Dining at La Petite Maison in Nice, U2 blends into the background of a high-end celebrity hotspot that typically hosts the likes of Beyoncé, Elton John, and Leonardo DiCaprio. In Nice, has a certain reputation as a five-star celebrity haunt, l a Petite Maison. So do Elton John, Tom Cruise, Harry Styles and Leonardo DiCaprio, their meals presided over by the restaurant’s founder, Nicole, variously described in print as “eccentric”, “unique” and “truculent” (she’s standing by the entrance when I arrive, and suffice to say, doesn’t look like someone you’d much enjoy being on the wrong side of). On Bastille Day in 2016, in which 86 people were killed. “I climbed through that window and hid under there,” he nods, pointing to a table at the rear of the restaurant. “Nicole,” he adds, “didn’t hide.”, he was eating on the outdoor terrace the night of Nice’s terrorist attack. The show, on Tuesday night, was the latest event in what is proving a packed year. Some were apparently suitably reverential: “Welcome home”; “Truly it’s a beautiful day”. He laughs, saying that when his own father reached that point, “he started sleeping with an iron bar under his pillow”, and illustrates this with a story about U2’s peers in the late 70s Irish rock scene, the Virgin Prunes. “As an art prank, they came by one night and wrapped our car up in hankies and powder, then threw eggs when I went to the window.
Despite being one of the world’s most enduring bands, their presence draws little attention during a lunch break that highlights the group’s current transition back into the spotlight. Which is what my meeting with U2 amounts to, it’s a very plush spot for a rehearsal lunch break. U2 were greeted enthusiastically by an audience of current pupils waving homemade signs. Let’s just do it for as long as we can.”, i think we thought: if we’ve got this thing.
The members—Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.—are currently balancing local residency in the south of France with preparations for a secret performance at London’s Tate Modern. Including songs they recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno – “to celebrate the great man and our collaborative history”, as the Edge puts it, all the band’s members own houses nearby and the interview has been squeezed in among preparations for a secret gig at London’s Tate Modern. That an equitable division of power is supposed to be a disastrous way to run a band.
This surge of activity arrives as the group marks half a century since Mullen posted a notice at Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive school seeking musicians. A recent commemorative performance at their former school showcased the band’s legacy, drawing a mix of reverent fans and younger students playfully asking about other bands like Oasis or Inhaler. Reflecting on their inception, the members note that their early ambition was longevity, a goal they viewed as the direct antithesis of the prevailing punk ethos of the time.
The band’s remarkable continuity, keeping the original four members together for 50 years, is attributed to what Bono describes as “the soviet.” This internal democratic system allows them to navigate conflicts and share creative control, though it requires significant openness. Mullen notes that while they haven’t transitioned into professional political advisors, the process of maintaining the band involves constant negotiation and the ability to share space in challenging circumstances. That they have survived intact is down to what Bono calls “the soviet” – a democracy in which songwriting credits are always shared equally and everything is decided by committee. According to as Bruce Springsteen, When he inducted U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005: “I believe they actually practise some form of democracy – toxic poison in a band’s head!”.
Maintaining this harmony has become more complex over time. Bono points to the influence of the male ego, suggesting that as men lose various forms of power, they often become more difficult to manage. Despite these tensions, the members emphasize that the internal friction is vital to their work. The Edge admits that while he occasionally wishes for his bandmates to simply follow instructions, doing so would likely result in an inferior musical output. According to “It’s got harder as time’s gone on,”, Bono. “Because, as Marianne Faithfull would say in situations like this: ‘Never underestimate the male ego, darling. Be that physical, sexual, mental, you make up for it by flexing, students of male psychology will tell you that as men lose power.
The band is now preparing to release their first album of new material in nearly nine years, Carnaval de Luz, due on November 13 via Island. The project includes a significant collaboration with Dolly Parton, which Bono describes as the final recording from the legendary country singer. He expresses genuine humility regarding the duet, noting that Parton represents a unifying figure across American culture who shares the band’s deep interest in spiritual themes. It’s enough of a celebrity haunt that the arrival of U2 – still incontrovertibly one of the biggest bands in the world 40 years after they could first reasonably have called themselves such – causes barely a murmur of interest among their fellow lunchtime diners. Renee Good, the subject of its opening track, American Obituary.).
This new record follows a period of artistic experimentation, including the release of two recent EPs. Days of Ash focused on political urgency, drawing inspiration from the war in Ukraine and the crisis in Palestine, while Easter Lily explored more spiritual subject matter. The tone of the upcoming album marks a departure, favoring themes of community and defiant joy. As the song Superficiality suggests, the band aims to respond to contemporary global challenges by creating music that offers a different kind of resistance. The latter filled with songs of a spiritual bent, the former with righteous anger and invective variously inspired by the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine – Bono recently caused uproar in Israel by comparing comments made by the country’s national security minister to Heinrich Himmler – and the Trump administration. (It arrived a month after ICE’s shooting of, there were the EPs Days of Ash and Easter Lily. According to watching them interact over Madame Nicole’s butterflied prawns and pissaladière, you get a vague sense of how “the soviet” might work – occasionally, after Bono offers a long answer that digresses into quotations from books, songs and the Bible, another member of the band steps in and effectively grounds it, summarising what he’s just, In more direct terms. But nonetheless, there’s no getting around the fact.
Bono characterizes the current era as “a little fascistic” and emphasizes the need for a distinct response from artists. He describes this approach as taking the metaphorical fiddle from Nero to play a more positive tune. Although the band has faced previous critical challenges—such as their 2011 Broadway musical about Spider-Man and the controversial 2014 iTunes release of Songs of Innocence—they remain committed to their original quartet structure. And those things are so important: they give you the sense that anything is possible, that change can happen, that you can be a huge band, it was a sort of examination of innocence and naivety.
Looking ahead, U2 will launch a world tour starting February 23 at the Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City. The tour schedule includes a three-night stint at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium from June 18 to 22. As they prepare to return to the stage, the band maintains a firm belief in their collective identity, noting that while they might continue under a different name if someone departed, the core of U2 remains rooted in the specific chemistry of the four original members. We were 16, 17, 18 and we expected to get a record deal.
