4.30.99 - Billboard Online

Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are working with U2 on their forthcoming album. They and the band are in Dublin writing and assembling material for the set, which as yet has no release date. The act is signed to the newly created Universal/Island in the U.K.; a U.S. label has not been determined.

Eno and Lanois were responsible for the fluid, theatrical sound of U2's 1984 album "The Unforgettable Fire."

The new album will feature a song co-written by Salman Rushdie and Bono. The track -- which has the same title as Rushdie's new novel involving the music business, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" -- is described by Rushdie as "a ballad, a sad love song, very Celtic with a high, haunting melody but with a tabla drum which gives it an Indian resonance."

Plans to release the song on the Internet to coincide with the book's publication have been dropped. "I wanted the book to have its moment, and I didn't want it to be thought of merely as a seed-bed for a song by U2," Rushdie says. "But I'm thrilled they have done it, because I like the blurring of fiction and reality."

Prior to submitting the manuscript to his publisher, Rushdie consulted other music-business personalities, including U2 manager Paul McGuinness and guitarist/writer Mark Knopfler. -- Nigel Williamson, Dominic Pride, London

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