While working on a spec commercial on my laptop in a hotel in South Beach Miami, I got a phone message from Daniel Lanois,. He asked if I would be interested in recording some demos for a band in the south of France. I called him back and said yes. He then told me it was U2. He said it would be easy “just drum machines and acoustic guitars”. Hmmm. Well, when I got there it was the whole band with electric guitars live drums etc , Brian Eno on keys and vocals, Dan on guitar and vocals and another keyboard player. I know how to engineer but it’s not really what I do anymore. But I made it through the week recording and mixing live as it happened. On my way over Dan had asked me to pick up an old classical piece of music, a hymn which we cut up in the morning before the sessions and used a basis for the song “White as Snow”. I had just recently bought the Harold Budd cd The Pearl. I suggested to Dan that we use one of the pieces on that cd as a basis for a track and with the help of a cool Brian Eno drum loop. We did that and it became “Ceders of Lebanon”. The next set of sessions were in Dublin at the band’s studio. I was promoted to taking 20 minute jams and editing them down into 4 minute song ideas. This continued in Fez, Morocco. The band had rented a cool hotel where they set up and did more recording. At the end of those sessions Bono asked me if I was busy that summer ( as the band wasn’t working, good family guys!!) I said I was free and he asked me to take all the tapes and edit down the material I liked best and send it to him. He had made the comment that he didn’t have the time to listen to 7 cds worth of music and if someone wanted make a name for themselves that would be a good way.( I was the only non famous person in the room when he said it). I set up at Dan’s house in Los Angeles ( he was in Canada making a film about himself) and I cut together about ten songs. The first one I sent Bono was the song No Line on the Horizon, also the title of their album. The band got back together and I didn’t hear back from them for about 8 months (I was a little freaked out) but eventually I met up with Dan at the Montreal Jazz festival and started working on the tracks in a hotel room , then spent the rest of summer in my Venice studio working with Dan. I finally got back with the band that fall in NYC and did some more work to help finish up the record. So many great memories from hanging out with Eno and Dan in Fez hearing stories from Brian about the Talking Heads to singing songs all night with Dan and Eno in the bar in U2’s Dublin hotel. Great guys, great music, great times…