a cryptic circle in the middle (no, not a coffee-cup ring). I needed him to talk more about his father and his childhood. It felt like he’d been a bit reticent about it. You already know the result; it found its way inside chapters 1, 2, and 4 of this book.
I remember that just as the gates opened to let his new Maserati get through (“We shouldn’t leave everything to the Germans,” he pronounced), he sang along to “Vertigo,” the new U2 single, which sounded like an undiscovered punk-rock stroke of genius from 1979. I noticed an unexpected pair standing there by the gates, waiting to get a glimpse of Bono: a dignified father and his young son, waving with a kind of humble pride at King Bono driving his own coach. It seemed to me they were paying their respects to a nineteenth-century poet and national hero, not a rock star.
Just a couple of weeks later, we talked again on the phone. It turned out we had the same topic in mind. The news had just been announced in theWall Street Journalthat Bono was joining the board of Elevation Partners, a new venture capital firm. This is how Robert A. Guth’s report read:
Bono, lead singer for rock band U2 and antipoverty activist, is starting a new gig: media and entertainment investing. The 44-year-oldrock star is joining Elevation Partners, a new Silicon Valley fund set up earlier this year by veteran technology investor Roger McNamee and John Riccitiello, who in April left his post as president of videogame maker Electronic Arts Inc. for Elevation. Fred Anderson, 60, who retired earlier this month as Apple Computer Inc.’s finance chief, also will join Elevation. The participation of Bono should sharply raise the profile of Elevation, which people familiar with the fund say initially will raise $1 billion for buyouts and investments in media and entertainment companies, seeking to profit from turmoil in those sectors. Elevation is expected to look for investment opportunities in media and entertainment companies disrupted by the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies. Music, movies, publishing and other traditional media industries are grappling with how to exploit new distribution means—including the Internet or cellular phones—while stemming piracy that such technologies enable.
Once again, Bono found a way to bring up the subject of Africa as he was answering my third question. But I guess I found a deft way too to maneuver that devil.
I think I’m going to address the businessperson today.
Sure. Have you seen the Wall Street Journal piece this week?
Yes, I’ll be getting to that. But I was wondering how I should address you now that you are a co-chairman of that board: “Mister President,” maybe? That reminds me of a silly yet funny story that my father used to tell me. He was raised in Milan. You’re aware that Italians love grand-sounding titles, to such a degree that calling someone “Sir”—“Signore”—may be close to insulting him. There is a man crossing some street in Milan, quite absentmindedly, and a car is just ten seconds away from hitting him. Someone is desperately trying to call for his attention: “Attenzione, dottore!” No reaction. Then he calls out louder: “Avvocato, attenzione!” Still no reaction. Then, he goes at the top of his voice, wringing his hands: “Commendatore! Attenzione!” But the man wouldn’t turn round. And nobody in that street dares to say Signore! So bang, the car crashes into the unfortunate man, and he’s lying dead on the road, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers with their mouths wide open. So after I read about this Wall Street Journal thing, I was thinking: Now, how shall I address Bono in his new capacity? I mean, it might be dangerous for you if people dare not address you as Bono anymore. How about: “You dirty capitalist pig”? Will that do the trick? [Bono laughs heartily]
Guilty, your honor! Yeah, that’s a high compliment, pretty good for me. Pigs are useful. They’re the cleanest animal in the farmyard, and they bring home the bacon.
I’d like to get into the details of your glorious life as a pig. Did you really want to be that pig in the first place? In U2, are you the born businessman of the group?
Well, the first time we went to get a record deal, I went as the band’s manager [laughs], which was interesting, because Paul [McGuinness] had, rather wisely perhaps, said: “You’re not ready for a record deal.” He didn’t want to go around the record labels until we had better songs. But I thought our songs had something. So I went to London with Ali. We were eighteen and seventeen years old in 1978. I’d never been before. It was a very special trip for us. We stayed in a guesthouse. I brought the demo tape around to record companies, and then to the NME, Sounds, and The Record Mirror. So I remember I would drop in with the tape, I’d give it to a journalist I had read and wanted to meet, and ask them to listen. Usually they would say: “Look, if I like it, I’ll give you a call back.” And I would interrupt:
“Well, then I’ll call you in an hour.” [laughs] And they were going: “What?”
