THE BAND
It all began in 1976 when Larry Mullen pinned a 'musicians wanted' ad to the notice board at Dublin's Temple Mount School: Drummer seeks musicians to form band. 'So on Saturday 25th September 1976, ' recalls Larry. 'This odd group of people convened in my kitchen in Artane. And that's where it started.'
Adam Clayton had discovered rock'n'roll as a thirteen year old, buying his first acoustic guitar and then talking his parents into buying him a bass guitar. 'It just sounded good to me. Deep and fat and satisfying.'
From the beginning, U2 were marked out by their passion. "A band before we could play" was how Bono put it in early interviews. Edge remembers reading UK music papers NME and Sounds every week and then hearing about this 'wild kid called Paul Hewson.'
The four teenagers, who initially called themselves 'Feedback', rehearsed in Larry's Dublin kitchen, Bono on vocals, The Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton and Larry making up the rhythm section of bass and drums. Inspired by punk, but insulated from the standoffish cool by the Irish Sea, Feedback had become 'The Hype' and then 'U2' and were soon building a local reputation based on the passion of their performances.
'I suppose a watershed moment would have been seeing The Jam on Top of the Pops, 'remembers `Edge. 'And realizing that actually not knowing how to play was not a problem... music was more about energy and trying to say something and not necessarily about great musicianship.'
After a brief period being managed by Adam, they had met up with Paul McGuinness but an early Irish release in 1979, the 'U23' EP on CBS, proved a one-off. They would wait until the following year to sign a long-term deal with Chris Blackwell's Island Records. 'I was amazed at the quality and talent and ambition of these four musicians and yet we couldn't get a record deal.'recalls McGuinness. 'Everyone in the world passed on U2 before we finally found a home at Island Records.'
"This odd group of people convened in my kitchen in artane. And that's where it started."
U2's first single, 11 O'Clock Tick-Tock, was released in May 1980. Boy, their debut album, was released five months later - promoted by another single, I Will Follow , October, a year later and by May 1983, they had their first UK number 1 album with War, culmination of a trio of albums produced by Steve Lillywhite.
War featured hit singles New Year's Day (the video shot in the snow in sub-zero Sweden) and Two Hearts Beat As One while the live album Under A Blood Red Sky released that November, cracked the US Billboard Top 30. It was also the end of a chapter for the band and the beginning of a quarter century of studio collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The Unforgettable Fire, recorded in a the ballroom of Ireland's Slane Castle, spawned one of U2's most iconic tracks in Pride (In The Name of Love) ... as well as a whole lot more experimentation. 'In America there was such a backlash when we put out The Unforgettable Fire,' remembers Bono. 'People thought we were the future of rock'n'roll and they went, 'What are you doin' with this doggone hippie Eno album?' 'We owe Eno and Lanois so much for seeing through to the heart of U2.'
Three years before the band had played support to Thin Lizzy at the annual Slane outdoor show. Seventeen years later, now established as the pre-eminent live act in rock'n'roll, they would return to play two sell-out shows themselves, later released on a live DVD, U2 Go Home'.
Back in the 1980's, the nine-month tour following the release of 'The Unforgettable Fire' took in 54 US dates and led to the band's unforgettable appearance at Live Aid in July 1985. 'In the middle of Bad he went on a wander trying to pick out some girls to dance with,' remembers Larry. 'It felt like he was gone for ever. We were quite jittery as it was and when Bono went missing, a certain panic ensued.'
They didn't realize it at the time but it was a set that would alert a whole new audience to their music but it was another two years before the band released, The Joshua Tree in 1987, the original working title of which was 'The Two Americas'. If the constant touring had seen the US hypnotise U2, America was about to return the compliment - the singles With Or Without You and the gospel-flavoured I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, went to the very top of the US singles chart.
The Joshua Tree went on to sell more than 20 million copies and at the 1987 Grammy Awards, won the band 'Album Of The Year' and 'Best Rock Performance', the first of what has become a record-breaking run of Grammy wins. In 2007 a remastered version of the album was released to mark the 20th anniversary of its original release and in their book, 'U2byU2' the band talked in detail about how many of the songs came together. At the 1987 Grammy Awards, U2 won Album Of The Year and Best Rock Performance for The Joshua Tree, their first Grammy Award wins.
