Classic or Dud: U2

what are the odds of the next U2 album being the best of their entire career

In the “sure, it’s a giant steaming turd, but look - there’s a flower growing out of one of the coils!” sense, sure, it could happen.

(What I’m saying here is that U2 are a bad band and all their albums are bad, but sure, the next one could be 1% less terrible than all its predecessors, why not?)

More like Ew2

U2 were a great band and let's face it, you're all massively jealous of Bono and the band in general.

https://m.popkey.co/431c39/ZmM5G.gif

But y'know, don't quit looking for reasons to get offended guys.

There are 3 or 4 U2 albums I regularly play and love in their entirety, so I can't dismiss the group. Likewise, I think Bono can come off a real tool but I also think he can be smart and funny. Even so, I don't expect this band to record anything I want to listen to ever again. I blame the Edge, who I am convinced decades down the line still doesn't know how to play guitar, which is pretty limiting for a guitarist. But as I've always said, if I formed a U2 cover band, the Edge would still be my first pick.

well i mean Edge can definitely play guitar but it's weird to me how they have consistently kicked off their recent string of albums with singles where they're trying to use him as a blunt, choppy instrument instead of the more recognizable sound of peak U2. i think within that sound he can do a lot, like I'd include The Fly or Breathe or Moment of Surrender in that. but not so much Get On Your Boots, American Soul, The Blackout, The Miracle of Joey Ramone, etc...

I don't think he can play guitar, though he can do cool things with guitars. And he does those things well, so he doesn't need to play guitar well. That It Might Get Loud doc settled it for me.

of all the tired zings about U2, edge can’t play is the most tired. one of the most influential players of his generation (hi dere worship players) but yeah, sure, he can’t play. good thing there are a million bar band guys who can hold down the blooz wank while we wait for guitar jesus.

Me I am somewhere in between Josh and omar. Like anyone of my age and class and temperament I have a long history of listening to these lads. I still like some songs. "Pride," "One." A few more if I cared enough to think about it but I don't.

Edge shouldn't be judged as a guitarist vs. other guitarists, because he has never had to play guitar like anyone but himself. Which is an admirable position to be in. I will fully confess that I envy him. In various documentaries (as Josh notes) he gives a lot of information about his method, which I think is interesting. More an architect of soundscapes than a shredder or technician, blah blah blah.

I've said this elsewhere but will say again: at their best they are a pretty good rock band, but to think about them as a rock band you have to ignore so much music-adjacent bullshit that it becomes a very difficult mental exercise. I mean, what do we talk about when we talk about U2? Can we ignore mullets? Checkered pants? The World Bank? It's possible, but difficult.

i can agree to an extent and refer to something he himself said once along the lines of him being more a technician than a musician, but i think at its peak his sound (if not his ability) has been more compelling than most major superstar guitar players.

I am not doubting his influence at all! I like his playing, he's a cool guitarist with a lot of good ideas, and that's all you need, not technical prowess or anything. Like, he knows:

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

He's the absolutely right guitarist for U2. But I do think he's pretty limited and limiting.

i think him being a player who has experimented w/his sound to overcome his occasionally self admitted limitations has made him vv interesting and he was either crafty or lucky or both to hit upon a sound early on that really worked.

I totally agree. It's key that he has never had to be anyone but himself. But I was just saying that the incentive to change when you're in such an enviable position is low. Change the Edge, you totally change U2.

The other argument of course is that simple works, which is one reason he's still playing stadiums and Andy Summers, John McGeoch, Will Sergeant or Stuart Adamson (RIP) aren't.

Or, you know, Michael Brook or even Daniel Lanois or any of the other guitarists who influenced him or who work in a similar sonic realm.

like marv levy used to say, it’s simple but it ain’t easy. really nail the riff from “Bad” and get back to me.

complexity isn’t why andy summers stopped filling stadiums lol. I agree we’d be all be better off if more players listened to daniel lanois.

Right!

And that clip JiC linked (where he plays the same thing clean) is EXACTLY what I think of when I think of him nowadays.

I will never call myself a U2 fanboi. But would still vastly rather see them than yr Bonnamasturbatur/Satriwanki/Malmsteen thingy or Phish/Rush/Yes/Tool/whatever.

And though I am not a global superstar (and never will be) I follow more of an Edgian ethos in my own music. Play exactly like yourself, and put yourself in situations where that makes sense.

For sure, doing even the simplest stuff he does while running around on stage in a stadium I imagine is really hard! Edge is the best Edge we will ever get.

I want to say achtung baby and zooropa was the last time he did anything that caught my attention. A song like Until the End of the World, he's moving around a lot more than usual, even has a guitar solo!

Ok. I think there's at least an equally interesting debate about whether Adam Clayton can play bass or not.

Consensus in my youth was that Adam could not, in fact, play bass particularly well.

Consensus in their mid-career period was, who cares?

I don't know the current consensus. Still stuck on "don't care."

my relationship with U2 ends abruptly around Zooropa/Passengers so it’s possible my perspective is tainted.

I think adam is okay - he doesn’t have jazz chops or anything but you can catch him bringing something to the song.

as an aside, it’s probably a different thread really but I can’t understand bonamassa at all. he’s like a walking museum of ancient licks and he will influence no one.

rogermexico, as an aside, there are actually two good bonamassa threads

thread for discussion of guitarists i have only heard of because i read guitar magazines in the late 90s

OFFICAL ILX JOE BONAMASSA CELEBRATION THREAD

Adam iirc couldn't even play bass when he joined up, they just thought he was a cool-looking dude and he happened to have a bass or something. i could be misremembering my U2 history. he's good, i think. he's had a lot of good bass lines in his career, memorable ones.

