U2 Wide Awake on 'Good Morning America'

May 20, 2005 — -- Since four Dublin boys first came together 25 years ago, U2 has been on rock's leading edge, both musically and politically.

After selling some 130 million albums, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famers are still -- as lead singer Bono put it -- "drunk on the idea" that music can change the world.

U2 kicked off the "Good Morning America" Summer Concert Series today with an exclusive interview and a concert performance from Chicago. The band began its 2005 "Vertigo" tour in San Diego and will be on the road through the end of the year, hitting arenas throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

Music to Change the World

Each member of the band is an integral part of the whole. Bono, the charismatic and politically active lead singer, is the most visible. He calls his condition "rock star syndrome," bent on having fun while doing nothing less than saving the world.

"Music can certainly change the temperature of a room or get people, you know, excited, or leave home, leave their jobs, you know, fall in love," Bono said in an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer.

The Edge on lead guitar is a rock icon; bass player Adam Clayton beat the occupational hazard of substance abuse; and Larry Mullen Jr., the heartthrob, keeps the beat on drums.

They've seen each other through marriages and funerals, wild highs and the deepest lows. Today, most of the members of the band are graced with children of their own.

The Edge told Sawyer his teenage daughter had some advice for him after listening to the latest album.

"I remember playing some of the early mix of the album to my daughter who's in her teens, and she said, 'Dad, you should listen to the radio more. You know, like, I'm not sure this is really, you know, gonna go over,'" he said.

Band a 'Four-Legged Table'

"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," which was released Nov. 23 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, and the tour have, of course, "gone over," with sold-out shows across the globe.

They are international rock superstars, but these four mates from Ireland are still friends and consider themselves equals in the band. They have called themselves "a four-legged table. If one of the legs gets dented, the whole thing doesn't fall down: the other three can support it."

For example, Bono says that Clayton, who kicked alcohol and drugs several years ago, has been through the most in his personal life, but "he can kinda spot people as they're about to walk off the side of a very tall building, and say, 'I wouldn't go there.'"

But everyone in the band has battled their own demons, said Bono, and each is there to support the others.

"Everybody has tried, you know, has poured petrol over their head and tried to set fire to themself in this band, in some fashion," he said.

The Fire Still Burns

For Bono, there's fire in the political and the personal.

He says his father's death gave him a new voice, and he wrote the song, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" in his honor. In the song, he writes, "You're the reason I sing, you're the reason the opera is in me."

Bono said of his dad, I've been "fighting with him ever since I arrived on this Earth, and, you know, standing over his grave, realizing he's not there to fight with, leaves me the most bereft in a way."

But Bono and the band have plenty of fight left in them, especially when it comes to causes close to their hearts -- the AIDS epidemic, poverty, third-world debt.

The Edge said that U2 has always used its music as a launching pad for politics and to inspire people to take action -- something he says is less common in music today.

"I think what's changed the most is actually not us so much as the whole thing of rock 'n' roll and music," he said. "It was about politics, it was about getting engaged, it was activism. It was a vital potent forum, and that's, I think now, less true. What we're doing is trying to keep that going, that sense of what music should be about."

Clayton added, "There's a lot to be done."

And Bono, never one to miss the final word, said that U2 would remain on the cutting edge.

"There's a new wave of rock 'n roll coming and we want to be part of it," he said.