In the 1980s, U2 made rapid advancements in musicianship, song writing, and stage presence. Always ready to embrace new ideas and innovative methods, the U2 franchise became a global experience, headed by the best management and production teams of the day, resulting in record-breaking sales. But the growth had not come easy. The band made a risky shift in focus, style, and image with The Unforgettable Fire, and increased popularity during The Joshua Tree era brought special challenges. By the end of the 1980s, the band members were looking more like sanctimonious celebrities—at least that’s the way the critics were imagining them—than artists. And for a group of do-gooders committed to a higher ethic than others in the music industry, the accusations were cutting and discouraging. As the lucrative 1980s came to an end, U2, it seemed, was having a major identity crisis, unsure of the way forward.
Heading into the final decade of the twentieth century, U2 set out to redefine itself, once again charting an unconventional path. In contrast to—but not without regard for—the new winds of global unrest and change, the band members focused inward as they examined the chaos of their own internal demons. Influenced by the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, and the Bosnian war, U2 used an armory of technology and gimmickry to illustrate and critique the gritty human condition, as well as to explore the depths of the human heart. Concerts supporting the albums Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop became extravagant productions filled with personae that both delighted and baffled fans. Bono put on a mask—in fact, multiple masks—to engage issues by using satire reminiscent of his Lypton Village days. Appearing less committed to global and social activism, the band’s cultural influence continued to be compelling, though often veiled in irony. Tackling the taboo subjects of sexual identity, failed relationships, ego, greed, and more, U2 in the 1990s set out to examine its own soul and invited the world to join the epic, larger-than-life journey.
As the calendar turned from one decade to another, the world was an anxious place. U2 was equally unsettled. Still reeling from the harsh reviews of critics, the band took the stage at Dublin’s Point Depot at midnight, December 31, 1989, ushering in the 1990s with an inspiring blend of church bells, “Auld Lang Syne,” and the introduction to “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It was a thrilling yet foreboding moment, as U2 said good-bye not just to the previous decade but to a familiar and comfortable way of doing music. During the New Year’s bash, Bono hinted at the band’s tenuous state, saying, “Well, it’s time to go. . . . It seems there’s a lot of people out there, [who] would like to see rock ’n’ roll get back in its box. It’s only entertainment, man. Is it?” (U2, “U2 Live Lovetown Tour—Point Depot Dublin”) And only the night before, at the same venue, Bono told the audience, “This is just the end of something for U2. . . . We’re throwing a party for ourselves and you. It’s no big deal, we have to go away and . . . and just dream it all up again” (U2, “U2 Live Lovetown Tour—30 December 1989”). Ending its Lovetown tour with four more concerts in Rotterdam, the group quietly slipped away into the new decade, neither fans or band members quite sure how or when it would emerge again.
In many ways, U2’s situation seemed to mirror—not coincidentally—the anxieties of a larger culture. Governments across the globe were in transition, sometimes for good, sometimes not. As international economies failed, paralleling the uncertainty and angst of the times, technology developed with unprecedented speed, outpacing the dilemmas it created. More than a few nations faltered. Iraq invaded and attempted to annex neighboring Kuwait, only to face the international community’s fierce and swift response as a US-led coalition beat back its forces during Operation Desert Storm. In South Africa, newly elected President F. W. de Klerk began dismantling apartheid amid escalating violence, riots, and acts of terrorism, facing increased pressure from local demonstrations as well as world governments. On the other side of the globe, in China, thousands of students occupied Tiananmen Square, lobbying for democracy and freedom, while the government responded with martial law, killing hundreds of protesters. In the Balkans, civil war raged as Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia gained their independence from Yugoslavia. A host of other problems plagued America: the ocean tanker Exxon Valdez spilled a catastrophic amount of oil on the Alaskan coastline, the arrest and beating of Rodney King resulted in historic riots in Los Angeles, the United States entered a major recession, and scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer above the North Pole.
But the greatest global shift happened in the Soviet Union, indirectly impacting the next iteration of U2. For seventy years, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (abbreviated USSR or Soviet Union) encompassed over eight million square miles, extending from the Arctic Ocean to Afghanistan and from China to Western Europe. Initially formed during Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, its Communist government was solidified under the harsh rule of Joseph Stalin in the mid-1920s. During this era, the Soviet Union became known for its Marxist government, managed economy of collectivism, rapid industrialization, and suppression of dissention. Through largescale confrontations with Adolf Hitler in World War II, conflicts that resulted in enormous casualties and devastating losses for both sides, the Soviet Union experienced an expansionary period, eventually taking control of a portion of Germany. At the end of the war, negotiations with Western forces led to the partitioning of Berlin into four quadrants, one of which fell under the control of the Soviet Union. Soon after, a flood of immigrants began pouring across the border from East to West Berlin. The Soviet response was swift and harsh as it quickly erected a wall around the American, British, and French quarters of the city, effectively isolating West Berlin from the rest of the free world. This “Iron Curtain” prevented emigration, commerce, and diplomacy. Heavily protected by guard towers, the new Berlin Wall had armed soldiers with orders to shoot anyone attempting to cross over. On the east side of the wall, life was harsh, drab, and repressive, offering few luxuries. With citizens living in a constant state of fear, East Berlin was as austere as West Berlin was friendly, warm, and welcoming.