Larry is probably the best musician in the bunch.

Bono has been both great and terrible in terms of both singing and lyrics.

Larry is p much unimpeachable, agreed

thanking u mad puffin

For sure, doing even the simplest stuff he does while running around on stage in a stadium I imagine is really hard!

I prefer when he falls off stages in stadium, tbh, if only he'd do more of that I've have more respect for him. Seriously though I think he's always been the only interesting musician in U2 and still is.

my challenging opinion is that, in any creative field, if you don't think you're at least hypothetically capable of producing your very best work in the near future, you should just stop.

I'm sure they think they are but hasn't the Edge got some ridiculous clifftop mansion to maintain?

...And my counterchallop is that as long as someone wants to hear what you're doing now and where you're going next, you may as well continue exploring/experimenting.

No, most people don't go to see the Rolling Stones with a burning desire to hear them say "here's one from our new album."

But on the other hand, making Tom Rush or Bob Dylan slog around with the same ten songs they wrote when they were 20 seems cruel in a different way.

Oh right, he hasn't built it yet - well, as of May 2016 that is, an update would be appreciated...

http://static.latimes.com/the-edge/

IMO clifftop mansions are great for immensely rich older men with young, physically fit wives.

"Ooops, he slipped! There was nothing I could do!"

Adam's bass playing is imo the highlight of "Pop." Adam, fwiw, also the only member of U2 to ever miss a gig (and, related, go to rehab).

I'd argue U2's major advances post Popmart have been stage design and presentation. The claw stadium stage, the Songs of Innocence set, even (in that context) the stripped down Joshua Tree redux stage.

"Ooops, he slipped! There was nothing I could do!"

He's not too nimble on his feet either, as we have seen earlier.

i heard American Soul off the new album on the radio recently and it reminded me that the way they've focused on 'rocking out' in the last 15 years or so, contrary to all their previous strengths, is so strange and i can't believe they're still at it

um throwing Alex Lifeson in with Phish when he's probably the most economical guitarist of his generation is pretty bonkers

I think the new one "rocks" a bit more than the last one. The last one was also a better album.

xpost Lifeson also clearly glommed on to what the Edge and cohort were up to.

Bono thinks The Biggest Band in the World should record rock singles * shrug*

Edge should have just had them include this Bill Bailey clip in that doco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dZwXnMrRU

also Rush literally afaik has never jammed or improv'ed ever in concert

GUYS the distinction is "admired by chops-hungry muso types" / "reviled by chops-hungry muso types."

You can quibble all you like about who is included/excluded from each bucket, but it is a recognizable distinction.

Edge can't play

But hes read all the manuals of the post-playing equipment

This is not even up for argument tbh. He couldn't even figure out the chords for the weight ffs

Quick note here that Bono, in his introduction to Tom Doyle's Billy Mackenzie biography The Glamour Chase, specifically admitted that they tried to rip off the Associates (and that he knew there was no way for him to rip off Billy's singing, a wise assessment). And as Doyle himself says in the book, I think you can pretty clearly hear it on the band's 1980 song "Paperhouse," from their debut The Affectionate Punch -- definitely a proto-Edge guitar break in there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U3xiazgtmA

(Should add of course that said guitar is played by the other core member of the original band, Alan Rankine.)

so as ILM's likely most loyal U2 fan i feel the need to add my 2 cents about the new album. don't read if you hate them, or me i guess.

like all U2 albums, if you're a U2 fan you're probably going to enjoy it but it feels like only half their work, there are a lot of songs on here that sound very much unlike them. more generic. This one too often feels like the work of other parties in places (recognizing that U2 has worked with other parties before of course but it felt a lot more collaborative in those instances.) though in a few cases on this album it works, the song w/Haim and a couple of the tracks with Andy Barlow from Lamb are nice.

But this is down there with Rattle and Hum and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb but where the former fell flat on its face sometimes bc of miscalculation and the latter was U2 settling into a very by-the-numbers groove, at least in R&H there were some genuinely outstanding songs and in HTDAAB they nailed a classic U2 sound and there are a couple of genuinely rousing tracks.

(also: after sitting with it for awhile i think Songs of Innocence is the better album and actually winds up in the middle of their discography quality-wise for me. upthread i complained about it but i think it's actually very good and sounds like a very heartfelt U2 album -- similar to No Line on the Horizon, albeit not nearly as great.)

my updated, subjective album rankings:

Achtung Baby
The Joshua Tree
Zooropa
War
Unforgettable
Passengers
Pop
Boy
No Line on the Horizon
Songs of Innocence
All That You Can’t Leave Behind
October
Rattle and Hum/How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb/Songs of Experience

Probably wouldn't quibble with that ranking, even if I might shift a couple of the top ones around. Haven't even bothered with the new one.

clicked this What's Going On cover expecting it to be disastrous, to my surprise it is not horrible https://open.spotify.com/track/5CPWcXuqQ2QSXJmc1sT19u

War
The Joshua Tree
Unforgettable
Achtung Baby
No Line on the Horizon
Rattle and Hum
Passengers
Boy
Zooropa
October
Pop
Songs of Experience
Songs of Innocence
All That You Can’t Leave Behind
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb