U2 guitarist The Edge has said that he wants to be “the vanguard of this resurgence of guitars”.
In an interview for the latest issue of MOJO, The Edge spoke about how he has a lot of “great material waiting” and that he hopes Bono‘s “noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album” will be their next project.
“Well, I would love that to be the next U2 record!” He said. “The lockdown was a very creative period for me, just in composing music. I don’t want to jinx ourselves… but there’s a lot of great material waiting. I think the guitar is coming back. I really feel it. And I would like to be part of that.”
He continued: “I’d like to be the vanguard of this resurgence of guitars! Don’t get me wrong – talking to people I know who work at Fender [guitar shop], they’re selling more guitars now than they’ve ever sold. But in terms of popular culture, there’s been a drift away from the instrument, it would be fair to say.
“And I think that pendulum is going to start swinging the other direction. Because it’s such an incredibly expressive instrument. The few bands that are using it well, it’s still fresh.”
Later in the interview, The Edge spoke about U2’s potential to set trends. “To not have any ear for what’s relevant within the culture is just being out of touch,” he said. “You can do stuff that’s completely against the grain, but you still want to know where the grain is. I think about it in terms of the flow of a river – if you’re not in the flow, you’re part of an oxbow lake. And I want to be part of the flow.”
In other news, it was reported last week that U2’s latest album ‘Songs Of Surrender’ was selling more copies than the rest of the Top Five in the charts combined.
Released on March 17, the album saw the Irish rock veterans return with a series of re-recorded and re-interpreted songs from throughout their 40-year career, including fan favourites, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and ‘With Or Without You’.
In a three-star review of U2’s new collection, NME concluded that: “There is disappointment that a number of U2’s big-hitters don’t translate well on ‘Songs For Surrender’, but this revision hasn’t been a totally fruitless endeavour: you just have to dig a little bit deeper to find the reimagined material that’s truly worth savouring.”
Earlier this month, Bono and The Edge became the latest musicians to perform for NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. They performed stripped-back versions of tracks including ‘Beautiful Day’ and ‘In A Little While’, accompanied by the Duke Ellington School of the Arts choir.