By the mid-1980s, it was apparent that the Soviet Union’s Communist ideal was failing. Echoing unrest around the world, many Soviet republics began to revolt, deeply dissatisfied with their Russian overlord. In response, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, attempted to overhaul a bleak economy through a series of reform measures called glasnost and perestroika. Too little too late, the breakup of the Soviet Union began in 1988, as one by one—starting in Eastern Europe—republics overthrew the Communist Party and seceded. By December 1991, the transformation was complete and the USSR had been completely dismantled.
Effects of the Soviet Union’s demise were evident in East Berlin. Increasingly dissatisfied, residents of the Soviet-controlled sector began to escape to the West through newly opened routes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, leaving others in the city to openly protest East Germany’s Communist government. By the fall of 1989, demonstrations were common in East Berlin, and in early November as many as half a million people rallied together in protest. On November 9, all crossings were opened, paving the way for unobstructed travel from east to west. Immediately, East Berliners streamed out of the Communist quadrant into the welcoming arms of West Berliners, who offered them flowers and champagne. As both sides danced together on the wall, some people began to chip away at the concrete symbol of repression, eventually demolishing large segments. Broadcast live around the globe, the world looked on in amazement, celebrating vicariously as the wall came down. The reunification of Berlin signaled a new day.
By the time U2 took the stage at Dublin’s Point Depot on New Year’s Eve of 1989, East and West Germans were being allowed visa-free travel back and forth across the once-impermeable border. On a figurative level, it seemed that the band also needed to cross over into new territory, transcending the boundaries of its iconic image. Whereas most megagroups of the 1980s had trouble reproducing their success, Bono, Edge, Adam, and Larry were tired of parading their hits around in front of audiences and were ready for something new. In search of a creative space, a place that would kindle imagination, U2 rushed to be part of the action in Berlin in October of 1990. Arriving on the same day that German reunification was finalized, the group and its production team set up camp in the renowned Hansa Studios in West Berlin, where they were able to see the infamous wall through a window. Within sight of the Berlin Wall, Hansa is where the trendsetting glam rocker David Bowie found solace from drug addiction and inspiration for his own trilogy of albums, including Low, “Heroes,” and Lodger, all collaborations with Brian Eno and all reflecting the tenuousness of the Cold War and the gloominess of a divided Berlin. Eno persuaded U2 to expect that something similar could happen for them at Hansa and that a spark from the studio would ignite their own creative fire.
For its seventh studio album, titled Achtung Baby (a cheeky nod to the German culture in which it was birthed), the band invited some familiar folks back to lend a hand. Along with Eno came Daniel Lanois and Mark “Flood” Ellis for engineering and mixing. Lanois and Eno had produced the innovative Unforgettable Fire, and Flood had joined them on The Joshua Tree. While Lanois would stay in the studio on a day-to-day basis, Eno came in and out, trying to listen to each new recording with fresh ears, pushing the band beyond its previous work. Eager to move past the pop and Americana feel of Rattle and Hum, U2 looked to the cutting-edge methods of this progressive and talented team in search of a new and relevant sound for the 1990s.
Though the move to Hansa was well intended, U2 encountered a number of obstacles as it began production of the new album. The studio itself, a ballroom used by Hitler’s forces, was in disrepair, requiring some significant work and a fresh supply of up-to-date equipment and resources. In addition, the winter was brutally cold, a harsh landscape as bleak as East Berlin, a sterile city of monotonous streets and featureless buildings. From Adam’s perspective, “[I]t was depressing and intense and dark and gloomy” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 221). But worse still, the malaise of their physical environment seemed to affect the morale of the band members themselves.
Confused and irritated, they struggled to find a common purpose, often arguing and fighting about ideas and musical direction. Edge preferred to move toward a more progressive sound and experimented for the first time with electronic dance beats and hip-hop influences, while Bono worked on lyrics that seemed dark, nebulous, and morose. Larry, however, opted for a more conservative approach, suspicious of and threatened by Edge’s experiments with drum machines. He favored, along with Adam, a refinement and adaptation of The Joshua Tree sound. Years later, Larry recalled, “It was particularly depressing because of the separation within the band. It felt confrontational. It seemed like I was out of the loop.” The atmosphere was so intense that the very existence of U2 appeared to be in jeopardy. Larry continued,
I thought this might be the end. We had been through tough circumstances before and found our way out, but it was always outside influences that we were fighting against. For the first time ever it felt like the cracks were within. And that was a much more difficult situation to negotiate. (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 221)
Expecting to be inspired, the band’s move to Hansa Studios in a reunited Berlin had been counterproductive, stressing the members almost to the point of dissolution. Conflicted and exasperated, U2 was nearly out of time, money, and patience, feeling as if there was no way forward. It was the band that needed reunification now.
