The boy on the cover of U2’s debut album, Boy, looks at the world with wide-eyed innocence and curiosity. Thirty years later, the girl in the title song of U2’s 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon tells the singer, ‘time is irrelevant, it’s not linear.’ This ode to the infinite nature of creativity might be interpreted as wishful thinking for these now ageing rockers but for U2 fans it was a reassuring signal of the four Dubliners’ continuity.
No band has sought inspiration in the zeitgeist of their generation more than U2. While many of their songs have explored their own souls’ dark journeys, they have found reflection in the lives of their worldwide army of fans and the life and times of the world that surrounds them.
The ‘70s is not a decade we reflect upon with a rosy glow of nostalgia. The first major oil crisis of the last century set the tone for a decade marked by strikes, international hijackings, rampant inflation and progressive rock.
In Ireland, violence in the north east had reduced to sectarian, tit for tat murders while the IRA exported terrorism to the streets of British cities. Closer to home, security issues were so pressing, State intervention was perceived as invasive and oppressive.
Was it any wonder punk came along? The revolutionary cry went up; out with the old, in with the new. It was an exciting time to be making music, living in Dublin. A whole scene grew up around the Grafton St corner of St Stephen’s Green. There were few venues for emerging punk bands and those there were, were overbooked. U2 were just minor players in a scene inspired by new policies of ‘do it yourself’ but occupied still by the old guard in new clothes.
The band of likeminded classmates put together by Larry Mullen got their first gigs in local northside venues as The Hype, playing Bowie covers. By the end of 1978, a browser in the Dandelion Green flea market could catch them playing Saturday afternoon free gigs in a partially flooded stable.
Participation was a byword for U2 as they embraced the audience that ventured to embrace them. Their music was an invitation as well as an evocation to and of their collective angst. In the boiling pot of this incestuous Dublin scene, the involvement of some members’ of the band in the Shalom group, inspired devotion and derision. A rival group emerged calling themselves The Black Catholics, opposed to all things U2.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t amount to a hill of beans. U2 had a plan to become the biggest rock and roll band in the world and when they met Paul McGuinness, they found the man who might have the moxy to realize their dream.
McGuinness was a Trinity graduate who had dabbled in music management already with Celtic rock outfit, Spud. He was well read and admired and emulated Brian Epstein and Led Zeppelin manager, Peter Grant, the two cornerstones of world domination and megastardom. He had dabbled in the world of advertising and commercial production and understood the power of image and the value of intellectual copyright.
The deal with Island Records was mutually beneficial. Although Island had considerably success in the ‘70s introducing reggae and Bob Marley to a worldwide audience, carving its own niche in the prog rock scene with Jethro Tull as well as tradrock and troubadours with Cat Stevens, Sandy Denny, Richard and Linda Thompson, among others, it failed to make any impression on the punk or new wave scene.
For Paul McGuinness and U2, it was a canny alliance. Island was cash rich and inclined to allow creative freedom and development room. And, as it turned out, it was needed. U2 was not an overnight success. It took more than three years of hard slog, thousands of road miles in hard touring and countless, nameless motel rooms before some faint flicker of light and hope appeared. Heavily in debt and suffering the doubt raised by the rock and roll lifestyle against their own personal convictions, the band almost split after the release of their second album, October.
They persevered in adversity. Even the setback of Bono losing his lyrics for the album while they toured inspired them to compose on the hoof. The singer ‘wrote’ his lyrics at the microphone while producer Steve Lillywhite was mixing the track. The album was not a commercial success but, in retrospect, it helped shape how they worked in the future.
The picture of Peter Rowan, the boy on the cover of U2’s first album, Boy, changes significantly on the cover of War, the band’s third studio album. He’s growing up. There’s an inquisitive anger in the eyes. The album announced U2’s arrival as a band with something to say. They now had a distinctive sound. The Unforgettable Fire laid the foundation for what was to follow.
As the first album with the production team of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, it was greeted with suspicion by U2’s American fanbase. But it consolidated a sound that was already manifesting itself since October and made a creative virtue of the band’s willingness for impromptu experimentation.
All of this came to fruition with The Joshua Tree, a massive album exploring the journey of the soul through a material wasteland, the American hinterland, drunk on imperial power and lust. Suddenly U2 were on the cover of Time magazine and on top of the world.
Hardly overnight success but it allowed them to buy bigger homes and stay in better hotels. As individuals, they were rock stars without portfolio. They felt like pretenders.
Rattle and Hum, the double album and feature film that followed The Joshua Tree, was panned by critics as pretentious, presumptious and arrogant. It was misinterpreted. U2 wore its creative heart on its sleeve. When Boy was released in 1980, Bono declared they had no influences as though they’d emerged in a vacuum. But what was simply an assertion of the band’s singular creative vision, would come back to haunt him. In Rattle and Hum they sought to explore, absorb and pay homage to the heritage that informed their own music; blues, soul, country and gospel. It was no wonder that at the end of the subsequent tour, significantly on the last day of the decade, in the Point theatre in Dublin, The Edge declared the band’s intention to go away and reinvent themselves.
Ironically, the world around them was in the same process. As Gorbachev’s Perestroika movement edged the Soviet Union tentatively towards more democratic freedom, the promise overran the reality and the walls, quite literally, came tumbling down. As though a corked steam kettle had popped, popular unrest and impatience spilled over into direct action. The Berlin wall was torn down, brick by brick. In Czechoslovakia, writer Vaclev Havel lead the ‘velvet revolution’ and in Poland, Lech Walensa was leading a popular move to democratic freedom and independence.
U2 chose Hansa studio in Berlin to record Achtung Baby, arguably the band’s creative zenith and the point where the band’s creative output and the zeitgeist coalesced. From the opening track, as the U2 locomotive chugs out of Zoo Station and Bono declares ‘I’m ready for what’s next…’ It was as though the ‘80s had never happened and Rattle and Hum was someone else’s nightmare. In the ‘90s U2 grew up, as a band and as individuals.
It was a period that was not without cringing embarrassment as they embraced the new dance culture and Zoo became the argot of post modern irony. Bono as Macphisto could order pizzas for an audience of thousands and phone Bill Clinton for a natter about world peace. In the end with POP and the subsequent tour, their emergence from a giant lemon was too reminiscent of Spinal Tap for comfort. They appeared to choke on their own post modern joke.
But what artist cannot embrace failure? Failure, in U2 terms, meant earning millions less than expected from what they produced. The only ‘loss’ they could suffer now was creative and the three albums the band released in the ‘noughties – All that you Can’t Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and No Line on the Horizon – have found them returning to basics in different measures and with varying results. In the meantime Bono has become a world statesman, at home in the company of world leaders. Adam has been through rehab and just recently married. The Edge is in a new marriage with a second family. Larry Mullen has a family and just recently launched himself in a new role as a film actor. They’re boys no more.
