Classic or Dud: U2

My sister and I used to joke about the day they'd do a Vegas residency.

I remember them releasing an acoustic version of "Stuck in a Moment..."on that 7 CD EP that was a Target exclusive back in the day. Not sure if they stopped doing this, but IIRC they used to do short acoustic sets of a selection of hits at all of their shows (like three or four songs), and they usually held up pretty well that way.

Dud

they also did a BBC piano room session with One, Vertigo and this, SOS by ABBA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLbexDnt_a8

I listened to all of this yesterday. Better than I expected, not as good as I hoped it might be in the best case scenario, and it probably should just be regarded as U2: the acoustic sessions or as a bonus to Bono’s book vs any new path being charted. It’s not essential but not bad.

The last album suffered from overproduction so it’s nice to hear them a bit more back to basics. Just four two guys in a room, making music! Some of the versions are pretty stellar, some are a bit more perfunctory. I’m a completist, so I’m inclined to get this. but maybe not at the current price.

You mean the 4-cd thing? Is it like "U2: Naked," minus all the (mostly) awesome production?

More like Bono and the edge naked, in a room together, just two guys etc. etc.

boner and the wedge

I watched the Tiny Desk concert and thought it was awful. Like monumentally bad. It's time to retire and enjoy being billionaires for the rest of their lives.

Counter opinion: I thought it stripped away some of their heavy-handed seriousness, and looked like they were having fun. Note, I pretty much stopped listening to U2 circa Rattle and Hum, so I knew none of these songs previously.

It's not a completely bad idea - just to use one old example, they created a new, "less-produced" arrangement of the Pop-era B-side "North and South of the River" for a special broadcast that was held in response to the bombing in Omagh. To date, it's the only time the song's been performed live, and it's actually one of my favorites - I wish it was given an official release (it would've fit perfectly on this set had they been open to older recordings), but plenty of home recordings are out there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueqt_KY1YlU

Having said that, most of this set is for collectors only as I can't imagine playing this whole thing ever again. It probably would've helped to make one LP of the best stuff and leave the complete four-disc set as a "limited edition" type of thing. "11 O'Clock Tick Tock," "Every Breaking Wave," and at least a few others made a nice impression, but they kind of get lost in a giant load of 40 tracks.

Nm, I didn't realize there was a single disc version!

giant load you say

I enjoyed the Bono, Edge & Dave show on Disney+

I heard the full thing on release day and I may never hear it in full again but the best tracks imo are Dirty Day, Until the End of the World and the weird '93 fat lady falsetto arrangement given to Desire.

lol this version of "desire" is so weird

This is so sleepy I h a t e it

oh man this new album is so bad. There's 4 discs of it????????

The best version of "Dirty Day" was a remix that was a b-Side on the "Please" CD single

4U2 would be U8 no?

unless 2 is a power and not a multiplier

suspect i will buy this when its cheap in a years time to flesh out a deal at amazon to get free delivery.

u-cubed

Sadly this is a snooze. The takes of classic good songs aren’t any better than the originals and any hope that there’s a hidden gem amongst the more recent interpretations is soon scotched. Bono should definitely give up trying to do a falsetto.

Will make an exception for Stay (Faraway so close) which has a spectral beauty.

I think I'll take back what I said, even when you try to whittle it down to the ten best, it really is a snooze. Ah well, at least I was trying it before I actually bought it.

My daughter's at Bono's son's band tonight, wild when your kid and you are at different shows in the same city at the same time.

Someone uploaded the 1988 Grammy Awards - I skimmed through it and it’s pretty strange. I’m not sure if it’s the whole thing or not, but surprisingly U2 and Prince didn’t perform even though they were clearly there (love the look Prince gives to the camera when his AOTY nomination is announced). Most of the performers aren’t even nominees and they way they’re presented is kind of odd and primitive. Lou Reed and his band are out in some balcony entrance, then Run DMC come running out below, and Billy Crystal’s reading out the names.