Fortunately, a moment of inspiration came in a particularly significant jam session. As the band bickered about the style of a song it was working on, Edge began improvising with a completely different chord progression. After a few suggestions from Lanois, Edge quickly shaped a series of phrases that caught the attention of the other three members, and soon Adam and Larry were laying down a rhythm while Bono tested a lyric idea he had been developing. The result was “One,” a simple yet evocative ballad about the pain of separation and the hope of reconciliation, themes that the band members were working out in their own lives at the moment of the song’s creation. Bono’s subdued vocals sounded both tender and tortured as he sang, “We’re one, but we’re not the same.” Not a hippie anthem or a sappy love song as some fans have supposed, the song is the tortured story of a gay son seeking the acceptance of a father. Written in an intentionally ambiguous way, it could also be interpreted as the story of two irreconcilable lovers, of a parishioner ostracized from church, or of the sad history of East and West Berlin. But “One” is not completely tragic. In the last refrain, the listener is reminded, “We get to carry each other,” emphasizing that bearing with one another through difficult times is not a burden but a privilege. “One” eventually became a hit, recognized by many critics as the best song U2 ever recorded and by some as one of the all-time greatest compositions of rock ’n’ roll, earning the band multiple awards and chart-topping recognition. With “One,” U2 had recovered the spirit and fire of its early years, finding the new beginning it so desperately needed.
The writing and recording of “One” demonstrates another key element of the artistic process for U2: the best work doesn’t come just when sessions are smooth and harmonious but often through volatile times of discord. Contrary to popular assumptions, conflict itself, when dealt with and addressed, can be a vital component to creativity. Though he himself has often been at odds with fellow band members, Bono is quick to acknowledge the power of disagreement: “[T]he friction of different points of view makes you better. And the thing that’ll make you less and less able to realize your potential is a room that’s empty of argument. And I would be terrified to be on my own as a solo singer, not to have a band to argue with” (Assayas, Bono, 152). Anger and emotion served U2 well as its members debated musical ideas and fought about direction safely within the boundaries of a committed friendship. Bono, Edge, Adam, and Larry, four hot-tempered Irishmen, learned to use disagreement as a useful tool in the creative process.
Moving to Hansa Studios in search of a new sound was, in Larry’s words, “the start of the chopping down of The Joshua Tree” as well as “the dismantling of U2 as we had known it” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 221). As the band and producers pushed ahead on the project, there was no way of knowing if fans would receive the new, odd-sounding material as well as they had the previous album. Though it’s now considered essential to U2’s sound, several innovative production techniques debuted on Achtung Baby. Gone was the simplicity of Edge’s trademark chimes and delays. “Zoo Station,” the album’s first track, opens with a heavily distorted, nearly atonal effect as Edge slides down the neck of his guitar, grinding away and hinting at the industrial and electronic influences to come throughout the rest of the record. Adam’s bass, mixed to take full advantage of innovative and popular subwoofer technology, is less plucky yet provides a fuller tone than had been heard before, and Larry supplemented a live set with the techno beats of drum machines and sequencers, forsaking the reverb-laden toms of the 1980s. Bono’s opening lyric, heavily processed with distortion and other electronics, also signaled a new direction: “I’m ready, ready for the laughing gas / I’m ready, I’m ready for what’s next.” Together with other sound effects and production innovations from Flood, Eno, and Lanois, “Zoo Station” set new industry standards for rock ’n’ roll.
Achtung Baby demonstrated other new sounds as well. Bono’s vocals are often doubled, with the melody being sung in two separate octaves. Throaty, airy, and passionate, Bono also began to feature his softer falsetto, singing the whole chorus of “The Fly” in his upper range. Edge continued to experiment with the guitar, building on the grittiness of “Bullet the Blue Sky” by incorporating more distortion, dissonance, and feedback. In “Love Is Blindness,” he channeled the pain and emotion of a failing marriage into an extended riff, tapping out notes with a pained and mournful-like quality, paying little attention to the meter and structure of the song. Lyrically, the album is less concerned with political conflicts, focusing more precisely on broken relationships, personal struggles, hypocrisy, infidelity, and primal desires. Once again, the song “One” serves as an example. For the cover of the single’s release, the band chose a photograph by David Wojnarowicz, a gay artist who had died of AIDS. Wojnarowicz’s image displayed a herd of buffalo plummeting off a cliff, symbolizing the hidden forces that push humanity into unpredictable places of despair. The serious nature of the content matches well the darkness of the production. Whether applied to two cities, a pair of lovers, or the dueling sides of a conflicted self, this less pretentious version of U2 whispered right into the souls of its fans rather than shouting at them through a bullhorn.
