How I Got That Sound: U2 ‘All I Want Is You’

Across a career spanning more than 45 years, multi‑award‑winning English music producer and engineer David Tickle has worked with some of the industry’s biggest names, including Blondie, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Joan Armatrading, Split Enz, U2, Joe Cocker and the Police. Here, Tickle explains how he created the mysterious and ethereal sound that weaves in and out of U2’s ‘All I Want Is You’.

“On the right side of the mix at the beginning, I recorded The Edge sitting next to me in the control room. I used an SM57 on his guitar — which was a beaten up old 1930s acoustic guitar — close to the soundhole. We listened to it via Yamaha NS10 monitor speakers while he was playing, so there were no headphones. It’s all kind of done as live as possible, as that’s how I wanted to capture the sound of the recording.

“Then we recorded a track of rhythm guitar, a kind of delayed jangly guitar that The Edge used and which is playing the eighth notes,...