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Click.
You’ve pressed the remote.
Zoo TV flashback.

Bono is at the wheel of his green Mark 2 ‘63 Jag and he’s saying how the idea of Zoo TV came from when U2 played at The Point in Dublin in 1989 on New Year’s Eve, when their concert was broadcast live on radio to some 500 million people across Europe and the Soviet states.

“Beaming across borders” Bono beams. “The concept behind broadcasting live from one point to a whole host of points… what we were doing there in audio we are now doing in and audio _and_ visual way with Zoo TV”.

And now U2 are rehearsing at The Factory in Dublin and you’ve been watching them for five weeks, hanging with them at Windmill Studios where they’re being filmed for the giant t.v. monitors that grace their Zoo TV tour, grooving on them at STS Studios as they record their song ‘Salom?’, driving around with Adam one day, Edge the next, Bono another…reaching into the no-longer-guarded silent psyche of Larry.

One night up at your sister Patricia’s house, you’re having chinwag with Bono, talking about how love and sexuality is in a complete crisis in the 90’s. And Bono, he says “But it’s too much to make it all holy, too much to make it all trash…”

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Dashing and Demanding: With a superb new album, U2 reinvents itself

Jay Cocks

Here we all were, fretting over the parlous state of rock, and help was on the way even while we were dithering. All of a sudden there’s a clutch of superb albums out there: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ Better Days; Robbie Robertson’s Storyville; Van Morrison’s Hymns to the Silence. And now, to put the capper on the company, U2’s dashing, demanding Achtung Baby.

This new 12-song collection, the first since the band’s Rattle and Hum of 1988, has something in common with all the other good stuff currently in circulation. It has the raucous, free-for-all spirit of the Jukes; it shares the narrative ambition and sense of musical mystery of Storyville (the band collaborated with Robertson, in fact, on a tune on his first album); and it taps into the same deep Irish roots, at once weird and winsome, as does Morrison, who is a kind of godfather to all Irish rockers. Read the rest of this story »

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’s concerts are magical affairs and, to a lesser degree, so are its albums. "The Joshua Tree" (Island Records), the Irish band’s fifth album since 1980, is a continuation of the sound and concerns heard on previous records.

The music, for the most part, is that of an overpowering guitar-led rock ‘n’ roll band, but U2 breaks its repetitious bent by tossing in some country guitar licks ("Running to Stand Still") and a bit of gospel vocalizing ("One Tree Hill"). If the music itself doesn’t steamroller you, the lyrics will.

Lyricist and vocalist Bono (Paul Hewson has dropped Vox as his stage surname) is one heavy dude. He tackles subjects ranging from U2roadie Greg Carroll’s death in a motorcycle accident ("One Tree Hill") to religious fait h ("I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For") to political prisoners ("Mothers of the Disappeared") to drug addiction ("Exit"). It’s all admirable and makes U2 this year’s social-conscience band.

"The Joshua Tree" came out of the pressing plant a million-seller, and who’s to deny the band commercial success? U2 has put its music, money and energy behind projects such as Live Aid, Self Aid (a Dublin benefit for unemployerymen) and the Amnesty International tour, but it would be nice to od-humored rock ‘n’ roll on an album. It doesn’t have to be mindleup a bit on the glo By Russ DeVault

- DEVAULT, RUSS Atlanta Journal 

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 »