The packaging of Achtung Baby also represented a significant departure from U2’s previous image. Conceived and designed by longtime collaborator Steve Averill, the artwork and related material were set in stark contrast to prior albums. Whereas The Joshua Tree featured Anton Corbijn’s black-and-white photographs of a serious and subdued band, the new album cover featured sixteen brightly colored vignettes of the band members and related scenes in a carnivalesque fashion, laid out in a four-by-four grid. With the feel of an eccentric family photo album, the pictures included symbols of Communism, fashion, and sexuality, as well as the silhouette of a nude Adam Clayton. Though some were more abstract than others, the photos scattered throughout the album represented a study in contrasts, seen most clearly in a picture of a Trabant, the unostentatious, commonly derided, and mass-produced East German automobile, which was painted in a flamboyant patchwork of colors for Achtung Baby. The album was also trendsetting because it was one of the first to use the cardboard Digipak, an environmentally friendly packaging that eliminated much of the plastic jewel case. As a whole, whether purchased on a cassette, CD, or vinyl record, the visual design of Achtung Baby was groundbreaking.
The entire Achtung Baby project was wildly successful due to rich collaborations, creative production, and a fresh spirit reminiscent of a more playfully adolescent U2. Peaking at number one in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom, the album produced multiple hits. “Mysterious Ways,” “Even Better than the Real Thing,” and “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” all broke into the Top 40 in Britain and America. And although “The Fly” hit number one in Ireland, Australia, and the UK, it only advanced to sixty-one in the United States. One more release, “Until the End of the World,” failed to chart but became a fan favorite. Including “One,” U2 released six singles from Achtung Baby, receiving more international acclamation than it had for The Joshua Tree.
Adding to the success of the album was a compilation of music videos featuring the work of famous directors such as Corbijn, Kevin Godley, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Pellington, and Phil Joanou. Especially notable was Godley’s video for “Even Better than the Real Thing,” winning MTV’s Best Group and Best Special Effects awards in 1992. Eventually selling twelve million copies worldwide, with eight million alone in the United States, Achtung Baby received broad critical acclaim and continues to represent one of U2’s finest and most creative records. The grand gamble for a new direction, it seems, had worked.
As U2 painted rich and colorful pictures of a fresh Europe through the music and art of its new album, the franchise also set out to revolutionize the touring industry. In support of Achtung Baby, in 1992 the band embarked on a worldwide tour that redefined the live concert experience. Emulating the innovation and irony of its hit record, U2 constructed a colossal production, combining state-of-the-art staging, multiple personae, and choreographed theatrics of a scale never seen before at a rock concert. At the core of the show was an elaborate multimedia presentation, designed around massive screens that simulated an oversaturated TV and media experience. Shirking the religious and political zeal of The Joshua Tree tour, Zoo TV, as the tour came to be known, was more satire than rant. As fans were never quite sure if U2 was serious—either about its content or about its own self-deprecation—they cheered for the sensational video clips, satellite linkups, prank calls, and general sensory overload. With dozens of large screens filling the stage, it felt like all the pictures on the Achtung Baby album cover came alive at once, creating a hyperexaggerated and heavily satirical event.
Blurring the lines between news, entertainment, sports, religious programming, and the home shopping phenomenon, U2 used a barrage of live and prerecorded video to illustrate and anticipate the complexities of broadcast technology in a decade that witnessed an explosion of media outlets and resources. At the time, hundreds of television channels were offered through multiple companies via a four-to-six-foot-wide satellite dish, an increasingly common sight in residential yards by the early 1990s. The Internet also became popular as modems improved, bandwidth increased, and high-speed options were made available. Services like America Online and CompuServe became popular for accessing e-mail, news, forum discussion groups, and other Internet features. During the Persian Gulf War, satellites linked news agencies with their reporters for real-time coverage of the first heavily televised war. As cell phones, computers, and other digital devices became more prevalent, it felt as though the globe was shrinking, and U2 was there to chart out the ironies, instructing its audience in satire-laden messages such as “Watch More TV.”
Though U2’s focus on media at once conveyed both the band’s fascination with and apprehension of the new technologies, Zoo TV featured three specific characters that further illustrated the precarious state of an oversaturated media culture. First, Bono created an alter ego called “the Fly” while writing the song of the same name. Accused of being ostentatious and egocentric by critics, the lead singer crafted a character that accentuated the allegations to the point of absurdity. Peering through oversized sunglasses, clad in leather pants and jacket, the Fly spewed aphorisms as ambitious as the show itself. Bono’s inspiration for the character, at least in part, came from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, in which a head demon, Screwtape, mentors a younger disciple, Wormwood. The senior demon’s task was to teach his fledgling apprentice how to distort the truth in slight, almost imperceptible ways, allowing for the greatest chance of success against the enemy (in this case, God). Screwtape instructed, “Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us” (Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 118). Picking up on Lewis’s brilliant satire, Bono sang as if he were placing a phone call from hell, during which he would spin the secrets of his malevolent trade. Interspersed with half-truths and partial lies, the Fly quipped, “They say a secret is something you tell one other person, so I’m telling you, child,” as gigantic screens flashed a hypnotic stream of messages, including, “Everything you know is wrong” and “Reject your weakness.” In one case, the quickly streaming message that read “It’s your world you can change it” morphed into one a bit more cynical of a consumerist culture: “It’s your world you can charge it.” During “Mysterious Ways,” the pompous and eccentric lead singer serenaded a belly dancer, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of the dance, reaching out and then retreating but never quite able to touch the object of his desire. Maniacal and deceptive, the Fly wore the clothes and the attitude of an overbearing rock star, a guilty pleasure that fans wanted to believe but knew they shouldn’t.