It’s true. That’s the way it happened, in those days. You’d push the door open into the editorial office of a rock mag. It wasn’t guarded, or anything, and you’d propose your stuff, be it a tape or an article.
They were all so very kind to me, those writers. After hawking the music around, two record companies were interested in offering us a deal. Now this was before we’d had a management contract with Paul. So he got a bit of a fright when I came home. We had two record companies wanting to make a deal, and he wasn’t even signed up as a manager. He quickly signed us up. Look, we never did close those deals. But the point is I always felt that with the gift comes the urge to bodyguard it. I never bought into the cliché “I’m the artist. Keep me away from the filthy lucre and the tawdry music-business world.” It’s just complete horseshit. It’s horseshit! It’s been going on for years. I just want to say: “Stop that!” Because I know I’ve grown up with a lot of these bands. Some of them are the most awful, selfish, darkest individuals you could find. And some of the people in the record company who go home to their wives at night might be people you’d rather go on vacation with. I know some incredibly inspired business people, and ethical, and I know some real assholes with a golden voice. So I just don’t have that picture of the world.
So what was the first important business decision that you made?
Within our band, we started a kind of cooperative where we published everything equally amongst us. That quickly got all those arguments that normally happen in bands about whose song is going on the album and whose song isn’t. This was at the behest of Paul, and established a pattern of extraordinarily smart advice over the years. It was Paul who felt that it would be a great thing if we could keep ownership of our songs and our copyrights, and even our master tapes. So at one point, I think it was, like, 1985, we renegotiated our deal with Island Records, took lower royalties, but at the end of the day, meaning after the contracts concluded, as I think I already told you, all the master tapes and the copyright would return to us. Another thing I will be forever grateful to Chris Blackwell for.
So very soon, U2 was tainted by the filthy lucre and the tawdry music-business world.
U2 were never dumb in business. We just had a strong sense of survival in us. We essentially became our own record company, living in Dublin, not in London, or New York, or Los Angeles. We don’t sit around wondering about world peace all day long. We’re not sitting around like a bunch of hippies. We’re from punk rock, and we’re on top of it. I wish we were more on top of it, but that’s an important part of that story. I’ve just been out, speaking to various people in business. They are completely bewildered when I tell them my story. I mean, they have no idea. They think that the record company came up with the name U2! Or they think that our manager was the person who planned our pathway to success. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Paul McGuinness mentored us in principles that proved to be the best there were, and the record company helped us in our journey. But we are very much in charge of our own destiny, and have been always. I think that’s really important.
I remember you described yourself as a “traveling salesman.” [Bono laughs] I mean, many artists would rather hide their business-savvy side.
Yeah. No! Particularly, I’ve had an epiphany in recent years about commerce, for my work in Africa. It has upended everything for me. You start to see that Africans are looking for a commercial way out. One of Africa’s big problems is trying to foster an entrepreneurial culture. And so you start to see that they get the thin end of the capitalist wedge. But there is a wide end. Globalization has become a pejorative term, but it’s meaningless. Globalization is like saying communication. Globalization has happened formally since deregulating international flow of money, going back to the eighties. But before that, you could say that globalization started with the sail and trade. And it turns out that the sail has done more good . . .
. . .than evil . . .
. . . than evil. Africa needs more globalization now than less. I think it’s really funny. “Globalization! What’s it doing to Africa?” And Africans are saying: “What do you mean? We can’t get any!” What critics mean is the abuse of globalization.
I think that you’re dodging the topic.
