U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono (vocals and guitar), The Edge (guitar, keyboards, and vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums and percussion). U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music. Throughout the group's musical pursuits, they have maintained a sound built on melodic instrumentals, highlighted by The Edge's timbrally varied guitar sounds and Bono's expressive vocals. Their lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal themes and sociopolitical concerns.
U2 formed at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in 1976 when the members were teenagers with limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they signed with Island Records and released their debut album “Boy”.
U2 in 1980. Shown from left to right: Clayton, Mullen, Bono, The Edge
By the mid-1980s, they became a top international act. They were more successful as a touring act than they were at selling records, until their breakthrough 1987 album The Joshua Tree, which, according to Rolling Stone, elevated the band's stature "from heroes to superstars". Reacting to musical stagnation and late-1980s criticism of their earnest image and musical direction, the group reinvented themselves with their 1991 hit album Achtung Baby and the accompanying Zoo TV Tour. U2 integrated dance, industrial, and alternative rock influences into their sound and performances, and embraced a more ironic and self-deprecating image. Similar experimentation continued for the remainder of the 1990s with mixed levels of success. U2 regained critical and commercial favour in the 2000s with the records All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group. Their U2 360° Tour from 2009–2011 was the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour in history.
U2 have released 12 studio albums and are among the all-time best-selling music artists, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, and in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 in its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and has labeled them the "Biggest Band in the World". Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes, including Amnesty International, the ONE/DATA campaigns, Product Red, and The Edge's Music Rising.
On Saint Patrick's Day in 1978, U2 won a talent show in Limerick. The prize consisted of £500 and studio time to record a demo which would be heard by CBS Ireland, a record label. This win was an important milestone and affirmation for the fledgling band. U2 recorded their first demo tape at Keystone Studios in Dublin in May 1978. Hot Press magazine was influential in shaping the band's future; in May, Paul McGuinness, who had earlier been introduced to the band by the publication's journalist Bill Graham, agreed to be U2's manager.
The group's first release, an Ireland-only EP entitled Three, was released in September 1979 and was their first Irish chart success. In December 1979, U2 performed in London for their first shows outside Ireland, although they were unable to gain 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.
Boy, October, and War (1980–84)
Island Records signed U2 in March 1980, and in May the band released "11 O'clock Tick Tock" as their first international single. The band's debut album, “Boy”, followed in October. Produced by Steve Lillywhite, it received generally positive reviews. Although Bono's unfocused lyrics seemed improvised, they expressed a common theme: the dreams and frustrations of adolescence. The album included the band's first United States hit single, "I Will Follow". Boy's release was followed by the Boy Tour, U2's first tour of continental Europe and the United States. Despite being unpolished, these early live performances demonstrated U2's potential, as critics noted that Bono was a "charismatic" and "passionate" showman.
The band's second album, October, was released in 1981 and contained overtly spiritual themes. During the album's recording sessions, Bono and The Edge considered quitting the band due to perceived spiritual conflicts. Bono, The Edge, and Mullen had joined a Christian group in Dublin called the "Shalom Fellowship", which led them to question the relationship between the Christian faith and the rock and roll lifestyle. Bono and The Edge took time off between tours and decided to leave Shalom in favour of continuing with the band. Recording was further complicated with the theft of a briefcase containing lyrics for several working songs from backstage during the band's performance at a nightclub in Portland, Oregon. The album received mixed reviews and limited radio play. Low sales outside the UK put pressure on their contract with Island and focused the band on improvement.
The Unforgettable Fire and Live Aid (1984–85)
"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."
—Bono, on “The Unforgettable Fire's” new direction.
The band feared that following the overt rock of the War album and tour, they were in danger of becoming another "shrill", "sloganeering arena-rock band". Thus, they sought experimentation for their fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire; as Adam Clayton recalls, "We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty." The Edge admired the ambient and "weird works" of Brian Eno, who, along with his engineer Daniel Lanois, eventually agreed to produce the record.
Partly recorded in Slane Castle, The Unforgettable Fire was released in 1984 and was at the time the band's most marked change in direction. It was ambient and abstract, and featured a rich, orchestrated sound. Under Lanois' direction, Mullen's drumming became looser, funkier, and more subtle and Clayton's bass became more subliminal; the rhythm section no longer intruded, but flowed in support of the songs. Complementing the album's atmospheric sound, the lyrics are open to interpretation, providing what the band called a "very visual feel". Due to a tight recording schedule, however, Bono felt songs like "Bad" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" were incomplete "sketches". The album's lead single "Pride (In the Name of Love)", written about Martin Luther King, Jr., was the band's biggest hit to that point and was their first song to chart in the US Top 40.
Much of The Unforgettable Fire Tour moved into indoor arenas as U2 began to win their long battle to build their audience. The complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks, such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad", were problematic to translate to live performances. One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use, but are now used in the majority of the band's performances. Songs on the album had been criticized as being "unfinished", "fuzzy", and "unfocused", but were better received by critics when played on stage.
