“20” – U2 TRACKS POLL (voting closes midday, Thursday 4 August)

xp I always took Elevation's "mole" lyric as deliberately goofy but I guess people don't see any goofiness in Bono. If that line was in a New Order lyric people would find it adorable.

some people are allowed to giggle and others are not

elvis would have known that

I just genuinely can't fathom how he's playing all the notes that he does on 'bad', for instance (think of the highest note on the opening chord), without a capo (I managed it with a high capo + C shape the other day, but he's not doing that on that video, no capo. ditto I finally nailed 'pride' with a capo and a D shape but that doesn't fit what he's doing either).

I've seen an interview with him where he mentions the fact that he's got a slightly deformed little finger on his left hand, which allows him to stretch to frets that most people can't reach.

xp That's true. Just because you can write a line doesn't mean you can sing it.

Kool G Rap shares the "Drowning Man" love.

done. didn't expect to vote in this tbh as been a bit of a hata over the years but thought why not and surprised myself by finding 20 songs i quite like, some of them quite a bit. nice memories of listening to 'the joshua tree' in my dad's car too.

"Bad" is pretty badass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zIW8qDPhos

I haven't received it xp - have you sent it yet?

(anyone else: I've acknowledged every one I've received, if you haven't had an email from me, holler)

mine? really, it says 'sent'. right, just forwarded again.

Your second email bumped it through, thanks.

:)

Yeah "Elvis Ate America" is unbelievably awful. They should have quit after one Elvis + America song.

For anyone too timid to search for it, here it is. HOW TRULY HORRIBLE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW-C8GQguMw

Quick question... should we add notes to our picks? I've got my twenty, but am wondering how much annotation to write...

Bloody hell, I was just such a big dumb fan of this band.

No annotations, please - just be here on Friday for the results thread. Appraisals, anecdotes and abuse belong there.

I have a couple of questions. I was going to rephrase them to make them seem less lame than they are, but what the hell:

• Is Bono attractive? Seeing him as a young man I can totally imagine that the hair, the passion and the charisma would make men want to be him. But would women want him? He's been getting ropier since, I can see that.

• How Irish are U2? There are a few obvious references like An Cat Dubh, Sunday Bloody Sunday, or the arrangement on Tomorrow. What I mean is - are there other resonances that mean a lot locally but that the rest of us might not be getting?

- my wife still has a mad crush on Bono; I find this unfathomable

- there's also the gaelic bit at the end of 'Another Time, Another Place'; all the onstage waving of the tricolour that they used to do; the ruins of (?) Slane Castle on the cover of The Unforgettable Fire - a lot of this stuff was ditched from The Joshua Tree onwards.

Oh shit, I forgot about that Bono & Clannad song.

I think Bono is less attractive than many pop stars have been

but then, many pop stars are not attractive to me

especially the male ones.

But even by those standards

I think he has not been that attractive

He is very small, this may possibly not help.

Yes, early U2: Ireland

later: not so much, occasional returns like 'Please'

But there is also a genuine lingering enigma here I think -- that the Edge's guitar playing DOES often seem to encode a Celtic flavour even when he's not playing on Celtic material - when he's not playing big blues-guitar solos, that is.

I feel that this is not wholly intentional - I feel that it is a strange case of a kind of cultural DNA operating - as though 'traditional music' went into the Edge and came out without his especially intending it.

The claim sounds like hokum and something I would not normally buy, but I think the musical evidence is there, though I can't point to examples on the spot.

The outro of 'Mofo' might be an example -- the big heavy dance number moves into something else as he sprinkles guitar on the fade.

BTW Johnny Marr has talked of growing up surrounded by trad Irish music
and people have made a lot of 'please please please' etc and tried to say he's an Irish guitarist

but really this pales next to the Edge - the comparison shows how marginal the influence is on Marr
it's like in the Edge that really DID happen
wasn't just a critical fantasy.

That's interesting, I'll open my ears for that. It's more than that the effects he uses bring to mind a kind of pipey/flutey celtic atmosphere, I take it?

I also wondered about them treating faith as a fundamental, serious question; certainly with religion early on but throughout their career in various ways I suppose. It seems to me, though I can't really think of an equivalent, that British bands would not have camped on that territory in that way.

Yes, IK, it is the notes he plays.

And yes, the 'faith' business works from an Irish background (ie: you can get away with it) as it wouldn't here - I think that's a good observation.

Bono has done all this 'reading the Gospels together' business with extreme right-wing US senators. I wonder if he has done the same with the surely less malign Cliff Richard?

Well, I suppose the Edge did cop a bit from the Skids, who were not Irish but whose music did glimmer with a little bit of that stuff. But really, it seems to me the Irish stuff, what there was, went out after "War." Unlike a band like, say, Midnight Oil, which remained Aussie-centric til the end.

I can't think of two more different guitarists than Johnny Marr and the Edge, in almost every single regard.

