What do you think it was like for the Edge when he came up with that riff? Like, he’s sitting around with his guitar, trying this, trying that, and then suddenly that riff comes out. Then he’s like, “Hmm. That’s…that’s something, alright.” And he calls the rest of the band in and he’s like “Hey guys, check this out, what do you think of this?”
It’s kind of amazing to me that music like that is actually the product of some human being’s trial and error, you know? I mean, when you hit on something like that, how must that feel?
Anyway, today is a wonderful, wonderful Martin Luther King Day.
Edge’s guitar sound is hard-wired into my Irish soul. It just flips a switch in me in a way I can’t explain with any kind of rationality, and makes up for any number of Bono’s sins or indulgences. And that ‘Pride’ riff is pretty much the ne plus ultra, except maybe ‘Where the Streets have no name’.