What I’m saying is: I’ve started to set up a few companies. I started to see commerce—conscious commerce—as the way forward for Africa. As an example, I’ve set up a company with my wife and the designer Rogun, called Edun. It’s a clothing line. We’re launching this in the spring of this year [2005]. We’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and capital in it. It’s an amazing thing. I want it to work as a business, I want it to make profit, but I also want it to contribute something to all the people in the chain. We have this concept of “four respects” at the heart of our company: One, respect for where the clothes are made. We want them eventually to be all made in Africa, but certainly the developing world. Two, respect for who makes them. Three, respect for the materials that they are made of. We’re trying to use organic cotton when we can. Four, respect for the people who are going to buy them—the consumer. We want to do business with Africa, because that’s what they want. I want to facilitate that. And I want to say: you can make profit without ripping people off, consumer or manufacturer. We want our clothes to tell their story, and the story to be a great one. Because when you buy a pair of jeans, the story of those jeans, where the cotton was grown, who grew it, how the sewers in the factory were treated, those stories are all woven into your jeans, like it or not. If there is a happy beginning, middle, and end, I mean if everyone in the process was treated fairly, well, then [laughs] when you put on those clothes, you’re going to feel better about them and yourself. There’s going to be some good Karma. But not if they were made by children. Ali said to me: “I want to buy children’s clothes that aren’t made by children.” So I am getting very excited by these ideas of commerce now.
Is Edun anything like your other company, Nude?
“Edun” is “Nude” in reverse. Nude, my brother and I started as a good-for-you fast-food chain. At the moment, it’s turning into a line of body-conscious products that will be made, like chocolate and coffee, in Africa, and makeup products from India. It’s just exciting, creating a product range, where again, the story of the products, and how they got there, is something you want to buy into as well as the product itself.
But, Bono, you are a performer in a band. That’s your first job. You’ve turned into a part-time humanitarian crusader. And now you’re on the verge of becoming an almost full-time businessman. Aren’t you afraid that this is all going to carry you farther away from the U2 mystique? Or, to quote a word that you used in Bologna, from the “sexiness” of being in a rock band?
But it’s never gonna be. I do all my business one day a week. And if I can’t do it in one day, I don’t want to do it. That’s it. I’m doing this with my wife. So Ali does this. And the same with the Elevation Partners fund. I told them I’ve got one day a week for this.
Sorry for the cliché, but it’s not very rock ’n’ roll, is it?
I think there’s a lot of baggage carried over from the sixties, that says a musician shouldn’t be a businessman, because—hey, man!—you’re supposed to be out there, man, just smoking the weed, putting your toes in the river, surrounded by a bunch of beautiful girls combing your hair as you watch the sun come up.
Don’t tell me that stuff never happened to you.
I have to say it sounds better and better now that I think about it . . .
[laughs]
You’re describing that with lots of gusto.
I did a lot of things when the sun came up in the mid-nineties. I can’t think of anything better right now than having my hair washed. I loved the sixties. It was the renaissance of pop. But these are different times demanding different strategies. Look at hip-hop culture, those old biases against commerce just don’t apply. It’s sexy that Jay-Z has his clothing line, or Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. People like it. People want to see an entrepreneurial spirit. They don’t want their stars to be out of it.
It seems like there’s a kind of unconscious apartheid in music. On one side, you have urban black music, which tackles materialistic concerns head-on, and on the other, white music, which is not supposed to address money and business.
That’s right. There are unwritten rules about what a rock band can do. And the rules, I am breaking them. We started dismantling them from Zoo TV, right away on. We want to take some of the good ideas of the sixties, but hopefully, we’re gonna leave out some of the less rigorous ones. We’re just saying: “No, not taking it.” What’s wrong with wanting to play arenas instead of clubs? What’s wrong with selling records? What’s wrong with wanting to make music that communicates on a grand scale? What’s wrong with writing operas? Operas were popular . . . At the time, they were looked down upon by serious musicians. The scene of the time was: “This is just a piece of fun. Let’s not take it seriously. This is not real music.” So we’ve thrown out a lot of these ideas. They’re antiquated. We can move into business, and let’s bring our idealism into whatever piece of the world we happen to be standing in.
I’m still trying to see how it was born and fostered in your mind. Can you think of fellow musicians who did great things with their money?
