U2 - Truths-and-Consequences

By Anthony DeCurtis | May 7, 1987


"I must say, I don't feel very qualified to be a pop star," says Bono, U2's lead singer, one overcast February afternoon as he drives through Dublin. "I don't think I'm a very good pop star, and I feel very awkward at times in the role. I think there are other people far better suited than me."
He pauses and laughs. "I sometimes think it might have been a mistake — you picked up the wrong guy! Look, I'm built more like a mechanic or something, a carpenter. I mean, take a look at these hands -- these are the hands of a bricklayer."
Bono has chosen a highly charged moment to begin questioning his qualifications for pop stardom. With the release of The Joshua Tree, U2's fifth, farthest-reaching and flat-out best studio LP, and a massive world tour in the works, Bono and his cohorts in U2 — guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. — will undoubtedly rise to the superstardom that has always been their goal but has always loomed as more of a promised land, ardently desired but seen from afar, than an imminent reality. Bono's half-hopeful statement that "U2 will be the band that's always coming and never arrives" is about to be proven wrong in spades.
U2's recent triumphs have raised vexing questions for Bono — artistic and personal questions all the more troubling because of the position of moral authority U2 has attained. Over the past few years, rock & roll has gone a long way toward establishing itself as a force for good in the world, and U2 has been at the forefront of the artists that have contributed to that movement. The band's 1983 LP War helped restore social consciousness to rock, and its galvanizing performances at Live Aid and during Amnesty International's six-concert Conspiracy of Hope tour defined the dual spirit of moral purpose and fervent celebration at the heart of those events. Success seemed to go hand in hand with significance for U2, and by the time the Conspiracy of Hope tour ended with a spectacular stadium concert last June, the whole pop-music world seemed poised for whatever U2 decided to do next.
All the while, however, as Bono saw the prominence of U2 increase, he wondered about the myths of excess and frivolous destruction that had grown up around rock & roll in the course of its history. He wondered what he and his band were supposed to represent in the context of that mythology. Was high-mindedness simply U2's "angle," an image as confining in its way as the fashion stance of the latest haircut band? As its audience and profits multiplied, what finally would separate U2 from the herd of Bands That Matter that had come down the pike and had burned out or taken a sharp right turn into comfort and apathy? He also wondered about the sirenlike lure that rock-star indulgence might hold for him. This internal interrogation — a process Bono refers to as "wrestling with myself for a living" — stokes the dissatisfaction that burns at the center of The Joshua Tree, and within Bono himself as he stands on the verge of a potentially dangerous ascent.
"I don't accept the rock & roll mythology of 'living on the edge, man,' — I don't accept that," the twenty-six-year-old Bono says during the drive through Dublin, gesturing with characteristic intensity and making it uncomfortably clear that the point he is making is considerably more important to him than keeping his eyes on the road.
"We're all pretty much removed from reality, I suppose — the reality of life and death. But rock & roll is even more removed from reality. Rock & roll artists who are living on the edge — what can they possibly have to offer? Their songs are written from such a removed point of view. "We're all asleep in some way or another," he says. "I've used my music to wake me up. ... I find now that I've been reading about them, I'm much more attracted to those old folkies, you know, like Woody Guthrie, people who work within their community. They're working, and their labor is writing a song."
Larry Mullen's home, in the coastal town of Howth, is the destination of Bono's drive. Mullen's sparsely furnished but comfortable suburban-style house — complete with clothes hung in the yard and a frisky dog — sits on a small hill overlooking the Irish Sea. It's drizzling outside. Framed by a picture window, the grays and blues of the sky and the sea merge into an impressionist blur. The weather inspires such a reflective mood that Mullen will joke later on, as the Judds' sprightly album Why Not Me enlivens the interior of his sports car on the drive back into town: "Somehow driving along like this in the middle of Dublin in the rain listening to the Judds -- it's just not right!"
