The guitar part The Edge called absolutely “perfect”
No U2 record is ever completely done whenever they walk out of the studio.
Even though the Irish legends fight tooth and nail to make sure that every single song of theirs sounds pristine, a lot of the work isn’t properly done until they finally take it to the stage and start working it off the crowd every time they play. They were more than willing to stretch their songs on the live stage if they wanted to, but The Edge was convinced that some tunes needed to stay exactly as they were on the record whenever they played.
After all, this band wasn’t the Grateful Dead by any stretch. They had their moments where they could jam onstage every now and again, but there had to be some structure to all of their tunes. Otherwise, they were dangerously close to becoming a prog rock outfit, and Bono would be dead in the ground before they started thinking about joining the same ranks as bands like Yes and Genesis.
And it’s not like most of their songs needed that much improvement when they walked out of the studio. There are certainly some pieces of The Joshua Tree that might not be fully realised in the same way that bands like The Beatles refined their songs, but even some of their lesser tunes like ‘In God’s Country’ has a perfect melody and some of the greatest panning effects that The Edge ever laid down in the studio.
The guitar legend could have relied on his delay pedals and other effects in the studio, but sometimes the best songs don’t require that much sonic adornment. ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ was the kind of song that demanded sounding cinematic every time it came on, but when working on the different textures on an album like Achtung Baby, it took the song with no bells and whistles to bring the band back together.
Sure, the record is known as a classic today, but when it was being recorded the band were dangerously close to losing their minds when working on every tune. Not everyone was willing to take the same kinds of risks that they were doing on tracks like ‘The Fly’ and ‘Zoo Station’, but after spending days trying to figure out what their next move was going to be, ‘One’ was the kind of traditional song that no one could have poked holes in.
And while Bono was still willing to take a few chances whenever the band performed it live, he said that The Edge always felt that they never needed to mess with this song, saying, “We could do a new arrangement of ‘One’ as you might want us to, but you see, I’m only one member of this band, and Edge is three. And if he thinks an arrangement is perfect, why mess with it? He says, ‘I’m not jamming here. That’s a guitar melody. I’ve written it. I can’t improve on it. No fat. Back to the original arrangement. We’re not going to change the bass line just because we feel like it.’”
Then again, it’s that push and pull that made U2 work whenever they started making their first masterpieces. Bono already sounds like he’s improvising and pulling out the greatest melodies that he can think of on a tune like ‘Drowning Man’, but The Edge was the kind of artist that needs everything to be spotless, and even if he so much as changed one note on a tune like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, chances are everything else would fall apart pretty quickly.
He needed to make sure he played everything right on the money whenever he hit the live stage, but it’s that sense of spontaneity that makes everything a lot more exciting. Everyone going to a U2 show is going to hear something that they’ve never heard before, and that only comes from when the band are in the moment playing the greatest music that they can at that exact second.
