Bono says he wants to release an AC/DC inspired album

U2 Bono

U2‘s Bono has said he wants to release an AC/DC inspired album in the near future.

Speaking to The New York Times, Bono said the album would come before ‘Songs Of Ascent’ – a new album the band have been teasing since 2009.

Bono told the publication that ‘Songs Of Ascent’ is nearly complete but on hold for now because the band want to release “a noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album”.

Reflecting on the songs the band had made in recent years with what they want to make in the future, Bono explained: “We all make mistakes. The progressive-rock virus gets in, and we needed a vaccine. The discipline of our songwriting, the thing that made U2 — top-line melody, clear thoughts — had gone.

“With the band, I was like, this is not what we do, and we can only do that experimental stuff if we have the songwriting chops. So we went to songwriting school, and we’re back and we’re good! Over those two albums, ‘Songs Of Innocence and Experience’, our songwriting returned. Now we need to put the firepower of rock ‘n’ roll back.

“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.”

Brian Johnson of AC/DC
Brian Johnson of AC/DC performs onstage with music group Foo Fighters during Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California CREDIT: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE

Bono also recently addressed the 2014 controversy where U2 arranged for their album ‘Songs Of Innocence‘ to be automatically downloaded onto the devices of 500million iTunes users.

The U2 singer took full responsibility for the marketing ploy, which caused significant backlash for users receiving a free copy of the band’s 10th album unsolicited.

In an extract from his new memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story published in The Guardian, the singer writes that “critics might accuse me of overreach” before admitting that “it is”.

Bono continued: “At first I thought this was just an internet squall. We were Santa Claus and we’d knocked a few bricks out as we went down the chimney with our bag of songs,” he wrote.

“But quite quickly we realised we’d bumped into a serious discussion about the access of big tech to our lives. The part of me that will always be punk rock thought this was exactly what The Clash would do. Subversive. But subversive is hard to claim when you’re working with a company that’s about to be the biggest on Earth.

“We’d learned a lesson, but we’d have to be careful where we would tread for some time. It was not just a banana skin. It was a landmine.”

Elsewhere in his memoir Bono opens up about the alleged death threats he’s received.

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