“I had a breakthrough today while working on a new singing song,” Daniel Lanois tells Guitar Player. “I was reminded about the unexpected one more time in the way I had planned out the song.
“I had a very long preamble, and I just sang a bunch of ideas over the preamble. And now I think the preamble is better than the song. Welcome to record making!”
That instinct for embracing the unintended has long defined Lanois’ work. It also underpins Belladonna Nocturne, his new album due June 19 and a thematic sequel to his 2005 Grammy-nominated instrumental release Belladonna. Across his career — as a producer for U2, Emmylou Harris and Peter Gabriel, and as a solo artist — he has treated recording less as documentation than as discovery.
Relaxed on a black upholstered sofa within his Los Angeles creative enclave, Lanois speaks with the calm focus of someone still actively searching for sound. That pursuit, he explains, is rooted in texture.
“I’ve always enjoyed texture because of my experiments in the studio,” he says. “It’s always exciting when an unexpected moment of texture comes my way.”
For Lanois, the studio itself functions as an instrument. He describes a process built on alteration and recontextualization, wherein fragments of recorded material are reshaped into new sonic events.
I take a sample of a little fragment from an already existing track and put it in the sampler. It’s a way of taking an existing piece of the fabric and expanding on it.”
— Daniel Lanois
“I take a sample of a little fragment from an already existing track on the multitrack — let’s say from the piano,” he explains. “I will extract that from the song and put it in the sampler and process it externally with a bunch of echo machines or whatever I’ve got handy. Once I’ve got something that’s exciting, I’ll run the track and drop that in at the relevant moments of harmony. It’s a way of taking an already existing piece of the fabric and expanding on it.”
That philosophy can be heard in some of his best-known productions. The recording of U2’s 1987 Joshua Tree track “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” for example, grew from a discarded idea.
“That song basically started with Larry’s drum beat,” he recalls of Larry Mullen Jr.. “It was part of a jam session that didn’t go anywhere. It just sat in the orphanage, so to speak. But I always loved the drums, and as they were isolated, I was able to build a new song onto them.”
That reflects a broader approach in which Lanois collects sonic discoveries and treats them as defining elements rather than accidents to be corrected.
“What usually happens in the studio is we start building a menu for a record,“ he says, “because it's nice if a record has its own personality and it's not a copy of anything else I've done before. And as we go along, if we're lucky enough to hit on a sound that's special, then we document all the parameters and consider that part of the menu for that record.
“And I've had very good luck with that. Of course, we carry our toolbox and our know-how, but it's nice to bump into something fresh for the making of a record at hand.”
When it comes to capturing sounds and treating guitar tones, Lanois says it’s crucial to spend time dialing in the tone that the session calls for.
I don’t use plugins We put a lot of time into trying to find the right amp, the right guitar and the right microphone until we find the sweet spot. And then off we go.”
— Daniel Lanois
“We put a lot of time into trying to find the right amp, the right guitar and the right microphone until we find the sweet spot,” he explains. “And then off, we go!
When it comes to shaping those discoveries in real time, his toolkit remains deliberately hands-on. He prioritizes sound at the source, avoiding post-production correction in favor of committed performance decisions.
“I don’t use plugins,“ he states. “We put a lot of time into trying to find the right amp, the right guitar and the right microphone until we find the sweet spot. And then off we go.”
Among his long-standing tools is the Korg SDD-3000 digital delay, famously associated with The Edge’s guitar sound.
“That’s still a favorite,” Lanois says. “But I wouldn’t recommend buying one because they just keep flickering out. It’s a great machine because it will accept guitar level on the input, and the output has several stages. I like it because of the access points, and it has an amazing voltage-controlled oscillator in it, too.”
Other staples include the Lexicon Prime Time and the AMS Harmonizer — early digital devices whose instability, he notes, is part of their character.
“We’ve got a conveyor belt of Lexicon Prime Times,” he says with a laugh. “We might get one good week out of them and then they go back to the repair shop. But I like those machines. If you put in the right source, you can get something really beautiful.”
They didn't teach anything other than slide guitar and accordion. Limitations can be a friend, but maybe not that one.”
— Daniel Lanois
Yet even as he discusses technology, Lanois consistently returns to something more personal: the search for a distinct voice. That search is most clearly expressed not through studio gear, but through his relationship with the pedal steel guitar.
“The pedal steel was my first guitar,” he reveals. “But I started on a pennywhistle and then graduated to a slide guitar, though it was just an acoustic guitar with high action. I played it with a little bar and just played melody things like that.
“I remember saying to my teacher, ‘When do I get to hold it like Elvis?’ They didn't teach anything other than slide guitar and accordion. Limitations can be a friend, but maybe not that one.”
He ultimately developed his own approach to the instrument, shaped as much by limitation as by intent. It’s a manner that remains evident on Belladonna Nocturne tracks like the lead single, “Steel Mill.”
“It was necessary for me to find something for myself,” he says. “There was no way I was going to play as good as Buddy Emmons or Lloyd Green or some of those great Texas players. So I thought, what is it I can be good at?”
That question led to a playing style defined by restraint and touch: no picks, controlled dynamics, and a focus on harmonic resonance rather than speed or virtuosity.
“I keep a nail on my thumb and no nails on the other fingers,” he explains. “I just turn up the amp real loud and play really quiet with my right hand. If the whole rig is turned up loud, I can get all the harmonics ringing.”
That same philosophy extends to his six-string guitar work, where fingerstyle technique and dynamic control remain central.
“I’m a fingerpicker,” he says. “I studied classical when I was a kid, and the steel guitar demanded that I fingerpick as well. I was in folk groups, learning Travis picking and all that.”
And when it comes guitars, Lanois affirms that presently he relies heavily mainly on two 1950s Gibson Les Pauls.
“I have a ’55 Custom, which has PAFs in it, rather than P90s,” he says. “That's a really beautiful guitar, with a Bigsby on it too. I've done a few modifications on it too.
“The other is my old faithful, a 1953 Gibson Les Paul goldtop. It started out with a trapeze tailpiece and Larry Cragg, a great guitar builder in California, put on a Tune-o-matic bridge for me and mounted a Bigsby whammy. And it’s got an [early ’60s] Firebird pickup in the back position, much like Neil Young's setup because Larry used to do Neil's guitars.”
But even here, the emphasis is not on gear itself — it is on what the gear enables.
What’s been consistent, from his early experimentation to his present-day recordings, is his openness to the unexpected..
“I’m always trying to discover new sounds,” he says, “and increase the size of my paintbox.”
