PASSENGERS:
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACKS 1 (1995)
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A DIFFERENT KIND OF BLUE ::. [back
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Eno: "The name was one of Bono's titles he sometimes has a title before he has a song. I had a feeling for that piece of music, and I thought I would use that as the punchline for the song. And coming in on the DART one morning I suddenly thought, I know how to do that song, and I'll get it done before they come in. And I did. I did all the singing and the writing before they got into the studio."
(from
"Some selected highlights from Original Soundtracks 1", The Irish Times, October 1995)
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BEACH SEQUENCE ::. [back
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Edge: "That's Bono playing the piano. That's another piece that, I think I was putting some chords together, and we left it, and Bono had this piano idea, and he went and put the piano on top, and it really works. You know, a lot of things, we didn't go back to them, we just would move forward onto the next idea and then in Westside we sometimes worked on five pieces in one day. I think over the two weeks we generated something, like 40 hours of music."
(from
"Some selected highlights from Original Soundtracks 1", The Irish Times, October 1995)
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MISS SARAJEVO ::. [back
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Bono
explains that the lyrical idea behind "Miss Sarajevo" invokes -- and maybe
undoes -- the spirit of the book of Ecclesiastes, a "time for everything
under heaven." But is there a time to finish this album?
(from
"All Passengers Present and Correct", Propaganda,
Issue 23, August 01, 1995)
"Pavarotti's
a father figure," Bono says. "He's an extraordinary man. He
rang me and asked me to write a song and I said I didn't think that would
be possible because we were working on these two records: this 'Passengers'
project and the next U2 record. And he just wouldn't stop calling,
which was pretty amazing. Every single day he would ring the house
and if he wasn't called back immediately he would shout at the housekeeper
and say, 'Tell God to give me a call.' I would go to the band and
say, 'He's been on again, and we have to write him a tune,' and they'd
just say, 'Oh fuck off.'"
"He
(Pavarotti) would say things like 'I will call you every day, every hour,
I will be with you in your dreams. I will speak into the ear of your
children.' But it's such an honour."
The
U2/Pavarotti track is "Miss Sarajevo." It was performed in Pavarotti's
hometown of Modena, Italy, on September 12 during a charity concert called
Pavarotti and Friends in aid of Bosnia. The track is included on
Passengers.
It
tells the story of a beauty pageant in the devastated Bosnian city.
"I
just think you've got to be smart about the way you go about making the
same points. I've tried before to take on these subjects head-on
and I've learnt a lesson. The track's about a beauty pageant they
put on there. They turned this shelter into a discotheque and they
just play music at deafening volume to drown out the sound of the shells
and, you know, they watch MTV and play our music and other people's music.
"There's
one woman and as soon as the shelling gets really bad she just walks up
into her house and they don't fuck with her and she plays, practises the
scales. Then they put on this beauty pageant where the girls came
out. They want to use their beauty as a weapon to defend themselves
and they walk out on the stage with this, 'Do you really want to kill us?'
(pose). It's a great surreal act of defiance."
(from
"First of All, I Am God", New Musical
Express, October 21, 1995)
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ITO OKASHI ::. [back
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Eno: "We wanted a Japanese singer for this one, so I phoned my wife and she phoned her brother in law who phoned his wife, who was Japanese. And within an hour this singer, Holi, arrived at the studio. We didn't tell her that it was U2 because we didn't want to make her nervous, but when she arrived she realised who it was."
However, Bono, being the charming person that he is, put her completely at ease immediately.
"This was the very first thing she sang, which was totally improvised, no rehearsal or anything. We had a bit of Japanese writing, it was a list of beautiful things, from Sei Shonagon's 10th century Pillow Book, and she just took that list and... sang it. And in fact we did several things together in four hours. Some of the other pieces are really lovely too, and I'm sure will see the light of day. But she was absolutely fantastic."
(from
"Some selected highlights from Original Soundtracks 1", The Irish Times, October 1995)
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