Well, there are very few examples in music, that’s my point. But one of the people who’s had the most impact on my life is Bob Geldof. Firstly, just through Live Aid, I ended up in Africa. I have followed on his coattails through that journey. He encouraged me, being there for me all the way. But he also gave me confidence to be . . . who I am. You don’t have to be a politician to hang out with them. You don’t have to wear a suit to be a businessman. You can be yourself at all times. And you can be as bohemian as you want to be. It’s about the quality of ideas. That’s really what Bob’s all about. Bob’s great hero is Samuel Pepys, a seventeenth-century English naval administrator and businessman.* In the end, it’s ideas that turn us on, whether they are philosophical, commercial, or political. What I would call them is melodies. I think we talked about this. I need to hear a great melody even if it’s not in a song.
Lots of people come up with brilliant ideas. But life teaches you that most of the time many obstacles prevent those ideas from turning into
realities. I mean, we discussed the discrepancies between great ideas and not so great realities in Africa. Sometimes you can’t find your way around an obstacle.
Yeah, I do have a blind spot. I mean, I have a few blind spots. [laughs] But one of them is: I don’t sometimes see obstacles.
Sure, but you must bump into them at some point.
Yeah, I’ve had a few black eyes. I mean, I know I have to climb them all the time. But it’s usually been very fortunate for me. If I’d seen the obstacles, I might have just left the idea lie. But fortunately, U2 has usually been able to overcome those obstacles by finding brilliant people. We always knew that if we didn’t know, we’d find somebody who did. And so, in U2, we’ve surrounded ourselves with the best people in business. Lawyers and accountants, and record company, and people who run our companies are the best at their job, and I think that makes overcoming the obstacles a lot easier. Look, we’re gonna find out. I mean, this clothing line, Edun, this is a whole new way of doing business. I’m told that the rag trade makes the music business look like a church fête. [laughs] And the sharks will circle, and I’m about to become shark soup. So we’ll see. But I’ve found some people in the business at the top end who are guiding myself and Ali. I think that they’ll help us negotiate these dangerous waters.
Speaking of sharks, have you ever gotten bitten in your career as a businessman? And did it leave a scar?
Yeah, we’ve made mistakes in our business.
What was the biggest one?
We made a lot of money from the sale of Island Records, because we owned a piece of it. And we put it in the hands of some people whom we liked personally, but weren’t as expert as they thought in the areas that they were investing in. And we lost a lot of money.
What sort of business did they handle?
It was a portfolio of investments. There were some great ones, and some, they just were really not great ideas, and we gave them a lot of money. As this one particular ship started to sink, rather than us jumping out, the man in charge of the fund kept spending more of our money to keep it afloat. I know it’s with hindsight, but I think anyone would have known that the ship, actually, when we bought it, had a hole in it. [bursts out laughing] So we learnt a lot. I don’t want to be too flip here. Losing money was not a nice feeling, and you’ve got to be careful because nothing begins the love of money more than the loss of money. But on the positive side it made us take more charge and interest in our business. This was, I guess, very early nineties. We had to take our financial matters very seriously, which means, when you’re involved with dealing this kind of money, you do need to take extra care not just that the cash can warp the people around you, but that it can get to you too. [laughs] Because money is a big thing, especially if you don’t have it. You have to give it respect, but you don’t want to give it too much of your love. So it means we have to sit the band in rooms, when we’d rather be making music, going through boring shit. But if you do it right, it means you only have to do that once a month, or, in my case, once a week.
But does plotting business strategy give you a thrill, the way it would to a chess player figuring out a couple of moves in advance?
Perhaps in some sort of odd way. I do love watching people work together, and build something together. When we’re making music, I’d say it’s like making a chair. Björk used to say that to me [impersonates accent]: “I’m a ploom-errrr . . . and we make ploo-ming.” [laughs] The idea that artists are different from everybody else is a dangerous idea, an arrogant one.
I also feel like you’re a manipulator sometimes. There’s a part of you that might be called . . . I don’t know, “perverse” might be going a little too far . . .
[interrupting] No, not a lot. [laughs]
But it’s something that I find really funny about you. Lots of people perceive you as very candid, full of Irish exaltation . . .
Irish whiskey, more like.
Probably. But, I feel, at the same time, you’re a gambler, or a chess player . . .
