U2 Will Release New Version Of “Red Hill Mining Town,” Rework Songs Of Experience With Steve Lillywhite
In a few months, U2 are heading out on a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 1987 classic The Joshua Tree. And in support of that, U2 fansite @U2 reports, they’re going to release an updated version of album track “Red Hill Mining Town” helmed by English producer Steve Lillywhite. According to a new interview in the latest edition of MOJO magazine, Bono went back to the master and re-recorded his vocal for the new version, and he says that the band also “brought out the colliery brass band which was recorded at the time…You can’t hear it in the original mix.”
The Edge has already said that the band are planning on revise their upcoming album Songs Of Experience to better address Trump’s terrifying presidency, and in the same MOJO article, they expand on the changes they’re making to the album with the help of Lilywhite. “I’ve been writing and changing things a little bit,” Bono says. “Just tinkering. Edge, too.” According to the Edge, “A couple of tunes may get lyric updates, and we might even write a new song or two.” But bassist Adam Clayton offers the most insight:
There wasn’t clarity to some of the mixes [on Songs Of Innocence] and we needed to be a little bit more inventive sonically. I mean, that record, when we performed it live, the songs became very, very masculine and very tough and we didn’t really capture that on the record. So again one of the reasons why we’re trying to slow this down a bit is we really want to get the mixes right. We don’t want a soup. We want a consommé.
The album is apparently “at the 85 percent mark” of being finished.