Last band standing Why there will never be another U2
Filed under: News & Rumors by U2Exiteer Kevin No Comments »November 27, 2001
By TIMOTHY FINN
In an interview for Rolling Stone back in 1987, Bono, lead singer for U2,
told reporter David Breskin:
“If Bob Dylan walked into a record company (today) and played them
`Subterranean Homesick Blues,’ and told them it was a hit record, they’d
show him the door. If Jimi Hendrix came along now, he wouldn’t get a deal.
The companies would file him under `black and confused and out of time’…”
And if U2 came along now — four 20-year-old upstarts with a big, raw and
confused sound — here’s what you could expect:
It would get rejected by the big labels and ignored by mainstream radio and
MTV. It would cut a record on a small, independent label, get some
underground acclaim and college-radio airplay, tour the States madly for a
year or two, cut another record, then split up — broke, bitter and too
jaded to care about the music business anymore (See: At the Drive-in).
U2’s triumphant “Elevation Tour 2001″ — which comes to Kemper Arena on
Tuesday and has been a sold-out extravaganza virtually everywhere it stops
– is worth celebrating for some obvious reasons:
* The band hasn’t been in town since May 1997, when it played at
Arrowhead Stadium one night and then tied up downtown traffic the next day
filming the video (co-starring William Burroughs) for “Last Night on Earth.”
* U2 hasn’t played an indoor show in Kansas City in a half-generation –
since October 1987, a few months before it won its first two Grammys for
“The Joshua Tree.”
But U2’s return to the road, following the release of last year’s
Grammy-winning and multi-platinum “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,”
signifies something more exceptional:
It’s impossible to imagine any rock band ever again remaining significant,
popular and — most important — intact (which eliminates Metallica) more
than 21 years after it released its first record. And don’t bother
mentioning Aerosmith, which was comatose from 1977 to at least 1989.
“In the 1980s,” Bono said in that same interview, “rock ‘n’ roll went to
work for corporations and got up at 6 a.m. to go jogging. And it wasn’t just
to keep fit. It was to get ahead: to improve the prospects of the
corporations.”
The jogging got faster but the field got thinner as the ’90s progressed. The
radio and recording industries consolidated rapidly into fewer, bigger
companies. In fact, U2 is now on the roster of one of the largest
conglomerates in the entertainment industry, Universal International Music.
Mergers generate debt, and debt demands quick returns on investments.
Consequently, big labels rarely nurture bands for several albums like Island
Records did U2 (or IRS did R.E.M.) — especially since artists and bands
from ‘N Sync to Limp Bizkit started moving 1 million plus albums the first
week of their release.
U2, on the other hand, didn’t issue a bona-fide hit record until “The Joshua
Tree,” its fifth studio album, which was released in 1987, seven years after
“Boy,” its debut album.
In the nearly 15 years between “The Joshua Tree” and “All That You Can’t
Leave Behind,” the band has remained remarkably dynamic and material, if not
red-hot fashionable.
Consider the dozens of rock bands who have come and gone since U2 made its
first waves in the early 1980s: the Smiths, the Replacements, the
Pretenders, Talking Heads, the Police, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Smashing
Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine and every hair band worth its weight in
spandex (and lightweights like Hootie & the Blowfish). The only band missing
from that list: Pearl Jam, who may become America’s version of U2.
More than just sticking together and putting out B-sides and hits packages
(like the Cure), U2 throughout the 1990s repeatedly flushed its music with
contemporary tricks (”Pop” and “Achtung Baby”) without surrendering any of
its signature sounds and traditions, like Edge’s guitar and Bono’s
overarching lyrics.
Thus, when Spin magazine ran its annual Top 40 list of “the best bands of
2001″ early this year, Bono was on the cover next to younger stars like PJ
Harvey, Zack de la Roca, Mos Def and Chino Moreno of the Deftones.
Inside the magazine, where U2 was ranked No. 11 — just behind Bjork but
well-ahead of the Deftones, the Basement Jaxx and rapper DMX — Eric
Weisbard wrote, “U2 should be proud. They’re the first rock band in history
to release an album that ranks with their very greatest 20 years after their
debut.”
That’s lofty praise for U2’s latest record, but he makes a point: Not many
bands win a Grammy for song of the year and get an MTV Career Achievement
Award all in the same year, as U2 did in 2001 — which would have been like
Cal Ripken winning the batting title the same year he broke Lou Gehrig’s
consecutive-game record.
Two months ago a few dozen pop musicians gathered in a New York studio to
record Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” as a benefit record for the United
Way’s September 11th Fund and for Artists Against AIDS Worldwide. At the
center of all that glitterati: Bono, the executive producer, who
orchestrated everyone from Puffy Combs, Jermaine Dupri, Ja Rule, Alicia
Keys, Destiny’s Child to Britney Spears, Fred Durst and both ‘N Sync and the
Backstreet Boys.
So how have U2 and Bono survived and remained hip and commercially
successful when so many before them have broken up or faded away? In the
latest issue of Details — a “special music edition” with Bono on the cover
– writer Andrew Essex gets at the answer, which springs from something
deeper than trends and record sales. It has to do with commitment and
loyalty.
Not only has U2’s lineup never changed, but the world around it hasn’t
changed much either. U2 has had only one manager, Paul McGuinness; one
record label, Island, which was devoured by Interscope; and one small team
of producers and engineers: Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Steve Lilywhite, Flood
and Jimmy Iovine, who now runs Interscope.
In describing the scene at the “What’s Going On” session, Essex writes:
“Moving amid the boy bandmates and the bootylicious divas, Bono is clearly
the biggest fish in the room. The other performers seem slightly in awe of
him. Maybe they should be. Besides having sold 100 million records, this is
a man who never gave in to the permissible rock cliches: He never left his
wife, he never went solo, he’s stayed with the same group of guys for more
than 25 years.”
He forgot a few things: No drug overdoses, no embarrassing legal escapades,
no oddball collaborations, no recruiting of pop stars like Rob Thomas to
appeal to younger fans.
None of that has anything to do with U2’s music, but it does have a lot to
do with why this band has remained united, upright and vital longer than any
other band in the last 25 years.
Fans and critics who loved “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” most admired
what Weisbard called “its return to mainstream splendor,” which means a
return to the old U2, before it dabbled in madcap shows like “Zoo TV” and
worthy diversions like “Zooropa.”
Bono admitted that on its latest record the band risked repeating itself –
relying on old tricks and resurrecting familiar sounds. Instead, U2, the
band forever in search of God and grace, proved what its staunch fans
already believed: that it knows was the difference between old habits and
renewed faith.
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