Happy Birthday The Edge

David Howell Evans was born August 8, 1961 somewhere in England. Barking, England to be exact. Yes, we thought he was Irish too. We bet he moved to Ireland at some point. Stay tuned. 

We were right. David’s father, Garvin, received a promotion and a transfer at his job and the family moved to Dublin, Ireland. Garvin worked as head toilet scrubber at a fish cannery. The promotion enabled him to receive a scrub brush and no longer had to use his bare hands to scrub the toilets. It was a good time in the Evans household. 

Some say David received the nickname ‘The Edge’, because of his perfectly square head. Others say it was because he would stand on the edge of rooftops and pee on the pedestrians below. Either way, it is a cool nickname. ‘U2’ formed in 1976 when Larry Mullen Jr. posted an advert on their school’s noticeboard looking for musicians to form a band. ‘Must be able to shuck clams’ was the only requirement. Only 4 people showed up, so The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr, and Bono became a band. 

The Edge’s brother, Dik, joined the band shortly after, but eventually left the band to join ‘The Virgin Prunes’.  U2 went on to become one of the biggest bands in the world, selling 700 billion albums and were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. ‘The Virgin Prunes’ were good too. Dik Evans spends his days sitting alone in the dark drinking and cursing the world.

Edge is an incredibly talented and innovative guitarist. He is at the top of every greatest guitarist list. Daniel Lanois called him an “innovative mind”, a “scientist, and a poet by night”, and said he is “dedicated to note-taking” to “document every detail of his sound”. Who is Daniel Lanois?

Spin magazine stated “The Edge masked and flaunted his willful ignorance of how guitars are meant to be played with forgiving delay pedals, forging a sonic trademark so distinctive that his band’s name became an adjective”. We think that means they like him. Happy Birthday Mate. Cheers!