"Xanax and Wine" (2004)

Demo Song

Background Information

“Xanax and Wine” was released in 2004 as a set of demo recordings included with The Complete U2, a digital ‘box set’ released at the same time as the album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. In that set “Xanax and Wine” is listed as being from the sessions for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. In a digital liner note The Edge speaks about some of the demo tracks:

Every U2 recording session produces its share of unfinished ideas. Some like ‘Smile’, from the sessions for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, just arrive too late. Others like ‘Love You Like Mad’, from the sessions for All That You Can’t Leave Behind, get lost in the crush. There are songs like ‘Beautiful Ghost’, from The Joshua Tree demo sessions, and ‘Flower Child’ from the All That You Can’t Leave Behind sessions that are waiting for a rewrite before they can be finished. Songs like “Levitate’ from the All That You Can’t Leave Behind sessions which just don’t fit in. Wherever they come from, these ideas are often the most revealing of their time, because they are the least worked on songs and recordings. For this reason, they are often some of my favorites.

“Xanax and Wine” is an early version of the song “Fast Cars” which was released on the album in some regions as a bonus track.

Adam Clayton discussed “Xanax and Wine” in U2 by U2:

We recorded a new song on the second-last night in the studio, which ended up as a bonus track in Britain and Japan. We had a kind of electronica track called ‘Xanax and Red Wine’ which included the line ‘how to dismantle an atomic bomb’, and we had done a couple of versions but couldn’t make it fit together. Bono wanted to get that lyric back onto the record and we didn’t have much time so the idea came to start from scratch, replay it with a sparse arrangement and adapt melodies and lyrics to fit that new format. It turned into ‘Fast Cars’. It really ended those sessions on a high note.

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