For now, however, Bono pulls off the battered mid-length gray wool coat he wore in the car and sprawls in a chair at Mullen's dining-room table. Sporting his customary black leather vest and black jeans, his shoulder-length brown hair drawn back in a ponytail, Bono is badly in need of a shave — and some sleep.
Mullen, his blond hair slicked back in a spiky cut, is, on the other hand, characteristically fresh faced and upbeat. Mullen, 25, is the quietest member of U2 — and he clearly idolizes Bono. Just as clearly, Bono feels considerable affection for Mullen. The two men spend a great deal of time together — Mullen getting a kick from Bono's tireless intensity, Bono finding relief from himself in Mullen's good-natured enthusiasm and good-hearted directness.
Mullen pulls up a chair next to Bono, and the conversation turns to Joshua trees -- the gnarled trees indigenous to the deserts of the American Southwest. The tree was named by the Mormons when they were settling Utah; its shape reminded them of the Biblical passage in which Joshua pointed to the Promised Land.
The imagery couldn't seem to be any more obvious, particularly for a man who confesses that the year in which he wrote lyrics for much of the material on The Joshua Tree was "a bit of a desert" — due to his obsession with the viability of rock & roll as a way of life, his marital upheavals and the death of Greg Carroll, U2's twenty-six-year-old personal assistant, to whom The Joshua Tree is dedicated. Bono, however, refuses to pin the symbol down precisely.
"We find it funny," Bono says about responses to the album's title, recalling that somebody asked, "You're not gonna change your religion again?" after hearing the Mormon tale. In explaining why the band chose the title, Bono for once falls short of words: "I'm not going to talk about the other reasons. You know, the symbol is a very powerful one, and you don't . . . you can't . . . you don't . . ."
"It's supposed to be the oldest living organism in the desert," Mullen says. "They can't put a time on it, because when you cut it, there's no rings to indicate how old it is. Maybe it's a good sign for the record!"
The photos on the album's cover and lyric sheet were taken near Joshua Tree National Monument, in California, not far from where the ashes of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons were scattered in 1973. According to Bono, however, even the band wouldn't be able to locate the exact Joshua tree that was photographed. "We stopped off on the road," Bono says, "and we went out, and we were shooting this landscape with the tree, and we just got back on the bus and drove off. Then somebody thought, 'God, say you ever want to go back to that tree? Or other people might go out looking for the tree.' And then we thought, 'No, better that people can't find it, or else some guy will arrive with it at a gig.' 'Bono, I've got the tree!'"
"Joshua trees might be extinct by the time this album is over," Mullen says, laughing.
"The funny side of this is, like, with this album, everybody's trying to say, 'U2, the next this, the next that,'" Bono says. "You get record-industry people saying, 'As big as the Beatles — what's the name of the album?' 'The Joshua Tree.' 'Oh yeah, oh right.'" He laughs. "It's not exactly Born in the Joshua Tree, or Dark Side of the Joshua Tree. It sounds like it would sell about three copies."
Of course, 3 million copies is more like it -- and even that's a conservative estimate for what will very likely become one of the most successful, not to mention most important, records of the decade. (The Joshua Tree entered the Billboard chart at Number Seven.) The reference to Born the U.S.A. is appropriate, not only because that album also lifted a populist artist to mega-stardom but because, as in Springsteen's case, the sheer aural pleasure of The Joshua Tree and the awesome, uplifting power of U2's live shows will probably obscure the fact that the album is as foreboding a record as can be imagined. The Joshua tree itself may be a symbol of hope and deliverance, but its twisted shape and the barrenness of its environment suggest the sort of forces that must be confronted before redemption comes.

