The first decade of the twenty-first century revealed, yet again, a redefined U2. Forsaking the artsy introspection of previous albums, the band stripped music and stage performances down to the basics. Now as mature and seasoned artists, U2 attempted to reengage its fan base with intimacy and authenticity. Concerts became community gatherings as U2 focused primarily on smaller arenas (compared to the huge outdoor stadiums of the previous tours), redesigned the stage for maximum contact with fans, and used new technologies to give audiences a global view. In a post-9/11 world, fans would often say that going to a concert was like entering a sanctuary, and U2 was their priest.
Aware of missteps in the 1990s, the U2 franchise applied what it had learned, even as it faced new challenges. Though it had abandoned the high-tech experimental sounds of the previous decade, production efforts in the studio, as well as supporting album tours, continued to be innovative yet not excessive. The band’s flirtation with new media grew through a partnership with Apple, resulting in pioneering ways to market music and advance both the Apple and U2 brands. The outcome was a triumphantly successful duo of albums, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Apart from recording, however, U2 faced a growing conflict as Bono’s avid interest in philanthropy often interrupted productivity and delayed the release of albums, leaving the other bandmates concerned about the front man’s perceived lack of commitment to the group. Still, as U2 stepped into the new millennium, its members appeared confident and content in their roles as both middle-aged family men and veteran rock stars, championing a message of love and grace instead of the rage and moody self-reflection of years past.
The final track on 1997’s Pop, a dark and sullen lament called “Wake Up Dead Man,” was a parting shot to a decade of experimentation. Hinting at what the 2000s might bring, Bono whispered to fans in the song’s bridge, “Listen to the words, they’ll tell you what to do / Listen over the rhythm that’s confusing you.” “Listen . . . Listen . . . Listen,” the singer repeated in a litany of phrases, even questioning Jesus, “Are you working on something new?” At the end of PopMart, the fanciful art project that made use of a lavish display of pop culture to critique consumerism, U2 once again retreated to the studio in search of a new sound, a fresh spirit, and a replenished soul. Remarkably reminiscent of its departure from the 1980s at Point Depot (“We have to go away and . . . and just dream it all up again”), the band left the 1990s—in Bono’s oft-quoted words—with a desire for “going back to scratch, reapplying for the job [of] best band in the world” (“43rd Grammy Awards Highlights”).
The very first lyric of All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000), U2’s tenth studio album, christened the new millennium with a spirit of optimism: “The heart is a bloom, shoots up from the stony ground.” The opening instrumentation, including a chiming set of arpeggios cascading from a seemingly forgotten place within Edge’s arsenal of guitars, also conveyed a bright and hopeful restart. Even the name of the tune, “Beautiful Day,” signaled, yet again, a new beginning for the group. Fans eagerly and joyfully embraced the sentiment, and for many it felt like the old band was back. But U2’s new project wasn’t just fluff and superficial sentiment. “Beautiful Day” also contrasts the song’s initial optimism with the harsh reality of daily life, as Bono sings “there’s no room,” “you’re out of luck,” and “you’re not moving anywhere.” Beautiful lives, U2 counseled, are not trouble-free lives. The whole album, in fact, presents a study in contrasts, simultaneously acknowledging despair (“Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”), inspiring joy (“Elevation”), and encouraging endurance (“Walk On”).
But it’s on “Beautiful Day” that all of these themes converge as an overture to the rest of the album, reinforcing a thesis of love and uniting those who suffer with those who have overcome. The hopeful message of the song clearly resonated with fans around the world, propelling it forward as one of U2’s biggest hits ever and earning the group three Grammy Awards in 2001. Adding to its impact and appeal in concert, Bono would shout repeatedly during the song’s final instrumental break, “The goal is soul!” To be sure, imagining such a beautiful day in the midst of adversity was a lofty goal worthy of U2’s effort and time, a perfect message of grace for the new millennium. As one of the band’s most endearing (and enduring) songs, “Beautiful Day” has become a kind of anthem for the twenty-first century and to date has never been omitted from a U2 concert.
