Dan The Man

Daniel Lanois is probably best known as a producer of several of the truly seminal albums of the last decade – Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind and Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball to name just two. His association with U2 goes back to The Unforgettable Fire in 1984 when he was an assistant to Brian Eno. He continued to work with the band through the decades on albums such as The Joshua Tree and their most recent long player All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

But the French-Canadian studio wiz is also a musician and songwriter of note. Earlier this year he released Shine, his third solo album and first in ten years, to wide acclaim. Currently on a tour with his band around Europe, which will include a Dublin date, he says he’s content for now to be a gigging musician.
“I’ve just decided to stop producing for a while,” he explains, minutes before going onstage in Austria. “Obviously I did the last U2 record but since then I’ve done no production at all. I’m only going to get back to it when I’m really hungry for it. It’s a bit embarrassing that it took ten years for me to make another solo record!”
Does this mean he won’t be working with U2 on their upcoming album?
“I’ll definitely be seeing them when I’m in Dublin,” he explains. “I’ll stop by the studio and help out for a few days and we’ll see how things go. They want me in as a session player this time around so I might have to take a few orders from them for a change!”
Even in his solo incarnation the U2 connection continues; one of the highlights on Shine is ‘Falling At Your Feet’, a duet with Bono.
“The song was written around the time Bono was working on Million Dollar Hotel with Wim Wenders,” says Lanois. “I gave him a hand with the soundtrack and he asked for some music for a lyric idea he had. So we married the music and the words together in an afternoon and recorded it. I thought it deserved to be heard again so we recorded it for this record. I think there’s something special about that song. It’s transcending and spiritual without being syrupy. Myself and Bono pretended we were Simon & Garfunkel when we were doing the vocals.”
How has he found playing live compared to working in the controlled environment of the studio?
“It’s fantastic,” he says. “The communication with an audience is a whole other thing than record making. There’s a kind of resourcefulness that comes into play. And it varies so much from night to night. We’ve gone from playing a beautiful Italian opera house to a grungy rock and roll club here in Austria.

Daniel Lanois plays The Olympia, Dublin on Thursday October 30. Shine is out now on Anti Records