Classic or Dud: U2

i'm american, so glastonbury doesn't mean much to me, but DL OTM. few things more tiresome than knee-jerk U2 hate.

that said, i spent years hating them for the negativland "U2" business, so...

cant figure out the thread that the recent Achtung Bay docu has been given some love on, so dropping on this one.
tis fascinating to see the band so riddled with doubt during their rattle & hum era.
i would have thought by that stage they had their thing locked down.
and the fact they believed they believed that they didn't have enough material for a stadium (as opposed to arena) shows despite the fact they were several albums into their career.
other than that, its a great watch .. loved the section re the breakdown of bands ("bought out", "snuck out" etc)
so many good quotes ..

of course : bay = baby

October is by far the best Christian rock record ever made. In all seriousness, it's an incredibly overlooked record, both in their catalog and overall. (This was brought to light in a recent discussion with a self-professed "huge U2 fan" who had never even heard it.) The urgent, devastating, soaring guitar solo in "Tomorrow"? Edge's guitar work overall? Bono is his usual strident self, but there's a lot less chest-beating than on the overrated War, and the whole band is tighter, more singular, and more focused than on Boy. It's a strange and captivating record, and I wonder if any ILMers have visited it lately.

why do I have this thread bookmarked

HE'S WATCHING YOU, DAN.

http://www.john-lee-ministries.org/Bono-Macphisto.jpg

anyway OTM re: October

I think it's a terrific record. But it's their hardest to get a handle on - I think largely down to the flat-yet-echoey production, it's of-its-time in a way that the others aren't, because they all get scooped up into the U2 sound. So while I like it, I'm more likely to consider it in another context, like if I'm thinking about Echo & The Bunnymen rather than U2 (I almost never do this btw).

I don't know if this is why I also find it slightly impenetrable - I know that personally they were wrestling with Christianity, but whether (other than a couple of obvious examples) and how that feeds in lyrically I just don't know. Is it Christian Rock? Is Tomorrow? I'm wary of categorising it as such - for one thing, anything prior to Zooropa seems equally worthy of the term.

x-post

I don't think I'll ever fully understand the vitriol spewed at Bono by so many... I mean, I get it: he's pretty douchey, he's pretty self-righteous, fine. But the dude has an amazing voice, and he's not any more over-the-top than so, so, so many other famous vocalists, neither in personality nor in vocal style/presence. I guess I should say that, while I can comprehend the vitriol, I can't inhabit it. I just can't. But that's a blind spot I'm happy to have.

think of it this way; if Jane's Addiction had released a bazillion albums, Bono would have been supplanted by Perry Farrell a long time ago

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Ismael, it somehow feels more Xtian to me than anything else by them, but I would never call it "Christian rock"... I mean, there's "Gloria", there's the chorus that goes "Je-RUUUUU-saaa-lem", there's "Rejoice"... I like the production quite a bit; there's a simplicity and dry-ness to it that you don't really hear on any of their other records. You can really hear the individual parts and hear the players interact. Edge's "gentle cascades of fireworks on the horizon" guitar shadings are more implied than so explicitly framed as on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. He sounds more like a very creative, very economical, very distinctive postpunk guitarist; the link between him and Steve Fellows of Comsat Angels is its most explicit on this record.

Best angle I have on the Bonophobia is that it's a mix of envy and embarrassment. Because when you're young Bono is the guy you want to be, then you grow all cynical and failed in various ways, but he's still that guy - so what else are you going to do but hate?

In breaking Bono news, my sister was passing the famous Bono Vox shop last week, and it's closed down. The sign's still up, but the windows have been boarded over. One of the less-heralded sad days for rock & roll.

I actually always wanted to be Edge when I was younger...

He's the first guitarist I remember registering as "a guitarist I really like"--this was at age, like, 10 or so. Discovering postpunk early in college blew my head right open because all of a sudden here were all of these guitarists who did cool economic angular things like Edge!

when you're young Bono is the guy you want to be

really?

Best angle I have on the Bonophobia is that it's a mix of envy and embarrassment. Because when you're young Bono is the guy you want to be, then you grow all cynical and failed in various ways, but he's still that guy - so what else are you going to do but hate?

lol what

I so adore psychoanalytic explanations for why we dislike rock star posturing.

I don't think I'll ever fully understand the vitriol spewed at Bono by so many...

admittedly this is recent, but I still offer it up as exhibit A:

HAHAHA! OH MY GOD BONO NOOOO SOMEONE MAKE HIM STOP OH THE HUMANITY

Bill Flanagan deserves a Nobel Prize for literature for making Bono a probing intellect in U2 At the End of the World, still one of the most intelligent tour biographies extant.

Well yeah, he should probably be drawn and quartered for that... I just get the impression that Bonohate among the cognoscenti has been around pretty much as long as the band itself, to the point where it's bascially institutionalized. Why so much hatred in the early days?

that was an x-post BTW

The only thing I remember about U2 At the end of the world was this picture and caption:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_u-zEPWVQP0E/S0Nf1g5Cs6I/AAAAAAAAD9I/3iaDjwEIhm8/s800/lm1.jpg

Larry Mullen, toughest guy in the band

And a chapter about Bono's nautical kleptomania that was too awesome to be true

and swimming nude on Bondi Beach with a waitress they shanghaied.

mullen is such a beaver, damn

I'm mulling that one over

Why so much hatred in the early days?