Bono’s second persona, Mirror Ball Man, was a flamboyant character dressed in a shining silver suit with sparkling shoes and a hat to match. A combination of car salesman and greedy televangelist, this slick showman with a heavy southern drawl trumpeted a type of prosperity gospel. A parody of self-made success, Mirror Ball Man loved to gaze at his own reflection as much as he loved to be the object of other people’s affections. Consumed with a sense of self-importance, he would prank call the White House, asking for the president, often bemused and confounded as to why his call wouldn’t be received. It was great fun for the audience but also felt a bit tragic, as if Mirror Ball Man was unaware of being both the setup and the punch line of a joke he had never heard.
Bono’s third character was MacPhisto. This character came into existence after the release of Zooropa in 1993, an album that was recorded mid-tour and was itself inspired by the hypermedia culture of Zoo TV. MacPhisto was a greasy-haired, red-horned, decrepit, has-been rock star, representing the logical result of living too long as the Fly and Mirror Ball Man. Dressed in a gold suit with matching platform shoes and dripping with irony and sarcasm, this persona would offer audiences all they ever wanted, nightly showering concertgoers with fake money during the satirical “Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car” then espousing the “virtues” of self-gratification, media saturation, and overindulgence. Though clearly suffering the effects of his devilish alter ego run amok, MacPhisto taunted his naive followers with quasimotivational messages such as, “People of the former Soviet Union, I’ve given you capitalism, so now you can all dream of being as wealthy and glamorous as me” (U2: Zoo TV Live). The not-so-subtle subtext of all of this was be careful of what you wish for, because it may be your undoing. The washed-up and washed-out demon, obviously reeling from many regrets, ended the concert singing “Love Is Blindness,” a haunting tune that was both love song and lament. As MacPhisto exited the stage, the fantastic, media-saturated experience came to a full-circle completion. Just two hours earlier, near the opening of the show, the Fly had sweet-talked the audience, snuggling up to each concertgoer and whispering into every ear, “They say a secret is something you tell one other person, so I’m telling you, child.” But the disingenuous MacPhisto concluded the show with far less confidence, conviction, and intimacy, confessing the depths of his failed ideology, singing, “Love is drowning in a deep well, all the secrets and no one to tell.”
In many ways, Bono’s interest in alter egos was an extension of the theatrics he had explored in the mid-1970s. Along with his friends—Gavin Friday, Guggi, Strongman, Guck Pants Delany, Dave-iD, Dik, and others—Lypton Village became a private universe for a set of adolescent boys who longed to escape the banality and violence of Dublin’s failed efforts in population relocation and social management. A sanctuary for misfits and outsiders, the Village was a surreal, secretive world, that formed around the use of art, music, and literature as a way of coping with the general bleakness of the day. It was there that Bono and his mates rechristened each other with new names, developed their own language, and began experimenting with acting, improvisation, performance art, and the integration of audio and visual modalities. The boys used irony and humor to defeat the crisis of apathy so prevalent in Dublin’s conservative status quo. Theater, along with music performance, allowed for creative expression and gave a voice to the otherwise silent malcontents. As a consequence, Lypton Village gave birth to an incredible cadre of creative artists, including U2 and the slightly lesser known Virgin Prunes, an avant-garde band that staged mad, chaotic costumed musical performances. Later on, during The Joshua Tree tour, U2 would experiment again with disguises and alter egos by dressing as a country western family act and actually opening incognito for its own concert. These experiences germinated and gave birth to a full-scale integration of satirical theater in the 1990s but also laid the foundation for other characters Bono would play in concerts throughout the coming decades.
While Bono was acting out the vices of celebrity in grand theatrical fashion from the stage, one of U2’s members seemed precariously close to being overcome by his own real-life demons. As the most eccentric person in the group, Adam had always seemed to enjoy the playboy lifestyle of a rock star. In 1989, he was busted in Dublin for possessing a small amount of marijuana but resolved the minor offense and kept the arrest off of his permanent record by making a charitable contribution, a provision allowed for by the court. Though it’s the only time any member of U2 has ever been arrested, Adam’s troubles with substance abuse did not end there. On November 26, 1993, his flamboyant lifestyle caught up with him—Adam was so hungover from an alcoholic binge that he couldn’t play the concert in Sydney that night. The situation was exacerbated because this show was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for a live global broadcast of Zoo TV the next night. Fortunately, bass guitar technician Stuart Morgan was there to capably step in at the last minute. Adam was back onstage for the broadcast, but soon after realized the depth of his problem: “It was a moment where I had to face a lot of things I hadn’t really been facing and realize if I was going to be able to go on and be a useful member of this band—and indeed a husband—I had to beat alcohol. . . . So I’m kind of glad I finally had to confront it” (Flanagan, U2: At the End of the World, 443). Having survived a debilitating personal vice, Adam—in true U2 fashion—turned the defeat on its head and emerged stronger, with greater confidence and personal conviction, as a new man.
