Imagining a world without U2 is difficult because—unlike any other band—this Irish quartet, featuring Bono (lead vocal), Edge (guitar), Adam Clayton (bass), and Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums), has both thoroughly shaped and been shaped by the culture it has inhabited over a forty-year journey. Indeed, interaction with the world, including political, social, and spiritual connecting points, is such a key part of U2’s art and mission that fans consider it normal, appropriate, and desirable. The band’s sense of community, activism, and faith has resulted in a global fraternity filled with faithful disciples, each drawn to a supergroup that has been as much a force on its environment as it has been a consequence of that environment. On the surface, it may seem that this well-oiled twenty-first-century megafranchise carefully crafts a product and hones its message, but in subtle ways—and sometimes glaringly obvious ones—the events and circumstances of the band members’ childhoods, as well as the war-torn history of the island where they formed, play an even greater part in shaping its message. Simply put, the band’s story is inseparable from Ireland’s story. This give and take with culture is part of a creative process that has characterized U2’s work for four decades, and it is why so many fans across the planet are intrigued—and even compelled—to listen and learn from U2.
Ireland’s early history is an interplay of political conflict and religious friction. Ultimately, competing ideologies on this small island collided in an eruption of anger and violence, giving way to the twentieth-century conflict known as the Troubles. Additionally, U2’s hometown of Dublin, unlike any other city in Ireland, provided the progressive environment the band needed for discovering its creative heart and soul. Here, members of U2, even in the throngs of the Troubles, were able to break through traditional sectarianism by befriending both Protestants and Catholics, attend an experimental high school free from the constraints of religious indoctrination, and foster lifelong friendships with other growing artists and musicians. On the one hand, mid-twentieth-century Dublin was a wild hub of poverty, drugs, anger, and street gangs, but on the other, and perhaps as a result of it, the capital city of Ireland provided the context for reflection and limitless opportunities in artistic formation. The historical and cultural milieu in which U2 formed was the result of centuries of Irish history, as well as the last few decades of modern events leading up to the 1970s.
Ironically, Songs of Innocence, the band’s thirteenth and most recent studio album, is the place to start for hearing U2 comment on its own prehistory. Filled with memories and reflections about childhood, the album functions as an anthology of sorts and provides ample content for addressing the earliest years of the foursome. In the lead track, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone),” Bono sings, “We were pilgrims on our way.” Therein lies the irony: after forty years of collaboration, culminating with the oft-declared title of “world’s greatest band,” the members of U2 can now look back with perspective to see themselves as young teens, better understanding how individual pieces of the past shape a much broader picture in the present.
U2 formed in the 1970s amid the turmoil of religious sectarianism, political conflict, economic hardship, and cultural isolation, some of which dates back to earliest days of Irish civilization. Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick, is credited with bringing Christianity to the island’s inhabitants in the fifth century, ushering in the Catholic faith, and by the beginning of the seventh century, a high kingship emerged, loosely uniting a jumbled assortment of smaller kingdoms. For three hundred years, the Irish experienced relative peace and stability, but that all changed as waves of Viking invaders set their sights on this new kingdom.
In the second half of the twelfth century, largely in an effort to unify Ireland and bring the church back into alignment with Roman Catholicism, an alliance between Henry II, king of England, and the English pope Adrian IV led to the successful conquering of the island, inaugurating an era of English rule. Henry II quickly became sovereign and forced the submission of the Irish kings and lords. Additionally, English peasants were sent to Ireland to settle and work there, a tactic still used throughout the world as a means of transforming a foreign territory by displacing an indigenous culture with the language, law, and customs of the invading power. The struggle between Ireland’s native culture and English rule continued for centuries.