When Time Magazine put the band on its cover with the headline "Rock's Hottest Ticket", it was only the fourth time a band had made it to the cover - following The Beatles, The Band and The Who.
A year later, in 1988, U2 topped the British single charts and released in theatres the live concert movie 'Rattle & Hum' which chronicled the US leg of the 1987 Joshua Tree tour. The double album Rattle and Hum' featured the number 1 single, Desire and a collaboration with BB King, 'When Love Comes To Town'. The band finished their 1989 Lovetown Tour with a series of late December shows at The Point Depot in Dublin when Bono announced that '...this is the end of something for U2...we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again.'
They did too, going away to Hansa Studios in Berlin with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois and dreaming up an album called Achtung Baby which took their music in a whole new direction. Band and production team had clashed over the direction they should be taking but out of this turmoil came one of their most acclaimed albums ever. As Daniel Lanois put it, 'If you manage to get the four of them in one room with instruments in their hands you're going to get results. That has a lot to do with my job - just getting them in the room and playing.' With The Fly, Mysterious Ways, and One U2 began the nineties with a new sound, a new reputation on the dancefloor and a series of their biggest hits.
"If you manage to get the four of them in one room with instruments in their hands you're going to get results. That has a lot to do with my job - just getting them in the room and playing."
Production designer Willie Williams set about reinventing the rock tour with help from a 130-foot video wall juxtaposing 24-hour hard news, shopping channel ephemera and postmodern slogans
The subsequent Zoo TV tour opened in Florida on February 29 1992 and circumnavigated the globe twice in almost two years before ending in Japan on December 10 1993. Achtung Baby had proved a groundbreaking album and production designer Willie Williams set about reinventing the rock tour with help from a 130-foot video wall juxtaposing 24-hour hard news, shopping channel ephemera and postmodern slogans to ramp up the irony levels. ("EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG"). Guest appearances featured Lou Reed, Salman Rushdie (while in hiding in the aftermath of publication of The Satanic Verses) and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, who performed 'Dancing Queen' with the band. Still can't imagine what it looked like ? This is what it looked like. It being the run up to the 1992 American Presidential Election, Bono interrupted the set list to make satellite calls to the Bush White House. He never did get through to then President George Bush - little did anyone know that within a few years Presidents and politicians would be taking those calls - but via the ZOO TV satellite link he also called into war-torn Sarajevo, hearing the voices of a city under siege thanks to the maverick journalist Bill Carter.
In the middle of Zoo's European leg the band recorded a whole album, the haunting and experimental Zooropa (1993) featuring lead vocals from Johnny Cash on the final track The Wanderer. The Zoo stop in Sydney was later digitally remastered and released on DVD,
' Zoo TV Live From Sydney'.
The Sarajevo connection inspired one of the tracks on Passengers: Original Soundtracks Volume I, the most experimental album the band had collaborated on - unsurprisingly with Brian Eno at the heart of the mix. 'Miss Sarajevo' featured a star turn by Luciano Pavarotti. Crowning this heady period, Pop (1997) cloaked its heavy lyrical payload in state-of-the-art dance rhythms, a creative collusion with DJ Howie B. 'The themes are love, desire and faith in crisis,' explained Edge. 'The usual stuff.'
The resulting tour, POPMART - which saw the band become the first major act to perform in Sarajevo after the Bosnian War - was another visual spectacle imagined by Willie Williams introduced the rave-rock of Mofo and Discotheque to a new generation of fans.
It was four years before another album, but it was worth the wait: All That You Can't Leave Behind features songs which went on to win 'Record of the Year' Grammy Awards in two consecutive years - 'Beautiful Day' in 2001 and 'Walk On' in 2002 - the only time this has ever happened. Released in 2000, ATYCLB went on to win seven Grammys and sell more than ten million copies worldwide. 'I think it was a very good idea to make a record that actually sounded like U2 again...' explained Paul McGuinness. 'It went to No.1 in 32 countries.'
It was followed by the 113-date Elevation Tour, a similarly stripped-back approach, with the focus firmly on the songs. 'It wasn't really minimalist,' says Edge. 'But compared to POP anything would seem back to basics.' It was the design that grabbed Larry: 'The use of the heart as a runway to get out into the audience and the way the heart itself filled with people, was great. It was almost like a club gig within an arena.'
