They listen to another track. Eno says it's a great jam but the guitar going cha-chaaang on the third beat makes it too reggae. He wants to

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move the bass and kick drum over one beat to compensate—have the bass land on the one instead of the two. Adam smiles and says, "And I worked so hard to not play on the one." Everybody remembers that the last reggae song they decided to try playing straight turned into "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," one of their biggest hits. Eno says that the band should plan on jamming some more tonight from 7 till 9.

Robbie protests that at this late date more jamming seems like a waste of time. Eno says, "It's actually time efficient." Edge, Adam, and Larry can keep jamming, coming up with new stuff—while Eno and Flood mix the best jams and Bono goes off and finishes the lyrics and melodies.

Bono calls it "songwriting by accident," and tells Robbie that what they have to decide now is if this is going to be a song record (see The Joshua Tree) or a vibe record (see The Unforgettable Fire). And how is U2 to address this decision? Roll out the blackboard!

Soon the band and their producers are studying a catalog of their options that looks like a Chinese menu:

Songs:

 

Vibes:

 

Soundtrack:

Babyface

 

Numb

 

Piano: Poem

Wandering

 

If God Will

 

Landscape

Sinatra

 

Crashed Car

 

Lemon

Zooropa

 

Jesus Drove Me

 

Sinatra

Wake Up, Dead Man

 

Cry Baby

 

 

 

First Time

 

Indian Jam

 

 

 

Kiss Me, Kill Me

 

Sponge

 

 

 

Velvet Dress

 

Lose Control

 

 

 

Wandering 1.

 

Nose Job

 

 

 

 

Bono wonders aloud if they should edit short bits of many of the different tracks together, creating a montage. He raves about the latest Beastie Boys album. He hated their raps but loved the way their songs jumped in and out of each other. Flood says that's because they couldn't play their instruments well enough to keep a groove going for a whole song, but Bono says that doesn't matter. "It's applying a deejay mental­ity to rock & roll. And about time."

He says that rappers make records at superspeed: "De La Soul made

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an album in a week! Everybody's on the floor doing everything, includ­ing writing the lyrics. These guys don't have degrees in electronics, but they know how much studio time costs. We need some of that."

As the band goes in to start jamming again, Bono apologizes to me for the tedium: "Making records is like making sausages," he says. "You'll probably enjoy them more if you don't see how it's done.

U2 falls into a jam around a bass figure similar to that of "This Is Radio Clash." Edge stays on one chord, hitting his pedals to try out different tones while Eno, at the synth, drops in little electronic accents that float around the groove like musical satellites. When they finish playing Eno says he really likes that one.

"Yeah," Edge says, "you like it 'cause nobody ever changes their part!"

"Nothing changes," Eno says. "My dream! I listened to a blank twenty-four track today. It was bliss. Turn up that hiss!" Everyone laughs.

At dinnertime Adam has to leave; he's going to appear on the Irish Recorded Music Industry's TV awards show to make a presentation to R.E.M. Edge and I go into the Factory's lunchroom to eat some Indian takeout. He turns his attention to one subject that has all the members of U2 feeling blue: they have looked at their financial prospects for the coming year. The monumental cost of keeping the Zoo TV tour on the road through the spring and summer in Europe and the autumn in Australia and Japan will eat up almost all the profits, ij the tour is a smash and sells out most of the dates. If Europe should have a rainy summer, U2 could lose millions. A year ago, when the band was sitting here dreaming up the most extravagant rock show ever, money seemed to be made to burn. But twelve months into a twenty-four-month haul, the excitement of breaking new ground doesn't seem quite as valuable.

"We've painted ourselves into a corner," Edge says. "I can't figure how we can work for a year and earn nothing." I ask if that's literally true. "It's so close," Edge says. "The budget is so tight that if one big thing goes wrong, there goes the profit."

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