OK. So I post there, on a Monday - and he posts here. Got it?
U2 and I don’t go back as far as you might think. My first girlfriend introduced me to them (no, not last month) and I never really looked back. She had Under a Blood Red Sky, the live album which was ‘sort of a best’ of from the first three albums and I went out and bought Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum before I went to Australia with my next girlfriend.
I loved that there was a distinctive feel to the sound of the first few albums, influenced by punk but very much their own take. I adored Joshua Tree, my love of The Unforgettable Fire came later and I really liked Rattle and Hum. What happened on that trip to Oz cemented U2 in my heart though. We were thousands of miles away from home when they released The Fly as a single. It was harsher sounding, clearly U2 were heading in a different direction and it was kinda fun. The moralising and Jesus imitation were out the window, Bono was the fricking Fly. When Achtung Baby arrived it was like some one had turned U2 inside out.
U2 had ended the Rattle and Hum tour on a New Years Eve, announcing that they were taking a break to ‘dream it all up again.’ They fought internally about a new direction, Bono and The Edge wanting to try a more electronic sound, Clayton and Mullen Jr wanting a back to basics approach. They moved their studio to Berlin and called in Brian Eno to help them get past their squabbling. What emerged was an album that still ranks, in my mind, as one of the greatest ever produced. They have never got close to it again and it straddles over their career as a real testament to what they could achieve when Bono wasn’t off playing at God.
Opener Zoo Station starts with that clanking guitar intro and then segues into Edge’s guitar and a Bono vocal that’s heavily distorted. It’s like nothing else they’d ever done and straight way you knew this was something different. They weren’t just trying new stuff they were delivering with it. There’s a sexual undercurrent throughout the album too, lots of stuff about ‘going down’ and ‘spilling over the brim’. It just wasn’t what anyone that loved U2 was used too. But slowly it started to get under your skin.
Even now, twenty years nearly since the album came out, One can send chills ups my spine and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Say what you like about Bono, I really don’t care, cause if you can write a song like that you aren’t that much of a (can I swear on here AT?) cock.
Live the songs came alive. I saw them at Wembley on the Zoo TV tour and as spectacle it was unbelievable. Last years 360 tour came as close as anything since to topping it. Both ridiculous and over the top but both allowed you to get lost in the music.
U2 haven’t exactly struggled since Achtung but follow up Zooropa gets largely ignored these days and they’ve practically disowned Pop.
Clayton and Mullen Jr got their wish with All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and whilst there’s some great songs on those albums they don’t really gel. Achtung was for me the last time they really nailed it.
Latest album No Line on the Horizon is the closest they’ve got to Achtung in my eyes. It’s not quite there but it’s far more daring than its most recent predecessors.
I still love U2. Always will. Some times it’s not cool to like the biggest band in the World. At 37 I stopped caring about that a long time ago. Yep, Bono can be a muppet, even he gets fed up with Bono. But if you let that stop you from listening to them with an impartial ear then I don’t think you’re listening at all.
G
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