...ON MUSIC

Adam: I can remember being confused when I first started playing. I found it difficult to work out whether the motivation was that I wanted to be like somebody in a band or I actually wanted to do something for myself. It took a couple of years before I was big enough not to emulate someone else.

Adam: Nobody knows how it works. You turn the music up as loud as you can and hope people like it.

...ON THE BAND

Adam: Individually we probably wouldn't have gone anywhere musically. Without any on of us the fragile uniqueness and special quality of U2 would be gone forever.

Adam: The first couple of years we kind of hated each other. It was very competitive, and everyone was trying to come out on top.

Adam: I think we've reached the point where we have the skill to direct the playing on each song right towards the feeling that caused the song to be written. We're trying to strip away everything till we get to that cause.

Adam: We are not where we are because we're shallow enough to believe that we're great or the music is all important. We are here we are because we've worked hard and we have moral values that we fight hard to retain. One of these values may be more time off touring out of respect for ourselves and our relationships. Pompously, I think it's an important band and we can trust ourselves to define our own schedule at this point.

Adam: I don't think there are any rules, we (U2) can make those ourselves. Unlike the majority of bands, we're very level-headed and conscientious. I think that the strength of our relationship as individuals is that we'll always have that responsibility for the music and, as we mature as people, individuals and performres, that spiritually, that transcendental state will become more and more focused.

...ON HIMSELF

Adam: I was thrown out of school at Mount Temple Comprehensive where we met, for doing nothing, no work. Being at public school before that meant I was mixed in with kids being trained to be part of the English elite, but it didn't always work; a lot of them are having real trouble fitting into the real world. it made me much more objective about how I wanted to run my life. I decided to take music very seriously and work really hard at it.

Bono: if it wasn't for Adam Clayton I wouldn't be in U2. Adam Clayton found Paul McGuinness, our manager. Adam Clayton booked our first gigs. I owe so much to him. He's totally committed to being in U2.

Adam: I think the important thing to retain through life is optimism. It doesn't have to be something that you necessarily get from Christianity. You just have to feel that way aobut life.

Bono: He is a rock 'n' roller and probably the onlyrock 'n' roller in the band as such. He loves to party. He actually knows all the people in London and San Francisco and he's the person people want at their party because he'll stand there in a smoking jacket and he'll drink, smoke cigars and he'll laugh at himself and at other people, and they'll laugh back.

Bono: Adam used to pretend he could play bass. He came round and started using words like action and fret, and he had us baffled. He had the only amplifier so we never argued with him.

The Edge: Adam is a very ostentatious sort of person, y'know, very extravagant, so when he started playing bass he wasn't interested in taking the bottom end of the sound spectrum at all. He wanted to be right up there in the mid ranges ... in order to give the group some any sort of clarity, therefore, I had to stay away from the bottom end of the guitar as much as I could. So I tended to work around those high chords, that ringing sound.

...ON DUBLIN

Adam: Every decision has been very much our own. That's the advantage of living in Dublin in many ways. You get a great perspective living in Dublin. We actually believe in music and the pwoer of music and try to perpetuate it in our own lives and protect that naivety.