Delayed Gratification

I was looking at how The Edge tracks his guitars in the recording studio. You can find an interesting report on his technique here.

There is an active discussion forum on how U2 gets its sound here. I wonder, though, how much Daniel Lanois has influenced the U2 sound.

Lanois did some recording with Eno in 1979. Eno was asked to produce an album for U2 and recruited Lanois to coproduce. Based on that work Peter Gabriel asked Lanois to coproduce his soundtrack to the 1984 film Birdy. Gabriel and Lanois also shared production credits for So and Us. Lanois coproduced U2’s The Joshua Tree with Eno and acted as principle producer for 1991’s Achtung Baby.

And, to top it off, Lanois is a Canadian. I suspect he influenced much of the sound that we hear from U2.