The success of “Beautiful Day” didn’t happen in isolation but was a response to the larger cultural milieu. As U2 headed into the studio for production of its new album, the world was an increasingly unsettled and unfamiliar place, surpassing a population of six billion. On the international scene, Serbs continued a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of a highly destabilized and economically depressed Russia, Pakistan was at war with India, and Osama bin Laden had set up his al-Qaeda base camp in Afghanistan. Acts of terrorism were on the rise, and the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, as well as the USS Cole in Yemen, heightened people’s awareness of hostile anti-American sentiments. With 150 million people using the Internet across the globe (half of whom lived in the United States), the Y2K bug had people fearing that computers and other electronic devices would fail at midnight on December 31, 1999, potentially plunging the planet back into the Dark Ages. At the same time, religious fundamentalists believed the advent of 2000 would bring an apocalyptic end of the world.
Always aware of and in tune with its global surroundings, U2 teamed up once again with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois—an intentional effort to rekindle the essence and style of earlier albums such as The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, along with a reinvigorated spirit of optimism. Choosing to stay close to home this time, the band retreated in late 1998 to Hanover Quay Studios in Dublin. For this project, the seasoned foursome wasn’t interested in far-off exotic production facilities as when recording Achtung Baby, nor was it attracted to the progressive sounds of hip European dance clubs like it had been during the Zooropa and Pop sessions. This iteration of U2 exuded confidence, security, and contentment in midlife and seemed to find the inspiration it needed in the very place it called home. While in the studio, the band combined the best of its classic sound—less ambiguous vocals, straightforward rhythms, ringing guitars, and singable melodies—with techniques gleaned from experimental work in the 1990s, using electronic effects, ethereal keyboards, and digital drums in a way that nuanced, rather than dominated, the new material. Surrounded by close family and friends, U2 recaptured its core values and produced an album that represented its very soul. Bono reiterated this in an interview, summing up the production saying,
The idea was, “What is the essence of our band? What do we have to contribute?” For ten years previous, we’d been doing exactly the opposite. We’d been thinking, “What is it we don’t have?” and going after it. [On this album] in order to keep it fresh, we say, “What is it we do have?” (Bono, “Rolling Stone Interview”)
What the members of U2 did have was a generous spirit—not the righteous anger of the 1980s or the biting cynicism of the 1990s, but a graciousness that was more a natural outcome of well-lived lives than a strategy for selling albums. Concerned with casting away nonessential things, Leave Behind was like journal entries about the most important things in life—the stuff of family and friends. “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” was written about Bono’s good friend Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of the rock band INXS who had committed suicide in 1997. The song functioned as a difficult but necessary conversation between two intimate souls. “Kite,” originally composed with his own children in mind, eventually became a statement about Bono’s relationship with his cancer-stricken father, who passed away less than a year after the album’s release and just a few days before U2’s historic concert at Slane Castle in 2001. The closing track on Leave Behind, “Grace,” was written as a bookend to “Beautiful Day,” personifying the essence of life as both a “name for a girl” and a “thought that could change the world.”
But the notion of grace really came to the forefront in “Walk On,” one of the album’s strongest and most popular songs, as U2 championed the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese political dissident. Sentenced to house arrest in 1989, Suu Kyi was the rightful president of Myanmar, the country known as Burma prior to its takeover by a military junta in 1962. Having received a majority of the vote in a general election, she was never allowed to take office. Despite the hostile and oppressive efforts of Myanmar’s corrupt regime, the civil rights leader remained committed to a posture of love and nonviolent resistance, inspiring her own party, the National League of Democracy, to do the same. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts but rejected an offer by the regime to leave and claim her prize in Oslo, knowing she would never be allowed to reenter the country. Likewise, upon the death of her husband in London in 1999, she again rejected an opportunity to leave the country, choosing imprisonment as she stood in solidarity with the Burmese people. U2 learned about Suu Kyi’s heroic story while recording the Leave Behind album and was so moved that it wrote “Walk On” as a tribute to her spirit of patient compassion. Though specifically about Suu Kyi’s courageous and noble opposition to a corrupt junta, fans facing a range of hardships also heard the chorus of “Walk on, walk on” and interpreted it as a call to endure. The song’s strong emotional appeal quickly transformed it into a classic, ultimately earning the band another Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 2002, making U2 the first artist ever to win the award two years in a row for two different songs on the same album.
