Born on August 8: To the world, David Howell Evans, U2’s guitarist, is known as The Edge

Although he was born in London to Welsh parents in 1961, just like his U2 bandmates, The Edge has become an Irish at heart.

The formation of the most popular quartet ever to emerge from the area of Dublin was a natural development. Four teenagers lived in the same neighborhood. At the time, The Edge responded to an ad posted by drummer Larry Mullen Jr. on the bulletin boards of the deeply Catholic Mount Temple Comprehensive School. It was on the benches of this school that the four boys that made up the U2 band spent their school days. At the age of 12, Paul “Bono” Henson also met his wife, Alison Stewart, there. It was at the same school that the band discovered graphic designer Steve Averill, who would later design their album covers. A big family!

The Edge mostly plays a few fairly classic guitars: a Fender Stratocaster, a Gibson Explorer, and a Les Paul from the same brand. But that doesn’t mean he neglects acoustic guitars. The distinctive sounds he’s been refining for years come from the reverb, modulation, filters, and digital delays he uses liberally. Rather than the solos so beloved by his peers, he prefers melodic sonic and rhythmic explorations, which come to life in the most beautiful way on the 1987 album The Joshua Tree and other tracks such as “With or Without You,” “Mothers of the Disappeared,” and the haunting four-note intro to “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

Although he has occasionally performed alongside Johnny Cash, Ron Wood, Tina Turner, and B.B. King, The Edge has never been drawn to solo ventures. Although he did compose the music for the American animated series “The Batman” in the mid-2000s.

He, of course, took part in the “UV Achtung Baby” residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas in 2023 and 2024. What we’ll remember most about him, however, is his performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” with Bono in March 2022 in the corridors of the Kyiv (Ukraine) metro, as Russian bombs continued to rain down on the country needlessly tormented by Putin. And even more surprisingly, The Edge—who is discreet on the subject but an open practitioner—played a few notes beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel in September 2015, during a conference on cancer.

Following the release of “Street of Dreams” in July 2026 , U2 has promised a new studio album (their ninth) for the end of the year, as well as a world stadium tour (still in the works) for the summer of 2027. In the meantime, after spending a few days with Bono on the French Riviera, the two men have also just unveiled “Fireflies,” a collaboration between the Irish band and Dutch DJ Martin Garrix. Bono and The Edge had previously worked with him on “We Are The People,” the official anthem of the 2020 UEFA European Championship. A few days before the release of their joint project, The Edge took the stage alongside Garrix around midnight on Friday, July 17, 2026, closing out the first night of the Tomorrowland techno festival with an exclusive performance for the Belgian audience...

Photo: The Edge with U2 at the launch of the album "The Joshua Tree" at Zaventem Airport (Belgium) on July 8, 1987