I really don’t feel like a gambler. And the reason I like the game of chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you’re in charge of them. And it’s your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you’ve made that makes you either a good or not a good chess player. It’s not luck. By the way, I’m no longer a good chess player, as it happens. But I think . . . gambling, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I never want to be in that situation. I think in business, you have to rule out as much accident as possible.
Have you ever gambled in Vegas or Monte Carlo, just for the adrenaline rush?
Very occasionally.
Did you win or lose?
I’ve been very lucky, and very unlucky. Funny, that. But I don’t do it very often. I’m fascinated by casinos for other reasons. Faith versus Luck. It’s a favorite subject.
Funny. I thought you were one hundred percent on the side of Faith.
Yeah, but I like to know what I’m up against. Luck is the opposite, if not opponent, of Faith. But let me illustrate by a complete contradiction. I had a very strange experience many years ago. A friend of mine was getting married, and he was broke. So was I. And I knew somewhere that somehow, some way, I was going to be able to help pay for his wedding. I didn’t know how, but I knew I would be. I was like a child that believed that every prayer would be answered. I haven’t really changed in that. I think every prayer is answered, but unfortunately, “No” happens much more than we’d like. [laughs] I didn’t know that then. So I thought to myself in my naiveté, in my childish way: “Oh, you know, at the back of a corn flakes box, they have these competitions and you can win a car. Maybe I should send away one of those. I bet I will win and I’ll give him the car.” Anyway, I never did send the back of the corn flakes box, and his wedding was getting closer and closer. I thought in my daftness: “I’ll win it on a horse . . .” So the Grand National, which is the biggest race in Ireland, was coming up on the weekend. I said: “That’s it. OK, I just need to get a tip.” Anyway, I’m just getting to know Ali’s parents. We were still kids, we were like eighteen or nineteen, actually. So when they asked us to go away for the weekend with them to County Cork, it was a big deal. Ali was excited; I was nervous: one, because they were sussing me out, and two, because we might miss the race. So we were both nervous. I was thinking: “Oh, damn! The Grand National. I won’t be able to go.” But on the afternoon of the race, we found ourselves in a pub called the Swan and Signet, in Cork. So I was sitting there, thinking: “What am I to do? There’s only fifteen minutes to go. I haven’t a clue about horses,” when—I’m not kidding—this kind of tramp, some odd character, walked out of the gents with a dog, and gave me a tip. I can’t remember, unfortunately, the name of the horse. Something like Rolled Gold: “Rolled Gold for the National!” he whispered under his breath. So I went: “There it is. OK, I’ve got the tip.” I turned around, swallowed hard, and said to Ali, her father and mother: “Look, I know this sounds mad, but I’d really like to make a bet in the Grand National.” And they said: “Really? But aren’t you broke?” I said: “I’d just like to put a pound on it.”—“All right, OK. If you really want to.” They were kind of disapproving, but we went to the bookies, and I sneakily put twenty pounds on Rolled Gold. So we went in, and I had twenty pounds. There was, I think, two pounds tax. I put eighteen on the horse. It was ten to one, this horse. After we left the bookies, I told them the story: I have a friend, he’s getting married, he’s broke. I want to give him the money, and I’ve had this feeling I’d be able to help him. I was so sure of the tip. And they said: “What?” And I said: “Yeah.” And they just looked at me with the kind of half smile parents have when their daughter brings home the wrong boyfriend. I told them I didn’t even want to watch the race. I was so sure of myself. Is this Faith? I don’t know. You tell me. Then we went off for a walk. Two hours later, Ali’s father, Terry, said: “Do you want to go back and see who won the National?” I said: “No, I’m not in any rush. I know who’s going to win.” And so, three hours later, we went back. I can’t remember how much it was—nearly five hundred pounds. I gave it to my friend, and he got married. It was a funny one. Ali’s father gets a laugh out of telling that story. I’m not sure what to make of it myself. Proof God has a sense of humor . . . A fluke? A cautionary tale about blind faith? Or, if you do—somewhere in the back of your subconsciousness—know some funny stuff . . .
So was it Faith or Luck?
I like to think Faith.