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) was "very much a guitar record," explained Adam. "Vertigo, Love and Peace, City of Blinding Lights, All Because of You, all pretty up , rocky tunes. A lot of them are a kick-back to our very early days, so it's like with each year we have gathered a little bit more and this is what we are now.' Recorded with both new and old producers - Steve Lillywhite, Chris Thomas, Flood, Jacknife Lee, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Nellee Hooper and Carl Glanville worked on the album - U2's eleventh studio record from was released in November 2004, debuted at at Number 1 in 25 countries and the lead single Vertigo won three Grammy awards, including Best Rock Song. The Vertigo tour which followed was the highest grossing tour of the year and with the album confirmed U2 as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world." During 2005 U2 played to more than 3.2 million people. In March Bruce Springsteen inducted the band into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, describing them as 'the keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in the rock-and-roll world," said rocker Bruce Springsteen while inducting U2.'
And then there was Live 8, beamed live to half the planet, and opening up with U2 performing Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with Paul McCartney. At the 2006 Grammy ceremony, U2 took home 5 Awards, including the coveted Album of the Year for HTDAAB. These new wins brought their total number of Grammy Awards to 22, more than any other band.
While spending a month recording at Abbey Road Studios London in 2006, U2 collaborated with Green Day to record a cover of the song The Saints Are Coming by The Skids. The recording was a benefit for Music Rising, a charity founded by The Edge which aims to help rebuild the musical heart and culture of New Orleans by replacing instruments that were lost during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. The band have released three 'Best of' collections: 'The Best of 1980-1990', 'The Best of 1990-2000', and 'U218 Singles'
in 2006 which also featured the new song 'Windows In the Skies' .
Five years after the release of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, in March 2009 the band released No Line on the Horizon. Their 12th studio album was written and recorded in in Fez, Morocco, Dublin, Ireland, New York and Olympic Studios in London. The album calls on the production talents of long-time collaborators Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, with additional production by Steve Lillywhite.
In July 2011, two years after opening up in Barcelona, the band played the final show of U2360°. Over 26 months it became the most succesful concert tour of all time, with 110 shows to 7.1million fans in 30 countries on 5 continents.
A revolutionary production, U2360° caught the imagination of its audience, who nicknamed U2's circular stage the Claw, the Spaceship and - in Houston - the Space Station. USA Today described it as 'a four-pronged UFO anchored by a glowing 164-foot pylon and cylindrical LED screens.' But whatever it was called, for the Chicago Tribune, 'The lights, the songs, the audience all synced up. Sometimes size matters.'
Just a few weeks from the end of the tour, the band flew out of the US, back across the Atlantic and landed on a farm in the heart of rural Somerset. After all these years it was time to headline the Glastonbury Festival. OK, it rained, but that didn't stop the band setting the Festival alight - 19 songs from eight albums in an electrifying set over an hour and three quarters. Here's what they played - and what people said about a night to remember.
Just a few weeks later the tour came to a close and ahead of the closing night in Moncton, Canada, Ray Waddell of Billboard summed it all up, 'With tonight's final show, U2's 360° tour will go down as the biggest tour ever reported both in terms of box office gross and attendance. This tour is a remarkable feat on a global scale, from its staging and production, to its video elements, all the way to the scaling of the house, routing and execution. Most importantly, U2 rocked mightily all over the world.'
Some other U2360° facts: 10 million watched a live stream of U2360° at the RoseBowl on YouTube; 320,000 Fans saw 360° in Mexico City ; 7,100 miles - approximate distance travelled by space station while talking with U2; 5,200 Years - collective touring experience of U2 tour personnel ; 400 tons - weight of the fully loaded claw; 134 Crew Members ; 126 Truck Drivers; 53 gigs attended by a single fan; 33 Flemish Speaking Crew members; 11 Babies Born To Crew ; 7 Astronauts Attended; 4 Appreciative Irishmen; 1 Singer in Surgery; 1 World Leader Released From House Arrest During Tour.
In October 2013, the band revealed they'd written a new song, 'Ordinary Love', for the biopic Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, starring Idris Elba and Naomie Harris. Produced by Danger Mouse, the song was released in a 10-inch vinyl pressing to mark Record Store Day on November 29th and the single sleeve featured a painting of Nelson Mandela by Irish artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers. Oliver, along with Mac Premo, directed a lyric video for Ordinary Love.
