Bono: We have to accept the fact that there's people out there that aren't familiar with our work in the eighties. There's a lot of people who are into U2 that came into U2 on "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa." There's something that really rings true about these songs and it's kind of ecstatic music. That's how I look at it. It's so high... in a good way as in uplifting.

The Edge: It's not really an autobiography. It's more just little, tiny polaroids. Just moments captured down through that ten year period that have remained fresh and special and unique.

Question: How did you choose what to include?

The Edge: There's about fifteen moments that crystalized. Fifteen songs that have, ten years later, actually stood the test of time.

Adam Clayton: For me it was like, this is our first album and it might be our last one. Then we got to make two albums and then three and we slowly began to realize that we were half way through the Eighties by then. It was something that we just didn't know where it would go. The pressure really wasn't on us until after "The Joshua Tree" when we were playing stadiums, and doing stadium tours is hard work. Pre '86 or '87 it was a "doss" but after that it got a bit serious.

Larry: We're always striving to do something different and to be on that cutting edge. We don't feel that we've actually finished what we started. It's like there's unfinshed business and that's why we still do it. There's stuff left for us to do.

Bono: The B-sides are really important. It's like they're more revealing. A lot of times we wrote them in the middle of the night, as we were recording them, usually being thrown out of studios. People would be knocking on the doors saying, "You have to leave," but we don't have a B-side. It's a bit like a photograph, like a polaroid. You didn't take that much care putting it together, but it captures a moment that tells a story.

Adam: There was a lot more material to have a look at and some of it was pretty unfinished. So it was quite hard to go through it again. I think what we ended up with is really good.

The Edge: I'm very happy tosay that I like this group of songs that we've put out -- both the A-sides and the B-sides because I feel they do actually still hold true and I think that they've dated well.

Bono: It was [my daughter] Ali's birthday and I didn't make it for the birthday. (laughs) I wanted to write her a little sweet song, but it ended up a little bit sour, as all the best love songs are. I can't write these straight love songs. They make me want to throw up.

Adam: "Sweetest Thing" was a situation where we got it up and we were looking at it because we knew we hadn't really finished it.

Bono: It was written during the album sessions for "The Joshua Tree." We forgot about it until this compilation record we put together of our A-sides and our B-sides from the Eighties.

Adam: Edge came up with a couple of extra chords and it was a really quick thing. So we said, "Yeah, let's stick them in."

The Edge: Yeah.

Question: You don't sound amused.

The Edge: Really, videos are not much fun to do. There really quite boring. We try as much as possible to limit them to a day or half a day, if we can get away with it. One way that we keep it amusing for ourselves is when we get a chance to do something that's kind of surreal or completely over-the-top.

Adam: Yeah. (laughs) I always thought we'd either end up working with animals or whatever 'cause it's kind of a circus anyway, this whole U2 thing.