So, back to the Elevation Fund. I’m really curious to learn about your strategy with the music industry. There is a part of the Wall Street Journal piece that really puzzled me: “Elevation’s expected to look for investment opportunities in media and entertainment companies disrupted by the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies. Music, movies, publishing, and other traditional media industries are grappling with how to exploit new distribution means—including the Internet and cellular phones—while stemming piracy that such technologies enable.” Stemming piracy? How will you pull that off?
[laughs in slow motion like a Frenchman] Just for once, Michka, could you not ask the hard question? The “how” is not clear, but I can answer the “why.” Look, there’s a moment when you can feel a tremor in the ground underneath your feet. And then there’s another moment when there is no ground underneath your feet. We are about to enter a phase with music and film, where everything is changing, where things like the way music is bought and sold will change the kind of music that is bought and sold. As an example, in the downloading of music, pop kids are not buying the whole album. They’re just cherry-picking the best songs off the Internet. With pop music, they made the money on the album, not on the single. The single just lured the young kids to buy the album, half of which would be of no interest.
But kids aren’t buying these albums anymore. I mean, mine don’t. My son, who’s fourteen now, is quite content with Nirvana’s back catalog. And my daughter, who’s eleven, developed a passion for an old Bangles album. I don’t know about yours, but my kids don’t seem to be great consumers for the music industry, yet they’re big fans of music technology.
Madonna didn’t want to sell her songs individually online because she felt that she’d made albums, and she didn’t want people to be able to just break in and take a few songs, which I understand. But it’s a little like King Canute, the king who sat with his chair in front of the waves and told the tide not to come in. Because people are cherry-picking your songs, whether you like it or not. Like Madonna, U2 will be very, very anxious that people buy our whole album rather than cherry-pick the songs, but we still feel a commitment to let people make that decision for themselves.
What’s been happening since How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was released? Have people mainly been cherry-picking or buying the album?*
I should find out the exact percentage, but I’m happy to report from this most downloaded band, most people want the album.
Even though “Vertigo” has been the most downloaded song in the world in 2004, your point is that it affects rock music less than pop. I would say you and Madonna don’t exactly play in the same field.
I would give Madonna more credit than that, but it is less of a problem in rock music than it is in pop. Rock fans have historically been more interested in an album format. So there is an example of how investment in pop will change if there’s no way to sell that audience the album anymore. That was where the music industry got its return. The amount of money that’s spent on promoting these kinds of pop stars will drop or be redirected to different genres where the album format is still alive. Take Norah Jones. She comes from jazz, she’s the most gifted interpretive singer around. She couldn’t be further from what they look for on Pop Idol; but she’s a sales phenomenon, because people over thirty are buying her records.
Sure. They must be people like me. I’ve never figured out how to burn CDs.
That’s exactly right. A lot of them don’t know how to download. There’s a huge audience there, that’s been ignored for years, whilst eighty percent of energy and cash is spent on marketing music to people under twenty-five. New distribution models are going to make the face of the music industry unrecognizable from what it is today. Another phenomenon is telephony. Telephony is changing the way we communicate: texting. The very syntax and design of sentences have been changed. Wait till you see what this will do to music: not just ring tones or true tones! You will be able to dial up any song at any time, watch the video if you want, find out where the band is playing near you and buy tickets. What I’m really trying to say is: I’m excited about the future. It’s coming fast, and I don’t want to be run over by it. I want U2 to be a part of the future and a part in shaping the future. This opportunity with Elevation Partners is for me a chance to involve myself in the business that runs my life. I don’t want to be a casualty. I don’t want to be bullied by the business in the future. I heard a story. Jack Lemmon is in a meeting with a major Hollywood bigwig at the peak of his powers. He’s pitching something he’s been working on for years. This great genius of American cinema is halfway through his pitch, and the phone rings. Bigwig picks up the phone, goes: “OK, OK, I’ll be right with you. So, listen, Jack, project sounds great, we’re gonna have to get back to this. I’ve gotta go . . .” Jack is unceremoniously shuffled out of the building, because . . . [pauses for dramatic effect] Tom Cruise is coming in. Now, Tom Cruise would never want Jack Lemmon out of the building. He’s not that kind of person. But the story really stuck with me. And I thought, you can do all the best work in the world, but there’s a moment where some guy can just sit there and write you in or out. I don’t want to give that power to somebody.