Interviews: THE FIRE WITHIN An Interview With U2's Bono

Record magazine, March 01, 1985

By: Wayne King

There can be no doubt about it: the reputation among journalists enjoyed by Bono, the lead singer for U2 (although he doesn't mind the "Bono," the once and future Paul Hewson would like to see his "Vox" surname retired), for his "scorched ear" policy of giving interviews is well deserved. The problem with Bono is not how to get him to say something, but how to get him to stop. Mind you, this is not a complaint; rock 'n' roll starts who are more than willing to talk and who have something to say are a rare commodity. (Strangely enough for one so self-assured, Bono doesn't like "the person I end up being in interviews sometimes. I say, Who is this man? I don't know who he is -- he's not the guy I go to bed with each night.") 

Two interviews with Bono, first on a trip to Philadelphia in early December where the band played their first American concert in eighteen months, and later over the phone from the West Coast where the mini-tour was wrapping up, were among the most pleasant, giving and warm exchanges I've ever had -- not just with rock stars, but with anybody. And there was plenty to talk about: U2's status as perhaps the most admired, respected, if not actually worshipped band for youth in the '80s; the responsibilities of such a position, and the limits of that responsibility; the fanatical response to the band in their shows in Philly and New York, and the problems that occurred at the Radio City Show; and most definitely, their intriguing if often troubling new LP, The Unforgettable Fire. 

Record: I've read that The Unforgettable Fire is the title of a collection of poetry from the survivors of Hiroshima, and I wondered if that's where you took the album's title from. 

Bono: That's right -- in fact, it's more than that. I wish was talked about a lot more. The Unforgettable Fire is an exhibition of paintings, drawings and writings done by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were done by people of all age groups, from 7 to 70 years old, by amateurs and professionals, and they are an art treasure in Japan. We had come into contact with them through the Chicago Peace Museum, because we were part of an exhibit in the museum in '83, the Give Peace A Chance exhibit. And the images from the paintings and some of the writings stained me, I couldn't get rid of them. Their influence on the album was a subliminal one, but I realized as the album was moving on, that this image of "the unforgettable fire" applied not only to the nuclear winterscape of "A Sort of Homecoming," but also the unforgettable fire of a man like Martin Luther King, or the consuming fire which is heroin. So it became a multi-purpose image for me, but it derived from that exhibition. 

After using Steve Lillywhite on all three of your studio albums, you chose this time to use Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Why the switch? 

We were at some sort of crossroads; we could have turned left or right, but we wanted to go straight on, and I suppose Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois helped us make a new departure. But that new departure was a continuance -- we set out to improvise in the three-piece setup of guitar, bass and drums. We wanted to bring atmosphere to rock 'n' roll, to give some more than just taking what's there. There was some regression, as well as progression. We were going back, a retreat to an original aim, which was that a whisper can be louder than a scream. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois were aids, and had been in the times of other artists' transitional periods, like the Talking Heads, or David Bowie, who Eno helped revive when he came to Berlin defunct after his funk trip.

And yet the critical reaction this time has been less than overwhelming. 

I personally feel that had it been our first record, and had people not had preconceived notions about the follow-up (to War) and the group, a lot of people would have had it at the top of their list, because I think its mood is a very interesting mood. I think if a new band came out with it right now, people would be talking about that group. But I think a lot of people cast their aspirations and belief in rock 'n' roll on this group -- instead of holding up the white flag, they want us to carry their flag. 

Still, from what you were telling me on the tour bus, when Pete Townshend told you that he felt U2 was picking up where the Who left off, it awed you, but you didn't seem to reject it. 

But we didn't accept it -- we threw the flag away! You have to spend a lot of time with The Unforgettable Fire; you just can't put the needle into the grooves and expect it to jump out on the table and dance for you; it's not like that. I wish it were, but it wouldn't be the record we made. A lot of people who believed in the group went, Let's hear it, this is the group I've been telling everybody about. Then they put it on (grunts, pretends great exertion), waited for the big bang, and really, we hadn't pressed that particular button. It's a much slower and seductive record -- for people who have spent time with it, or came with no preconceptions, it is by far their favorite record. 

So it doesn't bother you that much that long-time fans of the band like Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder called the lyrics "a spew of blather?" 

