BONO gets emotional when he thinks about his bittersweet duet with Dolly Parton.
If like me, you adored the country icon and everything she stood for, you’ll also find it hard not to be deeply moved.
Their tender ballad Torn is the last track on U2’s new album, Carnaval De Luz, the Spanish for “carnival of light”.
It is also Dolly’s poignant final recording, her swansong if you like, in a career stretching back to childhood performances at the Grand Ole Opry in the Fifties.
“What a gift she gave us and what a blessing it felt like,” Bono tells me of his chance to work with her. “And I’m like you, Simon, I can hardly listen to that voice now.”
Completed in June, little more than two months before Dolly died aged 80, Torn is a tale of our times about a family divided by opposing political views.
“Torn apart these loving hearts that beat and break the same,” she and Bono sing with voices intertwined, Dolly’s displaying a noticeable fragility.
And if Carnaval De Luz as a whole is a vibrant, punchy, forward-facing celebration of rock and roll, this song is an entirely fitting way for it to end.
“Dolly is the Queen of the Carnival. She’s the definition of it,” says Bono of the star noted for her billowing blonde wigs, physical enhancements and sequin-spangled outfits.
“She came from a one-room cabin on Locust Ridge Road (in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee) and real poverty, and she reminded us all that where you come from MUST not decide where you’re going in life.
“If you come from a tough neighbourhood or a broken family, you can still go all the way.”
I’m speaking to all four members of U2 as they celebrate 50 years since Larry Mullen Jr pinned up a handwritten note at Mount Temple School, Dublin: “Drummer seeks musicians to form band.”
Here they are before me, this seemingly unbreakable quartet of Sixtysomethings reclining on a sofa, from left to right, The Edge, Bono, Larry and Adam Clayton.
Even by their standards, this is a momentous year for U2, marked by their 16th studio album, two EPs themed around global turmoil and spirituality respectively, the big 5-0 anniversary and the announcement of next year’s mammoth world tour.
But first, let’s hear more of what Bono has to say about the incomparable Dolly Parton.
“I think what we loved about her was the lack of self-pity,” he says. “Years after she wrote about Jolene running off with her man, somebody asked her, ‘How do you feel about that song now?’
“She said, ‘When I look over and I see my man sleeping and catching flies out there on the porch, I think, ‘Come back Jolene and take him away!’
“There was always humour with Dolly and all our favourite people have that, don’t they? There’s no time for whining rockstars. Especially us, as we’ve been given so much.”
LARRY
Having not been around for a while because of injury, I’ve had a lot of time for reflection.
It was not a decision but a situation imposed on me. I couldn’t do my job and it was difficult to make my way through that. So it was good to have the opportunity to come back – because I missed everything!
And when I put my head in the studio again and started to play with these ideas, I felt, “Oh, this is where I’m meant to be. This is what I had hoped for”.
In our 50th year, it’s a great thing to celebrate the past and what we’ve done. But there’s nothing like looking at your 50 years and realise that there’s a future to be proud of, to be engaged with.
To still be moving forward, to have this record to take around the world, is exciting for us.
So how did U2’s collaboration with her come about? I ask.
“We wrote loads of songs that we tried to sell her,” says Bono
“But she said, ‘Well, I have a song I started that you may want to take in a different direction and it’s called Torn.’”
Dolly’s original concept followed a traditional country theme — a woman torn between two lovers — but now it focuses on a familiar U2 subject, how political divisions can destroy families.
Bono says: “Dolly stayed away from politics but she had two brothers that don’t speak to each other.
“They’re fighting about politics — and that doesn’t just happen in the red and blue states of America. It happens in the UK, it happens in Ireland, it happens all over the world, where families are at each other’s throats about the right way to go.”
He believes it’s time we give people with differing views to our own “a bit of slack” and listen to what they have to say and takes inspiration from Dolly’s approach.
“She always wanted anyone to be welcome at her show, whatever condition they arrived in,” he says, “And that’s the way it has to be for us on next year’s tour.”
ADAM
As teenagers in 1976/77, there was a lot of anger in the air. That was our go-to position, where we came from, our music. And the best way for a band to succeed was desperation. To have no plan B.
You had no choice but to keep going forward because your life depended on it.