U2 only appears when they win AOTY and it’s the most anticlimactic presentation I’ve seen for a top award. There’s no real build up and they just present it halfway into the show. It’s cool to see Brian Eno up there, and he even gets a special mention from Bono, who also pays respect to Prince and Springsteen. He also makes a joke acknowledging how much Christgau/The Village Voice hated them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tiwY2LTL8

Wow that opening Whitney Houston performance is great
And the list of names of who’s appearing - wow - Steven Wright! Dwight Yoakam! Lou Reed ! Miles Davis ! Etc

I heard what sounded like a perfectly fine MOR late-era U2 song on the radio the other day, and it turned out to be by Inhaler, the band fronted by Bono's son. I think it was this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Hilyfp_8A

Reading Bono's memoir yesterday, one of many thoughts I had was that he has bought into (and sold) the idea that everyone has that Achtung Baby was radically different and new because it was 'European', 'cool', 'futuristic', rather than 'rootsy', 'American'. OK. He even talks of how they were pursuing 'electronica' and 'dance music'.

There is clearly a kernel of truth in all this. But I also started to think that the idea quickly became a myth, which everyone has gone along with; and that it was a kind of marketing, a way of demarcating 'U2 eras' and making them easier to sell or at least describe.

How about this view: Achtung Baby was the most ROCK lp that U2 had made up to that point - save, admittedly, its immediate precursor RATTLE & HUM?

I think that's accurate.

Another odd thing, by the way, is that the idea persists that The Joshua Tree is 'about America' - again Bono himself continues to believe and promote this view. Again, at some level this must be true. But again, it's also something of an image that we've all been sold, for many years (including via literal images, cover art), and if it had been described differently we might hear it differently.

I thought about it and decided that *lyrically*, only two songs on The Joshua Tree actually mention the USA.

Two mention Central America. One is about Ireland. One the UK. One is meant to suggest Australia.

The Joshua Tree contains fewer guitar solos than Achtung Baby.

You could probably construct a counter-narrative about the LP that wasn't much about 'America' at all but about the things that people like to say Achtung Baby was about - 'European modernist soundscapes', say.

I don't mind the official standard narratives about these records, they've helped everyone 'understand' U2's career, but I can wonder whether they have limited relation to the facts of what's on the records.

Achtung Baby was radically different and new because it was 'European', 'cool', 'futuristic', rather than 'rootsy', 'American'. OK. He even talks of how they were pursuing 'electronica' and 'dance music

Perhaps somebody should have told him to purchase a David Bowie record before saying this

I feel that "Joshua Tree" was more about this romantic idea of America as a concept, which definitely lingered in the margins of "Unforgettable Fire" and was perhaps too on the nose on "Rattle & Hum." Wide open spaces, lonely highways, broad horizons, and the promises and rewards they portend (or fail to deliver), etc.

I think perhaps "Achtung" was similarly oblique about electronic music. It was more the idea of dance music than the actual execution (which sort of arrived via "Pop"). "European modernist soundscapes" does kind of broadly captures the sound of "Achtung."

The one marketing line I never understood c. "Achtung" and "Zooropa" was U2 as ironic. "Achtung" in particular has this almost oppressive dark night of the soul undercurrent to it which is the opposite of ironic, while "Zooropa" I've always thought was tinged by this pervasive sense of morning after sadness.

That's a pretty good, convincing post.

Though I would still say that the 'textures' of 'streets', 'with or without you', 'red hill mining town', are not 'American' (and that's fine).

What I meant was: they're not rock, blues, or roots -- which is what RATTLE & HUM is about, and possibly what Achtung Baby claims not to be by contrast. (Yes, there have been other kinds of music from the USA, nothing to do with such roots.)

and what R&H is "about."

The first thing I heard from Achtung Baby was "Mysterious Ways," which sounded VERY different and definitely was more interested in dance and romance than anything than all of the earnest christian leaning stuff they had done before. Keep in mind, this is from the perspective of a teenager who didn't have MTV and was not really keeping up with things.

