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U2: 'We want to make the sound of the future'

Mark Savage
Music Correspondent
Getty Images Bono and Adam Clayton of U2 perform on stage in 2005Getty Images
U2 are one of the world's biggest bands, with album sales in excess of 175 million

It's official. U2 are back in the studio making new music, after a gap of eight years.

The four-piece had been on an extended break, as drummer Larry Mullen Jr recovered from neck surgery.

Pompted by years of onstage damage to his "elbows, knees and neck", it stopped him recording new material (2023's Atomic City aside), and saw U2 hiring Dutch musician Bram van den Berg for last year's Las Vegas residency.

"It was difficult being away because of injury," says Mullen Jr, "so I'm thrilled to be back in a creative environment, even if I'm not 100% there and I've got some bits falling off."

"It's just the most extraordinary thing," he adds. "When I was away from the band, I missed it, but I didn't realise how much I missed it."

The band are speaking backstage at the Ivor Novello Awards, where they've just become the first Irish Group to be given fellowship of the Ivors' songwriting academy.

It's the body's highest accolade, placing them alongside former recipients like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading.

Bono, perennially laid back and loquacious, suddenly becomes energised when he talks about U2's recent writing sessions.

"It was just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, 'What's that feeling? Oh right, that's chemistry'.

"We had it when we were 17. We've had it over the years but you lose it sometimes, [especially because] the way music is assembled these days is not friendly to that chemistry.

"But isn't it strange that it's just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea.

"That's where we're at in 2025."

Adam Clayton, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr and Bono at the 2025 Ivor Novello Awards
The group spoke to the BBC exclusively at the Ivor Novello Awards (L-R: Adam Clayton, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr and Bono)

The band have been in reflective mode for almost the last decade.

In 2017, they set off on a stadium tour celebrating their career-defining Joshua Tree album. Bono spent the pandemic writing his memoir, Surrender, prompting the band to revisit and re-record some of their biggest hits on the mostly acoustic Songs Of Surrender album.

Last year's Vegas shows recreated their 1990s Berlin reinvention on Achtung Baby and they capped that off with an archival album of unreleased material from 2004's How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

"We spent a moment thinking about the past – but you do that because you need to understand where that desire to be heard came from," says Bono.

"And then you can get to the present and to the future – because the sound of the future is what we're most interested in.

"It doesn't exist yet. It's ours to make, and that's what we have the chance to do."

Breaking up the band

Attending the Ivor Novellos gives the band another opportunity to retrace their story, for an audience that includes Bruce Springsteen, Charli XCX, Ed Sheeran, Brian Eno and Lola Young.

"When we gathered in Larry Mullen's kitchen in 1976, this was unimaginable," says bassist Adam Clayton.

"We never thought the band could be this old!"

Mullen Jr recalls the record company executive who advised the rest of the group to ditch his services, while guitar legend The Edge sings a modified version of My Way, to illustrate how he always gets the last word.

Bono isn't impressed.

"I'd like to remind the room that The Edge the first one to break up this band," he deadpans.

"We've all had it go since but in 1982, aged 21, that man there decided that he had enough of the music business with its inflamed egos and pumped up personality.

"I asked him, 'Will you make an exception for me":[]}