Though “Walk On” told the story of a political dissident suffering under the repressive efforts of a corrupt regime, it also came to play a significant role in American culture at large as the country faced the worst terrorist attack in history. On September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists coordinated a series of four attacks using hijacked commercial airliners. Under the control of nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists, four planes filled with hundreds of people were deliberately crashed into separate targets. Two of the suicide missions targeted the pair of World Trade Center buildings in New York City, resulting in devastating explosions massive enough to bring both of the 110-story towers down. The damage was catastrophic, plunging the borough of Manhattan into chaos and killing 2,606 people. Combined with a third attack on the Pentagon in Virginia and a failed fourth attempt that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, nearly three thousand lives were lost, resulting in the deadliest attack on American soil since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. In New York, life came to an abrupt and shocking halt as residents waited for news of the missing and dead, many of which were never found or identified. In the weeks and months to come, a disfigured skyline reminded people of their loss on a daily basis and prolonged a sense of fatigued disorientation and despair. Through it all, the soul of America had been gravely wounded, and 9/11 became a pivotal moment in global history, ushering in a new age of fear, anxiety, and insecurity.
This was the global stage when U2 took the literal stage at Madison Square Garden, just three miles from the World Trade Center site and six weeks after the attack, as the first major artist to perform in New York City after the tragedy. Though some people felt concerts and other public festivities were inappropriate so soon after the catastrophe, and others thought it might be unsafe for the band, U2 used the occasion to nurture the soul of the city. On the first of three nights in the Garden, images of the Twin Towers appeared on enormous screens during the song “New York,” and names of victims, including police and fire personnel, scrolled across while Bono sang a tearful and impassioned version of “One.” On the third and final night, fire and emergency workers were brought onstage during a highly charged version of “Walk On,” and then stayed to give tributes after the band exited. As the firefighters spoke of their fallen colleagues, the arena wept, traversing a chasm between overwhelming sorrow and celebration of life. After the Manhattan concerts, fans spoke of U2 with great affection, referring to the performances as “healing,” “comforting,” and “cathartic,” a unifying force amid the pain and grief of a city. If, as Bono repeatedly said on the Elevation tour, the “goal is soul,” then New York had experienced the full effect of the message, and “Walk On” (released as a single just three weeks after the Madison Square Garden shows) had become a soothing hymn for America. Just a few months later, in February of 2002, U2 reproduced its moving tribute to the victims of 9/11 in front of eighty-six million people at the Super Bowl, delivering its reverent, spiritual, and highly charged memorial to an entire nation. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “U2’s live breath of fresh air and dramatic, emotional spectacle that paid homage to the victims of Sept. 11 was both daringly bombastic and also pretty damn cool” (“North American Media Comment”). Both Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated eventually called it the best halftime show ever. U2 had once again filled the role of America’s priest.
U2’s visit to New York City was only one stop on the third leg of a much larger tour that crisscrossed the Atlantic in 2001. Supporting Leave Behind, the Elevation tour abandoned the flashy overindulgence of Zoo TV and PopMart, opting instead for a minimalist experience. The tour’s intimate staging mirrored the starkness and simplicity of the album, working with neutral color schemes, clean lines, and flowing draperies. Once again, designers Willie Williams, Catherine Owens, and Mark Fisher took the lead, using images, lighting, and scrims to convey warmth and intimacy in arenas across North America and Europe. At one point, graphics were even superimposed on the audience, drawing fans into an all-encompassing artistic experience. During “Walk On,” often the concert’s closing song, a projection of a suitcase with a heart would scroll up arena walls, filling the dark spaces between stage and ceiling and highlighting the theme of love’s eternal and transcendent nature.
One of the tour’s most poignant and striking innovations, however, was in the design of the stage. After pioneering the concept of a smaller, separate “B-stage” on the Zoo TV tour (an idea that was first experimented with way back at a Yale University gig in 1983), U2’s members continued efforts to find new ways to physically place themselves in the audience, removing as many barriers as possible. On the PopMart tour, U2 had transported itself right into the crowd using a huge lemon-shaped mirror ball, an intentionally gimmicky stunt that brought audience and band closer to one another. For the Elevation tour, Fisher discarded the actual B-stage but took the concept one step further by creating a catwalk that looped from one end of the stage, out into the audience, and then back to the stage again. The shape of this walkway, though not immediately obvious from the floor, could be seen from the upper decks for what it was—a huge heart. It was a beautiful expression, a symbolic representation of U2’s own soul being offered in the midst of the arena. With fans on both sides of the ramp—inside and outside the heart—audiences were given unprecedented access to the band, especially while standing on the floor in general admission. Underneath the stage, another “first” was taking place. The band began to include a fifth musician, keyboardist Terry Lawless, giving him the task of filling in the musically subtle spaces so that tunes would sound like they did on the albums while still keeping the freshness and spontaneity of a live performance. Lawless continued to play from the “Underworld” on all subsequent tours.
