User:Merbabu/U2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Attention 2 Formation and breakthrough (1976–1979) 3 The Unforgettable Fire 3.1 Influences 3.2 Recording, result 3.3 Success 3.4 Tour

[edit] Attention

The great synthesis between songwriting and dance didn't happen. It was like mixing oil and water. The two approaches were actually pulling us in opposing directions. In some ways the earliest improvisations that we were doing with Howie were the best: fresh, different and very exciting. But when the songs started to emerge from the mist, we missed the personality of the band. The songs were resting on drum machined beats and sequenced bass and had a little bit of a sterile quality. What makes a great U2 record is the sense of four personalities working in accord, in a particular moment in time. So during the course of recording, we tried to change direction.

—The Edge on recording Pop^[1]

It's not enough to write a great lyric; it’s not enough to have a good idea or a great hook, lots of things have to come together and then you have to have the ability to discipline and screen. We should give this album to a re-mixer, go back to what was originally intended, so that ‘Mofo’ is on top of the stickiest groove with a proper plastic attack, 'Do You Feel Loved' is done as a liquid base line hook that carries the intimacies whispered on top of it, 'If Go Will Send His Angels' should be diamonds and pearls.

—Bono on Pop^[2]

All That You Can't Leave Behind is easy to relate to, full of solid songs that appeal to a wide audience with its clear notions of family, friendship, love, death, and re-birth. More Lanois than Eno on first impression, the sounds on this album come from a band that has digested the music it started to consume while making Rattle and Hum. This time they are niether imitating or paying tribute. This time it's soul music, not music about soul.

—Caroline van oosten de Boer^[3]

Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy, and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad). It was good if a song took you on a journey or made you think your hifi was broken, bad if it reminded you of recording studios or U2. Sly Stone, T. Rex, Scott Walker, My Bloody Valentine, KMFDM, The Young Gods, Alan Vega, Al Green and Insekt were all in favour. Berlin became a conceptual backdrop for the record. The Berlin of the Thirties—decadent, sexual and dark—resonating against the Berlin of the Nineties—reborn, chaotic and optimistic...

—Brian Eno on the recording of Achtung Baby^[4]

[edit] Formation and breakthrough (1976–1979)

U2 formed in Dublin, Ireland on 25 September 1976. Larry Mullen, Jr., then fourteen, posted a notice on his secondary school notice board (Mount Temple Comprehensive School) seeking musicians for a new band. Seven boys responded; attending the initial practice in Mullen's kitchen. Known for about a day as "The Larry Mullen Band," the group featured Mullen on drums, Adam Clayton on bass guitar, Paul Hewson (Bono) on lead vocals, Dave Evans (The Edge) and his brother Dik Evans on guitar, and Mullen's friends Ivan McCormick and Peter Martin.^[5] Soon after, the group settled on the name 'Feedback' because it was one of the few musical terms they knew. Martin only came to the first practice, and McCormick was out of the group within a few weeks. In March 1976 the band change its name to 'The Hype'. ^[6]

We couldn't believe it. I was completely shocked. We weren't of an age to go out partying as such but I don't think anyone slept that night....Really, it was just a great affirmation to win that competition, even though I've no idea how good we were or what the competition was really like. But to win at that point was incredibly important for morale and everyone's belief in the whole project.

—The Edge on winning the CBS competition ^[7]

Following tensions within the band over its line up, Dik Evans—who was older and at university—announced his departure in March 1978. The Hype, playing covers, performed a farewell show at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin on 16 March 1978 where Dik ceremoniously walked offstage halfway through the set, and the remaining four members finished their performance as 'U2', playing original material.

On Saint Patricks Day 1978, U2 won a talent show in Limerick, Ireland for which the prize money was £500 and a record deal to record a demo; an important milestone and affirmation for the fledgling band. ^[8] In May, Paul McGuinness, who had earlier been introduced to the band by Hot Press journalist Bill Graham, agreed to be U2's manager.

The origin of the name 'U2' is not clear. It is the name of a famous 1960s surveillance plane, the Lockheed U-2; however, the Dublin punk rock guru Steve Averill (better known as Steve Rapid of The Radiators From Space) claimed it was chosen by the band from a list of ten names created by him and Adam Clayton. In an interview with Larry King, Bono said "I don't actually like the name U2," and "I honestly never thought of it as 'you too'."^[9]

Influenced by Television and Joy Division, U2's early sound had a sense of exhilaration that resulted from The Edge's "radiant chords" and Bono's "ardent vocals", according to one author.^[10] U2's first release came in September 1979; an Ireland-only EP entitled Three. The first 1,000 12 inch copies were individually hand numbered, and the EP went on to top the Irish charts. In December 1979, U2 performed in London, their first shows outside Ireland, although they failed to get much attention from audiences or critics. In February 1980, their second single "Another Day" was released on the CBS label but again only for the Irish market

In 1984 a new record deal was negotiated with Island records.ROLLING_31 Returned U2’s copyright, a very unique state of affairs. Gave back the songs, extended the record deal, upped the royalty, and general improvement of terms. Jimmy Iovine had offered to work for U2 for free on Under A Blood Red Sky December 1983

[edit] The Unforgettable Fire

We knew the world was ready to receive the heirs to The Who. All we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin, without a doubt. But something just didn't feel right. We felt we had more dimension than just the next big anything, we had something unique to offer. The innovation was what would suffer if we went down the standard rock route. We were looking for another feeling.

