Love Is Blues

Celebrating B.B. King's late- Eighties collaboration with U2

- JOE BONAMASSA

ONE OF THE standout tracks from my new album, B.B. King: Blues Summit 100, is a cover of the iconic tune "When Love Comes to Town," which is a song King had recorded with U2 in 1988, an unlikely pairing that worked out phenomenally well and became very popular when it was released the following year. Bono had written the song specifically with B.B. in mind, and they recorded it together at Sun Studios in Memphis. B.B. would subsequently perform the song live with U2 nearly 50 times.

There are many really cool guitar parts in this song, not only from B.B. but also from the Edge, who played a solo, which was delightfully surprising, as it is very unusual to hear him play in this type of blues context. The Edge's solo has his signature ethereal sound, so in approximating it, we plugged in a TC Electronic 2290, an AMS reverb — using anything we could find from that era at Sunset Sound in L.A. — and the results are sonically appropriate.