Pop (U2 Album) - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

For the new record, U2 wanted to continue their sonic experimentation, and they employed multiple producers to have additional personnel to share ideas with. Flood was principal producer, having previously worked with the group as engineer for The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, and co-producer of Zooropa. Mark "Spike" Stent and Howie B were principal engineers. Flood described his job on Pop as a "creative coordinator. There were some tracks where I didn't necessarily have a major involvement... but ultimately the buck stopped with me. I had the role of the creative supervisor who judged what worked and didn't work." Howie B first worked with the band for Original Soundtracks 1 supplying mixing, treatments and scratching. On Pop, he was initially given the role of "DJ and Vibes". Later, his roles became more defined as co-producer, engineer, and mixer. One of his main tasks was to introduce the band to sounds and influences within electronica. The band and Howie B regularly went out to dance clubs to experience club music and culture. The overall goal for the record was to create a new sound for the band that was still recognizable as U2.

U2 began work on Pop in mid-1995, collaborating with Nellee Hooper in London, France, and Ireland. In September, the band moved the recording sessions to Hanover Quay in Dublin to a studio the band had just converted from a warehouse. The studio was designed to be rehearsal space more so than an actual studio. Flood, Howie B, Steve Osborne, and Marius de Vries joined Hooper and the band there, each of them incorporating their influences and experiences in electronic dance music. Flood described Howie's influence thus: "Howie would be playing all kinds of records to inspire the band and for them to improvise to. That could be anything from a jazz trumpet solo to a super groove funk thing, with no holds barred. We also programmed drum loops, or took things from sample CDs; anything to get the ball rolling. U2 arrive in the studio with very little finished material." These sessions lasted until December, and around 30-40 pieces of music emerged during this period.

Mullen, who had mostly been absent from the sessions to start a family and nurse a worsening back injury, had major surgery on his back in November. Mullen was unable to drum properly during this period, forcing U2 to abandon their usual methods of songwriting as a group and allowing them to pursue different musical influences. Mullen admits that he was upset that the band entered the studio without him, cognizant that key decisions would be made in the early months of recording. Eno attempted to convince the other band members to wait for Mullen, but as The Edge explains, "The thinking was that we were going to further experiment with the notion of what a band was all about and find new ways to write songs, accepting the influence, and aesthetics of dance music... we thought, 'Let's just start with Howie mixing drum beats and see where that gets us.'" Mullen was back in the studio three weeks after his surgery, but his back prevented him from fully dedicating himself to recording. As he described, "I needed a little more time to recover. But we were struggling with some of the material and for the project to move ahead, I had to put a lot of time in." Sessions ceased temporarily in January 1996 to allow Mullen to rehabilitate.

"It was quite hard for the band to shift from having played to loops of other people to playing to loops of themselves. We felt it was essential to do that, though, because you can get very lazy with samples. They're an easy way to get the ball rolling, but you're always in danger of sounding like some basic samples with the band on top. You're in danger of being dictated to by what's there, rather than saying: 'this is just our springboard'."

Following Mullen's return and the sessions' resumption in February 1996, there was a three-month period in which Flood, Howie B, and Hooper production team attempted to re-work much of the band's material to better incorporate loops and samples with the band's musical ideas from 1995. This period was a difficult one; Mullen, in particular, had to record drum parts to replace loops that Howie B had sampled without permission. Flood said, "We took what we had and got the band to play to it and work it into their own idiom, whilst incorporating a dance ethic... The groove-orientated way of making music can be a trap when there's no song; you end up just plowing along on one riff. So you have to try to get the groove and the song, and do it so that it sounds like the band, and do it so that it sounds like something new."

Despite the initial difficulties with sampling, the band and production team eventually became comfortable with it, even sampling Mullen's drumming, The Edge's guitar riffs, Clayton's bass lines, and Bono's vocalisations. Howie B sampled almost anything he could in order to find interesting sounds. He created sequenced patterns of The Edge's guitar work, which The Edge, having never done it before, found very interesting. Howie B explained, "Sometimes I would sample, say, a guitar, but it wouldn't come back sounding like a guitar; it might sound more like a pneumatic drill, because I would take the raw sound and filter it, really destroy the guitar sound, and rebuild it into something completely different." Although sequencing was used, mostly on keyboards, guitar loops, and some percussion, it was used sparingly out of fear of becoming a "slave" to it.

Nellee Hooper left the sessions in May 1996 due to his commitments to the Romeo + Juliet film score. The recording sessions changed radically in the last few months, which is why Hooper was not credited on the album.

By forcing the band members out of their individual comfort zones, the producers were able to change their approach to songwriting and playing their instruments. Mullen, in particular, was forced to do this, as he used samples of other records, sample CDs, or programmed drums while recuperating. Although he eventually reverted to recording his own samples, the experience of using others' changed his approach to recording rhythms.

During the recording sessions, U2 allowed manager Paul McGuinness to book their upcoming PopMart Tour before they had completed the album, putting the tour's start date at April 1997. The album was originally planned to be completed and released in time for the 1996 Christmas and holiday season, but the band found themselves struggling to complete songs, necessitating a delay in the album's release date until March 1997. Even with the extended timeframe to complete the album, recording continued up to the last minute. Bono devised and recorded the chorus to "Last Night on Earth" on, ironically enough, the last night of the album's recording and mixing. When Howie B and The Edge took the album to New York City to be mastered, changes and additions to the songs were still being made. During the process, Howie B was adding effects to "Discothèque", while The Edge was recording backing vocals for "The Playboy Mansion". Of the last minute changes, The Edge said, "It's a sign of absolute madness." Flood says, "We had three different mixes of 'Mofo', and during mastering in November '96 in New York, I edited a final version of 'Mofo' from these three mixes. So even during mastering, we were trying to push the song to another level. It was a long process of experimentation; the album didn't actually come together until the last few months."

U2 ultimately felt that Pop was not finished like they had wanted. The Edge described the finished album as "a compromise project by the end. It was a crazy period trying to mix everything and finish recording and having production meetings about the upcoming tour... If you can't mix something, it generally means there's something wrong with it..." Mullen remarked that "If we had two or three more months to work, we would have had a very different record. I would like someday to rework those songs and give them the attention and time that they deserve." McGuinness disagrees that the band did not have enough time, saying, "It got an awful lot of time, actually. I think it suffered from too many cooks . There were so many people with a hand in that record it wasn't surprising to me that it didn't come through as clearly as it might have done... It was also the first time I started to think that technology was getting out of control." The band ended up re-working and re-recording many songs for the album's singles, as well as for the band's 2002 compilation The Best of 1990-2000.