How can I be one day Batman, and next the Joker? (laughs) No, that doesn't sound right! How can I one day be someone with something to say and the next day deaf, dumb and blind? What upset me [about some of the criticism] was the cynicism -- for me cynicism is Public Enemy No. 1. Actually, the Cynics in the Greek sense were very positive people, so I shouldn't even describe [the critics] as cynics. I wasn't upset that people didn't connect the record -- of course I could understand that, although it did get some very good reviews in this country. 

Did you expect there to be such a misconception? 

I think there's a common misconception -- that we're a group with a black and white picture of a boy's face on their first album [Boy's cover was changed in the U.S.; the package appeared that way in Britain], and the picture becomes a symbol of some sort of purity and innocence. People associate the group with that. Well, I'd like to be able to own up to that, but I can't always. Like anyone else, we've crossed the line that you would, if you were lots smarter, draw. We've fallen over as many times as we've stood up. Elvis Costello told me recently that we walked a tightrope and fell off as many times as we held on. But he said he admires us for it -- not many of our contemporaries would walk it. 

But with The Unforgettable Fire you're getting closer to where you want to go? 

Yes, we're getting closer to where we want to go. I don't know where that is (chuckles), but something tells me we're getting closer. We're more hungry and thirsty about music than we've ever been. In that sense we haven't been bought off. The carrot's always being waved in your face, the bribes are always there to formulize your music, to "tin" it, to freeze it. We're not at ease now -- since fame and fortune were not necessarily the goals of what we were doing, we don't feel we've achieved our ultimate goal. I think we're just being born as a group. Adam said it really well: he said we've spent the last five years learning to be U2 and we'll spend the next five finding out what U2 can do. 

You told a writer for the New York Times that you can't be a spokesman for a generation, since you've got nothing to say but "Help!" If that's all you've got to say, how could the band be closer to its goal? Is it more frustrating the closer you get to where you want to go -- having, say, 5 percent to go? 

That is precisely it, but it would take me a song to say that. It's the 5 percent. You know, the 95 percent -- the race is the prize, to quote. I mean, I hate when I make an off-the-cuff remark to have to live with it the rest of my life -- it's like you're responsible for putting the bars in your own window, so you can't jump out. That's one reason we've avoided doing so much press -- I have a gift for going over the top, it's this drug adrenaline that does it. 

I say something like that to avoid responsibility to some degree -- I don't want people coming to me, or the group, as some sort of God substitute or guru-like goons because I can look at myself in the mirror and just laugh, 'cause I know who I am. We've grown up in public in Dublin, and people there know us to be the jerks that we are. I think it's good when I walk down the street in Dublin and one person will say, "That's Bono," and the other person will say, "So what?" 

I was trying to explain recently to someone, one of the reasons I'm interested in the principle of surrender, one of the reasons I'm interested in a man of peace like Martin Luther King, is that I'm the opposite. One of the things I'm interested in about the concept of turn the other cheek is that I'm a person liable to give out the black eye. I am the opposite to the songs -- (grasps for words)...I am in no sense a role model. 

Nevertheless you obviously are just that for a lot of people -- you can tell that from the fans who were hanging around the hotel last night, by the way crowds sing along and yell at your shows. 

Let me say this -- I think applause is a very good thing, I think people should clap one another more often. That's why rock 'n' roll concerts are so uplifting, because a lot of people are applauding others. That should go on a little more. When I'm onstage, I'm also applauding the music. 

I also think that some people miss the point. In Sydney, there were people camped outside my hotel room on the fire escape, and the others were also experiencing this, and I felt these people missed the point. Because if people want to treat me with respect they should treat me as a person. All the group feels that way; Larry particularly cannot handle being a piece of something to break off, and it got nearer breaking point in Australia for him. Everyone wants the uplifting thing of a concert, the connection, but if that turns into a lopsided thing then it becomes hard to deal with. 

