U2 pick Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, and David Bowie as the 10 must-listen tracks

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The members of veteran rock band U2 have picked the 10 tracks of their years, with the likes of Paul McCartney and David Bowie selected.

The Bono-fronted group spoke with BBC Radio 2’s Vernon Kay and shared their choices. U2 released their first album of original songs in nine years, Carnaval De Luz, earlier this week, and have since shared fond memories of listening to Sound and Vision, Roy Orbison’s She’s a Mystery to Me, and Wings. Also featured are two songs that had country legend Johnny Cash work with the band, as well as a Shane MacGowan song the band covered for the recently released 20th Century Paddy compilation album. One of the songs mentioned by the band, Ellis Island, is yet to be released.

U2’s ten tracks of my years can be found below.

• The Skids – Into the Valley
• The Stranglers – Hanging Around
• Paul McCartney and Wings – Live and Let Die
• Roy Orbison – She’s a Mystery to Me
• David Bowie – Sound and Vision
• Cozy Powell – Dance with the Devil
• Bob Marley and The Wailers – Redemption Song
• Johnny Cash – The Wanderer
• Johnny Cash and U2 – Ellis Island
• Dolly Parton – The Seeker
• The Pogues – Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Explaining their choice of The Skids’ Into the Valley, guitarist The Edge said: “or us as a band we were like so young we started taking it seriously and writing our own songs and there were some bands that were very influential and I just remember as the guitar player in the band when I first heard Into the Valley and Stuart Adamson’s guitar sound.

“It was one of those eureka moments like, what is that? So without consciously taking from The Skids, when I hear the first U2 album, there’s a couple of tracks I really can connect back to that band and that guitar part in Into the Valley.  And Stuart and U2 ended up touring together when he formed his Big Country band after leaving the Skids. So we sort of got to know each other a bit. They were really a very important group for us early on, just at that crucial moment as we’re really creating the U2 sound of that first album.”

Also featured on the list is She’s a Mystery to Me, an Orbison classic written by The Edge and Bono. Speaking of its inclusion on their 10 tracks list, Bono explained that they had met with Orbison after he stopped off to see the band perform a show.

He said: “Because me and Edge wrote it and Edge’s first partner, Aisling, she’d given me the soundtrack for David Lynch’s film, Blue Velvet. I’m staying in London in the Mayfair for whatever reason and I think we were playing Zoo TV indoors in what would be the O2 now. And it was on repeat and I woke up in the morning and there was one song on the cassette, the repeating cassette that I thought was haunting and I went to find it and I couldn’t find it. And it wasn’t on there. I had dreamt this song, the melody and words.

“So I thought, oh, that’s interesting. So we went down for our soundcheck and I played this on the guitar and Edge made to sound better. But you know, we were sound checking, playing London, you shouldn’t be taking up too much time, that kind of thing. And I said, just hold on a second, I just want to get to the bottom of this. And they were all looking at me. And I said, I think it’s a Roy Orbison type song. That night, after the show, there was a knock on the door and he wasn’t on the list. And so we didn’t expect him at our show.

“Roy Orbison had come to see us. So he walked in and he said, ‘hi’. He said, ‘I can’t tell you why I like tonight. I very much enjoyed it. But I have a new album and I’m wondering would you write a song?’ And the three of these just looked at me like I’m a witch and then tried to burn me of course.

“But it really did happen and we said ‘oh yeah’. Then I think Edge and myself went somewhere to see him and to try and finish it off. And he said an amazing thing, he said, ‘I like your song, but it’s not, could you make it so that it’s only I could sing it?'”