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Joe PuglieseTo celebrate the physical release of their new album Songs of Innocence, U2 sat down to answer questions posed by fans — and detractors — on Facebook.
The Edge gave a humorous introduction to the session. “It’s gonna be very hard to get Larry [Mullen Jr.] to say anything at all,” he joked, while also noting, “It’s gonna be hard for Bono to stop talking.” He continued, “I’m gonna answer anything, but I will not be divulging what strings I use or my favorite echo pedals.”
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Unsurprisingly, a disgruntled fan asked Bono a question that came off as more of a statement: “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people’s playlists ever again? It’s really rude.” This elicited a deep sigh and a lengthy response from U2’s frontman.
“Oops,” Bono said. “I’m sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea — might have got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing — a drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs, that we poured our life into over the last few years, mightn’t be heard. There’s a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”
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Mostly, though, the Q&A stayed light in tone. One person asked, “Why doesn’t Larry and Adam [Clayton] have cool names like the Edge and Bono?” Another curious fan wondered, “How do rock stars smell like?”
Watch the video below to hear their responses.
A version of this story first appeared on Billboard.com.
