Innovation is costly—it eats away at your life, your time. It makes a mockery of you as you stand there with your pants down, as you make noises in the studio. It laughs at every failure and has no patience for dreams. I still suffer the blows of insecurity, as I get it all wrong twenty times, but on the twenty-first time I may get it right, and th

The Lanois brothers didn’t want to be generic; we wanted to have our own sound. This simple philosophy has been with me ever since.

Somebody always knows something I don’t know. If I had said no in the recording studio to ideas I did not fully understand, I wouldn’t have made records with nearly as much soul. Letting something you don’t understand come to fruition is an intelligence in itself.

leaving ourselves open to every possibility has always been ingrained in my work technique, and so the philosophy continues.

Perhaps this is the right time to big up my friend Bono, as one of the great singers and improvisers. His ability to transform the direction of a piece of music is really something. Once he gets to that zone, it’s like some other being has entered his body as he challenges the rest of us to rise to that same level of nonthinking, only performing. T

I was hooked on work, and I realized something simple then: skill was an automatic ticket to any interesting scene. I made a decision that I would never ask for anything from the table, I would always bring something instead.

I hate music to be background. If you want music, make music; if you want food, make food—not the two at once.

Bob was private and punctual, never wasted any time, still one of the most focused people I’ve ever worked with.

Perhaps Neil Young’s theory could apply here—if it sounds dangerous, you’re on the right track.