U2 France

‘Here Is What Is’, which premieres at the Toronto Film Festival this week, is a ‘sonic, filmic, journey’ documenting life in the studio with Daniel Lanois. It covers a year in which Lanois collaborated with musicians as diverse as Willie Nelson and Sinead O’Connor, Aaron Neville and Billy Bob Thornton. And as the year also included a trip to Fez in Morocco, the film features footage of Lanois and Brian Eno working on new material with U2.

Danny came up with an exclusive advance clip for U2.Com - including the very first footage of the band recording with Danny and Brian in Morocco. Watch it right here.

When we caught up with Danny – in the studio in Fez and at home in Toronto – to talk about his new film, we couldn’t resist grilling him on how the next U2 record is coming along. ‘I want them to make a masterpiece!’ he says.

Where did the idea to make the film come from ? It came from a suggestion of a friend to document my recording sessions, which I’ve never done. Over the years U2, for example, have often had some cameras in the room but I haven’t! And rather than dig into the past as most documentaries suggest, we decided to document real events over the course of a year. At the start we had no idea what the next 12 months might hold, like we had no idea there would be an invitation to go to Morocco. In fact the only thing we had was the beginning of a batch of my own songs - so Garth Hudson playing ‘Love Child’, that’s the first thing we recorded and the first thing in the film.

You are usually quite elusive about the mystery of the recording process, preferring to let the results speak for themselves. Did you wonder whether it was possible to document on film how a song is made ? That’s true but I believe what is special about the film is the live studio performances as is the case with a song called ‘Harry’ where the camera pans across the room - its actually a real live performance being documented on camera, which hardly ever happens. You look at Pride, say, in the video about the making of The Unforgettable Fire album and you think its a single performance but it’s actually a series of performances - here I wanted people to see the unfolding of the performance as the camera does.

You say that ‘feel’ defines your approach to the studio but as Bob Dylan says you can’t buy ‘feel’… so can you film it ? If you happen to be there for the take then you can! Like that Garth Hudson moment: I said ‘Garth would you play an intro to my song Love Child?’ He studied the chord sequence and melody and then he played what you see, and it has real depth. Or there is a scene when I am working with the drummer Brian Blade, I didn’t realise I got that animated, looks like I should be committed ! Or when Brian invited us down to Shreveport, Louisiana to the Zion Baptist Church where his father sings ‘This May Be The Last Time’. I felt as long as the camera was on and we weren’t trying to hide anything then it would have some element of truth in it. Brian, by the way, has very broad taste, for example even though he is labelled as a jazz drummer, he was always a fan of Larry’s.

The film carries some striking footage of you at the recording desk apparently playing the faders like you’re working a musical instrument not a machine. For me it is about understanding the position of all my ingredients which is not unlike knowing where the white and black notes are on the piano. I take time to understand the position of my ingredients relative to the faders. When I do a mix I am already prepared and it’s how I can do it differently to other mixers and producers - I see every mix as a unique moment, it’s like asking me to be conductor. And it’s what keeps me alive in the studio - I wish faders were bunched up smaller and closer. Maybe I will invent a new console so I can reach more of them more easily!

In the film you mention that the real thing you bring to the studio is your ability as a player, that this is what enables you to communicate with those you are working with.

Yes, you command immediate respect if you understand what a musician has to get through, and that’s why I get along with Larry - he knows that I am dedicated to the drums, that I know how to tune them, that I listen back to them on radio. I don’t consider that to be someone else’s job. I know that Edge has a regard for my playing or he wouldn’t invite me to sit in a room and play with him. You know there are many ways of working: coming in with a finished song and doing a rendition of it would be one way, the Neil Young way, but in the studio with Eno and U2 you sense that the band room is the arena of innovation, that you have to pay respect to that appetite and let the jams unfold and let the riffs come and let the singer be inspired…

You initially bumped into U2 through Eno who you’ve been working with since his early experiments in ambient music. What’s he like to collaborate with ? Eno is one of the most resourceful people I know, he can maximise available tools and people, which is why he is great. He’s not the kind of collaborator who would want to get someone else to do background vocals or to replace the drummer but there is a part of him which is a pyromaniac of technology. When everyone is out of the room he’s still tinkering and when people come back in the room they will hear their song presented back to them with a new face and he knows he can convince the room. Eno will convince you of a way to approach your song because you have been out or the room! We are opposite in a way, I am the soul musician and he is almost like an alchemist, but with musicality. He will find a way and you can hear it on Beautiful Day – that was always a great chord sequence but when U2 were out of the room Eno was starting a little fire in the corner!

From Slane Castle to Fez, you’ve been working with U2 for a long time - how has that relationship changed ? Everybody is more comfortable now, everyone is musically successful, everybody is trying to look after everyone else. You know U2 will always be a hit band, they could turn up in my city in Toronto tomorrow and fill the stadium seven nights in a row – that is what a hit band does and they have been that for years. So at this point the only thing you can do is make a record that is a masterpiece, that is groundbreaking, that is innovative, a record where you can hold your head up and say, ‘We’ve done it again!’ And right now I want them to make the greatest masterpiece possible. What’s great in a record is to take people on a sonic journey, transport them to another place. Bono always says to me that the lyricists job is to see the future and as he is on the pulse of a lot of things, he can obviously see something that other people are not seeing and that should be represented in the music. So after doing some writing in France we went down to Morocco because we are interested in other cultures, how other people think, not just how they make music and there was something beautiful we found there. I noticed that people take their music very seriously there, reminded me of New Orleans a bit.

You and Eno have not been working with them as producers this time but as songwriters. Yes, so we have come in wearing slightly different hats. We’ve always been full of ideas of course but now I think the music will be better for it. You don’t really need Eno and I in the room to work the equipment, it’s different to how it was back in the 80’s, and I think Bono saw the wisdom of maximizing our presence to allow our musicality to come into the picture. Usually the Edge has some beginnings that he has worked on at home. I brought one in, provisionally entitled Two Years, a big long symphyonic number on steel guitars which I’ve been working on for a long time. Eno had a couple of beginnings, and he’s been coming up with really fantastic rhythmic beginnings which have a lot of atmosphere and feeling in them. You can apply chord and melodic information on top, but it’s really good for Larry to play off of, because its not just a blank canvas.

So you think the next U2 record is well under way ? Even before we got to Morocco we had chosen eleven that could be a U2 record and my advice was to work on those eleven, not to fall into the temptation of making more and more material… but we did end up making more material so there you go! Although I worked on All That You Can’t Leave Behind for some reason Achtung Baby feels like the last time we were really concentrated like this. That was an incredible journey of discovery, we were hungry for something fresh and we stopped at nothing. There were problems but we wanted something special and we found it. When you think about it, what records does anyone go home and listen to once you get past the commerciality, once you get past what the radio plays ? I want this next U2 record to be one that I’m excited to go home and listen to.’