U2 named greatest act of last 25 years
Updated: 18:32, Tuesday October 25, 2011
U2 has been named as the greatest act of the last 25 years at London’s annual “Q” awards. Considered to be one of the most prestigious awards in the UK. U2 gathered the most votes, as Coldplay have been named the BestThe ‘Mylo Xyloto’ band beat off competition from the likes of Muse, Arcade Fire, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys and U2.
BRIAN BOYD
‘Achtung Baby’ was the making of U2. As the album is rereleased after 20 years, alongside a film about the band, Bono and Edge recall the turmoil that surrounded the recording and talk about their future
IT’S WHEN THREE glasses are raised to toast “12-step programmes” that you realise perhaps one too many cocktails has been taken. It’s a bar in Toronto and the caipirinhas were Bono’s idea, with Edge not slow to get his round in. “If we don’t come up with a very good reason to make a new album, we should just f*** off,” says Bono. “Why does anyone need a new U2 album?”
For the first time in their 35-year career the notoriously “faster, stronger, higher” band have put the brakes on and taken a long look in the rear-view mirror. A new film about the band, From the Sky Down , documents how their huge success in the 1980s provoked a bout of self-loathing and almost broke up the band as they struggled to stay true to their vision of a band forged in the white heat of Dublin’s punk/new wave movement.
To mark the 20th-anniversary rerelease of their key Achtung Baby album, U2 had a rush of blood to the head. They decided to open their archives and cede editorial control to the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim to make a film ostensibly about the troubled gestation period of Achtung Baby . The result was something very different.
“Watching From the Sky Down the first time made for painful viewing. I hated it,” says Bono. “U2 never look back. It’s never been what this band is about. Edge will tell you that when we put together our best-of collections he forced me – actually had to physically force me – to listen to them before they went out. I’ve never been interested in what we have done. I’m interested only in what we’re about to do. But I think there comes a time when it actually becomes dysfunctional not to look into the past, and for the Achtung Baby album we made an exception.
“The film is not about us per se. It’s about how bands function – or, in this case, don’t function. But when I saw it first I just saw these four people talking intensely about their music, and, really, does the world need that at this time? Davis didn’t tell us he was going into our past to put a context on what really happened to the band after the success of The Joshua Tree and how bad things were in Berlin when we started to make Achtung Baby . He didn’t tell us because we wouldn’t have agreed. Now that I’ve seen it a few times I realise it is actually about the creative process. Let’s face it, the era of rock music is going to end soon, and if you are interested in rock music and rock bands you’ll be interested in their internal dynamics: what makes a rock band tick, the tribal aspect, the idea of the clan. The irony for me now is that we made Achtung Baby to set fire to our earnestness and now here’s this very earnest film about the making of the album.
“We held back nothing from Davis. We opened up our archives to him and he really had carte blanche. The first time I saw it I was going, ‘Oh no, no, no,’ and I went to him and made a few suggestions as to the changes I wanted. There was no battle of wills. He just didn’t even get into a discussion with me. He didn’t change anything. But I was looking at it, going, ‘Why is this film talking about Cedarwood Road [where he grew up], the Baggot Inn and my grandmother? I thought we were making a film about the Achtung Baby album. What is going on here?’ ”
What is going on in the film is a look at how a band who shared musical DNA with Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire ended up sitting at music’s high table alongside Elton John and Dire Straits – but without the AOR table manners. A generation before Nirvana dragged alt-rock into the musical and media mainstream, this punk-theatric band ended up on the cover of Time magazine, in April 1987, as “Rock’s Hottest Ticket” and selling out arenas around the world.
Disgusted with the idea of being rock idols and disillusioned by their stadium-rock billing, they were at breaking point. “We were carrying Catholic guilt around – the sin of success,” says Bono. “We had emerged from playing with The [Virgin] Prunes and hanging around the Project Arts Centre getting mime lessons from Mannix Flynn. And the context here is that the musical scene we came from had this very Maoist music press. There were certain canon laws: thou shalt not go platinum; thou shalt not play in a stadium or an arena; thou shalt not go to America; thou shalt not be careerist. If you even thought about those things you had committed a sin.”