The opening moment of each Elevation concert set the tone for the evening. As U2 walked out onto the stage to perform the opening song, “Elevation,” they did so under the naked, white light of the arena, as if saying to the crowd, “We’ve come to expose ourselves tonight. No pretense, no persona. We’re just here to bear our souls.” Continuing on with a theme of love and grace throughout the show, Larry, Edge, Adam, and Bono paraded their own hearts out in front of audiences in an act of solidarity and authenticity.
Though U2’s cultural impact in this period rivaled that of The Joshua Tree, it didn’t come without controversy, especially with regard to the new album’s distribution. In the 1990s, the US radio industry saw a dramatic evolution as business models changed. Taking advantage of reduced government regulation, radio stations began to amalgamate services, making it possible for large corporations to own and control multiple elements, including radio stations, concert venues, and tour companies. As a result, artists were encouraged to make deals with promoters in order to have their music played, but these deals included stipulations about where artists could perform, how their music would be distributed, and how much airtime they would receive. The effect was that musicians essentially had to buy their way into a station’s rotation. Though completely lawful, the complex negotiations felt more like “payola,” the illegal practice of paying or in any way bribing a radio station for airplay, an activity especially common in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. The consequences were similar, and artists in the new millennium were often forced into stringent deals that seemed both unethical and unfavorable to them.
With the release of Leave Behind, U2 faced a critical dilemma: should the franchise play the game and enter into negotiations that would limit rights to its own music in return for radio play? Or would it be better to venture out alone, taking its chances with independent promotion and distribution? It turns out that the band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, did a little of both. For “Beautiful Day,” U2 capitulated to the industry and paid for promotion—by some accounts paying twice as much as other artists—gaining it considerable radio play and earning it the number–twenty-one spot on Billboard’s Top 100. The song also charted in several other US markets and became one of U2’s most appealing hits ever. The outcome, however, was entirely different for the band’s next single, “Electrical Storm,” released in 2002 on The Best of 1990–2000. Thinking the momentum of U2’s previous success with “Beautiful Day” would carry it forward, McGuinness decided not to “pay for play” during the promotion of the new single. The varying degree of success between the two songs was striking. While “Electrical Storm” reached the number-one spot in Canada and other European countries, it languished in the States, only reaching number seventy-seven on Billboard’s Hot 100. In contrast, the 1990–2000 album was itself successful, peaking at number three in the United States, offering further proof that the failure of “Electrical Storm,” at least in part, could be traced back to U2’s decision against engaging in the practice of paying for airplay on radio stations in America. Trying to take the ethical high ground, its anti-music-industry posture left the band flat and disheartened.
Several other complications delayed the production of Leave Behind, as the band members’ schedules conflicted with recording. Specifically, Bono’s philanthropic work frustrated some of the crew, causing them to wonder if he was more committed to the band or to his humanitarian efforts. It was a busy season for the lead singer, as he increasingly became known as “the Front Man,” not just for a rock band but also for multiple campaigns focused on alleviating suffering in sub-Saharan Africa. Deeply committed to the work, Bono endeavored to engage critical global issues of Third World debt relief, preventable disease, and AIDS eradication by studying with influential economists, activists, and investors such as Jeffrey Sachs, Bobby Shriver, and Bill Gates. Not content with the role of a typical celebrity activist—someone with a mild interest in a cause who benefits from charitable tax deductions and an increased public profile—Bono became proficient in foreign policy, international humanitarian efforts, and global fiscal models. Several related projects took him out of the studio. The Jubilee 2000 effort was an international coalition of over forty countries that agreed to cancel Third World debt by the year 2000. That project was also related to and eventually evolved into the British Drop the Debt campaign. Both organizations believed that debt forgiveness of the world’s poorest countries is essential to the work of justice and the alleviation of poverty, a motif that became more and more common in U2’s music and concerts. Another project involved the Millennium Development Goals, an initiative of the United Nations to eradicate extreme poverty and promote human rights. Bono worked diligently and tirelessly with each of these organizations, exhibiting a passion that a few years later would nearly turn into a second full-time occupation.