—Bono on 'The Unforgettable Fire's' change of direction. ^[11]

tough European audiences

jimmy Iovine had offered to produce Under A Blood Red Sky for cheap rate. ROLLING 31

Live Aid p162

Band of the year

Larry: I thought it was a great idea to get someone to come in to help us develop in a different way. It seemed we had done very well on three chords and the truth but we needed someone who could take our songs in a different direction, add new textures and explore new ways of using the studio.

"[Brian Eno] catalysed our songwriting, allowed us to get away from he primary colours of rock into another world where we could really describe ourselves in what was going on around us. It was monumental"

Improvisation, unfinished, Eno’s influence. Ie, Bad, 4th of July, Elvis

The documentary Rattle and Hum featured footage recorded from The Joshua Tree Tour shows and the accompanying double album of the same name included nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances. A total of seventeen songs are on the album, including two non-U2 tracks. "Freedom For My People" is a live except by Adam Gussow and Sterling Magee, and "The Star-Spangled Banner" features Jimi Hendrix. Released in record stores and cinemas in October 1988, the album and film were intended as a tribute to American music. The film was recorded, in part, at Sun Studios in Memphis (along with The Point Depot, Dublin, Ireland), with tracks performed with Bob Dylan and B.B. King, and a song about jazz legend Billie Holiday. Among the live recordings on the album were the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" and a cover version of Bob Dylan's famous song "All Along The Watchtower". Despite a positive reception from fans, Rattle and Hum received mixed-to-negative reviews from both film and music critics.^[12][13]

• Ethiopia
• p 169 15% - charity justification for being in band

[edit] Influences

• Rolling Stones, tradition 169
• Conspiracy of Hope - ended up helping rather than distracting from album - p174
• travels in south America - 'mothers', 'bullet'
• Greg Carroll
• 1986 - marriage issues

[edit] Recording, result

• Wanted to get into America p172
• Eno and Lanois
• Something more focussed, but still have the atmospherics
• 'Cinematic' - ie, sense of location

[edit] Success

• Fastest selling in UK history
• First American Number on
• Singles

[edit] Tour

• Difficult - cuts and bruises
• Stadiums
• Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbisson

Bono, at least, had a strong sense of the tone and colour of the lyrics. He wanted to get into America. I'd written off roots American music as an area for exploration back when we were starting out because all I knew was the watered-down 1970's FM version. I had become kind of inoculated against the white blues. But during The Unforgettable Fire tour I discovered an amazing American institution" 'Public radio.' For the first time I heard the music of Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and other seminal blues and country singers and players. Suddenly I knew it was time to take another look.

—E. p.172</ref>

Bono had been reading Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote. I was reading Norman Mailer and Raymond Carver. We had fallen under the spell of America, not the TV reality but the dream, the version of America that Martin Luther King spoke about. The language of the American writers particularly struck Bono, the kind of imagery and cinematic quality of the American landscape became a stepping off-point

—E. p.177</ref>

I'd been travelling widely, so travel was a huge theme. I'd been listening to the blues, and immersing myself in American writers, from native American writing through to black writers like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and poets and playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Sam Shepard, Charles Bukowski. I had this love affair with American literature at the same time I became aware of how dangerous American foreign policy could be in the countries around it, with the brutal crushing of the Sandinistas. I started to see two Americas, the mythic America and the real America.

—B. p.177</ref>

U2's sonic trademarks are here: the monumental angst of Bono's voice, the driving pulse of Adam Clayton's bass and Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums and the careening wail of Edge's guitar. But for every predictable roaring anthem there's a spare inventively arranged tune, such as 'With or Without You,' a rock & roll Boléro that builds from a soothing beginning to a resounding climax.

—B. p.177</ref>

U2's sonic trademarks are here: the monumental angst of Bono's voice, the driving pulse of Adam Clayton's bass and Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums and the careening wail of Edge's guitar. But for every predictable roaring anthem there's a spare inventively arranged tune, such as 'With or Without You,' a rock & roll Boléro that builds from a soothing beginning to a resounding climax.

—RS. p.58</ref>

More than any other U2 album, though. The Joshua Tree has the power and the allure to seduce and capture a mass audience on its own terms. Without making a show of its eclecticism, it features assertive rock ("Where The Streets Have No Name"), raw frenzy ("Bullet the Blue Sky"), delicacy ("One Tree Hill"), chugging rhythms ("I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For) and even acoustic bluesiness ("Running to Stand Still")—all of it unmistakably U2.

—RS. p.58</ref>

The wild beauty, cultural richness, spiritual vacancy and fercocious violence of America are explored to compelling effect in virtually every aspect of The Joshua Tree—in the title and the cover art, the blues and country borrowings evident in the music, the imagery that pervades songs like "Bullet the Blue Sky," "In God's Country" and "Exit" (which drew its inspration from The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's book about Gary Gilmore's murderous odyssey in the American West). Indeed, Bono says that "dismantling the mythlogy of America is an important part of The Joshua Tree's artistic objective.

—RS. p.58</ref>