Let’s talk about The Edge

TRIGGER WARNING FOR RIFFY
It’s not gonna be nice
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I think we give Bono his due here, got all the bases covered - hanging with the elites, certain pandering messages, having lost his marbles, shitty songs, voice gone.

We lament Larry not having put a stop to it.

We shrug off Adam as a lucky guy, and at least he give us his dick.

Let’s talk about Edge, shall we?

Because Edge is not fucking blameless here.

Setting aside the political stuff, Edge has been Bono’s colluder and accessory before and after the fact with the murder of their music.

Edge has been Bono’s yes man. Bono kisses his ass and Edge just goes along with everything.

And where are Edge’s symphonies today? Nowhere, that’s where. We heard something on Little Things but what else? Edge okay’d atrocities like Ahimsa and Football, he apparently contributed to them.

Edge is talking the same shit about songwriting and blah blah.

Yup.  And if you listen to him talk, as I occasionally do (not intentionally) on their XM channel, he is almost as insufferable as Bono. 

"We want to be part of the culture, part of the musical conversation blah blah blah".  Mindless, pedantic, self-serious bullshit.

It’s almost more insufferable to me because Bono genuinely has a lifelong bullshit problem, but Edge just adopted it.

I think Edge just got older and more comfortable.

I’ll release the bad pun from the start : he’s just not on the edge anymore. He’s right in a middle of it, whatever this is.

I think he got tired of experiencing and went polishing stuff with a passion.

He got tired of jamming and started making stuff on his own, just as he got tired of Dublin and went to Malibu and Eze instead.

He got filthy rich to the point where he couldn’t even spend all his earnings, even when buying something as ludicrous as his landscaping project thingy.

Everything you want to know about Edge is in his body language : just look at how he was moving during the Joshua Tree Tour (87)

https://youtu.be/5Chq5PY-TzE

There’s intent, there’s focus, there’s drama.

…now compare it to how he’s hopping around these days. I’d swear he’s just out from the giant cake of a 7 year old kid at a birthday party.

https://youtu.be/3kldlL0X5DQ

He’s just grooving as if he was playing to All You Need Is Love.

Now… as much as it frustrates me because I’ve admired him so much and for such a long time…. All I can say is… « good for him ». I mean he looks way more balanced and way happier than he’s ever been in his life. He’s just enjoying his life and that musical hobby of his. It transpire in everything he does, now. Hell, for that I admire him too ! I hope I look as detached and as comfy as he does 15 years from now.

How could I possibly blame him for actually being happy ?

If the speculation about Adam and Larry is true then Edge is indeed the author of U2’s slow slide into… irrelevance. And he has indeed started talking the kind of crapola bono specialises in.

For the purposes of this conversation I couldn’t care less if he’s happy. I’m not into music because I want band members to be happy. Hell, most great art comes from a place of suffering.

U2 have been financially secure for years now. I’m sure they could have comfortably retired after the success of the JT.

In the end I suppose bono and edge must just enjoy it. I still struggle to see how they could possibly think the likes of YTBTAM, Ahimsa, Shave and that football song are anything but awful, though.

I think the same thing is still being discussed here, just in other threads. This band doesn't have to prove anything anymore, they've done a lot. It is admirable that they lasted four decades in the same line-up, without any crisis. How many bands can do that? Their latest productions are still of better quality than 70-80% of current performers. Even if they didn't release anything else, they left a lot here. Maybe I'm weird, but I like Ahimsa. With that female vocal and guest singer, it's an original song.

I think the same thing is still being discussed here, just in other threads. This band doesn't have to prove anything anymore, they've done a lot. It is admirable that they lasted four decades in the same line-up, without any crisis. How many bands can do that? Their latest productions are still of better quality than 70-80% of current performers. Even if they didn't release anything else, they left a lot here. Maybe I'm weird, but I like Ahimsa. With that female vocal and guest singer, it's an original song.

Oh, they had some crisis. It’s been documented. That’s one of their finest achievements; they moved on from them.

Miami

my mammy

Btw, does 8 really equal D?

I agree with Soloyan. Edge got comfortable and they (him and Bono) don’t wanna put the hours in anymore.

When they were a true band putting in the hours about 1/2 the songs arrived out of a jam or just the band being in the same room playing together. The band would jam for hours and pick the better pieces of those jams and form songs. It’s one of the reasons U2 albums took so long to make. We all saw how One was written out of them playing Mysterious Ways.

Now they don’t want to spend days and weeks jamming, so Bono and Edge now want to be songwriters. They write the song and bring it to the others. The problem is, they aren’t Bob Dylan or Paul Simon, they are losing what Larry and Adam brought to the mix. Likely the reason why Larry isn’t happy. He’s be brought crap like You’re The Best Thing and Song for Someone.

U2 is at its best when they are all playing together.

Btw, does 8 really equal D?

Actually it's the other way around

Symmetric property

For all real numbers x and y
If x = y, then y = x

it's the devils way now....

I'd say edge is at least as culpable for the dramatic decline of u2 as bono is.

And that is a big problem for a band - when your two biggest 'creatives' are in  a malaise/producing uninspired stuff then you are badly hamstrung.

Seems like Edge spends a quite a bit of time in California. I'll hear his name randomly mentioned by different celebrities saying they hung with him and his wife. The weather's probably better than Dublin.