Now we need to put the firepower of rock ‘n’ roll back. So we went to songwriting school, and we’re back and we’re good! Over those two albums, ‘Songs Of Innocence and Experience’, our songwriting returned. 'With the band, I was like, this is not what we do, and we can only do that experimental stuff if we have the songwriting chops. The discipline of our songwriting, the thing that made U2 - top-line melody, clear thoughts - had gone. The progressive-rock virus gets in, and we needed a vaccine. He told The New York Times in October: 'We all make mistakes. He teased: 'We have a lot of great material in the pipeline.'īono revealed in October that the upcoming record - which the group have been teasing since 2009 - won't be their next LP because he is keen to drop a rock record first. That time would have been spent working on ideas and early-stage new songs. We came home, and almost immediately the world was turned upside down. We finished our last show in India in December of 2019. 'For me, that was such a creative opportunity.'Īsked if they would have still done the acoustic LP if it hadn't been for the COVID-19 lockdown, he replied: 'We'll never know, will we? We were due for some time off. Maybe it's something to do with the lockdown, having the time to not do very much. who knows? But the answer to the question is 'yes.' I'm finding myself for the first time in a little while getting very excited about the electric guitar again. I've been working a lot on new guitar music, and I'm very excited about it. U2 have 'a lot of great material in the pipeline'.įrontman Bono put a planned album called 'Songs of Ascent' on hold because he wants U2 to release a 'noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album' first.Īnd guitarist The Edge says they've been busy working on lots of different tunes.Īsked if he's working on new ideas with the guitar, he told Guitar Player magazine: 'I know the answer to that. The Edge says lockdown was a 'creative' period for U2

Al jackson hold on to hope