'We thought it should be a love song, a very human song. ' Edge explained, when asked about how the band approached the request by movie producer Harvey Weinstein to write a song for the movie. 'Not epic, not earnest in dealing with world-changing political shifts but personal in two people trying to hold on to one another in the face of dreadful mistreatment and heartbreak.' The song went on to win the golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in January 2014 and was nominated for an Oscar at the ceremony in February, where the band performed it live.
In February 2014, the band released another single, 'Invisible'. Produced by Danger Mouse and mixed by Tom Elmhirst, Invisible marked the launch of a partnership with (RED) and Bank Of America in the campaign to create an AIDS free generation. For 36 hours, every time the track was downloaded from iTunes, the Bank made a donation of $1 to (RED) for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. More than $3m was raised and when the track went on sale, all proceeds from 'Invisible' on iTunes continued to go to (RED) for the Global Fund.
'The early lyrics were set on a train coming into London for the first time.' said Bono. ' I remember sleeping in Euston station, being broke... coming out of the subway into the spring of 1979, being 18 years old, it was punk rock in London.'
The video for 'Invisible', directed by Mark Romanek, was shot in black and white, in a Santa Monica airport hangar, over three days in January. With a cast of 1200. And flashlights. A sixty second clip premiered on February 2nd during the Super Bowl, to launch the partnership with (RED).
Out of the blue, on September 9th 2014, the band turned up at the Cupertino launch of the new iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple head Tim Cook explained that a decade previously 'we began a deep collaboration with one of the best bands of all time - and that band is U2.' Taking the stage, the band performed a brand new song, 'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)' - after which Bono spoke with Cook and revealed some news. The song was the lead single from a new album called 'Songs Of Innocence' and the eleven tracks, finished less than a week ago, were now ready for release. Literally now. As he spoke, iTunes were putting the album automatically into the music libraries of 500million customers in 119 countries around the world. It would, said Cook, be 'the largest album release of all time.'
Bono described how it all came together. 'Remember us? Pleased to announce myself, Edge, Adam and Larry have finally given birth to our new baby... Songs of Innocence. It's been a while. We wanted to get it right for you/us. We just finished it last week and thanks to Apple and iTunes it's with you today. That's already amazing to me as it normally takes a few months to turn this stuff around.'
Hailed by critics as a great work of art, Songs Of Innocence was attacked by some for the means of distribution.The band faced critics down: 'It's the job of art to be divisive.' They talked about the groundbreaking release in a video on Facebook.
A month later, Songs Of Innocence was released on CD & Vinyl, the striking cover art featuring Larry Mullen Jr protecting his 18 year old son. The image resonated with the band's iconic 1980 debut album Boy and, three years later, the War album. Both featured the face of a child, Peter Rowen, the younger brother of Guggi, Bono's childhood friend growing up on Cedarwood Road.
The eleven tracks on Songs Of Innocence, a kind of musical autobiography, chart U2's earliest influences from 70s rock and punk to early 80s electronica and soul... and reveal how music changed everything. As Bono sings in 'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)', 'I woke up when the miracle occurred/ Heard a song that made some sense out of the world...' Exploring themes of home and family, relationships and discovery, detailed liner notes fill out the picture with resonant stories, like one of the first gigs the teenage band got into. 'The 4 members of U2 went to see the Ramones playing in the state cinema in Dublin without thinking about how we were going to get in. we had no tickets and no money. My best friend Guggi had a ticket and he snuck us through a side exit he pried open. The world stopped long enough for us to get on it. Even though we only saw half the show, it became one of the great nights of our life....'
With Songs of Experience, the sister album to Songs of Innocence, taking longer to complete than anticipated, the band surprised everyone in 2017 - announcing a one off stadium tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree. 'One reason to revive The Joshua Tree,’ reported Jon Pareles in The New York Times, ‘Is that its concerns — personal, societal, mystical — haven’t disappeared.'
#U2TheJoshuaTree2017 was performed against (a) video backdrop, often with starkly beautiful desert scenes by Anton Corbijn, the photographer for The Joshua Tree album cover and many other U2 graphics. The band was dwarfed, but the music wasn’t. Larry Mullen Jr. on drums, Adam Clayton on bass and the Edge on guitar tore into the urgent rhythmic flux of “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Against the craggy postpunk groove of “Bullet the Blue Sky,” both Bono’s falsetto and the Edge’s guitar leads were keening sirens.
