My world changed on November 18, 1987. Sitting at the top of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, I was ambushed by a phenomenon that was greater than the sum of its four parts. It was a synergy of music, words, images, lights, and decibels. Lots of decibels. But the magnitude of volume wasn’t limited to just sound. That night there was an explosion of passion, mood, and spirit. It started big and only got bigger. Out of the darkness came the hymn-like strains of an organ, slowly growing in intensity. As U2 took the stage, the Olympic torch on the Coliseum burst into flame. Then came the unmistakable 6/8 rhythm of Edge’s guitar intro, the pounding of Larry’s kick drum and toms, Adam’s driving quarter notes, and a blinding flash of white light that flooded the audience. By the time Bono sang “I want to run,” the opening line of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” we were higher than the stadium itself. It was the first time I’d heard a seventy-thousand-voice choir, and I almost believed the band had come to see us perform rather than the other way around. I became a follower.
My fascination with U2 began in 1985 with a simple record—a mini-album that bore a sticker advertising a reduced price. Under a Blood Red Sky (1983) contained eight live songs and only cost a few bucks. It was a great deal and a great introduction to U2, encapsulating much of what the band had come to stand for during the first five years of its career. Every song demonstrated a passionate live performance, each carrying the emotion of a full concert on its own. The themes articulated on this small album were varied yet all engaging: conflict, war, suffering, peace, celebration, unconditional love, and even a little bit of Latin liturgy. This was complex stuff, the kind of catchy rock ’n’ roll that could be listened to while driving home from a long day of work and also meaty enough to provide ample conversation with thoughtful friends well into the night. But most fascinating to me was this post-punk Irish band’s use of scripture—both the opening and closing tracks referenced the ancient book of Psalms. “Gloria” kicked the album off with the chorus “Gloria in te Domine / Gloria exultate” (loosely translated from Latin: “Glory in you, Lord / Glory, exalt him”), and “40” concluded the record with the crowd chanting a three-thousand-year-old refrain of “How long, to sing this song?” I was mesmerized.
In the pre-Internet era of my first U2 album, I really didn’t know much about the band. There was an occasional article or a conversation with another fan who had heard a random rumor about the group, but all I really had was the primary text of the songs. I began to dissect the lyrics, analyzing each and every line. U2’s first three albums, Boy (1980), October (1981), and War (1983), had slipped by me, except for a few popular songs that made it onto American radio stations; I eventually went back and picked those albums up. After Blood Red Sky came The Unforgettable Fire (1984), a very odd-sounding album with an almost ambient, ethereal quality; The Joshua Tree (1987), a must-have, trendsetting record of the 1980s; and then Rattle and Hum (1988), which appeared both as an album and a movie. I’ll never forget leaving the theater after watching it—what had I just seen? Was it a documentary? A concert video? A feature film? Were these guys righteous activists or just sanctimonious celebrities? I wasn’t quite sure, but I was definitely intrigued all the more.
And then I abandoned the group for a while. I wasn’t alone. Many fans who had come to rely on U2’s straightforward approach to music and activism were confounded by the next series of albums. I loved Achtung Baby (1991), but the sensual language felt carnal and foreign. And when band members dressed in drag for the album cover, it seemed like a reversal of their squeaky-clean, choir-boy lifestyles. There was a lot to love about the record (the first U2 I’d purchased on CD), including its fervent spirit and creative production, but the unambiguous sensuality left me confused. And here’s a confession I’m hesitant to make as the author of a book in which I claim to be a fan: I didn’t even purchase the experimental-sounding Zooropa (1993) and the dance-themed Pop (1997), the band’s next two albums. As I saw it (along with many others), U2 had become the band of press conferences in a Kmart lingerie department (which they actually did!). The group appeared to have sold out. I eventually learned it was all part of an elaborate, calculated commentary on culture by a band that was immersing itself in the milieu it was attempting to critique. I was the unwitting victim of a very intentional, brilliant hoax. Though I ultimately bought the albums (and loved them), U2’s grand experiment in irony and misdirection, apparently, had worked a little too well, resulting in low sales and less loyalty from fans.
