Bono wants U2 to record a rock'n'roll album inspired by AC/DC

Brian Johnson and Angus Young onstage burt their heads are Bono and The Edge — What an AC/DC-inspired U2 might look like (Image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Bono has revealed that he'd like the next U2 album to be a "fuck-off rock‘n’roll album" inspired by AC/DC.

The singer, who is currently promoting his new book, Surrender: 40 Songs One Story, made the claim in a new interview with the New York Times. Speaking with the paper's David Marchese, Bono revealed that his newfound desire to rock comes after the singles from 2014's Songs Of Innocence album and 2017's follow-up Songs Of Experience failed to set the pop charts ablaze.

"Right now I want to write the most unforgiving, obnoxious, defiant, fuck-off-to-the-pop-charts rock ‘n’ roll song that we’ve ever made," explains Bono. "I spoke to Edge about it this week. He’s going, 'Is it that call again?' 'What call?' 'The one about we’re going to write the big fuck-off rock song?' And I say, 'Yeah, it’s our job!' We can make songs famous now, but I don’t think U2 can make them hits.

“I don’t know who is going to make our fuck-off rock ‘n’ roll album. You almost want an AC/DC, you want Mutt Lange. The approach. The discipline. The songwriting discipline. That’s what we want."

Bono goes on to say that Songs Of Ascent, an album originally slated as a sister album to 2009's No Line On The Horizon, is almost complete, but he wants to release "a noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album" first.

As earlier reported, Bono has also recently addressed the thorny issue of 2014's Songs Of Innocence album, which was automatically added to the accounts of more than 500 million iTunes customers upon its release.

"On 9 September 2014, we didn’t just put our bottle of milk at the door but in every fridge in every house in town," explained a contrite Bono. "In some cases we poured it on to the good people’s cornflakes. And some people like to pour their own milk. And others are lactose intolerant."

Artists

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.