“The Joshua Tree” was a high-water mark of an era when leading rockers were eager to be role models and do-gooders, putting on benefit concerts like Live Aid and Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour, which both included U2. A backlash would soon dismiss similar efforts as naïve or pretentious, but U2 has persisted. It doesn’t write scolding protests; it strives for empathy, hope and, ultimately, exaltation.’
#U2TheJoshuaTree2017 closed in Sao Paulo, Brazil in October 2017… and with the band on a creative roll, the release of the new album was announced a few days later. 'Recorded in Dublin, New York and Los Angeles, Songs of Experience was completed earlier this year with its subject matter influenced by Irish poet, novelist and Trinity College, Dublin Professor Emeritus Brendan Kennelly’s advice to Bono to 'write as if you’re dead'. The result is a collection of songs in the form of intimate letters to places and people close to the singer’s heart: family, friends, fans, himself….’
In May 2018 the band hit the road again, third year of touring in four, this time with the #U2eiTour and playing tracks from the new long player: 'The idea for this tour,’ explained Adam, ‘is to finish telling the story of innocence and experience…’ First song on the opening night in Tulsa Oklahoma was Love Is All We Have Left, with the closing track 13 (There Is A Light) and the opening night reviews were good.
There was a special guest everynight, back from the dead, or at least from the 1990’s.
'Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
The name is MacPhisto…
I sometimes dress up as Mick Jagger
Oh Las Vegas, when you don't believe I exist
That's when I do my best work…'
In December 2019 the band played Mumbai in India, the final show of The Joshua Tree Tour 2019. And the final show of four years of touring between 2015 and 2020. And just ahead of their first trip to India, they released a new song, 'Ahimsa', a collaboration with legendary composer A.R. Rahman.
'This is an invitation to a high location
For someone who wants to BELONG
This is a meditation on your radio station
If you like it you can sing along...'
'We come as students to the source of inspiration.' explained Bono. 'That is Ahimsa… non-violence. India gave this to us… the greatest gift to the world. It is more powerful than nuclear energy, the armies, the navy's, the British Empire. It is power itself. And it's never been more important.'
If the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic saw recording studios and concert venues closed, it offered other creative opportunities. Bono got to spend time completing a memoir, ‘Surrender, 40 Songs, One Story’ which was released in November 2022. He drew it as well as wrote it. Drummer Seeks Musician To Form Band.
Publication was accompanied by a new album, ‘Songs of Surrender’, featuring 40 of the band's songs, which topped charts worldwide.
Curated by The Edge, the songs had been reimagined during lockdown. Some, like ‘Walk On’ and ‘Bad’ received a lyrical makeover while others like ‘Dirty Day’ came with an orchestral accompaniment that would hint at what was to come when the songs were taken on the road.
Bono wrote and performed in a solo theatrical show Stories of Surrender, which traced his life from childhood to success with the band and as a political activist.
A few months later Bono and Edge took an unannounced trip to the beleaguered city of Kyiv. Playing an impromptu 40-minute set in a subway station Bono praised the resilience of Ukrainians and the leadership of the country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (LINK)
In 2023 tickets went on sale for U2:UV, a series of dates by 'the world's biggest rock band at the world's most cutting edge venue, Sphere in Las Vegas.’
On the city’s Fremont St, location for the video of ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ 36 years before, Larry, Adam, Edge and Bono shot a video for a new song, Atomic City.
Not for the first time, a U2 show became a turning point in people's experience of live music. The reviews were… pretty good. 'Mind blowing’. 'Jaw-dropping’. 'The sheer obliterating pleasure of sensory overload’.
‘U2:UV’ was the first time since October 1978 that the band had performed without Larry. In a statement announcing the shows, and news that Larry was recovering from surgery, Bono, Edge and Adam said, "It's going to take all we've got to approach the Sphere without our bandmate in the drum seat, but Larry has joined us in welcoming Bram van den Berg who is a force in his own right.'
Over 700,000 fans from 100 countries saw the band play 40 sold-out dates from September 2023 through March 2024. One year after the opening night in Vegas, V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film opened at Sphere Las Vegas, directed by Morleigh Steinberg and The Edge. Now showing...