The Zoo TV tour, like Achtung Baby, was a calculated risk. Unsure of whether fans would grasp the dual layers of entertainment and irony, U2 nonetheless committed vast amounts of money and resources to the project. The creative team responsible for the new concert format included artists, technicians, and longtime collaborators with the band. Brian Eno had suggested that a stage full of chaotic, simultaneous videos would be the perfect concept for the new album. Willie Williams, who had helped with cutting-edge projection on David Bowie’s Sound+Vision tour in 1990 and had been U2’s lighting designer since the War tour, brought considerable expertise and ingenuity to the team. For other input, U2 turned to Catherine Owens, an Irish artist with extensive work in sculpture, paint, video, sound, and photography, and Mark Fisher, a stage architect who had previously worked with Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. Along with the band and manager Paul McGuinness, the team began dreaming up the ostentatious stage show nine months before the first concert. It was a bold and formidable task.
Part of Zoo TV’s uniqueness lay in the extravagant technical setup it used. Owens was responsible for turning eleven Trabants—the nondescript, mass-produced car of East Germany—into works of art, painting them with colors and designs that countered the bleakness of Communism. Suspended above the stage, the cars served multiple purposes as props, pop art, and moveable lighting trusses. The amount of technology used was staggering, including a million-watt sound system, nearly a thousand speakers, more than thirty TVs, four video walls, eighteen projectors, and multiple handheld cameras. For the stadium version of the show (the tour started in arenas and then moved outdoors on the third leg in North America), the crew would build a television control studio, employing thirty technicians whose sole responsibility was to run the camera systems, laser disc players, satellite dish, and mixing stations.
Perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment of technology-meets-stagecraft came when U2 conspired to highlight the devastating consequences of the Bosnian War, which raged in Eastern Europe between 1992 and 1995. At the insistence of Bill Carter, an American aid worker and journalist living in Sarajevo, U2 accomplished two things by satellite linking with the bombed-out city during concerts in 1993. First, the band helped bring a sense of urgency to the plight of Sarajevans, calling attention to a prolonged conflict that remained hidden to much of the world. The linkups were extremely costly and difficult, requiring Carter to transport multiple women to a television studio on a nightly basis, risking their lives while driving through “Sniper Alley,” a particularly volatile area of the city. Second, highlighting victims of war during a concert that emphasized the extravagance of entertainment media created an absurd moment, brutally jarring the audience with a juxtaposition of contradictory images. An ethical debate ensued as fans and critics discussed the appropriateness of forcing unsolicited scenes of violence and chaos on an unassuming crowd of music enthusiasts, prompting some to accuse U2 of gratuitous sensationalism. The point was valid, illustrated and punctuated by a group of Sarajevan women who chastised one concert audience via satellite, saying, “We don’t know what we’re doing here. This guy dragged us in. You’re all having a good time. We’re not having a good time. What are you going to do for us?” When Bono tried to console them, they continued, “We know you’re not going to do anything for us. You’re going to go back to a rock show. You’re going to forget that we even exist. And we’re all going to die” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 253). It was an intense and awkward incident, leading Larry to believe that the band might be guilty of exploiting Sarajevans for the sake of entertainment. Many people outside the U2 franchise felt the same.
Though U2’s antics on the stage helped to support the music and the message of Achtung Baby, it was the band’s retreat to Berlin amid the political upheaval of Eastern Europe that inspired its own reunification and renewal. In the end, the determination of Edge, Adam, Larry, and Bono resulted in far-reaching innovations in music production, technology, staging, and concert theatrics. U2 also learned that collaboration with other creative artists and technicians was essential to the creative process, enhancing the ability to be imaginative and pioneering. Surrounded by a team of resourceful people, the band accomplished what it had set out to do, dreaming it all up again.
While Achtung Baby became the means for U2’s rebirth, two other albums also helped further refine the group’s image in the 1990s. Zooropa, an unconventional, futuristic romp in experimental music, was released during the middle of the Zoo TV tour, and Pop, a brazen exploration of consumerism and materialism, rounded out the decade. Each project presented the band with new challenges, but each also brought fresh rewards.
Released in 1993, Zooropa, U2’s eighth studio album, has a unique origin, actually born out of the Zoo TV tour. A further experimentation with electronic, dance, and rock music, the album expanded Achtung Baby’s use of techno beats and sound effects, creating a postapocalyptic musical landscape—a kind of dystopian projection of media’s future. Once again nuanced with irony and satire, Zooropa presented a serious investigation of technology and modernity set to industrial beats and party music. Through Zooropa, U2 seemed to be echoing the messages of two prominent mid-twentieth-century philosophers. First, Marshall McLuhan, an influential communication theorist in the 1960s and 1970s, had popularized the expression “the medium is the message” and accurately predicted a “global village” that would one day be linked by electronic and visual media. In this sense, U2, through its Zoo TV tour, appeared to be crafting a quintessential McLuhanesque experience, mixing live video feeds from across the globe with other forms of media-driven art and using the medium to critique the medium, fully aware that it was also being consumed by the medium.