In 2000, U2 began releasing another set of albums that won a lot of fans back, primarily because the new records reflected the earlier, more accessible sounds and themes of a younger U2, but this time with the seasoned voice of experience and age. All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) marked the beginning of a new millennium with a fresh spirit of hope and joy. It took on even deeper meaning when terrorists brought down the World Trade Center buildings in New York, prompting the band to become an agent of healing in a climate of chaos and fear. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) continued building on themes of peace, faith, and reconciliation and ushered in a new generation of U2 fans with the punk-influenced riffs of “Vertigo” and a call to take action against senseless global poverty. It felt like the band had returned to its musical and ideological roots. No Line on the Horizon (2009) represented fresh sonic territory for the group. It was filled with lavish sounds and compelling stories, and though the album underperformed in sales, it captured the hearts and souls of faithful listeners through its personal narratives of pain and conflict, as well as those of joy and grace. As the members of U2 moved into their fifties—their fourth decade of making music together—they faced a bit of an identity crisis, resulting in their longest gap between records. The outcome, eventually, was Songs of Innocence (2014), a retrospective album focusing on the group’s earliest years as it navigated the turbulent waters of a violent Dublin. Creating one of its most intimate and emotive supporting tours, U2 demonstrated it could still generate relevant, artistic, and popular content. The band had transcended stereotypes characteristic of other legacy acts in the music industry and had migrated to undiscovered territory. No rock ’n’ roll group had survived this long while maintaining the ability to create new, critically acclaimed material with all the original members intact. U2 had become a one-of-a-kind supergroup.
U2 is a quartet of men who came together as teens in a time when their world—Ireland—was plagued with violence and religious sectarianism. They formally joined forces in 1976 in response to a note posted on the school bulletin board by a young novice drummer hoping to start his own band. Larry Mullen, Jr., the author of the note, was just fourteen years old when he and a handful of classmates from Mount Temple Comprehensive gathered around a drum set that filled the kitchen in his small Dublin home one Saturday in September. Adam Clayton showed up that day and brought his own bass guitar. At sixteen years old, he also had a sense of rock ’n’ roll swagger that immediately caught the others’ attention. Dave Evans, a nerdy fifteen-year-old who had built his own guitar, also responded. Later he would be rechristened “Edge” (also “the Edge”) by his artsy friends. Sixteen-year-old Paul Hewson tried to play guitar but didn’t do so with much proficiency. He did, however, have lots of charisma and energy and loved to sing. Taking the name “Bono,” he quickly became the lead singer and front man of the new band.
The early years were filled with lots of trial and error for this quirky group of teens who had more soul than talent. Known first as Feedback, then the Hype, and finally as U2, the band experimented with different configurations of vocals and instruments, finally settling on a solid combo of drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, and lead singer. Relentlessly pursuing their new passion, the four boys endured personal hardships, overcame youthful inexperience, and blazed new territory as a rock band in the middle of a repressive Irish context, accepting any and every opportunity to perform. Indeed, it was their live performances that quickly set them apart from a flurry of other groups emerging around the same time. Almost by chance, the adolescent band discovered a love for the stage but, even more so, loved the connections that were made with audiences it performed to from the stage. Very early on, U2 became well known for impassioned, spirited, and aggressive concerts that often overshadowed unrefined ability.
In addition to an engaging stage presence, U2 also anchored its formative period in a set of values that looked oddly counter to the rock ’n’ roll environment of its day. Inescapably impacted by the violence of religious sectarianism so prominent in Ireland, the band cultivated a spirit of reconciliation and hospitality in the middle of a deeply divided culture and rejected dominant religious institutional frameworks. Still—and perhaps as an alternate to the austerity of organized Christianity—three of U2’s members became profoundly committed to a “born-again” Christian communal movement, preferring Bible studies in the back of the tour bus to raucous parties after concerts. Eventually, all four of U2’s members would claim a less rigid form of Christianity as a foundational component of the group. Also in response to Ireland’s repressive Catholic culture, U2 infused its music with a rare blend of activism. Inspired by difficult social conditions and topics that were considered taboo in the church, the band championed equality, justice, and peace and sought to infuse concerts with meaningful content. Another early value was U2’s commitment to community, as it both built a fan base and fostered a relational component not often seen in the cutthroat music industry. Despite being in its musical infancy, U2 emphasized live performance, maximum engagement with audiences, social activism, spirituality, and community. Though these core values were intuitive to the young band, they continued to evolve in ways that later helped shape a forty-year career and launched the four neophytes on a mission to change the world.
My purpose in writing this book is to demonstrate that U2 provides a unique case study for understanding how popular musicians both have the opportunity to influence culture and are themselves conversely shaped by the culture they inhabit, revealing a dynamic and vibrant, ever-changing interplay of artistic expression and social engagement. Coming together as teens in 1976, Adam, Larry, Bono, and Edge were unaware that they were about to embark on a decades-long global adventure. While they certainly had lofty aspirations, the formation of a band was more of an experiment than a calculated strategic assault on rock ’n’ roll. U2 became an icon through hard work as well as by being in the right places at the right times, surrounded by the right people. At every step of the band’s development, its members acted out of instinct and mission while also responding and adapting to the context of its day. Now, U2 serves as a powerful and relevant model for understanding how artists and culture shape one another.
