U2 open up on ‘dodgy’ Trump, how America is changing and why they’re touring Joshua Tree 30 years on
U2 discuss being back on the road three decades on and banning the US President from attending
ON stage, microphone in hand, Bono looks out on an (as yet) empty American stadium.
He’s at the soundcheck for the first night of U2’s US tour at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field to celebrate the start of The Joshua Tree Tour 2017. It might be 30 years since the album was originally released but today bears many similarities.
In his only sit-down interview, the rock star says: “People are angry. In the last year the world has changed. Trump getting elected shows the world is not the same.
“Grieving and totally depressed. People feel like their innocence has died a little bit. It’s like Brexit, it’s showing that people are not happy with their lives and they are asking questions.”
Bono is explaining why U2 decided to tour their multi-million selling 1987 album The Joshua Tree now, playing it live for the first time in its entirety and original order as the central part of the show in front of 1.7million fans over 33 dates.
U2 have always refused to do nostalgia, touring only new albums. But their 1987 breakthrough album about the Two Americas — as it was originally going to be called — the real and mythical one, included songs about oppression, terrorism, war and social commentary.
He explains: “It was something that rang home and was relevant to today’s world. The songs are 30 years old but events of the last year have changed people.”
It’s a busy afternoon and time is tight for the Irish superstars. I chat with Bono first in a backstage dressing room before he’s escorted to a quick roundtable chat with 15 journalists, then I’m joined by bassist Adam Clayton.
He says: “You can’t really go anywhere without talking about how things have changed in the world in the last year.
“And we need to get over that. I’m like everyone else. I wake up every day and want to find out what Trump has said or tweeted. But we have to stand back and look at the overall effects.
“Rolling back all the safeguards of the environment is hugely damaging and will take a long time to put right. And firing (FBI Director) James Comey looks dodgy. We don’t know what the repercussions of that are yet.”
The show in Seattle is spectacular. Powerful visuals and films made by long-time collaborator, Dutch photographer and film maker Anton Corbijn who is also present tonight, are shown on a huge screen behind the band as they perform.
Bono says: “It is quite a ride, it’s a wild ride. You have to step inside our songs as there are all kinds of feelings wrapped up in them. This was 1987 when we were starting to realise about the personal and the political. I started to discover the hypocrisy of the human heart. It sounds pretentious, but even my own.
“I have a lot of respect for people wherever they come from but it is the personal stuff that makes those other stories more interesting. It is the emotional stuff. It’s about dignity.
“Politics starts at home with your kids, family, community and friends. Getting inside these songs again has been special.”
A dramatic part of the show is when the song Exit is introduced by a clip from 1958 show Trackdown.
This TV western is about a conman called Trump who convinces a town to build a wall and the segment ends with the hero crying, “You’re a liar, Trump” to huge cheers before Bono, dressed as a preacher, darts around the stage.
He has banned President Trump from attending any of the Irish group’s tour across the US.
He explains: “People who voted for Trump are welcome here but he’s not. We won’t be toning down the show when we play places that support Trump.
“It’s our job to use our songs to carry messages. And that’s as far as it goes with our shows.
“If I tell people how to vote they would tell us to f*** off.
“I tried that on our (1992) Zoo TV tour. I used to crank call people from the stage. I called Princess Diana, Le Pen and one time in Norway, I crank called the minister of fisheries.
“I asked him how the dolphin soup was going. And he said, ‘Very well thank you. Very well actually. We like to eat whale’. And then the audience started cheering HIM and booing ME.
“You’ve just got to use your voice. In the end, the people speak and that is democracy and you have to deal with that whatever your own beliefs.”
Playing the album in full as well as a selection of hits from their huge catalogue, including new song The Little Things That Give You Away, makes this tour something special. Where The Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You and Bullet The Blue Sky from The Joshua Tree send the crowds crazy.
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It is no surprise U2’s fifth studio album sold more than 25million copies and made them the biggest band in the world.
Clayton, 57, says, shaking his head: “It was a crazy time. On the one hand we were fast-tracked to a No1 album and hit singles around the world.
“And a level of fame and recognition that took a long time to adjust to and figure out.
