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U2 Biography
Musicians:U2
Rock group
In 1984, U2 lead singer Bono told Jim Miller in Newsweek,
"The message, if there is a message in our music, is the hope that it
communicates." Nearly ten years later, after being called everything
from "pompous and self-righteous social crusaders" to "sincere and
involved political activists," U2 decided it was time to step out of the
identities the world had superimposed on them. Bono Vox, who by this
time had become simply Bono, told Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times,
"We felt we were being made a cartoon of ‘the good guys of rock and so
forth’ so we decided to make some cartoons of our own and send them out
as disinformation." U2 forged ahead to reach rock icon status with
multiplatinum albums including Rattle and Hum, War, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and the group’s 2000 release, All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
U2
started off humbly enough as a Dublin, Ireland, school boy band formed
in response to an ad placed on the Mount Temple High School notice board
by Larry Mullen, Jr. in 1976. Of the several students that came to his
house to audition for the rock band, Mullen noted that, although some
could play, technical merit wasn’t the decisive factor. Mullen told Jay
Cocks of Time that the original band consisted of one fellow who
"meant
to play the guitar, but he couldn’t play very well, so he started to
sing. He couldn’t do that either. But, he was such a charismatic
character that he was in the band as soon as he arrived." That fellow
was Paul Hewson, who later adopted the name Bono Vox (Latin for "good
voice," which Hewson appropriated from a billboard advertisement for a
hearing aid retailer). David "The Edge" Evans, a guitarist who could
play, Adam Clayton, a bassist who "just looked great and used all the
right words, like gig," Mullen on drums, and second guitarist Dick "Dik"
Evans, The Edge’s older brother, made up the rest of the band.
U2
began their musical odyssey as Feedback. After playing mainly cover
tunes for a few shows in small local venues, Dik Evans left the band to
form the Virgin Prunes, and the band changed its name to the Hype.
Clayton, acting as band manager, sought advice from all the music
industry sources he knew, including Steve Rapid, a singer for the local
band the Radiators, who suggested that they change their name. Clayton
wanted something ambiguous; Rapid suggested U2 because there was a U2
spy plane, a U2 submarine, a U2 battery made by Eveready, as well as the
obvious "you, too" and "you two."
U2 Got Serious
In
March of 1978, U2 entered a talent competition sponsored by Guinness at
the Limerick Civic Week. They won £500 and the opportunity to audition
for CBS Ireland, after which they secured supporting spots on tours with
the Stranglers and the Greedy Bastards. In September, they recorded
additional demos at Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios with Chas de Whalley,
which subsequently lead to their signing by CBS Ireland. After building
a considerable following in Ireland, they released their first EP, U2:3,
which featured the tracks "Out Of Control," "Stories," and "Boy-Girl."
It was available only in Ireland, where it topped the charts and where
U2 found themselves playing sold-out shows. It was in December of the
next year that U2 played their first United Kingdom dates—to a cool
reception.
In Ireland, their single "Another Day" peaked on the
charts at number one. U2 was to remain popular in Ireland, while
struggling for years to get a foothold in both England and the United
States. Although signed to an English record company, Island Records,
fairly early in their struggle, U2 found success first in the United
States with a 1981 tour—their second in the U.S.—that pushed Boy into the charts. England was a miss with "11 o’clock Tick Tock" and with Boy, until "Fire" finally hit the charts (followed by Boy
as a latecomer). In mid 1982 the band retired to the studio to record
new music. It was that October, during a concert in Belfast, that they
introduced "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" to their fans. That song carried a
message of peace in Northern Ireland that would later become the focal
point of the band, seemingly fusing their lyrics and politics. Beginning
in February of 1983, U2 played a 27-date sold-out tour in the United
Kingdom. In November of 1983, as U2 was constantly meeting the demand
for concerts and chart-topping hits in both the United States and the
United Kingdom, they released Under a Blood Red Sky— their first live album—to again meet the demand for new work. It became the most successful live album of the time.
Their next studio album, 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, reached number one in the United Kingdom. The band headlined at Madison Square Garden in 1985, and Rolling Stone
touted them as "The Band of the Eighties." In between the philanthropy
that was to become an ever-increasing indentifying aspect of the
band—participating in "Do They Know It’s Christmas" for Ethiopian famine
relief, singing for Artists Against Apartheid, raising funds for Irish
unemployed, and doing gigs for Amnesty International—they released the
EP Wide Awake in America and resumed world touring in 1986.
Although it seemed that U2 were the social crusaders of their generation, Bono assured Time’s
Cocks that he "would hate to think everybody was into U2 for ‘deep’ and
‘meaningful’ reasons. We’re a noisy rock ‘n’ roll band. If we got on
stage, and instead of going ‘Yeow!’ the audience all went ‘Ummmm’ or
started saying the rosary, it would be awful." Regardless of how Bono
saw it, the band’s social consciousness is one of the main reasons,
according to Christopher Connelly of Rolling Stone, U2 "has become one of the handful of artists in rock (and) roll history… that people are eager to identify themselves with."
