When a hot young Irish band hired Eno to produce their next album in 1983, he brought his Canadian friend along for the ride. Lanois recalls being crammed into a car with Eno and all the members of U2, rocketing around Dublin as Bono screamed along with the tape deck. The Unforgettable Fire, released in October 1984, sold more than four million copies worldwide. The follow-up, The Joshua Tree, released three years later, sold 25 million copies. Lanois’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.
The method is surprisingly straightforward. Forging a common language is the first task—forcing the musicians and recording team to settle on the vocabulary they will use to describe the component parts of each song. Then the diagrams—structural timelines written on a big easel so everyone can see them. “I like to go public with my information,” says Lanois. “And I keep a nice big clock in the studio so somebody at the back of the room can say, ‘Hey, there was something at the 2:32 mark that I’d like to hear again.’ ”
In his own notebooks, the producer sketches far more detailed musical maps with notes on miking, mixing, even where the instruments sound best in the room. (Soul Mining reproduces a couple of pages on a demo for U2’s Pride. “Bass is sounding good at back of studio, therefore drums in reception may be the best idea,” reads one thought bubble.)
Lanois is also a big believer in the idea that inspiration flows from atmosphere. The Unforgettable Fire was recorded in an Irish castle. There were several different set-ups in New Orleans over the years. And for a time, he worked out of an old porno theatre in Oxnard, Calif., up the coast from Los Angeles. Teatro, as he dubbed it, had parachutes hanging from the ceiling, weather balloons that served as floating projection screens for old newsreels and boxing movies, and restaurant booths and bleachers on the floor in case an audience was called for. His album with Willie Nelson was recorded there, as was the soundtrack he composed for Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade. These days he prefers to create a new studio for each project. “It’s almost like decorating the room for an event,” Lanois says. “When you do that, the project feels important. It feels different from the others.”
Then there is the madness. When U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb won album of the year at the 2005 Grammys, Bono joked about people being confined to a “home for the bewildered” after the fraught sessions. “Danny-boy Lanois is like, when you make an album with him either it’s going to be a great album, or somebody’s gonna die. Probably you,” said the front man. While recording So at Peter Gabriel’s English estate, Lanois locked the singer up in a barn and nailed the door shut, in an attempt to force him to finish the lyrics. Dylan writes about the producer smashing a Dobro to bits in a fit of rage. (Although the Oh Mercy sessions couldn’t have been that bad, as the pair hooked up again for 1997’s Time Out of Mind, another Grammy Album of the Year winner.) “We all have high expectations,” Lanois explains. “But I’ve tried to leave the French-Canadian thug behind.”
Closing in on senior status, he may be mellowing. His latest musical foray, Black Dub, is a “collective,” not a solo project. The album, due to be released Nov. 2 (the same day as the book), is a departure from his folkie work in the past—a blend of rock, soul, reggae and dub. “Part of me still wants to go north and write from the tundra,” he says. “But I’ve lived in Jamaica for the last 10 years, and I wanted to carry that rhythmic torch.”
The new band was supposed to have toured this summer, but those plans were cancelled and the album release pushed back after he piled his BMW motorcycle into a car in June. Lanois punctured a lung, broke 10 bones in all, including six ribs, and spent three weeks in intensive care. He says he has absorbed the lesson about riding a bike in city traffic, but not the one about slowing down. He was back at work almost as soon as he left the hospital, and spent some more time mixing the Neil Young disc, albeit from a wheelchair. “It was kind of a blessing in disguise,” he says. “l think the album is better for it.”
Toronto residents will get the first chance to hear the fruits of the collaboration at the stroke of midnight on Oct. 3, when Lanois is planning to preview four tracks outside City Hall, part of the dusk-to-dawn Nuit Blanche art festival. The electro-Young should fit in nicely with the rest of the night, a sound, light and film show featuring listening and viewing pods scattered across Nathan Phillips Square, each wired with a 24-channel speaker system.
Lanois plans to blow into the city a couple of weeks in advance, and compose some music for the night. He’s got a new Toronto base—a former Buddhist temple that he jokes the monks sold to him when they got tired of the filth and the rats. The sounds for the show are mingling with the ghosts in his head, but he’s in no hurry to force the creative process. “It’s a challenge to be forever looking for new ways,” he says. “But it’s like when you become interested in a woman. A little spontaneity and response to the immediate subject matter go a long way.”
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