He also duets with Bono on Falling At Your Feet a song they
Posted in General on 12. Oct, 2010
He also duets with Bono on “Falling At Your Feet”, a song they composed and recorded together during sessions for U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind.Given that, at that time, Bono was also busy with the Jubilee 2000 campaign and under pressure from his bandmates to spend more time on the U2 record, it’s a little surprising that he and Lanois managed a side-project. Were the rest of U2 miffed? “No, not at all”, he laughs, “because we did it so quickly. There might have been a jealous moment where people wondered why Bono couldn’t give those lyrics to the U2 record, but nothing more than that.”Lanois was one of four children his hairdresser mother brought up on her own in Hull, Quebec He tells me that the “comforts of cash” came late to him. He didn’t start producing “the big records” until his late thirties, and he says that, had he made a bundle of money when he was 18, he’d “probably be doing heroin in some little villa”.
What lyrics like “sometimes I want to take a pill and hide” (from “Sometimes”) underline, however, is that wealth hasn’t salved what one suspects is a natural propensity for angst. “Just because the acquisitions keep coming in,” he says, “it doesn’t mean you’ll live longer or see things more clearly.”Lanois also talks passionately about what he sees as the misuses of music, and how he finds the histrionic sounds that have accompanied the CNN channel’s reports on the war in Iraq particularly crass. “As a man who has dedicated his life to making music”, he says, “I take personal offence at that stuff Keep music out of this. And keep your simpleton slogans and garish graphics out of it, too.”Returning to the new album, I make the point that while most rock musicians file their strongest material in their twenties and thirties, Lanois and his fellow fifty-something Tom Waits are still doing excellent work. “When artists stop doing good stuff,” Lanois comments, “it’s often due to a decline in their dedication. What tends to come with success is a lot of invitations: awards shows and parties where you can hang out with your heroes. That’s all really great, but it may begin to water down your creativity.”I stick my toe in the limelight now and then, but people aren’t tripping over themselves to put me on magazine covers.
That means I’m still hungry, and hunger is good for creativity. Anyway,” he adds, “I’d rather hang out with a motley crew than the elite.”For a moment I misunderstand him. That’s lower case for “motley crew”, right?”Right!”I close by asking him about Bob Dylan. Given that Dylan’s Lanois-produced albums Oh Mercy and Time out of Mind were hailed as comeback classics, it seems churlish not to. But it appears that not even Dylan’s producer got beyond the enigma.”Bob is a very mysterious guy indeed,” says Lanois. “I think he probably leaves certain aspects of emotion out of his working life in order to be focused, but just to sit next to him for a couple of months is still pretty wonderful.
For me, the greatest compliment would be if Bob thought my dedication to the sonics equalled his dedication to the written word. There is only a handful of people like him on the planet.”‘Shine’ is out on Mon on Anti. The secret of a fly’s flight has been uncovered by scientists using high-speed cameras – revealing that its frustrating ability to change direction in an eyeblink is down to subtle movements of its wings. Until now, it had been thought that the insect’s small size meant that the air would effectively act like a liquid flowing over its body, and so changing direction would be like swimming against a current.