An additional recording project also took U2 away from the production of Leave Behind and led the band to some unusual artistic connections. The Million Dollar Hotel, released in 2000, was a film based on life in a skid-row hotel in downtown Los Angeles and was cowritten by Bono, directed by Wim Wenders, and produced by Mel Gibson. The writing and filming of the movie took considerable effort and time on Bono’s part, but it also included the other members of U2, as they contributed several songs to the movie’s soundtrack. Most notably, “The Ground beneath Her Feet,” an emotive lament about the loss of a lover, was based on a Salman Rushdie novel of the same name. Rushdie and Bono formed a friendship in the Zoo TV days, about the same time the author became a highly controversial figure in the Islamic world for his novel The Satanic Verses. The book prompted Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death threat against Rushdie, irreversibly altering his life and driving him into seclusion. Later in the 1990s, Rushdie gave Bono a copy of a new story he was working on, which eventually became the inspiration for “The Ground beneath Her Feet.” Recorded with Daniel Lanois playing pedal steel guitar, U2 credited Rushdie with the lyrics on the soundtrack for the film, illustrating a unique partnership of author and musicians. The artistic collaborations with Wenders, Gibson, and Rushdie spurred U2 on in its own creativity but, at the same time, also contributed to the delayed release of Leave Behind.
To capture the essence of the new album for its cover and packaging, U2 reunited with another innovative artist, Anton Corbijn, the band’s longtime photographer. Along with Steve Averill, U2’s reliable friend and graphic designer, the team of musicians and artists decided to contrast the garish and colorful schemes of U2’s previous three album layouts, with pictures of a subdued, mature-looking band. Shot in the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, the cover of Leave Behind shows a single monochrome photograph of the band members standing in a nearly empty terminal, small luggage in hand, waiting. What precisely U2 is lingering for is open to the viewer’s interpretation. Is the quartet waiting for the next flight? For a ride? For family members? Whatever the perspective, Corbijn’s artwork and Averill’s design conveyed a sense of expectation, if not a complete departure from the previous decade. In one understated image, U2 announced to the world it was “packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been” (“Walk On”).
As 1999 turned into 2000, U2 was again at the top of its game with a soul-filled album that netted seven Grammy Awards, four hit singles, and several ancillary projects. Now as seasoned artists, Adam, Edge, Larry, and Bono entered their forties strong and confident, the successful contenders of a twenty-plus-year career. Having experienced both the fortune of fame and the stinging disparagement of their critics, these veterans of rock ’n’ roll had survived without imploding, neither succumbing to internal conflicts nor buckling to the pressures of the music industry. U2 dared, yet again, to imagine the world not as it was but as it should be, believing that a simple musical idea—grace—could shape and influence culture and appealing to listeners as a type of spiritual guide amid the fear and anxiety of a post-9/11 context. In response, fans wholeheartedly accepted this new iteration of U2, seeing the musicians as both rock ’n’ roll royalty and intimate soul mates on the journey of life.
While the first twenty years of U2’s career produced three easily defined sets of trilogies—Boy, War, and October; then The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Rattle and Hum; and finally Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop—the first album of the new millennium, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, was nicely paired with the band’s eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Continuing the themes of essence and love (and despite its explosive name), Atomic Bomb, like its predecessor, stood in contrast to the flagrant excessiveness of the Zoo TV era, favoring a more relatable and accessible style. With the new record, U2 looked back to its past for musical inspiration as it addressed existential issues of life, death, and faith and implemented innovative production and promotional strategies. Along the way, Bono continued to develop his philanthropic interests, raising more than a small amount of concern with the other band members. Nonetheless, Atomic Bomb marks one of the most successful and energetic periods as the band battled the global monsters of poverty and terrorism, and the franchise grew to a colossal size through new business deals.
In its quest for a big rock ’n’ roll album, U2 invited Steve Lillywhite to return as head producer for the new record but also included Flood, Jacknife Lee, Daniel Lanois, and Brian Eno, all previous collaborators with the group. For this project, Lillywhite and company were charged with reshaping and updating the band’s original aggressive sound, resulting in the most mainstream rock album of U2’s career. “Vertigo,” the opening track of the 2004 album, anchored Atomic Bomb with a punk-influenced guitar riff and a driving rhythm section reminiscent of the band’s early club days. Filled with angst and spirit, the song’s aggressive music complemented the lyrical theme of hope amid a dizzying new culture of fear and anxiety and quickly become an international hit. But the success of “Vertigo” was due to something more than just good music and polished lyrics, receiving a huge push from an extraordinary and innovative partnership.