“It is a really nice experience to be on that rollercoaster but it is about not getting too dizzy and being able to stand up in that situation. Looking back I wouldn’t change it for the world but today one no longer goes out with a bodyguard.
“Nowadays, I quite welcome interaction with the public. People will come up and share things that happened to them just because you’re in the band that wrote that song that they were listening to at the time. That is an amazing privilege.”
In another part of the show is a devastating version of Miss Sarajevo brought to life with a film of a young female Muslim Syrian refugee at the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, as Bono recites the Statue Of Liberty quote from Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free”.
He tells me: “I’m opposed to Trump’s views on immigration as that’s what America is about. That’s why I recite the words.”
Bono says: “It’s important to me that we get these stories and images out there. Whether it’s about the Syrian Crisis today or El Salvador where I’d visited when we were writing the Joshua Tree, I need to see what’s happening.
“Last year I went to five refugee camps in the Middle East and East Africa. If I wasn’t in U2 I think I’d be a journalist — because of my curiosity. I have to do things to understand them. I will always go to try and figure something out.
“In the Eighties I took my missus Ali to some very dangerous places. It was holidays in hell or tragedy tourism? But I needed to physically experience them.”
The singer, who turned 57 last week, says the only downside of the tour so far is that Ali hasn’t joined him yet.
“Ali wasn’t here for my birthday which was a bit hard. My daughter (Jordan) has the same birthday as me so it was also tricky not having her, my cosmic twin, around.
“I spent my birthday with my tour crew as we were rehearsing in Vancouver. I had a great day and, aside from my family, these are the people I’d want to be with as we’re all like a family on tour.”
Despite missing his four kids and wife when touring, they’ve always respected each other’s independence.
He says: “Ali is a strong woman and that’s why I respect her.
“There’s a celebration of strong females in the show which supports the Poverty Is Sexist campaign that I co-founded.
“Women do carry the burden of extreme poverty and gender equality is not with us.”
During this segment, and the performance of Ultraviolet (Light My Way) from the band’s 1991 Achtung Baby album, a montage of inspiring women grace the screens including Times writer Caitlin Moran, Oprah Winfrey, Girls star Lena Dunham and Michelle Obama who is a friend of Bono’s.
He says: “Michelle is an amazing woman. I was out for lunch recently with the Obamas and Barack is a thoughtful person and he was a huge spirit as President. A brilliant man.
“Could Michelle have a future in politics? Maybe as she kicks ass; she properly kicks ass.”
Another strong female in Bono’s eyes is US Senator Elizabeth Warren who is also referenced during the performance of The Joshua Tree’s Mothers Of The Disappeared, when the band were joined by support band Mumford & Sons and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
Warren recently said the firing of James Comey showed Trump’s “disregard for the rule of law’’ and demanded an investigation of ties between Russia and Trump.
Recent news in Chechnya that gay men are being abducted, tortured and killed is also something that Bono says demands a wake-up call.
The last time I spoke to the band was two years ago when they were celebrating Ireland’s referendum on same sex marriage.
Bono says: “That was great news and we thought the world was getting closer to some kind of fairness, justice and equality for all.
“But what’s going on in Chechnya shows we need to fight for these people and they need to be protected.”
Passionate in his beliefs, Bono also has major concerns about globalisation.
He tells me: “It’s not working for all the people it involves.
“It is a very serious problem and has to be looked at. Artificial intelligence and robots are coming to the office and will affect clerks and people in legal work.
“Employment is being re-evaluated but you can’t leave behind commerce or innovation that free enterprise brings.
“I’m a classic Third Way man and I call it the radical middle. I’m centre of the road, though definitely not middle of the road.”
Clayton adds: “The next generation have a scary future. People have to work harder than their parents worked — and for less money — and the chance of ever owning property is a dream to many.
“That is things going backwards and it has to change.
“Whatever the revolution is, I am sure it is coming and it will be a very peaceful, stealth revolution.”
Bono says: “I believe in people and taking hold of democracy.
“And as a band we have to use our voice.
“That’s what this tour is about.”
- The Joshua Tree tour dates are at