But don’t these people already have that kind of power over U2?
No, not really. We’re in control now. But there may be a moment, in five or six years, I don’t know. We’ve got great people in the music company now, and we’ve got great relationships with them. Jimmy Iovine, who runs Interscope, the smartest and most successful music man of the last ten years, is like a blood relation. His commitment to us is way beyond business, and ours to him. But what if he wasn’t there? What if relations weren’t good with whoever was? U2 doesn’t want to be in that position. The last record before All That You Can’t Leave Behind was called Pop. Now, it sold, I think, 7 million albums or something, which is a huge success. But compared to what people were expecting, they were disappointed. Someone could have said: “Well, now, you know, it’s the end of the nineties. You guys have had your run. We’re not prepared to invest any more money in this.”
Did you actually hear that?
No, no. I’m just saying it could have happened. And then All That You Can’t Leave Behind would never have.
So your point is, given what’s going on in the music business now, even the biggest sellers are in danger.
I think the music business is really traumatized. On the one hand, I don’t think the music companies are making the best of their relationship with the audience. I think artist and fan have lost out in the music business. Neither benefited as they should have from the CD boom. The price of music went up because the price of production was at first high, but then it stayed there even when CDs were much more cheaply made. I think in the future there can be more for all three parties: more for the record company, more for the fan, and more for the artist, but only if we cooperate better together. Never has more music been listened to than today, in more locations. Instead of having one record player like they had in the seventies, in every American house, there is an average eight CD players. There is the car. People are listening to music when they’re moving. With iPods we have the most beautiful design icon for years. I’m very proud to say that U2 has its own black iPod. It is an embarrassment to me that it took a technology person, Steve Jobs at Apple, to sort out the biggest problem in the music industry—downloading music. Apple’s i Tunes have proved the point that people are prepared to pay for music online as long as it’s made easy and fun and reasonably priced. So I think the music business can prosper, but it’s going to have to rethink itself before it does so.
But what makes you think it’s going to survive anyway? Look at what Prince did. He said: “We don’t need the record companies anymore. We just have to produce the music, and then we will distribute it through the Internet, so we won’t be feeding any parasites in the record industry anymore.”
But he didn’t sell any records or CDs. Not enough anyway for an artist of his stature. That was a brave and bold move, but he underestimated how important all those people are in the process. They’re not parasites. They’re important. He used to have somebody going into NRJ* or Radio One and saying: “This new Prince single is great!” And they go: “How long hasn’t he been around? I haven’t heard anything from him . . .” And that guy goes: “No, it’s great. Listen to it.” And then, there’s somebody going into Virgin, Tower, or the FNAC† and saying: “Prince’s new album is amazing. I want to have a whole special shelf just for him. And I want to have a cardboard cutout of him.” And they go: “Well, I don’t know, we got Britney Spears coming through”—“No, no, Prince! He’s a great artist. We need him. Please.” They have a relationship. In Nice, or Paris, or Santiago, these are people working for you, working with you. These are important people representing us. The music business is necessary.
But how will it survive in the world you’re describing?
People will pay for downloads. What will happen is the download will be the paperback, and the CD will become like the hardback. But the CD, the object, will have to become a more interesting object. Instead of this little jewel box with twenty pages, this U2 album, we have a book to go with it—things you can’t download. We wanted to create the art object again. Sgt. Pepper’s, when it was released by the Beatles, wasn’t just a listening experience. It was an art experience of looking and owning this incredible Peter Blake artwork. So I think that will open a few new formats, different formats. Cynics say: why would they buy a thing you can get free by stealing it? Think about bottled water. You can get water out of a tap, without risking prosecution.
Fewer people buy hardcover books than paperbacks, don’t they?
Yeah, but a million people buy a twenty-five-dollar item. That’s a lot of money.
How many will U2 sell?
A million.
But why are you investing in the business now? What’s the urgency?