In 2004, U2 surprised the music industry and fans alike by partnering with Apple, creating a first-of-its-kind cross-branding campaign. In collaboration with the legendary computer maker, the band promoted its new album and blurred the lines between music and marketing, culminating in several iconic projects. First, prior to the release of Atomic Bomb, Apple used “Vertigo” in a commercial for its relatively new line of iPods. Introduced along with iTunes in 2001, the iPod had revolutionized the music industry by offering new modes of music storage and distribution at precisely the same time the file-sharing giant Napster was being forced to shut down due to legal challenges of copyright violations. In advance of Atomic Bomb’s release, Apple created an iPod commercial in the style of its “silhouette” campaign that featured U2 performing “Vertigo,” ostensibly cross-promoting both its media player and the band’s new single in one breakthrough moment. Looking more like a music video than an advertisement, the commercial was broadcast widely on television, creating an unprecedented level of publicity for a yet-to-be-released album. In a second trendsetting move, in the United States “Vertigo” was offered exclusively through the iTunes Music Store ahead of the full album’s release, giving fans a chance to download the single directly to their own computers and music players. A third collaboration resulted in the production of a special edition iPod, featuring a red-and-black color scheme (similar to Atomic Bomb’s own album artwork), as well as custom engraving of the band members’ signatures. Finally, the band offered a first-ever digital box set, The Complete U2, containing all of its albums, as well as a significant number of rare and previously unreleased songs. Unparalleled in the music industry, the run-up to the release of Atomic Bomb initiated a long and productive relationship between U2 and Apple.
Not everyone, however, was pleased with the new alliance between the supergroup and a monstrous corporation. Critics immediately accused U2 of selling out to one of the commercial monoliths it had been making fun of in the 1990s. Both Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and the band’s members were quick to defend the partnership, citing the innovative convergence of music, art, pop culture, and technology. Jobs said the collaboration provided a chance to make innovative products together. Jimmy Iovine, the head of U2’s record label (and one of U2’s former producers) supported the relationship as a way to “redefine the music business,” while Edge predicted, “iPod and iTunes look like the future to me and it’s good for everybody involved in music” (“Apple Introduces the U2 iPod”). Reacting to the band’s critics, Larry responded,
[Apple makes] products that we like, also they have single-handedly saved the music industry, they have developed the technology to download the music and for it to be paid for. Record companies couldn’t do that—they were faffing around suing people. We are big fans of Apple, we’re happy to stand up and say that, “yes, these guys design the best stuff.” (Boyd, “Meet the Bomb Squad”)
Though U2 endorsed Apple along with its iTunes and iPod products, the band was quick to point out that it never received any money for its commercial, believing that the television airplay of “Vertigo” was comparable to radio play but using a different medium. Not seen in any way as a compromise, the band gladly partnered with the computer company, welcoming the corporation as an innovative point of distribution in an age of new media. With the release of Atomic Bomb, U2, it seemed, was everywhere, an unstoppable force of resilience on the shifting landscape of an outmoded music industry. To its critics, it had become a voracious commercial marketing giant.
In support of the Atomic Bomb album, U2 crafted a technologically innovative and emotionally provocative tour, called Vertigo, that traveled to arenas and stadiums around the globe in 2005 and 2006. Featuring both indoor and outdoor configurations, the tour spread across five legs, selling out all 110 shows. Continuing a stage element that was implemented on the Elevation tour, U2 again featured a long ramp that extended out into arena audiences, this time in the shape of an ellipse. At many points in the show, either individual members or the entire band would perform in the midst of the audience, making everyone in the arena feel as if they had the best seat in the house. For many fans, their goal was to get inside the ellipse, something only achieved through a random selection process when entering the venue. Primarily used in North American indoor concerts, outdoor shows in other countries reconfigured the stage, replacing the ellipse with two catwalks that led to smaller B-stages in the middle of the stadium.
Again under the direction of Willie Williams, Mark Fisher, and Catherine Owens, the show’s design implemented another piece of state-of-the-art technology. Using tennis-ball-sized LED lights, the designers constructed curtains of lighted beads that hung from floor to ceiling, displaying abstract patterns, colors, maps, symbols, and flags at highly choreographed moments in the concert. When not in use, the curtains were retracted into the rafters, essentially creating two completely different stage sets. The effect was thrilling, artistic, and provocative, as images accented the themes of the songs being played, resulting in a show that blended the minimalism of Elevation and the imagery of PopMart. When U2 played outdoors in stadiums, the curtains were replaced with a massive wall of LED panels, which functioned as a nonmoveable backdrop to the stage. Once again making innovative leaps in staging and lighting design, U2’s production team helped create a dynamic yet intimate concert environment for fans.