Was the ironic aspect primarily through touring and its live presentation? I agree, I don't see it in the music at all. I wonder if they were nervous about going in the general direction of Achtung Baby, moving away from what had previously been very successful. When it worked, maybe Bono realized he could really lean into that character and totally ditch the Serious Guy routine. Or was it a way of protecting their brand so they could move back into their earlier mode if the Fly character didn't catch on? "Oh, just kidding guys, we were being ironic." I've never been a huge U2 fan, apart from Zooropa and most of Achtung Baby, but Bono's Mr. MacPhisto and the ironic distance did not do the music any service. But I don't know how much Bono's persona helps the band in general.

"Numb" being the first single from Zooropa was kinda startling.

One is meant to suggest Australia.

Van Diemen's Land is on R&H not JT.

I posted this in another thread, but I'd argue that "Night and Day" -- released a full year before Achtung -- was more of a left turn than anything on Achtung. It sounded very little (apart from Bono's voice) like what anyone expected U2 to sound like at that time.

^^ yes

They tricked themselves eventually into thinking they'd been a rock band and that's what everyone wanted from them, but even their most "rock" albums were more devoted to the groove than any cliches of rock. Which isn't to say the argument about AB doesn't work, it's maybe correct, but I don't think the whole dance/ultramodern aspect was overstated. I do think it's fair to suggest that their image as a serious rock band obscured their true talents, ones already on display before that. There was a reason imo the '90s were so creatively good for them, right down to side projects and soundtrack songs.

Assert: you're correct, it's NZ - I had read 'Auckland' and didn't remember where that was.

Tom D makes a fair point that the 'very American' R&H contains a song that's about both Ireland & Australia!

Cow Art: a point about The Fly (character) is that he is very American - Bono drawling, wearing what the memoir refers to as an outfit mainly inspired by Elvis Comeback Special - so already, by the time that 'character' appears (late 1991, and then on the tour), the 'European' idea has been diverted.

john boyle o'reilly -- who the song is dedicated to iirc -- did end up in the US (as editor of "america's oldest catholic newspaper" in fact)

What song?

I see: hats off to Mark S - I've dug out my 1988 double LP of R&H and it does say

(Dedicated to JBO'R / a Fenian poet deported from Ireland to Australia because of his poetry. It wasn't very good... '!)

Not very literate, but much more content than I had remembered.

And Mark S is quite right to say that this gives an American destination to the song in a sense.

(The text on the LP does not give JBO'R's name as initials, and U2's parentheses are not consistent.)

really wish they'd give zooropa a proper reissue and release all the outtakes from the sessions - i really wanna hear the early versions of some of the pop tracks from then, i'd be surprised if they weren't better than the pop versions

I have heard that said.

In truth, for people who
a) like official bootleg stuff (as with Dylan)
b) like U2
(which is a small minority of people) --

there must be tons, hours, of such outtakes from, eg, the RATTLE & HUM sessions, that we have never heard, that must exist.

More audio of Dylan on hammond organ in the 'Hawkmoon 269' session? 'Angel of Harlem' with and without horns? Demos of 'All I want is you'?

I expect so.

I bet that stuff exists in some state of evolution, but since the band's material often stems from jam sessions I'm not sure how worthwhile it all is. I remember when an Achtung Baby work in progress boot leaked shortly before the album's release, and it had stuff like five versions of "Salome." Sure, you can hear it evolve and get tweaked, but it mostly sounded like five sketchy unfinished versions of "Salome."

The super-coolest work in progress release I've ever heard, btw, remains the one Peter Gabriel released with the anniversary edition of "So," which featured tracks edited together from various stages of a song's evolution, resulting in stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJU_MLQc2fc

I bet that would work with U2.

The middle of that "Sledgehammer" evolution clip is wonderful. It's coming together: the guitar parts are basically locked in, his keyboards almost there, the vocal choices too.