[vehemently] Because I want to understand it better! I don’t understand it as well as I can. I don’t like when I don’t know what’s coming round the corner. Some people are saying, when you turn that corner, someone’s going to mug you, right? I’ve worked for twenty years. And we own our master tapes, we own our copyrights. I don’t want that not to be worth anything. That’s for our children.
So what’s your vision of the future? How far do you see? We were talking about chess. How many moves in advance can you come up with?
Well, [clears throat] in music, the thing that I’m excited about now is how the iPod will turn into a phone. You will be able to carry your entire collection with you wherever you go on your phone. If the Internet is the freeway, your phone is the car. For the very first time, U2 is considering technology partners. We have to understand the way our music is going to be bought and sold, and the sort of systems of distribution. So now we’re on to meet phone companies. We want to meet the people in Vodaphone. We like the people at Apple. Jonathan Ive, the genius who designs for Apple, if he had a fan club, I’d be in it. As I told you, Steve Jobs made the downloading of music sexy with i Tunes, while the music business argued amongst themselves. He has created these beautiful objects that are Apple Macs. Even their commercials are great. We want to be in them, turn them into music videos.
I guess I see what you’re getting at. But I’m not quite sure about a world where artists are becoming businessmen, and businessmen are becoming artists.
The world would certainly look different. I mean, why aren’t people like this designing cars? The roads are filled with bad ideas, ugly objects with no femininity, no humor, no sex. If the job of art is to chase ugliness away, let’s start with the roads and the automobiles. Let’s get people like the Apple people on the case. I want to form relationships that are mutually beneficial rather than disadvantageous for U2.
Are the other members of U2 following you on that?
I think the band are getting extremely interested in this. These are people who’ve refused huge sums of money for relationships with commercial companies, just because they didn’t feel it was a real relationship. So a car company comes to us, offers us 23 million dollars for an old song. That’s a lot of money to turn down. We could have given the money away. As it happens, if it was another song, we might have said yes. But the song that they wanted, we just didn’t want to see it in a car commercial. We turned down another incredible sum of money from a computer firm for “Beautiful Day.” Worse than that, we liked the people involved. But we didn’t, at that point, want to be working for someone. We want to work with someone if they give us creative control. We can collaborate if you let us into your company to play with your scientists. We’re talking to various people. That was our manager’s first question to Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard when they approached us: “Can Edge get into the lab?” And she said: “Yes.” I appreciate that all of this can look like megalomania. But what’s the alternative? Just to let the world go by? To be left behind, or worse: run over, lie down in the middle of the information freeway and get hit by a truck? And you know, the truck has a “For Sale” sign on it. Why? Because it used to be delivering CDs in the old model. [laughs]
Aren’t you also involved in video games?
Video games are now where the movies were in 1920, but they’re a much less passive medium. Fathers can play with their children. Dating will never be the same again, and with giant screens and Sensurround sound, it’s total immersion. It’s a new global art form. Language is a barrier in movies, not in video games.
I hear in China, it’s the biggest thing.
Well, you see, if the world doesn’t go into recession in year 2005, it will be because of two things: because of India and China. If 200 million people in India and 200 million people in China now have disposable incomes, think about it. There’s still great poverty to be overcome, but nevertheless, there’s a new middle class of 400 million people in the world economy. They like our cars, our movies, and our music, especially in India, but they prefer theirs. [laughs] They have Bollywood there outside Delhi. In China, actually, they love video games online, so there’s not even a piracy problem. If you create a great new video game, you won’t just be selling it to the United States and Europe, Australia. You’ll be selling it to China, to India, to everywhere. The world is a completely different size for that creative act. So what’s going to happen is the same thing that’s happened with movies at the turn of the century. These interactive games, because they will be so popular, will start to draw all the most creative and talented people, even away from movies and music. You should meet my friend John Riccitiello, who is the smartest guy in that business. I’m working with him in Elevation. He’s a partner. I remember asking him: “How can we make video games emotional?” And he said: “Wow! Now that’s a project that everyone wants to be a partner of.” Am I as excited about this as I am for an AIDS vaccine? No. But there it is. It’s still very important to me.