'The sound of a drum kit in a room...'

31 Oct 2007
Get into a room with the band and 'everything is possible' explains Bono, in the 40th anniversary edition of Rolling Stone. 'Really and truly. It's this incredible thing. I treasure it. I treasure it now more than ever.'


Find the whole four page interview here including audio of Bono musing on a choice between 'U2 or activism'.

Great read, here's a couple of highlights:

Has your activism affected how you think about being in U2?
'I've spent a lot of time in these two-dimensional worlds - numbers, values, analysis of statistics. And when I get away from it, being with U2 is such a playground. It's made me realize how sacred music is. It's a kind of sacrament - like marriage, like friendship. I'm not sure the other three in the band know this, because they - maybe sensibly - have avoided that other world. They just think they're in U2, and that's great. But I really know how great it is to be in U2.'

Is it as great as what you dreamed it might be like when you were young?
'When I was a kid and I was at school, I worked at a gas station. And I would just get wound up thinking about practice on Saturdays - or Wednesdays sometimes. Just hearing the sound of a drum kit in a room, the silver of the ride cymbal and the skin of a tom-tom. It meant a great deal to me. Then, as it became my job to be in a band, you take for granted that you've got a few hours with your mates in the studio.
I don't anymore. It is sanctuary and escape from the material world of causalities, profit and loss, cynicism and hard-bitten victories over your own indifference or somebody else's. You get into this fucking room and everything seems possible, and I've never really appreciated it more than now. Really and truly. It's this incredible thing. I treasure it. I treasure it now more than ever. I'm terrified that I might lose my first love in the supermarket, in the maw of so many choices of what you can do with your time.
But I also think I'm better for having my brain pummeled in so many different areas.'

RECENT NEWS

2 Oct, 2025

 Subscribers Special
Ten films from Sphere, made only for our U2.com subscribers.

29 Sep, 2025

We were and it was. Two years since opening in Vegas, here's ten of the best of the mind-blowing.

12
29 Sep, 2025

As Dublin welcomed President Obama to receive the freedom of the city last week, here's how U2 honoured the incoming President at the Washington DC  Inauguration Concert in 2009.

18 Sep, 2025

Bono and The Edge to accept 2025 Woody Guthrie Prize on behalf of U2 in Tulsa next month.