The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1986–89)
"The wild beauty, cultural richness, spiritual vacancy and ferocious 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 ... Indeed, Bono says that 'dismantling the mythology of America' is an important part of The Joshua Tree's artistic objective."
—Anthony DeCurtis
For their fifth album, The Joshua Tree, the band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's textures, but instead of out-of-focus experimentation, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures. Realizing that "U2 had no tradition" and that their knowledge of music from before their childhood was limited, the group delved into American and Irish roots music. Friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards motivated the band to explore blues, folk, and gospel music and focused Bono on his skills as a songwriter and lyricist. U2 interrupted the album sessions in mid-1986 to serve as a headline act on Amnesty International's “A Conspiracy of Hope” tour. Rather than being a distraction, the tour added extra intensity and focus to their new material. Later that year, Bono travelled to San Salvador and Nicaragua and saw first-hand the distress of peasants bullied in internal conflicts that were subject to US political intervention. The experience became a central influence on the new music.
The tree pictured on The Joshua Tree album sleeve. Adam Clayton said, "The desert was immensely inspirational to us as a mental image for this record."
The Joshua Tree was released in March 1987. The album juxtaposes antipathy towards US foreign policy against the group's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom, and ideals. The band wanted music with a sense of location and a "cinematic" quality, and the record's music and lyrics draw on imagery created by American writers whose works the band had been reading.
The Joshua Tree became the fastest-selling album in British chart history, and topped the Billboard 200 in the United States for nine consecutive weeks. The first two singles, "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", quickly became the group's first number-one hits in the US. They became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which declared that U2 was "Rock's Hottest Ticket". The album won U2 their first two Grammy Awards, and it brought the band a new level of success. Many publications, including Rolling Stone, have cited it as one of rock's greatest. The Joshua Tree Tour was the first tour on which the band played shows in stadiums, alongside smaller arena shows.
The documentary Rattle and Hum featured footage recorded from The Joshua Tree Tour, and the accompanying double album of the same name included nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances. Released in October 1988, the album and film were intended as a tribute to American music; they included recordings at Sun Studios in Memphis and performances with Bob Dylan and B. B. King. “Rattle and Hum” performed modestly at the box office and received mixed reviews from both film and music critics; one Rolling Stone editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "bombastic and misguided".
The film's director, Phil Joanou, described it as "an overly pretentious look at U2". Most of the album's new material was played on 1989's Lovetown Tour, which only visited Australia, Japan and Europe, so as to avoid the critical backlash the group faced in the US. In addition, they had grown dissatisfied with their live performances; Mullen recalled that "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best". With a sense of musical stagnation, Bono said to fans on one of the last dates of the tour that it was "the end of something for U2" and that they had to "go away and... just dream it all up again".
Achtung Baby, Zoo TV, and Zooropa (1990–93)
"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..."
—Brian Eno, on the recording of Achtung Baby
Stung by the criticism of Rattle and Hum, the band sought to transform themselves musically. Seeking inspiration on the eve of German reunification, they began work on their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby, at Hansa Studios in Berlin in October 1990 with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. The sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. While Clayton and Mullen preferred a sound similar to U2's previous work, Bono and The Edge were inspired by European industrial music and electronic dance music and advocated a change. Weeks of tension and slow progress nearly prompted the group to break up until they made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song "One". They returned to Dublin in 1991, where morale improved and the majority of the album was completed.
Achtung Baby was released in November 1991. The album represented a calculated change in musical and thematic direction for the group; the shift was one of their most dramatic since The Unforgettable Fire. Sonically, the record incorporated influences from alternative rock, dance, and industrial music of the time, and the band referred to its musical departure as "four men chopping down the Joshua Tree". Thematically, it was a more introspective and personal record; it was darker, yet at times more flippant than the band's previous work. Commercially and critically, it has been one of the band's most successful albums. It produced five hit singles, including "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways", and "One", and it was a crucial part of the band's early 1990s reinvention. Like The Joshua Tree, many publications have cited the record as one of rock's greatest.
The Zoo TV Tour was a multimedia-intensive event, featuring a stage that used dozens of video screens.
Like Achtung Baby, the 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour was an unequivocal break with the band's past. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborate multimedia event. It satirized the pervasive nature of television and its blurring of news, entertainment, and home shopping by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience. The stage featured large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases. Whereas U2 were known for their earnest performances in the 1980s, the group's Zoo TV performances were intentionally ironic and self-deprecating; on stage, Bono performed as several over-the-top characters, including "The Fly", "Mirror Ball Man", and "MacPhisto". Prank phone calls were made to President Bush, the United Nations, and others. Live satellite link-ups to war-torn Sarajevo caused controversy.
Quickly recorded during a break in the Zoo TV Tour in mid-1993, the Zooropa album expanded on many of the themes from Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV Tour. Initially intended as an EP, Zooropa ultimately evolved into full-length LP album. It was an even greater departure from the style of their earlier recordings, incorporating further dance influences and other electronic effects. Johnny Cash sang the lead vocals on "The Wanderer". Most of the songs were played at least once during the 1993 legs of the tour, which visited Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan; half the album's tracks became permanent fixtures in the setlist. Although the commercially successful "Zooropa" won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1994, the band regard it with mixed feelings, as they felt it was more of "an interlude".