Henry VIII successfully reasserted the English Crown’s authority in the sixteenth century and once again united the hodgepodge of Irish territories. His method of colonization, however, was brutal. Many Irish peasants suffered and died due to a combination of war, famine, disease, and dislocation. Henry imposed English law, restricted nationals, and punished dissenters. Promoting his newly authorized Church of England—a symbol of defiance against the increasingly aggressive Catholic Church in Rome—the king closed Irish monasteries, confiscated lands, and established a Protestant “Church of Ireland” in 1537. During this period, religious and political sectarianism reached new and dangerous heights for the Irish people.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English government continued to confiscate land and deny rights and political offices to Irish Catholics. Dissatisfaction with British rule culminated in 1798 as angry peasants rebelled, attempting to create an Ireland free and independent from England. The revolt was unsuccessful but highlighted the need for autonomy and revitalized the Irish spirit. With the turn of the century, British and Irish Parliaments negotiated to create a new structure of governance, and on January 1, 1801, Ireland and Great Britain merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
It wasn’t just politics and religion that threatened the peace of Ireland. Environmental issues also worked to destabilize the country in massive proportions. In the 1840s, the Great Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine, devastated Ireland as blight ravaged potato crops. More than one million people died, and a million more fled to the United States. Ireland’s population has never fully recovered. The famine also exacerbated already tense sectarianism. Poor Irish Catholics, who relied on the potato as a food staple, were affected in far greater proportions than the English, who had privilege, wealth, and, most importantly, land ownership. To the Irish people, the British government seemed disinterested in their suffering, and many suspected that England, the world’s most prosperous empire, was using the famine for political advantage. When Ireland emerged from the Great Famine, the majority language had changed from Irish to English, indicating a clear cultural shift on the island.
Irish nationals who had not fled to new lands found themselves at increasing odds with the British government and progressively more divided among themselves over possible responses. The “Home Rule” movement dominated political conversation from the 1870s through the turn of the century. Home Rulers sought self-rule, believing that Ireland should be a free country, completely separate and unobstructed by British oversight. This demand for Irish autonomy was formally authorized in a limited sense by the British Parliament in 1914. However, the Home Rule legislation allowed for six counties in the north to remain under the rule of England. These six counties later became Northern Ireland, while the rest of the country took the name Republic of Ireland. Nevertheless, skirmishes with the British, guerilla activity, and even a civil war continued to destabilize the island in the early twentieth century, and the newly formed Irish Republican Army (IRA) became a militant voice for complete independence. A treaty in 1921 with the British government secured total autonomy for Ireland proper but also confirmed Northern Ireland as a permanent ward of the United Kingdom. This arrangement officially became known as the partition of Ireland.
Though Ireland continued to divide along geopolitical lines, one of the most drastic distinctions, and one that bears significantly on any discussion of U2, is seen in the religious segregation that continued to compartmentalize the island. The dominant religion of Ireland has always been Christianity, but Northern Ireland favored Protestantism, keeping a tight association with the Church of England, while the rest of the island leaned toward Roman Catholicism. The religious schism dividing the country pitted those who followed the pope against those who were faithful to the king. This distinction cannot be overstated. By the mid-twentieth century, the people of Northern Ireland had more resources, were more Protestant, and had a higher regard for the British Empire than those who lived elsewhere. Catholics, on the other hand, were discriminated against, opposed the partitioning of Ireland, and rejected British rule.
Despite the partitioning of Ireland, divisions continued to intensify as violence and paramilitary activities propelled the country toward decades of conflict and fear. The IRA emerged in several forms as a terrorist organization seeking the reunification of Ireland, resulting in fierce clashes with British forces and with Northern Ireland Protestants. While the IRA fought for a united and autonomous Ireland, the unionists stood in opposition. Unionists, and the more violent loyalists, favored alliance with the British and actively worked to retain Northern Ireland’s integration with the United Kingdom. Many unionists were landowners and feared that separation from England might ruin them, potentially curtailing their own rights and threatening their financial interests. Most of the conflict occurred in the north, but fighting also took place in Dublin and London. Amid a backdrop of religious, political, and economic contention, the era would become infamously known as the Troubles.
Centuries of fighting and disagreement between Irish nationals and the British government had taken its toll, and a perfect storm began to form as competing interests and ideologies converged on an island smaller than the state of Indiana. Lasting from the late 1960s through the late 1990s, the Troubles marked thirty years of violence for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, occasionally spilling over into England and mainland Europe. During this time, thirty-six hundred people were killed and thousands more injured. The northern cities of Belfast and Derry were hardest hit by the conflict and were the sites of repeated violent confrontation between three aggressive ideologies: Catholic nationalists, Protestant unionists/loyalists, and the British military.
In the mid-1960s, civil rights issues gained attention in Ireland and highlighted the plight of the Catholic population. Nationalists in Northern Ireland, unfairly treated for centuries, actively sought the end of job and housing segregation, equal voting rights for those who did own property (Protestants) and those who did not (Catholics), and reform of the Protestant-controlled police force. Unionists, who controlled the northern government and allied closely with Britain, feared a shift in power. Tensions continued to rise as violent groups on both sides fanned the fires of discontent, leading to riots, bombings, and other paramilitary activities.