While the Vertigo tour set new trends in stage design, it also highlighted some important
and controversial themes of the day, specifically focusing on conflict in the Middle
East. After the terrorist attacks of
9/11 (which happened during the Elevation tour), President George W. Bush organized
a coalition of forces and led an invasion of Iraq. The purpose of the military action
was to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and to disarm the country of weapons of
mass destruction. The incursion led to a protracted war, beginning in 2003 and ending
in 2011, with an estimated death toll of over 500,000 Iraqis—a stark contrast to the
multinational coalition’s loss of 4,491 lives. The “shock and awe” campaign against
Iraq was swift and hard-hitting, largely viewed by the public as an act of retribution
for the terrorist attacks. Critics accused the Bush administration of rushing to blame
Hussein without proper proof and verification, warning that the incursion would destabilize
the Middle East by provoking further sectarianism and extremism in the area. As U2
toured in support of its Atomic Bomb album—and perhaps not coincidentally—Middle Eastern countries were exploding amid
the chaos and violence of fiendish forces both within and without.
U2 highlighted the conflict during an especially poignant set of politically charged songs. With an appeal for dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths in particular, Bono sang, “Lay down your guns / All you daughters of Zion, all you Abraham sons” in “Love and Peace or Else,” a haunting call to Middle Eastern reconciliation. “Lay your love on the track / We’re gonna break the monster’s back” was the plea from U2. Through an effective and seamless transition between tunes, the band ripped into another call to peace with “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” appropriately reinterpreted, this time, as a response to the war in Iraq. During the song, Bono would explain the symbols on a headband he wore: the word coexist incorporated the Muslim Crescent in the letter c, the Jewish Star of David in the x and the Christian cross in the t. With a third song to drive home U2’s critique of warfare as a senseless attempt to resolve conflicts, “Bullet the Blue Sky” also found new and emotive meaning as the LED curtains displayed modern jetfighters, and Edge mimicked the sounds of war with his guitar. In the song’s instrumental bridge, Bono would fall to his knees, blindfolded, with hands crossed over his head, in a startling and provocative demonstration, evoking images of a terrorist execution. Playing the part of a prisoner of war, he then moved to the microphone and sang, “These are the hands that built America,” with a final chorus of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” often adding the tag, “No matter what he see, no matter what he hear, just as long as Johnny comes home safely here.” When performing at outdoor venues, the massive LED backdrop displayed a conspicuous “Coexist,” and Bono would strike a fire, simulating an explosion on one of the smaller B-stages. An obvious and pointed commentary on the American-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, U2 had reinvented its original call to peace and justice through a series of new and old songs alike.
One other moment on the Vertigo tour was quite notable and innovative. Immediately preceding “Pride (in the Name of Love),” the show featured a partial reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ending with the fifth article, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and then the sixth, “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law,” it was a moving reminder of America’s own recent and controversial use of waterboarding during the interrogation of terrorist suspects in Iran. As U2 concluded “Pride,” flags of African nations streamed down the screens, while the band transitioned into “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and Bono reminded audiences that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream was not just an American dream but was also an African dream. With an extended and impassioned plea to consider the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Bono urged concertgoers to join the ONE advocacy campaign by texting a message to the organization as the band sang “One.” It was a remarkable and pioneering use of mobile technology, with some concerts even projecting new ONE members’ names on the screens in real time.
U2’s inclination toward activism wasn’t limited just to the Vertigo tour. The mid-2000s found the band members busy at work calling attention to injustice and poverty. Specifically, Bono continued developing his interest in Africa, speaking on behalf of its people, and furthering his own education about the ongoing plight of sub-Saharan countries. In particular, he began to meet regularly with highly influential political leaders in North America and Europe. Working tirelessly, Bono straddled the aisle of the US Congress, moving between conservatives and liberals, networking with political rivals, making presentations, and promoting an African agenda. Ironically, just a decade earlier, while pedaling the satire of Zoo TV, he often prank called the White House—and was promptly disconnected. But during the Vertigo era, heads of state such as President George W. Bush, US treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, and Senator Jesse Helms, all arch conservatives, eagerly embraced Bono and any positive media attention an encounter with the rock star would bring. For all his effort, Bono was extremely effective in creating alliances, advising policy, and speaking on behalf of those in Africa who had no voice.