Passengers, Pop, and PopMart (1994–99)
In 1995, U2 released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks 1. Brian Eno, producer of four previous U2 albums, contributed as a full partner, including writing and performing. For this reason and due to the record's highly experimental nature, the band chose to release it under the moniker "Passengers" to distinguish it from U2's conventional albums. Mullen said of the album, "There's a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record." It was commercially unnoticed by U2 standards and it received generally poor reviews. However, the single "Miss Sarajevo" featuring Luciano Pavarotti, which Bono cites as one of his favourite U2 songs, was successful.
"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..."
—Bono, on Pop
On 1997's Pop, U2 continued experimenting; tape loops, programming, rhythm sequencing, and sampling provided much of the album with heavy, funky dance rhythms. Released in March, the album debuted at number one in 35 countries and drew mainly positive reviews. Rolling Stone, for example, stated that U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives". Others felt that the album was a major disappointment and sales were poor compared to previous U2 releases. The band was hurried into completing the album in time for the impending pre-booked tour, and Bono admitted that the album "didn't communicate the way it was intended to".
The PopMart Tour stage featured a golden arch, mirrorball lemon, and, at the time, the largest LED screen in the world.
The subsequent tour, PopMart, commenced in April 1997. Like Zoo TV, it poked fun at pop culture and was intended to send a sarcastic message to those accusing U2 of commercialism. The stage included a 100-foot (30 m) tall golden yellow arch (reminiscent of the McDonald's logo), a 150-foot (46 m) long video screen, and a 40-foot (12 m) tall mirrorball lemon. U2's "big shtick" failed, however, to satisfy many who were seemingly confused by the band's new kitsch image and elaborate sets. The postponement of Pop's release date in order to complete the album meant rehearsal time for the tour was severely reduced, and performances in early shows suffered. A highlight of the tour was the concert in Sarajevo where U2 were the first major group to perform there following the Bosnian War. Mullen described the concert as "an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life, and if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile." Bono called the show "one of the toughest and one of the sweetest nights of my life". One month after the conclusion of the PopMart Tour, U2 appeared on the 200th episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, "Trash of the Titans", in which Homer Simpson disrupted the band on stage during a PopMart concert.
No Line on the Horizon, U2 360° Tour and thirteenth studio album (2006–present)
The stage structure from the U2 360° Tour, the largest ever constructed, allowed for a 360-degree seating configuration.
Recording for U2's twelfth album, “No Line on the Horizon”, began with producer Rick Rubin in 2006, but the sessions were short-lived and the material was shelved. In June 2007, the band began new sessions with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who contributed not only as producers, but for the first time with U2, as songwriters as well. In March 2008, the band signed a 12-year deal with Live Nation worth an estimated $100 million (£50 million), which includes Live Nation controlling the band's merchandise, sponsoring, and their official website. Recording on the album continued through December 2008 in the US, the UK, Ireland, and Fez, Morocco, where the band explored North African music. Intended as a more experimental work than their previous two albums, “No Line on the Horizon” was released in February 2009 and received generally positive reviews, including their first five-star Rolling Stone review. Critics, however, noted it was not as experimental as expected. The album debuted at number one in over 30 countries, but its sales have been comparatively low by U2 standards and it did not contain a hit single.
The group commenced the U2 360° Tour in 2009. The shows featured the largest concert stage structure ever, nicknamed "the Claw", and a 360-degree staging/audience configuration that allowed fans to surround the stage from all sides. The tour visited European and North American stadiums in 2009. At year's end, Rolling Stone named U2 one of eight "Artists of the Decade". The group's tours ranked them second in total concert grosses for the decade after The Rolling Stones, although U2 had a significantly higher attendance figure than The Stones. They were the only band in the top 25 touring acts of the 2000s to sell out every show they played. U2 resumed the 360° Tour in 2010 with legs in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. However, their scheduled headline appearance at the Glastonbury Festival 2010 and their North American leg that year were postponed following a serious injury to Bono's back. These appearances were rescheduled for 2011 after the South African and South American legs. By its conclusion in July 2011, U2 360° had set records for the highest-grossing concert tour with $736 million in ticket sales, and for the highest-attended tour with over 7.2 million tickets sold.
U2 are currently working on their thirteenth studio album, which they plan to release in 2013.
This has been one of the most interesting articles I’ve ever put together (with the help of Wikipedia) on a solo artist or band. The members of U2 are quite interesting in their own way and their reputations precede them. I hope you enjoyed this issue and will continue to follow me along as I explore other musicians, their successes and failures all along the way to the top of the ranks in their genre.
Next on my NEW, ‘Blues-Rock Hot List’ is someone new to me and I hope to you too is ‘Popa Chubby’ from The Bronx, New York City, NY.
MUSICIAN by Night
GOD Save “The Blues”
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