Fifty years on, this band has allowed me to go from a position of great ignorance and arrogance – thinking I knew everything and could do anything – to realising that my relationship with these three other guys means I’ve been able to achieve way more than I could ever have expected.
The by-product is great humility and gratitude. I feel that we still have a lot to give . No matter where our lives have led us, the constant is mucking about in a studio, creating music together.
As for the sound of Torn, which bears the merest hint of country twang, Bono adds: “We did something similar with Johnny Cash. If you think about Larry’s drum part, it’s more of a sci-fi country landscape.
“I think he did her a favour by not doing the obvious but it was risky. If she didn’t run with it — and she’d have no problem telling you — then we’d have lost her.
“But she liked the direction we took it and her camp has a more traditional country version, which they’re going to put out.
“Hearing her voice in the context of Carnaval De Luz is a bit of a shock and a welcome one.”
Now it’s time to take a deep dive into the rest of the album, a freewheeling tour de force punctuated by The Edge’s most direct, driving riffs in years and blessed by an engine room — Adam on bass and Larry on drums — at the top of its game.
Bono is still finding an incredible vocal range, particularly noticeable through his falsetto on The Mirror Maker (Rosalia) and Superficiality.
As it’s U2, a number of words beginning with U spring to mind about the album — upbeat, urgent, unfettered, uncompromising.
The album begins with the pulsing adrenalin rush of Go (Carnaval De Luz) which segues in the glam-rock stomp of La Reina, which in this context means the carnival queen.
THE EDGE
I feel intense gratitude that I’m still able to make music with these guys, who are my friends as well as my creative partners.
That combination of trust and mutual respect and belief in one another, which is necessary for a band, is also incredibly hard to maintain.
The fact that we’re still here and still enjoying working together and still making great work is kind of mind-blowing.
For us, it’s about being exacting and going after it in an uncompromising way. The music will lead you on really circuitous routes before you get to the final version, but it’s important to never give up – that really comes above everything else, that’s the lesson.
I think it’s always the case with U2 that the music is the boss and the songs are the boss.
Of U2’s rekindled vigour, Adam says: “I suppose we’ve caught up with ourselves.
“Just as we were getting ready to go back to work after Covid, Larry couldn’t perform and had to have medical treatment.
“Now that he’s back in the band full-time, it’s full steam ahead. You can hear it on the record — it’s in the grooves.”
Larry says “it was a real thrill” to get back behind his drum kit in the studio.
“You never know what’s going to happen when you go into a room — it’s complicated,” he continues.
“But we captured a mood and what’s great about this record is that the mood continued.”
He believes that U2’s two EPs, the gritty Days Of Ash and the reflective Easter Lily, released earlier in the year, helped “us get something out of our system”.
“Something is stirring,” agrees Bono. “A disturbance in the force and we’re having fun with it.
BONO
Chemistry . . . there’s some humiliation involved in getting older and still your drug of choice is the perfect song or performance. It means you can be unhappy a lot of the time, because it’s just out of reach.
Further humbling comes, but it’s actually a gift, when you accept you can only achieve them with these three other people (he gestures to his bandmates).
You can’t become yourself without them – and I’ve tried.
I’ve been in other bands, as an anti-poverty activist and all that, but it’s something to realise you really need THESE people to be yourself. And, of course, Western – and Southern, Eastern, Northern – civilisation depends on us.
What would happen if we put out a shite U2 album? The whole thing would collapse!
“We may have arrived with the right music at the right time — though that’s not necessarily a given. But Carnaval de Luz seems to have struck people the right way,” he adds, before acknowledging the U2 naysayers, “I’m sure there are plenty of people out there for whom it will not strike a chord.
“But for us, it is the sound of relief — and exuberance.”
As for The Edge, his blazing guitar is at the front and centre of the record and must be a source of satisfaction.
“It was a bit of a throw down because guitar hadn’t been at the forefront of contemporary music for a while,” he says.
“But now we’re seeing Fontaines D.C., Geese, The Lambrini Girls — all with fantastic sonics — and that’s what we need.
“It’s what I was searching for on this record. By the same token, it has to be in keeping with what Adam, Larry and Bono are doing.
“You can’t just play guitar for the sake of it. Riffs have to sit in the perfect context to make them great.”
One of the new songs, The Mirror Maker (Rosalia), is a sultry shout-out to shape-shifting Spanish singer Rosalia, who mixes flamenco with pop and hip-hop.