While his indefatigable devotion ultimately resulted in increased attention on the situation of sub-Saharan Africa and impacted economic policies in those countries, it also brought criticism in a couple of ways. First, Bono’s critics again cried “Sellout,” interpreting the lead singer’s political activities as akin to sleeping with the enemy. The people Bono was now courting were the very ones he had chastised from the stage in his earlier days. The accusation of “compromise” would follow Bono for many years to come. A second conflict came from within the band itself—Edge, Adam, and Larry’s patience was being tested as Bono ran around the planet on a mission to save Africa while at the same time neglecting the band. The consequences of what many would call Bono’s new “day job” meant less time in the studio, postponed albums, and delayed concert appearances. Though given numerous awards and honors during this period, Bono had jeopardized his relationship with his bandmates and with the most ideological of fans in the process.
Controversies aside, Atomic Bomb and the Vertigo tour were massive triumphs for U2. Apart from the song “Vertigo,” the album found success in three other singles as well, especially on the international front. “All Because of You,” “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” and “City of Blinding Lights” all broke into the Top 10 in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland and charted in the Top 100 around the world. The tour also produced three concert films, of which one was notably innovative. U2 3D, the band’s second theatrical concert release, was the first-ever live-action three-dimensional (3-D) film and was distributed exclusively in IMAX 3-D and other 3-D capable digital theaters. Directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, the film made use of state-of-the-art technology to give viewers a surprisingly realistic concert experience without being gimmicky. And while U2 3D depicts the main flow of a typical concert on the Vertigo tour, including the political and social themes, it is especially impressive in its presentation of “The Fly.” Picking up where Zoo TV left off, the film displays the song’s cacophony of messages as 3-D images that cascade down the screen in front of the band, emphasizing the words themselves, confronting viewers with the power of text. Beautiful, stimulating, and pioneering, U2 3D again showed the band’s enthusiasm for using the latest technology to deliver its message. Rounding out a prominent list of successes in this period, U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, a sign of the band’s nearly unprecedented accomplishments.
On the Vertigo tour, Bono was fond of using the phrase “Don’t become a monster in order to defeat a monster,” an idea found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 146: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” A key theme of both the album and the supporting tour, U2 delivered its worldwide countermessage of love and peace as an antidote for a post-9/11 culture of anxiety, suspicion, and terror. Now a global presence, Bono became a tenacious activist, negotiating legislation on behalf of Africa and calling national leaders to accountability, defying behemoth systems and institutions alike. In the process, he and the band were often criticized for collaborating and compromising with the enemy, accused of filling their own monstrous appetites for fame, success, and wealth at any cost.
Bono has said that he and the band don’t write the songs as much as the songs write them, often unaware of the significance a lyric will come to have. The period of Leave Behind and Atomic Bomb provides good examples of this. When writing “Walk On,” U2 could not have known that its song would eventually function as an anthem for a city, and a country, devastated by the worst act of terrorism the world had ever witnessed. Nor could the band foresee that its classic hits from an earlier era, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Bullet the Blue Sky,” would find new meaning against a backdrop of violence as forces invaded a volatile Middle East. Now in midlife, Larry, Edge, Adam, and Bono were able to look back in awe at the way their music, their career, and their colossal organization had developed, both proud of and pensive about the journey. Edge’s reflections during his acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exemplify the wisdom he and his friends had gleaned over the years:
Above all else what U2 have tried to avoid over the last twenty years is not being completely crap. But next on the list down from that was to avoid being typical and predictable and ordinary. . . . And as far as U2 goes, I’ve stopped trying to figure out how, or more importantly when our best moments are going to come along. But I think that’s why we’re still awake. And that’s why we’re still paying attention. We know in the end that it is magic. And so we end up waiting. (U2, “Transcript”)
Indeed, waiting had helped the band produce some of its best material, and waiting was something that both U2 and its fans would have to do again as the band entered another long period of indecision, struggling for a fresh sound and a pertinent message. And though U2’s view of the horizon looked promising as it packed away the LED curtains of the Vertigo tour, the way forward ended up being far more murky and unsure than the band could have anticipated.