DESPERATE NOT TO turn into a cigarette-lighter-in-the-air stadium-rock band, U2 boarded the last flight to East Berlin just before Germany reunified, in 1990. It was one of the harshest Berlin winters, their recording studio, Hansa, was a former SS ballroom, their hotel was rubbish and they had no songs. “On a scale of one to 10 we were at a nine for breaking up,” says Bono.
For Edge, U2 were over the moment they walked into Hansa – or, at least, Rattle and Hum U2 were over. “It would have been insanity for us to have stayed in Rattle and Hum mode; that was a wonderful, great little aside, but it was never who we really were,” says the guitarist. “Who we really are is all about the future and innovation. We were getting a bit purist and a bit ‘disciplist’ about roots music, but we needed to become disciples of what is coming next. I arrived in Berlin with drum machines and loops, telling everyone what was happening in Manchester,” he says, referring to the Hacienda nightclub and to The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, among other bands. “I was also big into industrial music, but the producer of the album, Danny Lanois, was going, ‘Okay, this all sounds interesting, but show us where it’s going musically.’ And I couldn’t.”
Things deteriorated rapidly. As Bono has it, while outside they were tearing down the Berlin Wall, U2 were building their own wall inside Hansa. On one side were the so-called traditionalists: Adam, Larry and Lanois; on the other, Bono and Edge were throwing club- culture and dance-rhythm shapes. Bono had always felt aggrieved that whenever a club DJ would play a U2 song, it would empty the dance floor. He wanted to make U2’s music sexy.
“To Danny Lanois, from his perspective, we were kindred spirits to his love of roots music,” says Edge. “He loved the organic feel to our music, the material that was on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree . But no one knew how to make the bits of new material we had into U2 songs. The first two weeks were a nightmare. Everything we tried would just nosedive. It got to the stage where we lost trust in each other … and there was a clear dilemma.
“There were options: one was to see whether U2 could absorb new material and make it their own, or whether U2 as a band were inflexible and couldn’t stretch. The other option was to throw out all the material, start again and … extend the line-up or bring in other musicians.”
With the band having to take some very hard decisions about continuing to flail around in the studio or just cancelling everything, a deus ex machina arrived in the shape of the discarded second bridge from a song called Sick Puppy (later renamed Mysterious Ways ). That bridge was shaped into the intro for a new song, One . “As soon as One came into that room it stabilised everything,” says Bono. “Everyone just sort of surrendered after we had that. By surrendering, we got over the hump.”
With a song to anchor the album, they returned to Dublin for Christmas and finished off the album in a rented house in Dalkey, in south Co Dublin.
Released in 1991, and hailed as a triumphant reinvention, Achtung Baby sold more than 20 million copies. It remains their most important album, and the resulting tour, Zoo TV, changed how live rock music would be presented and experienced.
It’s dark outside in Toronto now, and an interview that began in sunshine has gone way over time. There’s just one more thing. It may well be an act of lese-majesty, but here goes: one possible interpretation of the film, Bono, is that, without Edge, you’d still be in the Baggot Inn. “Sure,” he says, nodding.
“That’s a lovely thing to say,” says Edge. “But I don’t think that’s true. It’s symbiotic. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without Bono, and I think that’s reciprocal. He makes me great. I help him to be great.”
Before they descend into you’re-my-best-friend territory, we slip away. Bono is saying, “Being in U2 is like being in the priesthood. There’s only one way out. And that’s in a coffin.”
A year is how long you will have to wait for a book about U2’s super successful 360° Tour! Random House publishing be releasing a book about U2’s 360° Tour. GQ editor Dylan Jones will pen the text of U2360: The Official Story of the Greatest Spectacle in Stadium-Rock History.
Why does the tour deserve a book? Well, it launched in 2009 and grossed over $730 million during its run, making it the highest-grossing tour…EVER!
The book is out in Oct. 2012.
Did you see any of the dates on this tour? Do you plan to get this book?
