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Dreaming Up Mystery Girl

Bono of U2 tells his song “Mystery Girl” came from a dream followed by an amazing coincidence.  In jitters before a big gig at Wembley stadium, he could not sleep sleep and stays up most of the night with a recording of the soundtrack to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet set on repeat, looping around again and again to Roy Orbison’s song “In Dreams.”

Bono finally drifted off, and woke with a song in his head. It had something of the quality of Roy Orbison, and his first impression was that it was just another Roy Orbison song. It slowly occurred to him that the song was new, something he had composed in his sleep. It was about a “mystery girl.”

Bono played it to the band during the sound check and they liked it. Right after the big show, he sat down with his guitar, bent on finishing the new song. At this moment, there was a knock on the door, and a bodyguard told Bono, “There is this Roy Orbison and his wife outside, they'd like to meet you.” Bono and his band were incredulous. They had not known that Orbison was at the concert.

Orbison asked Bono if he had a song that they might record together. Bono was thrilled; he loved Roy Orbison’s “angel” voice. The timing, of course, was perfect: Bono had the ideal song for the two performers to record together, the gift of a dream partly programmed by Orbison’s song “In Dreams.” Soon after, Bono and Orbison recorded “Mystery Girl”, a lovely song that perfectly suited Orbison's voce and carried elements of his own signature style, together with something of Bono's edge and phrasing. Bono recalls that the band thought “there was a bit of voodoo in me.”

Bono interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohhh_TSJ8QI&feature=related