Sociologist Jacques Ellul, a second influential author of the post–World War II period, published The Technological Society, in which he argued that technology has become the new god, replacing process, risk, and ambiguity with technique and efficiency. The song “Zooropa” laments a world that no longer values mystery and doubt, as Bono counsels the song’s female protagonist, “Don’t worry, baby / It’s gonna be alright / Uncertainty can be a guiding light.” Another important book by Ellul, Propaganda, addressed how popular media can be a powerful tool for controlling individuals through larger social forces. Either by intention or chance, U2’s official fan club magazine from 1986 to 2000 was called Propaganda, as both an obvious parody of the band’s perception of its own influence on fandom and as an attempt to literally distribute information to its fans. Both McLuhan and Ellul boldly prophesied that extensive use of mass media technologies would quietly and unwittingly change the users of technology. In U2, the presentation and performance of the music became a commentary on the delivery of the music itself, an ironic admission that the very medium of rock ’n’ roll could both reflect culture and shape it.
Not inconsequentially, many similar themes show up elsewhere on Zooropa. Through a cacophony of sampled background voices, the first words on the album ask, “What do you want?” The answer comes in a series of advertising slogans, such as “Be a winner, eat to get slimmer” and “Fly the friendly skies.” Bono finishes “Zooropa,” the first song on the record, offering an antidote to cultural banality by giving advice to the tune’s female protagonist, singing, “She’s gonna dream up the world she wants to live in / She’s gonna dream out loud.” Self-referencing its own ability to successfully reimagine and shape its destiny, U2 challenged the listener to do the same. In “Numb,” an atypical song composed and sung by Edge, the narrator offers a bleak, monotone commentary on the modern condition, concluding in the chorus, “I feel numb, too much is not enough.” Continuing the exploration of an industrial apocalypse, “Lemon” contrasts a man who “dreams of leaving” a mechanical wasteland with a woman who personifies ingenuity and creativity. Bono sings of the heroine, “She is the dreamer, she’s imagination.” On the album’s final track, “The Wanderer,” Johnny Cash sings on top of heavily synthesized backing tracks as a lonely drifter “under an atomic sky” in a “city without a soul.” Dark and foreboding, Zooropa uses a wealth of technological gadgetry to offer a commentary on technology itself, ending with two possible outcomes—the quiet acquiescence of the wanderer or the stubborn resilience of a hope-filled dreamer.
As with Achtung Baby, the message of Zooropa struck a chord with fans, whether they fully grasped the layered meanings or not. Charting at number one in more than a dozen countries, including America, the album sold seven million copies and was an international success. Though it was well received by fans and critics, earning it a Grammy Award in 1994 for Best Alternative Music Album, the decidedly European feel, heavily influenced by Eno and Flood, didn’t carry as well as previous albums in the United States, where none of its four singles entered the Top 40. While some in the U2 organization thought the album was rushed, and thus flawed, it was still, in Bono’s words, “A wonderful, wild, fling of an album” and “grand madness” (Bono, “Rolling Stone Interview”).
With Pop, U2’s ninth studio album, the band continued its image of eccentricity. Winding out a set of three records in the 1990s, producers Flood and Howie B led the recording project, extending the use of techno, dance, and electronic music and incorporating new sampling, looping, and sequencing technologies. Pop’s investigation of pop culture and consumerism represents a culmination of the thematic inquiry U2 undertook through the 1990s, starting with a brooding look at personal demons on Achtung Baby and being refined on Zooropa into an examination of the effects of technology and media on the human condition. Using the medium of satire, each album critiques Western culture while asking how to be fully human in a fragmented world. Continuing to distance themselves from their do-gooder image of the 1980s, the members of U2 completely embraced celebrity, exaggerating their own rock star status through extravagant personae and lavish displays of pop art.
The Pop recording sessions included multiple collaborators for production, engineering, and mixing, as U2 tried to broaden its own knowledge of a somewhat new genre. Heavily influenced by Howie B’s expertise in electronica music, the band spent time hanging out in dance clubs, experiencing the music firsthand. To its detriment, U2 and crew faced an unnerving set of pressures in the studio, causing them to struggle with the album’s production. First, Larry had to have surgery on a debilitating back injury, forcing him to miss a significant amount of recording time while recovering. A second issue arose when Larry rejoined the band in the studio and had to spend an extensive amount of time rerecording drum parts that had been written and sampled in his absence. In a similar way, the whole band labored to reproduce Howie B and Flood’s complex samples and loops. The third and most significant problem emerged when Paul McGuinness booked the supporting tour without the album being completed. Initially, the band gave its approval and didn’t consider it an issue. But as the team struggled with complicated production and engineering tasks, deadlines were missed and the album’s release was delayed by months, putting the band precariously close to the start of the new tour. In the end, production had to be rushed, resulting in what the band, as well as many critics, believed was an unfinished product.
