Over the last 25 years Daniel Lanois has produced landmark albums for U2, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Peter Gabriel, among many others. Last year — around the time he started to craft the album Le Noise with Neil Young — Lanois began writing his memoirs. The result, Soul Mining: A Musical Life, came out November 9. Co-written with Keisha Kalfin, the book jumps from era to era non-chronologically, focusing on some of Lanois' greatest records. "I tend to think in a non-linear way," Lanois tells Rolling Stone. "And chronology doesn't come into play for the creation of music, so I decided to work that way. It's probably also just the acid kicking back in."
Lanois isn't involved with any of U2's upcoming projects, but he says he keeps in regular touch with Bono. "Bono took advantage of his back injury and brought the band into the studio," Lanois says. "I haven't heard anything yet, but I'm sure it's adventurous." Lanois was heavily involved with U2's 2009 disc No Line On The Horizon, which didn't live up to commercial expectations.
Superstar producer Steve Lillywhite, who also worked on the disc, recently made headlines when he gently criticized the album. "They did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations," he said. "It's a pity because the whole idea of Morocco as a big idea was great. When the big idea for U2 is good, that is when they succeed the most, but I don't think the spirit of what they set out to achieve was translated. Something happened that meant it did not come across on the record."
Lanois says he doesn't totally agree with that assessment. "Steve came in late into the project so he would have a late-in-the-project perspective," he says. "The record started out brilliantly. We were just full of life when we started it in Morocco. Bono wanted to make a gospel record for the future. The first third of the record was filled with delight and we really hit on something special. We spent a long time on it, perhaps too long. The usual pressures came in at the end, like what's the first single going to be and what's gonna be in the set. If we had put out the record coming out of Morocco it would have been an amazing record, even at that stage."
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