The trajectory of this book moves from the youthful idealism of a band barely able to play instruments, through multiple phases of artistic expression and cultural engagement, to an examination of faith and activism as consistent expressions evidenced over the band’s entire career. Chapter 1 examines the complicated interplay of Ireland’s political, social, and religious history, including a violent period known as the Troubles. U2 formed in a context that directly led to the group’s unique vision and mission to transform the world around it. Dublin in the 1970s provided the impetus, and Mount Temple Comprehensive offered a safe space for the members to discover and develop a love for the arts while living in the middle of a gloomy context of drugs, poverty, and violence.
Chapter 2 traces the growth of the young band, specifically through the production of the first three albums. Full of hope and idealism, U2’s optimistic spirit compelled the members to seek out and offer alternatives to the banal world around them. Three of the four teens even became members of an outlying religious community, an experience that would later influence the entire band. The young group also quickly came to realize the power of technology and media and embraced an upstart cable channel called MTV in this era. Chapter 3 follows the development of a much more experienced U2 as the band exploded in popularity and rose to conquer the music industry. With America as its backdrop in the 1980s, U2 played to massive venues and both enjoyed and wrestled with newfound fame while consistently offering a blend of rock music and brazen social conscience.
Chapter 4 delineates a bold period of satire and irony in which the band made a radical shift away from overt political and social statements, instead opting for a progressive, experimental style through which it engaged its own internal demons. Inspired by the rapidly changing landscape of post–Cold War Europe in the 1990s, U2 mystified and thrilled fans with grand staging and theatrics while tackling the taboo subjects of ego, pride, greed, sexuality, and more. As it examined its own soul, the band challenged the world to do the same. Chapter 5 marks yet another shift in the musical and thematic style of U2. Searching to redefine itself on the cusp of a new millennium, the group discarded the artsy and introspective approach of the previous decade, replacing it with intimacy and authenticity in a post-9/11 era of Middle Eastern conflict and global terrorism. Staging for live performances became an experiment in community, and marketing turned to partnerships with monstrous corporations. As seasoned veterans of the music industry, Adam, Larry, Bono, and Edge celebrated family and career with a graceful message of love. Chapter 6 examines the most recent period of a long career and traces U2’s movement into new and uncharted territory as a band with unparalleled fame, fortune, and success. Resisting the temptation to become a top-hits legacy act, U2 and its formidable franchise pressed on to create state-of-the-art tours while also searching, once again, for relevancy in an age of new media and technology.
The final two chapters veer away from a strict chronological investigation to a discussion of underpinning foundational values of U2. Chapter 7 gives an overview of how U2 both has been shaped by spiritual faith and also has contributed to a unique understanding and application of that faith. Through an integration of Christianity and the arts, U2 has blazed a trail across religious institutionalism in a way that has brought both the favor and disdain of organized Christianity, transcending common approaches to religious music. Chapter 8 closes the book with a look at U2’s—and specifically Bono’s—commitment to social activism by examining the causes the group has supported through albums, concerts, and special projects. Learning lessons from experiments such as Live Aid early on in its career, the band helped pioneer a new form of philanthropy, consistently engaged cultural issues, and challenged audiences—all signature pieces of a forty-year career.
U2 has always sought to disrupt culture; a desire to challenge listeners and operate differently as an organization has been part of the band’s DNA. At the same time, it has played by, and indeed mastered, the rules of a ferocious and daunting music industry. The result is a complex portrait of a musical act that has consistently spoken with a countercultural voice against the injustices facing a global village but has also used every modern, corporate, and commercial agency at its disposal to advance its own cause. U2 is really a study in contradictions: in one decade, fighting against synth pop but in another using it as a musical anchor; at one point, prank calling the White House and ten years later being warmly invited into the Oval Office; in one era, ranting about the evils of American conservatism but in a more recent one championing the virtues of corporate capitalism; early on, rejecting organized religion but later catering to megachurches. Certainly, some of U2’s movement across social, religious, economic, and political spectrums can be chalked up to developmental issues—maturity, experience, wisdom, family. But more importantly, the long and very public career of U2 provides an opportunity to examine the dynamism and fluidity of a group of artists whose beliefs and practices have been and continue to be in progress.