In spite of the group’s missteps in the studio, U2’s PopMart tour, launched in the spring of 1997, rivaled Zoo TV’s expansive production and complex stage. Extravagant and excessive, the tour included a 165-foot-wide state-of-the-art LED screen, a 100-foot-tall golden arch that parodied the famous McDonald’s logo, and a huge, gaudy mirror-coated lemon, big enough to hold the entire band, a prop that looked more like a space ship than a piece of fruit. Driven by designers Willie Williams, Catherine Owens, and Mark Fisher, the show featured the largest video screen ever to have been built at that time. The 150,000-pixel screen became the backdrop for a stage that took its inspiration from a supermarket. Reinforcing the theme of decadent consumerism were images of the evolution of a monkey transitioning to an upright human, who then walked as a shopper pushing a cart. The screen was also used to display colorful and kitschy pictures of the band members in a style reminiscent of pop art created by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Mimicking the art-imitates-life quality of pop culture, U2 even announced its tour, appropriately, at a news conference from the lingerie department in a New York City Kmart. And though some would again accuse the band of selling out, U2 considered its embrace of pop culture as the best defense against it.
One of the tour’s most significant moments involved a promise that Bono had impulsively made during a Zoo TV concert in 1993. Holding to its word, in 1997 U2 took its entire production to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital that had been held captive for nearly four years by Serbian forces. A highly anticipated event that came at great financial loss to the franchise, U2 was the first major act to perform in the devastated city. Broadcast live throughout Bosnia and around the world, emotions were high as forty-five thousand people, many of whom had been on opposite sides of the war, filled the stadium. At the last minute, ten thousand more were allowed in even though they hadn’t purchased tickets, while thousands of soldiers and peacekeeping forces looked on for any sign of trouble. A spectacular success, the evening transcended all expectations of a normal concert, becoming a de facto celebration of the end of the siege of Sarajevo. Though it took four years to do so, the band and crew had kept its promise. As they headed out of the area, humbled and changed, they realized it was one of the most moving and meaningful events of their career.
Though the PopMart tour was immensely popular, even setting a record for the most attended concert ever, Pop itself was one of the least commercially successful albums in U2’s catalog. Initially well received by fans and critics, it reached the number-one position in the United States but lacked the staying power of previous records, only selling a million copies. Despite its relative obscurity, many hardcore fans revere Pop as a U2 classic, an innovative and imaginative convergence of pop culture and art.
The members of U2 engaged in several other lesser known projects in the 1990s as well—specifically, they made a foray into movie soundtracks. Earlier, in 1986, Edge released Captive, a solo album written for a film by the same name. Notable for Edge’s use of the infinite guitar—the instrument that two years later gave the hit single “With or Without You” its signature sound—and for being the only solo project from any member of U2, Captive also included one track featuring Larry on drums and vocals by a young, up-and-coming Irish artist named Sinead O’Connor. In 1995, however, the entire band contributed to the soundtrack for the movie Batman Forever with “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.” The tune was played regularly on the PopMart tour, received strong airplay on the radio, and was accompanied by an animated music video that featured both the Fly and MacPhisto. With a story line about a pretentious star in a rock band, “Hold Me” not only served as a dark and foreboding interpretation of the enigmatic Batman character, it also provided a summative commentary on U2’s entire Zoo TV experiment.
That same year, Bono and Edge collaborated to create the theme for the latest James Bond movie, GoldenEye. Written specifically for Tina Turner, the song was a hit internationally and helped introduce Pierce Brosnan as the new Bond, as well as reenergize the aging series. In a similar way, Larry and Adam teamed up to write and perform the title track for the 1996 blockbuster film Mission: Impossible. Inspired by the theme from the original TV series, this updated electronic version gained global attention, became a Top 10 hit, and set a contemporary, youthful tone for the Tom Cruise movie reboot. Whether as a band or individuals on separate ventures, U2 continued to engage and shape pop culture in the 1990s through work with film soundtracks and also laid a foundation for related projects in the new millennium.
Fleeing its pious image of The Joshua Tree era, U2 had reinvented itself at the tail end of the twentieth century. Both the content and the musical style of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop, along with the accompanying tours, exhibited an artsy and introspective band that delivered its message through satire and theatrics. While U2 in the 1980s had been consumed with global justice and conflicts in distant places such as El Salvador and South Africa, the U2 of the 1990s focused on the inner demons of greed, lust, addiction, and hypocrisy. Bono’s lyrics became self-deprecating and confessional, giving voice to his own internal struggles in the first person as he donned several alter egos reminiscent of his much earlier experience in Lypton Village. Edge’s guitar parts changed, too, moving from his trademark chiming rhythms to impassioned lead lines processed through heavily distorted effects. Influenced by European electronica, Larry and Adam laid down driving beats that were built from sequenced patterns, pushing the band into places in which it wasn’t always comfortable. In the end, the trilogy of albums demonstrated U2’s fascination with pop culture and marked a visionary—and expansionary—period in rock ’n’ roll history.