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Mullen, who added Junior to his surname after his father began to receive large tax bills meant for his prosperous son, lives on a beach near Dublin. His girlfriend does office-temp work, so she is free to join the tour at frequent intervals. "I live in a nice house and don't feel bad about it," he says. "But I don't drive a flashy car, first of all because I don't want to, and second of all because I think that would be rude in a country like Ireland, where there is high unemployment." Clayton lives in Dublin ("an incestuous place"), though his dreams of taking off for "another climate, a beach somewhere" are tempered by the sure knowledge that "I'd always return." With his wife Aislinn, who works for a boutique, and their daughters, the Edge also lives in Dublin, although he frets, "My life revolves around the music, the keyboard. My family should make a difference, but I am not able to spend enough time with them."
Politics and the past make perpetual demands, of course. The band underwrites Mother Records, an outfit that gives young bands their first shot. "We're trying to provide an opportunity for Irish groups," McGuinness says. "You don't have to be Irish, but it helps. We do have one Scottish group." Besides the trip to El Salvador last year, Bono and Ali found time for seven weeks of relief work in Ethiopia, and Mullen tries to stay tapped in to the roots: "All the neighbors knew my mother, and I try to drop in on them occasionally, just to keep my foot in." Celebrity, however, does have its inconveniences. "When you go into a shop, and you're in the only successful band to have come out of Ireland since whenever, every father and uncle and grandmother knows who you are. It is embarrassing when you want to go buy some socks."
There are further signs of changes and counterbalances as well. Although Bono has received lyric credit on the last two albums, the songwriting has traditionally involved the whole band, "chipping away," as Mullen puts it, "chipping away and doing it until it feels right. It takes an awful long time and is incredibly frustrating." Sometimes the system works well -- Pride (In the Name of Love) was written at a sound check in a total of seven minutes -- but the Edge is mulling over further streamlining. "I think in the future Bono and I will work together more closely," he says. "It seems to be a quicker way. When you've got everybody there, it can be very fun, but slow." However this may affect the rest of the band, they are all agreed on one point. "The Joshua Tree is the best record we've made to date," Bono declares, "but it will not be our best record by a long shot."
Bono has been reading Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver and has promised to write new songs during this tour. He has already begun one, based on a recent video shoot at a grungy Los Angeles location and a chance encounter with a gay Viet Nam vet. "I spotted empty bottles all over the roof with the label Wild Irish Rose wine," he says. "So I started this song. It is about suicide. The opening line is 'This city of angels has brought a devil out in me.' " (Well, the band has been listening to a good deal of country music.) He yearns to write a song that, as Manager McGuinness puts it, "could go into the language."