Her album Lux topped many 2025 end-of-year lists.
So I’m keen to find out what she thought of U2 singing about her.
“It was an awkward moment because she became so famous,” says Bono. “My daughter had seen her Motomami tour and I knew her music — but normally you have to be in jail or dead before we write a song about you.
“It was nice to find this incredible artist and celebrate her — but what if she wasn’t into it?
“I can tell you she’s been very kind and generous in our direction. Somebody asked the other day, ‘Would you have taken it off, if she thought it was s**t?’
“It was Edge who said, ‘No, we’d say it was about Saint Rosalia who lived in a cave in 12th Century Italy — at Monte Pellegrino, the same spelling as the sparkling water.’”
Edge says: “Rosalia has a healthy disrespect for staying in your lane, something that (Brian) Eno brought to our band early on.”
Moving on, I ask U2 about the flamboyant carnival concept behind their album.
“People forget that carnival was originally a religious festival,” says Bono. “And it came before BEFORE Lent, the period when people ask hard questions of themselves.
“Then Easter is supposed to arrive with the promise of transcendence — and we love a good rock and roll song with a bit of transcendence, you know Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire.
“That’s who we are and that’s what we love about music.
“But we got the protest songs and Easter Lily out of the way first and now it’s the carnival bit.”
This is the cue for Edge to implore people not to lose hope in straitened times. He says: “If you allow doomscrolling to dictate your mood, you’re never going to move forward.
“Without being in denial of the challenges facing us, the carnival is what we want to cling onto. It’s an act of defiance to hold onto joy and positivity in the face of everything that’s going on.”
He points to Donald Trump’s disastrous mid-term elections and alludes to authoritarian leaders being thrown out in places like Hungary and Serbia.
“Everyone was in shock at the number of authoritarian regimes springing up and now they seem to be on the back foot,” he says. “I think carnival is the right mood for this moment.”
Bono picks up the thread by adding: “Sometimes, dancing is the most revolutionary thing you can do.
“Think about it — people go to festivals, they want to dance, they want to move their bodies and they’ve got the freedom to do so.
“We’re not giving up that freedom. That’s what rock and roll is, and this is a moment to fight back by not letting somebody rob you of joy.”
That thought prompts him to consider next year’s The Greatest Show On Earth world tour, named after a Carnaval De Luz joint effort with long-time collaborator Eno.
“We want to go out and make it the best night of anyone’s life — and of our own lives.”
He stops in his tracks and adds with self-deprecating humour: “That sounds completely insincere and a sales job.
“I warn you I am also a salesman, but I’m not being insincere. U2 have to go on stage and believe each night can be the one.
“In these times, it had better be the one. People are paying for tickets, coming with their mates and families — and we are very proud to say that Wolf Alice are joining us.”
U2 are no strangers to carnival atmosphere and remember being taken by Quincy Jones to the Brazilian state of Bahia, the spiritual home of carnival.
“We also went to the Rio carnival and we’ve been to samba schools,” continues Bono. “There’s a reason South Americans are good at football — they’ve got rhythm and they’re better at being in their bodies than Irish people.” Edge and Bono riff off each other and the former says: “They say the Irish have a Latin sensibility but we didn’t get carnival when we were growing up. We got — as in the UK — pancakes.
“So when we discovered what was going on in Spain, South America and Mexico, it made a lot of sense to us.”
This brings us to barnstorming La Reina, on the surface a tribute to a carnival queen but also serving as a reminder that coming together is an antidote to loneliness.
Its mention prompts Bono to make a plea: “When we come to the UK next summer, people can tell us who they want for Carnival Queen and we’ll put them on a float.
“Usually, they came from a small town and weren’t posh but became queen for a day. I love the idea of finding our queen. They don’t have to be U2 fans, just someone U2 fans admire.
“We all have saints and angels walking around us. One works in the pub, one in the emergency room — and no doubt the odd hairy bloke dressed in a crown.
“La Reina is going to be a fun moment and great to hear Edge swagger it out on glam-rock guitar.”
I leave you with a lyric from stripped-back ballad If The World Is At War We Better Not Be. “I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for you to happen to me,” intones Bono.
In this case, “you” means meeting the three people who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him for 50 years — and they called themselves U2.