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The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

I'm still digging long-established bands like U2 - they're new to me!

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is.

U2 - that's a band that never should have existed. There's no life experience in any of their songs.

U2 are a great band; they've given us an unbelievable body of work, and all of us musicians owe them at least something. I can honestly say that every time I have played the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, as soon as my drums are set up, I go into the beat of 'Sunday Bloody Sunday.'

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

U2 have a lot of religion, also people like Johnny Cash and Elvis. Those people weren't shy about it - it's nice there are people who've come before that were open about it.