Finally Won Critical Acclaim
In 1987 U2 embarked on a 110-date world tour. Their new album, The Joshua Tree,
entered the United Kingdom charts at number one and the album went
platinum in 48 hours, making it, at the time, the fastest-selling album
in United Kingdom history. In mid April, The Joshua Tree reached the top of the American charts where it remained for nine weeks. Shortly thereafter, the band appeared on the cover of Time with the headline: "U2: Rock’s Hottest Ticket." The Edge released a soundtrack for the political kidnapping film Captive. In November, Eamon Dunphy’s book Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2
was released. It became a bestseller in the United Kingdom although the
band retracted their support of the volume after they could not get
parts of the text changed that they maintained were inaccurate.
In
1988 U2 received the award for Best International Group at the British
Record Industry Awards, which was followed by their first Grammy Awards
for Best Rock Performance by a Group and Album of the Year for The Joshua Tree. That same year, the lovine-produced double album Rattle and Hum,
featuring live recordings from the previous two years as well as studio
tracks, was released and topped the charts in both the United States
and the United Kingdom. U2 also released the live documentary film Rattle and Hum,
directed by Philip Joanou. As if these achievements hadn’t raised their
profile high enough, the band also appeared on the live television show
Smile Jamaica for Jamaican Hurricane relief, where they were joined onstage by Keith Richards and Ziggy Marley.
The
year 1989 brought the group the British Record Industry Award for Best
International Group for the second year in a row. Grammy Awards for Best
Rock Performance for "Desire," Best Performance Music Video for "Where
The Streets Have No Name," and an MTV Music Video Award for their
collaboration with B. B. King on "When Love Comes to Town," followed.
The rest of the year, the band spent working tirelessly, touring
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and then finally returning home to
Dublin, where the tour culminated with a New Year’s Eve show that was
broadcast live on the radio. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
and Radio TelefÍs Éireann (RTE), Ireland’s National Public Service
Broadcasting Organization, collaborated to transmit the show throughout
Europe and the former U.S.S.R. to a listening audience estimated at more
than 500 million.
Although they had not released an album since
1988, U2 discovered new diversions in 1990. In February, the Royal
Shakespeare Company produced A Clockwork Orange 2004, which
featured music by The Edge. In June, Mullen wrote the official Eire
World Cup Soccer team’s song. But as always, busy as they were, U2 found
time for good works. This time they contributed to an anthology of Cole
Porter songs that was released as Red Hot + Blue and benefitted
AIDS education. They also traveled to Berlin to film a video featured in
a television special airing on International AIDS Day.
In
November of 1991, U2’s next, long-awaited album finally surfaced, but
without the media blitz that seemed to accompany all the other year-end
major releases. U2 had decided that the album would sell itself to their
fans just fine without the fanfare. They were right, as initial
shipments of Achtung Baby totalled upwards of 1.4 million units.
Zoo TV Tour and Beyond
In
February of 1992, U2 began their Zoo TV tour. They took the radio
transmission concept inaugurated on New Year’s Eve 1989 one step further
by incorporating a satellite dish into the show. A short European tour
followed, during which a contest winner had the show beamed live by
satellite to his home in Nottinghamshire from Stockholm, courtesy of
MTV. The tour concluded with a Greenpeace concert in Manchester in which
barrels of contaminated United Kingdom sand were delivered back to a
nuclear power plant site where U2 and others were protesting the opening
of a second plant. In August, they went back on the tour circuit,
taking Zoo TV to the stadiums of the United States with their outside
broadcast tour. When the tour ended in mid November in Mexico City, U2
had played to an estimated 2.5 million people.
During a break in the Zoo TV tour, U2 took the time to record an ER That EP eventually became the ten-song Zooropa
album, winner of the Grammy Award for Alternative Album of the Year in
1993. On May 9th the Zoo TV tour, which had since mutated into the
Zooropa ’93 tour, started an ambitious schedule of visiting 18 countries
in four months and closing the trip back in Dublin in August.
The group released the techno-oriented Pop
in March of 1997, which featured the singles "Staring at the Sun" and
"Discotheque." Though some fans and critics found the album to be a
stylistic puzzle of sorts, Time magazine’s Christopher John
Farley called the album "passionate, futuristic and completely
engaging." The group embarked on the massive PopMart arena tour in
support of the album in May. Staging for the tour included the world’s
largest video screen, a 35-foot mirrorball lemon, a 12-foot wide stuffed
olive, and a 100-foot high golden arch. About the tour, Bono told Chris
Willman of Entertainment Weekly, "We thought… let’s have some
fun with our bigness. You know, we can’t be hung for that. Because humor
is the evidence of freedom, isn’t it?"