People say, What do you think of groups that are sort of copying your sound? I say, Well, if they capture the spirit of the group, there would be no U2 clone bands, because the spirit of the group is the spirit of the individual, and that's what interests me, the individual. And people must approach me as an individual so that's why I try and avoid responsibility, because if people look to you for that, then they're taking responsibility off their own lives. 

© Record, 1985.

Achtung Baby: Zoo Station

Celebrating AB´s 20th anniversary, here goes interpretation of the song (adapted from Niall Stokes´U2: The Stories Behind Every U2 Song')

Bono was interested in the zoo.He´d read a novel about setting free the animals, a kind of introduction to Dadaism...He was interested in the zoo as a metaphor. So there was a certain surge of recognition  when they landed in Berlin to record the album. This place was a f***ing zoo alright. Even the train station was called Zoo Bahnhof, Zoo Station. The point was that the song would open the album with a statement of intent.Forget the previous reference points. You are about to embark on a journey into the unknown...

The first verse reads as if it could have been written from the point of view of a child about to be born :"I´m ready to say I´m glad to be alive/I´m ready, ready for the push." And that suspicion lingers  throughtout, as if Bono is drawing inspiration from  having watched his own first child struggling to find her bearings in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile world. "In the cool of the night/in the warmth of the breeze," he sings, "I´ll be crawling around/on my hands and knees."

...Bono had engineer Flood distorted his voice. It gave  Bono a different sound, and also a new persona to play with.
The band sounded different too.The drums were hard, insistent, industrial. There were moments of sunlight, as the train emerged from the underground, flashes of openness captured on The Edge´s guitar. But this was the beginning of a journey into the dark underbelly of human experience and the suggestion of a child´s eye-view only made it more poignant...

U2: The Stories Behind Every U2 Song (Stories Behind the Songs, Niall Stokes)

Interview on October, 1982

A great interview made to the band in 1982 conducted in Hattem, Netherlands prior to the concert there on May 14 talking about October. We can see that Bono was already an advocator of peace.

Posted by Tim Neufeld, @U2 staff.

U2 on October

October, originally with the working title of Scarlet, was released in the summer of 1981. In several countries, October was re-issued on 5" CD in March 1996 as part of the Island Master series. This Island Masters re-issue featured higher quality paper and extra pictures from the original LP's inner sleeve. However, a different back cover featured a black and white photograph of the band instead of the photo of the docks in Dublin from the original version of October. In Argentina, a promotional copy of October was released with the title Is That All?, title of the last track on the album. The album peaked at No.11 on the UK album charts during its first week of release. Conversely, it never cracked the Top 100 on the US album charts and didn't rise higher than No.104 where it was certified platinum by the RIAA. UK magazine New Musical Express voted the album No.4 in its annual poll.


'October was the most dificult of the three records I did with them basically because of the well-chronicled story of Bono losing his lyrics during the American tour. The fact that the first album had a bit of success in America meant that the band toured over there for a long time to do the groundwork. When they came back and it was time to do the second album, nothing was ready!'


Steve Lillywhite in Propaganda 5



'I listened to it last week for the first time in ages and I couldn't believe I was part of it. It's a huge record. I couldn't cope with it. I remember the pressures it was made under, I remember writing lyrics on the microphone and at fifty pound an hour that's quite a pressure. Lillywhite was pacing up and down the studio... he coped really well. And the ironic thing about October is that there's a kind of peace about the album even though it was recorded under that pressure.'


Bono, 1982 





'A lot of people who liked Boy were disappointed by October, while people who didn't like Boy, preferred October..... you can't come to terms with our music in one or two listens. I think October will prove to be a very important album for the band.'


Edge 


" 'October'...It´s an image," Bono said in 1981. "We´ve been  through the '60s, a time when things were in full bloom. We had fridges and cars, we sent people to the Moon and everybody thought how great mankind was. And now,  as we go through the 70's and 80's, it´s colder time of the year. It´s after the harvest. The trees are stripped bare. So 'October' is an ominous word, but it´s also quite lyrical."