I don't remember any Bono hatred at all in the early (pre-Joshua Tree) days, apart from the stray "Boy, that singer's crazy, climbing up the scaffolding!"-type comment.

Holy crap does it bother me when people inexplicably invoke the "U2 was being ironic" line when it comes to talking about "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa," two of their most heartfelt and honest albums, imo. Like, who listens to "Achtung Baby" and just thinks such a dark record is actually the band being silly, ironic and goofing around?

http://www.avclub.com/article/foo-fighters-taylor-hawkins-why-he-hates-u2s-disco-204670

Seriously, what album was he listening to? I can imagine hearing "Discotheque" and hating it, and yeah, that song is one of the few examples of U2 actually being ironic/silly, but even "Pop" is a pretty dark record. But I totally don't get people who shrug at "Achtung" as some sort of digressive lark.

"I know! Let's ask the Foo Fighters drummer why he hates U2."

I remember back in the ’90s when the song came out that these talk show guys on KROQ out here in L.A.—Kevin and Bean—they kept going, “Okay, we’re going to play you a little bit of the U2 song. We’re going to play you a little bit of the new U2 song. We can only play a little bit of it and here it is right here. Ready? Okay!” Then they’d play that Rick Astley song [starts singing] “Never gonna give you up / Never gonna let you down!” And then they’d turn it off really quickly and go, “That’s the new U2 song! They’ve changed direction!” And the funny thing is, a couple of weeks before, Tommy Lee had been interviewed so they had a sound bite of Tommy Lee going, “You guys are fags!” So they’d go, “We’re going to play the new U2 song, we’re going to play a little snippet of it. Here it is,” [starts singing] “Never gonna give you up / Never gonna let you down,” then they’d turn it off and you’d just hear Tommy Lee go, “You guys are fags.” And it was so fucking funny, man.

Beat me to it

ha ha ha that sure is a good one

TH: I remember back in the ’90s when the song came out that these talk show guys on KROQ out here in L.A.—Kevin and Bean—they kept going, “Okay, we’re going to play you a little bit of the U2 song. We’re going to play you a little bit of the new U2 song. We can only play a little bit of it and here it is right here. Ready? Okay!” Then they’d play that Rick Astley song [starts singing] “Never gonna give you up / Never gonna let you down!” And then they’d turn it off really quickly and go, “That’s the new U2 song! They’ve changed direction!” And the funny thing is, a couple of weeks before, Tommy Lee had been interviewed so they had a sound bite of Tommy Lee going, “You guys are fags!” So they’d go, “We’re going to play the new U2 song, we’re going to play a little snippet of it. Here it is,” [starts singing] “Never gonna give you up / Never gonna let you down,” then they’d turn it off and you’d just hear Tommy Lee go, “You guys are fags.” And it was so fucking funny, man.

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'pop' is dope imo.

that whole thing may be the dumbest conversation ever transcribed. a post-exodus av club writer talking to the second best drummer in the foo fighters.

next up ask him about vaccines and whether or not HIV causes aids.

Ugh, I can't think of a drummer who's more of an utter non-entity than Taylor Hawkins.

Like, who listens to "Achtung Baby" and just thinks such a dark record is actually the band being silly, ironic and goofing around?

This is otm.

'pop' is dope imo.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, May 23, 2014 10:43 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ this. They should've packed it in after Pop, because everything after was strictly snoozeville.

"AVC: It feels like both Pop and Achtung Baby were supposed to make listeners think U2 was this fun party band, which they never really were."

featuring such floor fillers as "so cruel" and "wake up dead man"

yeah but he likes Queen. Those guys were fags. It was so fucking funny, man.

I'm down w their post-pop stuff generally (NLOTH >ATYCLB>>>HTDAAB) but probably the worst thing abt U2 is how they distanced themselves from their most bizarre '90s stuff so quickly.

achtung and pop : quite simply, brilliant albums.

i hated, i mean, really hated, u2 before these albums (and bh was even more anti-u2 than me, out of principle !).

however, a friend gave me tix to see the zooropa live show in leeds, and i have never seen anyone totally denouce their previous groove as quickly as bh did that night.

after the gig the band became hq faves ..

i do wish the band would kick that groove again (there is a chance given that the new track was all about the minimal electro drums ?)

In HateSong, we ask our favorite musicians, writers, comedians, actors, and so forth to expound on the one song they hate most in the world.

Kevin and Bean, holy shit, they were (are?) the worst.

Taylor Hawkins: Let me start out by saying that I love U2. I really do, especially the first four records. They’re very, very important records. They were super, duper important to me growing as a musician, whether I was 10 or 12 or 14. Boy, October, War, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Joshua Tree, those records, they’re part of my musical DNA and structure.

(Insert Drummer Math Joke Here)

Achtung Baby is cool and I liked No Line on the Horizon, remember old friend giving me shit for how dad-rawk some of it was though and I have to concede he was right in parts

This HateSong seems like bullshit

Or rather, a mildly diverting idea executed terribly

Their panicked backsliding from Pop is so tragic. They were really finding something there, oh well.

The panicked backsiding started with Pop itself. Jettison the U2 anthems, begin with "MOFO," and you got something.