Following the success of Pop, U2 released All That You Can’t Leave Behind
in 2000, an album that returned to the "generous spirit that flowed
through their best ’80s records," according to Stephen Thomas Erlewine
of All Music Guide. The album spawned the single "Beautiful Day,"
for which the band won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo
or Group with Vocal, Song of the Year, and Record of Year. David Browne
of Entertainment Weekly called the album "unwaveringly assured"
and said that the group "no longer seems wary of their tendency toward
the an-themic and grandiose, and they shouldn’t be; it still sets them
apart for nearly everyone else…" Maclean’s called All That You Can’t Leave Behind
U2’s "strongest album in years." The group again headed out in support
of their newest release, this time on the worldwide Elevation tour.
Continued Social Activism
In
addition to their musical pursuits, social activism remains important
to U2. The group has championed the causes of eliminating Third World
debt and gun control. U2 often uses concert performances to address the
audience about these issues. "We’re treading a very fine line between
artists and wanting to lecture Americans about issues that are
important. It’s basically turning a mirror on the audience," The Edge
told Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu. Bono has appeared in front of
the United States Congress to urge the country’s participation in
erasing the debt of Third World nations, and he met with Pope John Paul
II to lobby support for the issue. As the Daily Telegraph stated
in 2000," [O]ne senses that for him (Bono) and his colleagues in U2,
rock stardom is a complicated business in which the freedom that success
has brought them is counterbalanced by responsibility."
When asked what they’re all about, bassist Adam Clayton explained it best in an interview with Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
when he said, "I feel we made a decision then (going into the 90s) that
if we are going to be the righteous men of rock ‘r’ roll, we are going
to be very miserable. I think we realized that issues are more
complicated than we once thought, and we don’t want to be continually
earnest about what we do. We are not a religious cult… we are not a
political theory. We are a rock ‘n’ roll band."
Selected discography
U2:3(EP; includes "Out of Control," "Stories," and "Boy-Girl"), CBS Ireland, 1979.
Boy (includes "A Day Without Me" and "I Will Follow"), Island, 1980.
October (includes "Fire" and "Gloria"), Island, 1981.
War (includes "New Year’s Day" and "Two Hearts Beat as One"), Island, 1983.
Under A Blood Red Sky (live), Island, 1983.
Unforgettable Fire (includes "Pride (In the Name of Love)"), Island, 1984.
Wide Awake in America (EP; includes live version of "Bad," "Three Sunrises," and "Love Comes Tumbling"), Island, 1985.
The Joshua Tree (includes
"With or Without You," "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,"
and "Where the Streets Have No Name"), Island, 1987.
Rattle and Hum (includes "Desire," "Angel of Harlem," "When Love Comes to Town," and "All I Want Is You"), Island, 1988.
Achtung Baby (includes "The Fly," "Mysterious Ways," "One," "Even Better Than the Real Thing," and "Wild Horses"), Island, 1991.
Zooropa (includes "Numb" and "Lemon"), Island, 1993.
Pop (includes "Discotheque" and "Staring at the Sun), Island, 1997.
(Compilation) Best of 1980–1990, Island, 1998.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind (includes "Beautiful Day," "Wild Honey," and "Stuck in a Moment"), Interscope, 2000.
Sources
Books
Dickey, Lorraine, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Rock, Carlton Books, 1993.
Dolgins, Adam, Rock Names, Citadel Press, 1993.
Rees, Dafydd, and Luke Crampton, Rock Movers & Shakers, Billboard Books/ABC CLIO, 1991.
Robbins, Ira A., Trouser Press Record Guide, fourth edition, Collier Books, 1991.
Periodicals
Billboard, November 16, 1991.
Daily Telegraph, October 28, 2000.
Entertainment Weekly, May 9, 1997; November 3, 2000.
Hollywood Reporter, March 2, 1994.
Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1992; March 22, 1992; June 4, 1993; September 12, 1993.
Maclean’s, November 2, 1987; November 20, 2000.
Melody Maker, May 30, 1992; December 5, 1992.
Musician, March 1992; September 1992.
Newsweek, December 31, 1984.
People, April 1, 1985.
Rolling Stone, October 11, 1984; March 14, 1985; May 7, 1987; September 8, 1988.
Spin, August 1993.
Time, April 27, 1987; March 10, 1997.
Village Voice, December 10, 1991; December 22, 1992.
Online
"Robbie Williams, U2, Coldplay Dominate Brit Awards," MTV News, http://www.mtv.eom/news/articles/1440978/20010226/u2.jhtml?paid=1022 (September 20, 2001).
"U2," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (September 20, 2001).
"U2," RollingStone.com, http://www.rollingstone.com (August 15, 2001).
Additional information was obtained from the Wasserman Group, Island Records, and MTV, 1994. |
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