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“Pop: music of general appeal, especially among young people that originated as a distinct genre in the
1950s. It is generally characterised by a heavy rhythmic element and the use of electrical amplification.”
- Collins English Dictionary

By it’s very nature, pop should be a transient, ephemeral thing. Yet it is one of the undoubted paradoxes of life that often it is the most ephemeral things that stick in your mind the longest.

I can still vividly recall the first pop concert I ever attended. It was in the gymnasium of Mount Temple school, Dublin, in 1976, when I was 15 years old. It was the middle of the day, all the lights were on and the familiar smell of rotten sneakers and stale sweat filled the room. Most of the school was there, milling about with end-of-term excitement, paying little attention to official proceedings. Five friends strode out onto a rickety stage constructed from several tables shoved together for the first performance by their group, Feedback. Their leader, Paul Hewson (Bono), struck a chord on his guitar and, I swear, a jolt ran through the room.

Few of the kids there had seen a live electric band before and, as they launched into an enthusiastic version of Peter Frampton’s Show Me the Way, the place exploded. I was utterly awe-struck. I stood transfixed in front of the stage, feeling those electric guitars and pounding drums ripping right through me, watching Paul as he stopped playing his guitar, grabbed the mike stand and yelled: “I want you! Show me the way!”

Even the song title seems strangely pertinent. For, in that moment, was the beginning of something that brought me to where I am now, writing about popular music for The Telegraph having misspent my youth in pursuit of my own rock dreams. And it took four members of that teenage group to where they are now, standing at the very summit of the big rock candy mountain, about to release their eagerly-awaited 10th album.

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By Edna Gundersen
USA TODAY

As blue light specials go, this one’s a rattle-and-humdinger. Already regarded as the biggest rock band in the world, U2 aims to surpass itself with an ambitious stadium tour, announced Wednesday at a packed press conference in New York’s Kmart.

The PopMart Tour, billed as “a giant, sci-fi disco supermarket setting,” starts April 25, at the Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, the first of 33 U.S. cities on the 1997 itinerary. The global outing, expected to gross $260 million, hits 62 cities in 20 countries this year and should easily upstage 1992’s visually dizzying and financially dazzling Zoo TV Tour.

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By JON PARELES

DUBLIN — It was crunch time for U2. The Irish band’s next single had to be finished within three days, and the deadline for the complete album, which had not yet been entitled “Pop,” was less than a month away. U2, with its producers and engineers, was recording and mixing in two studios simultaneously. Workdays stretched to 14 and 16 hours. But even at that stage, everything was subject to change — including, as it turned out, the final deadline. “We have trouble finishing things,” said the Edge, U2’s guitarist. The album, originally due last September as a pre-Christmas release, was finished in late December, with all-night recording sessions up to the last minute. It is to be released March 4.

During the nine months it took to make “Pop,” U2 invited a few journalists in to watch the band record. This observer joined the group just as it was finishing the single, which was released last week. It was a rare chance for an outsider to see a process that usually takes place in private. For a band like U2, making an album is essentially a slow-motion improvisation in which ideas are seized and refined while the tapes roll. What state was the album in? “Chaos,” said Bono, U2’s lead singer. “Promise,” said the Edge.

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Hot Licks

U2: All finished and ready to go some time in March, Pop sees the band furthering their attempts at dance/rock crossover. Produced by Nellee Hooper, among others, there’s bits of techno and bits of trip-hop but it’s not an outright four to the floor dance extravaganza. The first single is Discotheque (reviewed in Single File) which is as good a place to start as any.

Single File

U2 go disco-tech
by Kevin Courtney

U2 “Discotheque” (Island)

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by Kevin Courtney

“ALL is quiet on New Year’s Day” goes the old U2 hit, but barely one week into 1997 the post-holiday silence has been broken by the rattle and hum of U2’s latest single Discotheque. It made its world exclusive debut on Dave Fanning’s 2FM radio show last night at 8:30 p.m. The single, the first track to be culled from U2’s forthcoming album (entitled Pop) was delivered personally to the Radio Centre in Montrose on Tuesday night by the band’s manager Paul McGuiness, who told Fanning: “I’m very superstitious. You have to be the first to play it.”

BBC Radio 1 will give the song its UK airing this morning, and the single goes on general release on February 10th. The group’s record company, Island Records, estimates the new album could sell 10 million copies, netting U2 about 30 million. It will also be the prelude to U2’s 1997 tour, details of which will be announced in March.

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When the band reunites in the studio after a yearlong break, the result is a kind of rhythmic techno-dance/’60s-pop-songwriting thing. OK, let them explain it to you.

DUBLIN, Ireland–For most of its celebrated career, U2 has preached the gospel of rock ‘n’ roll tradition, toasting at every turn such personal heroes as Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

So, why is Adam Clayton, the group’s bassist, talking about such ’90s techno-dance favorites as the Prodigy, Massive Attack, Tricky and the Chemical Brothers as he drives to U2’s recording studio on the banks of the Grand Canal Basin?

“See what you think of this,” says Clayton, who has just flown in from London, where he and drummer Larry Mullen represented the band at the MTV Europe Music Awards. He slips a cassette into the car’s tape player, and music suddenly explodes from the speakers.

It’s a burst of the sonic color you’d expect from a prized dance-floor entry–not the light audio confections associated with mainstream dance music in the United States during the last two decades but the hard-edged british dance music that bristles with attitude and bite.

Though the style is hugely popular in England, it has not secured much of a commercial foothold in America. For one thing, most of the Bitish dance stars have tended to be relatively faceless, and the emphasis in the music is on textures rather than conventional pop songwriting techniques.

Just when you begin to wonder which of those hot British acts’ music is playing in the car, you hear a voice through the speakers that sounds suspiciously like that of U2’s Bono and some sharp, vibrating guitar lines that seem awfully similar to those of the band’s the Edge.

Some dance outfit imitating U2?

Clayton smiles.

“It’s our new single–’Discotheque,’” he says. “What do you think?”

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