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U2
Achtung Baby
(Island)
Rating: 10 out of 12

There is no question about it. He may look as if he’s been dipped in a bottle of red ink but it is Adam who stands there bollock naked before the camera and the world on the back sleeve of the latest, long playing opus from the band whose name begins with U and ends with 2. And is that Eve who hovers topless behind Bono on the front?

It’s a long way from the palpable innocence of Boy, this seething odyssey into the dark underbelly of inter-personal exchange, signalled on the cover by a series of images of shameless lust for low-life and exotic. It’s a long way too from the clarion-like conviction of those early years, best characterised in the religious dedication of “Gloria.” “I try to speak up,” Bono sang back then, if you remember, “but only in you am I complete. Gloria in eo Domino.” And the guitars rang and the angels sang and the heavens rejoiced. Rejoice! I cannot think of a more alien concept to Achtung Baby.

Instead we are confronted here with a world of intense uncertainty, a world in which bearings have been lost, in which and betrayal, lust and infidelity walk hand in hand — a world in which the metaphors of religion have quite clearly given way to the metaphors of sex. “If you want to kiss the sky, Better learn how to kneel,” Bono sings on “Mysterious Ways,” and in another context it might have been taken as a reference to prayer. But here humility gives way to humiliation, as he interjects with the authority of a dominatrix. “On your knees, boy.”

Pleasure and pain. The desire to deny those to whom we are closest the freedom we crave for ourselves. Confronting the terrible truth that in love there are no rules — these are the kind of themes that refuse to be ignored when all your own assumptions of certainty and security and fidelity are blown apart on an intensely personal level. Read the rest of this story »

Talk about inspiration. If you think the world of rock and roll is only populated by people doing themselves in, you ought to know the story of the U2 band. And talk about trips. Starting with a notice on a bulletin board in Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive School, moving through all the disappointments of trying to get a band going and trying to find a distinctive sound and trying to get someone to listen, right up to the triumphant appearance of U2 at Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert in 1985 and then on Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour in 1986 — here’s the story of the group that may be to its time what the Beatles were to theirs.

Irish writer Eamon Dunphy has mapped the journey, charting in rich details in its political background and spiritual dimension. If the albums War and The Joshua Tree haunt you, if the state of the world worries you, if faith and talent interest you — or even just the ins and outs of the rock biz — read this exquisite book. It’s nearly as haunting as the music U2 makes. (Warner, $16.95)

© Cosmopolitan, 1987. All rights reserved.

U2 Makes a Bid for ‘Great Band’ Status

The members of U2, the Irish rock band — Bono Vox, also known as Paul Hewson, the singer; Dave (the Edge) Evans, the guitarist; Adam Clayton, the bass player, and Larry Mullen Jr., the drummer — are in their mid-20s. Even before their first album, Boy, in 1981, they had a strong cult and critical following in Britain, and through extensive touring they have developed a critical and now popular following in this country as well.

Their 1983 album, War, marked their emergence into serious contention for “great band” status. Now they have released their fifth studio album (not counting a couple of partly live, 12-inch mini-albums). It’s called The Joshua Tree (Island 7 90581, all three formats), and in conjunction with a yearlong world tour (due into New York in mid-May), it’s designed to achieve megastatus for this band at last. Robert Hilburn of The Los Angeles Times wrote earlier this month: “U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago — the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.”

The group won its fans because at a time of punk anarchy, fashion overkill and synth-pop triviality, this was a band that stuck to singer-guitar-bass-drum basics. And solid basics, to boot: Bono was a powerful singer, the Edge played guitar that was both imaginative and soulful, and Mr. Clayton and Mr. Mullen made for a propulsive rhythm section. Read the rest of this story »

With The Joshua Tree, the U2 pendulum swings back to America again. If The Unforgettable Fire, partially through Brian Eno’s guidance, was their most European record, this, their fifth studio album, turns their sights again on the Big Country, sometimes howling off in pursuit of the ghosts that possess the American soul. In time, it may he reckoned their most influential album to date.

It also clarifies how U2’s vocation has become the revival and renewal of rock and the recovery of its most romantic values. Between the increasingly mercenary implosion of hard rock into a static vaudeville routine and the intervention of pop dance floor values, rock has lost its lustre and mystique of genuinely redeeming passion. From one angle, The Unforgettable Fire can now seem a strategic retreat, to regroup, reassess the situation and gain new ammunition. But if that album necessarily circumvented some of the issues, The Joshua Tree returns to a frontal assault.

It is also the second successive album where U2 strip away the skins of their previous styles. Only the opening “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “In God’s Country” and, possibly, elements of “One Tree Hill” preserve previously identifiable hallmarks. Otherwise, the Edge’s guitar has developed its own military tendency, homing in on the legacy of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, while the group’s new commitment to songs finds both Bono and the rhythm section contending on dance floors they never previously frequented, with complete confidence. Read the rest of this story »