U2 is remarkably self-aware regarding its apparent contradictions over the years. As the wealthy, established, and successful lead singer flies around the world, speaking in front of global leaders, it seems impossible that he wouldn’t remember the disdain he had for such people as his band was being formed. This type of contradiction was brilliantly demonstrated on the Innocence + Experience tour in 2015 when Bono would talk to his younger self during a reflective, almost painfully introspective moment of prose in “Bullet the Blue Sky”:
So this boy comes up to me, his face red like a rose on a thorn bush, like all the colors of a royal flush, a young man with a young man’s blush. And this boy, he looks a whole lot like me. He stuck his face into my face, and he asked me, “Have you forgotten who you are? Have you forgotten where you come from? You’re Irish, but here you are, smiling, and making out with the powerful, like you’re really there for the powerless.” (U2: Innocence + Experience)
Bono continued the argument with his adolescent self later in the song:
Now the boy is behind a police line. And I’m on the other side of a barricade to myself, age 19. Other side of the barricade now, other side of the barricade. The boy keeps shouting, shouting, “We don’t want you in our revolution. You’re part of the problem, not the solution!” (U2: Innocence + Experience)
The rant is an amazing admission: speaking and acting on behalf of U2, Bono understands the paradox of becoming something he once railed against—the very thing that a teenage version of himself would have detested—but is still invested in the same core issues. With the album Songs of Innocence, U2 comes full circle to its simple beginnings, again emphasizing an activism that leads to engagement with the world around. But rather than standing in the exact same place it had once been, simply mimicking the opinions of forty years ago, the band has spiraled up and now stands over and above the original place with new experiences, reinterpreting old memories and adapting original beliefs in fresh ways. The result is a deeper, more refined understanding of the interplay between art and culture.
On U2’s second album, October, Bono sang, “I can’t change the world / But I can change the world in me.” As the young, self-aware idealist entered his twenties, he knew that changing the world would be difficult, if not impossible, but found inner transformation more hopeful. In 2015, on the band’s thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, the fifty-plus-year-old veteran front man offered a revised perspective and a new variant of the old lyric, this time in “Lucifer’s Hands”: “I can change the world / But I can’t change the world in me.” Having spent decades pursuing an activist agenda and experiencing significant victories in the battle against global poverty along the way, Bono and his band had learned that, ultimately, changing the world is actually easier than changing the self. On the Innocence + Experience tour, he would often comment that external enemies are much easier to identify than internal ones.
Every culturally relevant artist faces at least two worlds when confronting the reality he or she seeks to critique: the inner and the outer. Even a young U2 was able to recognize the tension between internal idealism and external forces. During an interview with Dave Fanning in 1979, the nineteen-year-old Bono was articulate and insightful about U2’s approach to the music business:
It’s a big industry. There’s a lot of people trying to stand on us. . . . Rather than pretending that it’s not there . . . we’d like to join that race, and in fact, beat the people that are involved, and make use of it rather than just go talking against it. We are teenagers, we are young. There is the big chance that we will be exploited, but we hope we’re not stupid. (Bono, “Audio. Bono, August 1979, RTÉ Radio, Ireland”)
U2 was already caught between its artistic desire and what an industry required, being told by promoters to play traditional Irish music and cover popular tunes. Bono was emphatic in his opposition to this as the band toured Ireland, even before recording its first album:
Because we play an original set, we have certain difficulties. . . . We’re expected [by promoters] to treat [fans] like simple people. . . . This is not true of us. There’s people in those towns who want to hear what [we] have to say. . . . They’re really smart. (Bono, “Audio. Bono, August 1979, RTÉ Radio, Ireland”)
Neither U2 nor the rapidly growing and increasingly loyal fan base would settle for the typical fare of an average band. Bono, Edge, Adam, and Larry were on a quest for something bigger, and they welcomed their fans to join. Speaking with Fanning, Bono reiterated,
The reason we joined up in the first place was not just to be part of any one movement . . . but was basically disillusionment with the crap that was going on in the top thirty, and we thought we’d have something to say. That’s what we’re about and we’re trying to put what we have to say on a record. That’s our ambition. (Bono, “Audio. Bono, August 1979, RTÉ Radio, Ireland”)
Nearly four decades later, Bono again reflected on his band’s mission and purpose. Commenting on a phrase often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi—“Go into all the world to preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words”—Bono said, “I love that one. Actions, actions, actions. It’s about being useful, and that’s what I want to be” (McGirt, “Bono”).
Conscious of its ability to say something and do something, U2 continues pursuing an arduous balance of the internal and external, seeking to both unsettle as well as adapt to a rapidly changing culture. Some will judge the mission of U2 as successful; some not. And though critics might disagree about the end product, there is little doubt that the members of U2 have, at minimum, changed their own worlds and at best made a virtuous mark on a global scale, all while being shaped and nuanced by the very culture they have sought to disrupt.