If you mean Irish stuff disappears in lyrics, images, etc, yes

(though lots of exceptions: Van Diemen's Land, Please, Peace On Earth, Hands That Built America, Breathe)

If you mean it disappears from the guitars as I tried to suggest, then obviously I disagree

I could think of many, many guitarists more different from each other than Marr and the Edge, in many significant regards.

I think the Edge himself makes this fairly clear on the Yentob Imagine video that's on youtube, where he says there are gunslingers vs sidemen, the latter are about 'supporting the whole song', and aligns himself with Keith Richards & Marr in this group.

I think he is broadly correct here (in fact so much so that it's a bit of a truism, a bit of an easy unsurprising victory, like a lot of what the Edge says)

I don't mean his general role, I mean his style. I would align Edge with Keith, sure, but not Marr, at all. Nor would I align Keith with Marr, either. That's just crazy talk. Though I concede all three do play guitars.

The people that I hear in the Edge's guitar playing are Tom Verlaine (especicially in the earlier stuff e.g. check out the solo in 'Another Time, Another Place') and John Martyn (don't know if they used any of the same gear, but some of Martyn's echoplex stuff certainly has sonic similarities to the Edge circa The Unforgettable Fire)

Marr has always said, for about 25 years, that KR is his model of the guitar player, and that kind of thing. Undoubtedly he sees himself as in that bracket or tradition. He could hardly have been more explicit about it - he called 'Bigmouth' 'my Jumping Jack Flash'. I think the way KR moves between rhythm and lead (an old guitarist friend once told me that KR had made the distinction redundant) is pertinent.

In fact I think Marr and KR are closer than they are to The Edge. Mainly because Marr had a bit more of a blues / rock / twang tradition in his play ('nowhere fast', 'vicar in a tutu', 'queen is dead' etc) at a time when the Edge seemed more about purity of scales and textures (though the Edge did later join the rhythm & blues party somewhat with 'the Fly' etc).

Is Bono attractive? Seeing him as a young man I can totally imagine that the hair, the passion and the charisma would make men want to be him. But would women want him? He's been getting ropier since, I can see that.

Going to say no, not really. Appealing in some way, sure, but not attractive. His hair was horrible, he's self-absorbed, and like I said before, I could never get over feeling betrayed by the terrible lyrics on Achtung Baby. Larry was (and let's face it, remains) pretty hot. My choice was always The Edge (TM). He's quiet, thoughtful, skilled, and not prone to embarrassing himself.

Also, he goes by a pseudonym: THE EDGE

Dave 'take me to the Edge of' Evans

hahahaha
I put Van Diemen's Land on my list, I'll put it that way.

he also sang 'seconds'

and seems to have written most of 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' according to that film?

and he 'sang' 'Numb'

and ... ?

he's actually quite a good singer considering all the things he does at the same time

whereas Bono is one of the worst guitar players ever to be a rock star and pretend to be able to play guitar.

see, he's the best

How come nobody's mentioned Adam? I'd've thought he & Larry have this all sewn up.

Has everyone seen that Brian Eno quote about Larry Mullen's timekeeping (before I go looking through old popbitch emails for it)?

nope

Here it is:

Brian Eno told a story about U2 drummer, Larry Mullen. When he was producing All That You Can't Leave Behind, Eno gave Mullen a click track (computer generated beat) to play drums over, as a way of keeping everything in synch. Mullen swore the click track wasn't right, and refused to play over it. Eventually Eno adjusted it - but just to humour the drummer, as he knew it couldn't be at fault. Except he later found Mullen was right. The click was off - by six milliseconds!

"The thing is," said Eno, "when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, 'No, you've got to come back a bit.' Which I think is absolutely staggering."

wau!

Yep. For the curious, the original source is the New Yorker, April 25, 2011 issue.

I like that.

I like Larry's seriousness, his simplicity, a kind of puritan focus that is also youthful or childlike.

Might be a daft question, but if he was so shit hot, why did he need a click track?

it sounds like eno was foisting it on him

he of little faith in the robotic shit hottness of larry mullen

If I had a head like yours I'd bleedin' bury it

I was reading about Larry and click tracks last night! He never used one 'til he was convinced to do so by Andy Newmark from Sly & The Family Stone, who swore by them. I still don't think he likes it though.

Nate's story is better.

Yeah I was reading that story this morning too, it's on the wikipedia entry for Boy or October, I think. It's what reminded me of the Eno story.

On the other hand, Adam went for bass lessons in the mid 90s

my wife still has a mad crush on Bono; I find this unfathomable

Ha! I was working in a record store when the tree album came out, and I had a huge crush on my manager, and she had a schoolgirl-swoon crush on Bono--she was like Elaine's "Desperado"-loving boyfriend whenever we played it in the store, completely zoned out and oblivious to the world. I'm sure that contributed greatly to my U2 problem.