Herman Hess’s Wild Influence on Bono
By Eric Shivvers
I always knew that if you wanted to become great at your craft, you had to know the masters, or were lucky enough to be a prodigy. I will say it straight out that I’m no prodigy, therefore, I had to learn my craft of being an art director from the ground up. That’s right, watching Saturday morning cereal commercials, in the mid-70s no less, impeded by cartoons such as Looney Tunes or Hong Kong Phooey. Luckily, my parents, my mom and stepfather, were academics, which lead me to travel and live in Europe as a young kid. Those experiences have stayed with me and helped me build a knowledge base of design. Added to the fact, my father’s an architect and has a voracious, creative appetite. It’s no wonder I turned out the way I did.
I had a pretty good idea, when I filled out my application to the University of Iowa, that I was going to complete my declared major of graphic design. When I got to college, I immersed myself into expanding my knowledge of who the greats were in design, painting and photography. I would emulate them. Well, actually copy them until I found my own style, which I kept pushing as my studies moved along. I found my path being no different than that of my father’s architectural desires or my mother’s love for being a wordsmith. In fact, writing is no different than designing. In order to self-express one’s self, one must read to find out how others before you created their sense of love lost, joyful disposition or contemplation of one’s woes. Bono’s a masterful lyricist who doesn’t carry a degree from an academic institution, but instead has used life’s experiences and the understanding others works in order to master his craft. I find it heartwarming that he comes from country brimming with literary talent– W.B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce.
The influence of prose on the lead singer can be seen in U2’s early recordings. The Ocean, on the Boy LP, has a direct reference to Oscar Wilde’s book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The fear Bono emulates in the song is he doesn’t want to succumb to the narcissism that comes with being a rock star. The album Boy is about the trials and tribulations of teenage angst. Such a heavy, literary reference such as this seems out of proportion to a rock song, but then again, he’s bringing Oscar Wilde’s 19th century idea into pop culture. I’m not sure how many U2 fans would take this lyric and dig further into it. Do you think most casual U2 fans would go to the library and check out the book as I did? I’m not sure. As for myself, I felt I had to read the work in order to get the whole picture, excuse the pun and I did it later in life. I’m sure my stepfather would be thrilled that I read the work, but upset that it took an Irish band, and not an Irish lit scholar such as himself, to get me to read the great work.
Why am I blabbering about this creative inspiration? Well, I will cut to the chase. Since we’re about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby, I wanted to touch on some of the songs over the next couple weeks. The first is that very underrated song, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses. Admittedly, it’s not my favorite tune on the record. I still get it confused with the Rolling Stones song, Wild Horses. I think I’m musically dyslexic that way. However, like The Ocean on the Boy LP, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses has a literary reference. Unlike the blatant Dorian Gray reference in The Ocean, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses tucks a Hermann Hesse book reference under the covers of the song. The line, under the trees the river laughing at you and me, is in reference to Hesse’s book Siddartha where the river in the novel symbolizes a teacher. It’s that teacher that Bono is searching for in this citation. In my mind, the teacher could be a religious reference or that of his mother speaking to him from beyond. No matter how you read it, the brilliance here is Bono’s innate ability to reference the old and turn it anew again. Pushing that age-old story about a river into a new dress, which could be “vacant as a parking lot” or “left just out of reach” either way, it makes him a grand lyricist and one who truly is a pundit of life.
You can read all about Eric’s joy for U2 in his book: I’m a Fan: How I married U2 into my life without going to the altar
The Killers, Jack White, Nine Inch Nails, Snow Patrol, Patti Smith, Depeche Mode & more re-invent U2’s landmark album Q ’ the UK’s biggest selling monthly music magazine ’ is proud to announce a very special issue featuring an exclusive CD: AHK-TOONG BAY-BI COVERED ’ an interpretation of U2’s landmark album featuring a host of stellar artists.
Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Q presents the album as a commemoration of U2’s Achtung Baby, 20 this year. All of the tracks on the CD are brand new recordings made exclusively for Q.
Q Editor in Chief Paul Rees commented: “It is always Q’s intention to present a unique take on music. At a time when free CDs have become ten-a-penny, I strongly believe the Achtung Baby Covered album sets a new, and much higher, benchmark for the format. Not only in the sense that each of the tracks are brand new recordings by some of the biggest and most iconic names in music such as Jack White, Nine Inch Nails and Patti Smith, but also in that several of them mark the first new material we have heard from these acts in a long time ’ such as those by The Killers, Damien Rice and Garbage. This is an entirely appropriate way to mark Q’s anniversary and that of Achtung Baby, one of the pivotal albums in our lifetime.”