Achtung Baby Review - Jay Cocks In Time Magazine (1991)

Here we all were, fretting over the parlous state of rock and help was on the way even while we were dithering. All of a sudden there's a clutch of superb albums out there: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes' Better Days; Robbie Robertson's Storyville; Van Morrison's Hymns to the Silence. And now, to put the capper on the company, U2's dashing, demanding Achtung Baby.

This new 12-song collection, the first since the band's Rattle and Hum of 1988, has something in common with all the other good stuff currently in circulation. It has the raucous, free-for-all spirit of the Jukes; it shares the narrative ambition and sense of musical mystery of Storyville (the band collaborated with Robertson, in fact, on a tune on his first album); and it taps into the same deep Irish roots, at once weird and winsome, as does Morrison, who is a kind of godfather to all Irish rockers.

But U2 does something unique here. The band not only reasserts itself but reinvents itself too. After Rattle and Hum, there was some thought that it had overreached itself, gone a little too mainstream, got a little too big even for its own grand ambitions. Achtung Baby restores U2 to scale, and gives the band back its edge.
The album is full of major-league guitar crunching and mysterious, spacy chords. Evanescent melodies float seamlessly between songs of love, temptation, loose political parable and tight personal confession. The notes credit all songs to the band collectively -- lead singer Bono of late had taken a separate credit for lyrics -- and Achtung Baby does sound more cohesive than anything else U2 has done. Tunes like The Fly are restless, even reckless, with invention, and the band can write ravishing, slightly eerie romances like Mysterious Ways better than anyone else who can fill a stadium with cheering fans. There's a lot indeed to be cheered on Achtung Baby. And celebrated. It's a monster.

Achtung Baby: 20 years on

Next November,19th Achtung Baby will be 20 years old. Considered by many as "U2`s second(?) masterpiece after The Joshua Tree" , recorded in the middle of mayhem (of the band and the world), it was the answer to what U2 considered "dream it up all again".

Achtung Baby was widely regarded as a sonic and visual reinvention of the band: a step too far in some territories, where Adam's nude image on the sleeve was covered with an appropriately fixed X or clover. 

The album peaked at No.2 on the US album chart and at No.1 on the UK album chart. It was certified multi-platinum by the RIAA with 8 million units sold. In Switzerland, Achtung Baby reached No.3 on the album charts and stayed in the charts for a total of 19 weeks and was certified Gold. In Australia, Achtung Baby was certified 5 times platinum by the ARIA.

U2 won the Grammy for Best Rock Album by a Duo or Group and producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno won Producers of the Year for Achtung Baby. Additionally, the album was nominated for Album of the Year. In the Rolling Stone annual reader's poll, it came No. 1 for Best Album and Best Album Cover.

Produced by Daniel Lanois with Brian Eno mainly at Hansa Ton Studios, Berlin, Dog Town, S.T.S., and Windmill Lane, Dublin. Engineered and Mixed by Flood with Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and Even Better Than The Real Thing mixed by Steve Lillywhite

'All I know is that it feels like what I want right now, it's raw and rough and straightforward and down to the essence of things, quite unpolished in some ways and I like that.'

Edge in Propaganda 15 

'I certainly think this record, 'Achtung Baby', is a new start and things move in shifts. I mean, there's another record that belongs with this, just as 'Rattle and Hum' belonged with 'The Joshua Tree'. I know that record, I can hear it in my head already.' 

Bono, November 1991 

'If you manage to get the four of them in one room with instruments in their hands you're going to get results. That has a lot to do with my job - just getting them in the room and playing.'

Daniel Lanois on making Achtung Baby

Achtung Baby was included in All-TIME 100 Albums by TIME , in Rolling Stone 's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (ranks 62) and the RS readers considered it one of the best albums of the 90`s.

  

From here to 19th November, we will be going over song by song of this superb album.

www.rollingstone.com //www.u2.com//www.time.com