The Edge: ‘It’s going to be very difficult to break up U2’
After 47 years as U2’s guitarist, The Edge looks to the future – and back at a lifetime alongside one of music’s most divisive figures
In May last year, the U2 guitarist known as The Edge found himself in the bomb-damaged Kyiv suburb of Borodyanka. Above him stood a bronze monument to Taras Shevchenko, a poet sometimes referred to as the father of Ukrainian literature. A journalist at the scene asked a question that U2 have faced throughout their long career as one of the most successful bands in pop history: is there a role for musicians and writers in the real world of global politics? “Well,” Edge replied, looking up at the statue, “the Russian empire seems to think so. Isn’t that a bullet hole in the poet’s head?”
While in Kyiv, Edge and bandmate Bono performed a short gig in an underground station that doubled as a bomb shelter and met the president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “What struck us was that the man who is right out in the forefront, fighting to preserve democratic representation in the face of autocracy, was a stand-up comedian. And his chief of staff was his film producer,” says Edge. “He’s one of us, in that sense – a creative and a performer.”
Later, Bono and Edge were escorted to the towns of Irpin and Bucha. “It was inspiring and horrifying, because we saw not only the courage and intelligence of the Ukrainian people,” he says, “but also the net result of the Russian occupation – multiple civilian murders, mass graves. It was an absolutely unforgettable trip, for both really good and really bad reasons.”
It was also one of many moments when the 61-year-old guitarist has been struck by the strangeness of his rock-star life. He tells me that such moments can occur when he’s performing onstage in front of tens of thousands of people – “I’ll look up in the middle of playing Where the Streets Have No Name and… Whoa! It’s phenomenal, you just have to try and take it in” – or when becoming a prestigious Kennedy Center Honoree and winning praise from President Joe Biden at a White House reception, as happened to U2 in December last year. “When I find myself in crazy places,” says Edge, “I try and make a point of acknowledging that this is where music has brought me.”
Wearing his signature black beanie hat over his baldpate, Edge peers at me through a computer screen from the sunlit home in Malibu, California, that he shares with his second wife, American choreographer and dancer Morleigh Steinberg. The couple have two adult children, and Edge has three more from his first marriage, to teenage sweetheart Aislinn O’Sullivan. He also owns properties in Ireland and on the French Riviera, and is said to be worth £330 million. This is the life that has been granted him by the phenomenal success of U2, with whom he has been guitarist since he was a 15-year-old. Over a 47-year career, his inventive playing has driven the band to unprecedented heights, helping turn them into stadium superstars with more than 150 million album sales and billions of streams.