The magazine/cd package is a strictly limited edition and will only be available from www.qthemusic.com and in stores from the 25th October.
Q is one of the world’s most influential music brands ’ communicating to and engaging with more than a million music fans every day. The iconic Q magazine sits at the heart of the brand and service that encompasses online, social media, radio, TV and live events, with each dedicated to discovering great new music and bringing unparalleled access and insight in the people making it.
The full track listing:
Nine Inch Nails ’ Zoo Station
U2 (Jacques Lu Cont Mix) ’ Even Better Than The Real Thing
Damien Rice ’ One
Patti Smith ’ Until The End Of The World
Garbage ’ Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Depeche Mode ’ So Cruel
Snow Patrol ’ Mysterious Ways
The Fray ’ Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World
Gavin Friday ’ The Fly
The Killers ’ Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Glasvegas ’ Acrobat
Jack White ’ Love Is Blindness
Bono’s star-studded famine commercial has been banned from airing on U.K. TV – because broadcasting officials fear the clip breaches rules regarding political advertising.
The U2 rocker shot the minute-long advert with a slew of his celebrity pals, including George Clooney, Jessica Alba and Colin Farrell, to raise awareness about the famine crisis sweeping across Eastern Africa.
The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity, which was produced by Bono’s One charity, is aimed at urging government officials to do more to tackle the hunger issue, but the TV commercial has now been taken off the airwaves by bosses at governing body Clearcast amid worries its message could potentially conflict with the terms stated in the 2003 Communications Act.
A Clearcast spokesperson tells BBC News, “These rules ensure that adverts aren’t being broadcast by bodies whose objects are wholly or mainly political.”
“One (charity) appears to be caught by this rule as they state that part of their raison d’etre (reason for existence) is to pressure political leaders. It also appears that a number of the claims made in the version of the ad that we have seen are directed towards a political end, which is again against the rules.”
Music is my lifeblood. It’s a plain and simple fact. From Bowie to The Cure to Nirvana to U2 and well beyond, I listen to a very eclectic group of genres. However, I’m no longer a consumer of music like I was in my post-college years. I still “listen” to newer bands, but have not been very impressed with recent releases. The last time we had a major shift change in music was in 1991.
U2 fans have a special love for Steve Jobs. It was October 26, 2004 when Apple introduced the IPOD U2 Special Edition as part of a partnership between Apple, U2 and Universal Music Group (UMG) to create innovative new products together for the new digital music era.
The new U2 iPod holds up to 5,000 songs and featured a gorgeous black enclosure with a red Click Wheel and custom engraving of U2 band member signatures.
“U2 and Apple has a special relationship where they redefined the music business,” said Jimmy Iovine, Chairman of UMG’s Interscope Geffen A&M Records. “The iPod along with iTunes is the most complete thought that we’ve seen in music in a very long time.”
“We want our audience to have a more intimate online relationship with the band, and Apple can help us do that,” said Bono. iPod and iTunes look like the future to me and it’s good for everybody involved in music,” said The Edge.
“U2 is one of the greatest bands in the world and we are floored to be working with them,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We just wanted to make some innovative products together, and we hope U2 fans will love having their very own special edition iPod.”
The new U2 iPod was introduced as the band prepared to release their new album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” in late November. In addition to the new U2 iPod, the results of the U2, Apple and UMG partnership included:
• U2’s single “Vertigo” from their upcoming album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” is available exclusively in the US through the iTunes® Music Store;
• Apple and U2 have created a breakthrough television ad featuring U2 band members performing their new single “Vertigo.” The ad is a cross between Apple’s award-winning “Silhouette” ads and a music video; and
• Apple has created the online music industry’s first-of-its-kind “Digital Box Set.” The first digital box set, “The Complete U2,” will contain over 400 tracks including all of the band’s albums and over 25 rare and unreleased tracks. U2 fans where able to purchase and download The Complete U2 with just one click on the iTunes Music Store in the US and Europe.