Hello, welcome and a very happy new year to you all. This is Simon, accompanied as ever by Brian,

and our first soda-jurker guest of 2025 is a celebrated musician, songwriter, and, as Jimmy Page once described him,

Sonic Architect. Not only has he known the world over for his distinctive and innovative approach to the guitar,

he also happens to be a founder member of one of the biggest bands that's ever walked the planet.

With the band in question, he's released 15 studio albums, sold 170 million records worldwide,

and won no less than 22 Grammys. Not unreasonably, given those stats, he and his colleagues were inducted into the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. In late November 24, the groups acclaimed 2004 LP, How to Dismantle

an Atomic Bomb, was given a 20th anniversary reissue, for which our guest gathered previously

unreleased material for an accompanying Shadow album entitled How to Reassemble

an Atomic Bomb. We sat down a few weeks ago from an illuminating chat about that project and much

more. We are beyond thrilled to welcome U-2's The Edge to the show. The Edge was born David Evans

in 1961 in Barking Essex, Southeast England, to a Welsh family, but grew up in Dublin, Ireland,

where his family moved when he was still a baby. He took piano lessons as a child,

but after his mother brought home an old acoustic guitar she'd bought at a jumble sale,

there was no looking back. He played it constantly around the family home,

teaching himself by playing along to records and even the television,

and drawing early inspiration from guitarists like Rory Gallagher. As he approached his late teens, our guests was drawn to the

punk rock and post-punk scene and acts like The Clash, Patty Smith, Television and the Ramones.

He first encountered Paul Hewson, or Bono, as the world would come to know him, Adam Clayton

and Larry Mullen Jr. in 1976 at Mount Temple

Comprehensive, after he and his brother Dick answered an ad Larry had posted on the school

notice board looking for musicians. The young David now had a band and thanks to Bono, he'd soon

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