HEARD the one about the spider and the fly? They got together and created a Broadway musical and album.

Having composed the music for the forthcoming Broadway production of Spider-Man, Bono and the Edge will release a U2 album based on their musical adaptation of the comic books.

The singer — who styled himself The Fly on U2’s Zoo TV tour — and the guitarist have written 18 tracks for Spider-Man: The Musical, a $25m (¤16m) production that is due to open in New York in October 2009.

The band will rework some of the musical numbers and include them on the album, which is due to follow their next release this October.

Teese Gohl, the project’s musical supervisor and who has worked on films such as Frida and The Butcher Boy, said his task was to show the two musicians how to write for a musical and for a female vocalist. He said it was a complicated project because Bono and the Edge were writing with both the musical and their album in mind.

“When you write songs for a musical you have to think drama and multiple singers,” he said. “This was particularly important for them because they’re used to writing for just one man.” The U2 pair have now completed the 18 tracks and only have to finish off the incidental music to be used between scenes and played in the background.

They used a 20- to 30-piece orchestra for the score — something rarely heard in modern musicals.

The production will open and close with Boy Falling from the Sky, one of the show’s most intricate pieces.

Other songs include Bouncing off the Walls, which will accompany the first transformation of Peter Parker into Spider-Man, and Rise Above, a number written for Mary Jane, the female lead.

They have also written numbers for Arachne, the Spider-Woman villain who was a relatively minor character in the comic book series. U2 are not planning to record all the songs. Gohl said the album that the band have just completed is “entirely different”.

Bono last year described the score as “punk rock” and “beautiful opera”. He added: “If we pull off what we’re trying, it will be something the likes of which no one has seen or heard. It should be a hallucinogenic experience for theatre-goers.

“You have the visual energy she brings. The myth of the arachnid and the elasticity of these characters, you can turn theatre upside down.”

Taymor, who previously directed the Lion King musical and Across the Universe, a cinematic musical based on Beatles songs, is overseeing the project. She first made contact with U2 through Elliot Goldenthal, her companion and an Oscar award-winning composer.

Open auditions for the lead roles of Peter Parker and Mary Jane will be held in New York next week. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood, the stars of Across the Universe, are considering taking roles.

Casting was originally planned for last year but difficulty in finding a venue slowed down the project.

Gohl said: “We couldn’t find an appropriate space because we needed somewhere with no balconies. It is a huge production and balconies would obstruct people’s view. There was even talk about building a theatre or setting up a tent. But they finally found a venue and we have a theatre in Manhattan now so it can go ahead.”

Bono and the Edge previously penned GoldenEye, the theme tune to the James Bond film of the same name, which was performed by Tina Turner.

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