In 1972, just about the time the members of U2 were entering adolescence, nearly five hundred people were killed, most of them civilians. Belfast was a war zone, filled with British troops and heavily restricted by curfews. As the city spiraled into chaos, the British government suspended the ability of Northern Ireland’s parliament to rule itself, thus pitting nationalists, unionists, and the British army against each other in a three-way tug-of-war for control. Wave after wave of explosions, ambushes, and incursions in Belfast, Derry, and Dublin to the south left the island’s inhabitants dejected and war weary.
As U2 recorded its first set of albums in the early 1980s, violence continued, often in an almost predictable pattern including terrorist bombings, executions by authorities, and retaliatory attacks, while paramilitary groups secured the support of international governments and acquired illegal munitions. Several infamous dates live on in Ireland’s memory, all instigated by the IRA and ending in significant loss of life and injuries. On October 12, 1984, the terrorist group set off a bomb in a Brighton hotel where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other politicians were staying. In Newry, on February 28, 1985, a police station was attacked with mortar fire. And most notably, on November 8, 1987, at a Remembrance Day parade honoring military veterans in Enniskillen, an explosion killed eleven people and injured sixty-three others. The incident occurred just hours before a concert in Denver during The Joshua Tree tour and deeply affected the band, prompting a highly charged and emotional rant from Bono about the violence in Ireland during “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which later appeared in the film Rattle and Hum.
Bombings and executions continued in the 1990s, and though ceasefires were occasionally put in place, they had limited effect as both nationalist and unionist paramilitary groups fought each other. Finally, in 1998 the main political parties of Northern Ireland met together and negotiated a truce known as the Good Friday Agreement, which allowed for a multiparty political structure and defined the relationship between the Irish and British governments. The agreement found widespread acceptance across the north and south and officially ended the violence of three decades. Without a doubt, the era of the Troubles shaped the mission of U2, both consciously and unconsciously, and found its way into the group’s music, performances, and activism.
Dublin today is a trophy city, a shining symbol of Ireland’s tenacious ability to rise above its troubled past. Settled more than a thousand years ago during the Viking Age, this capital city is now recognized as a world-class urban center and is known for industry, finance, education, and art. But Dublin’s warm and inviting reputation is fairly newfound. By many accounts, Ireland in the 1970s was a repressive environment. The heavy-handed, conservative nature of the Catholic Church tended to stifle creative expression, favoring temperance and conformity. Music journalist Neil McCormick says, “Officially there was no homosexuality in Ireland. Along with no contraception, no divorce, no abortion and (if the Catholic church had its way) no sex for any unmarried person not engaged in the procreation of good Catholic babies” (McCormick, Killing Bono, 66). Living in the republic was a monocultural, monochromatic, monotonous experience.
Dreary and bleak conditions in Dublin in the 1970s only accentuated the banality of life in the southern part of the island. Four decades prior to U2’s formation, the city more closely reflected the gloomy nature of its Irish name, Dubhlind: the “black/dark” (dubh) “pool” (lind) on the River Liffey. Along with waves of emigration that drained the country of its uninspired citizenry, musical artists found themselves a part of the exodus. A host of bands that called Ireland home escaped as quickly as their fame would provide for passage to another world. Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, and Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats all set sail for more creative ports. With high unemployment and low expectations, the island was a place to leave, not embrace.
The Dublin of U2’s childhood, though nestled in the heart of the republic, was not isolated from the violence of the north. As the Troubles spilled over onto the streets of the city, the blood of the dead and wounded seeped into the consciousness of its youth. Riots in 1972, protesting the shooting of twenty-six unarmed civilians by British soldiers up north in Derry (an event which would later be known as the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre and immortalized in U2’s song of the same name), culminated in the burning of the British embassy in Dublin. Multiple bombings in the city center throughout 1972 and 1973 left another wake of dead and injured. But the worst of the bombings happened close to where Bono and his friends lived and left a permanent impression.
May 17, 1974, found expression four decades later on U2’s album Songs of Innocence in “Raised by Wolves.” Filled with anger and despair, the song is a retelling of the day’s events. “Wolves” is a snapshot of what Bono remembers as four car bombs were detonated, killing thirty-three people. In the album’s liner notes, Bono recalls, “On May 17th I rode my bike to school that day and dodged one of the bloodiest moments in a history that divided an island.” Written from the perspective of a best friend, Andy Rowen, the song commemorates the Talbot Street explosion, which Andy and his father saw as they drove by in their family van. In a Rolling Stone interview, Bono says, “The bomb tore apart the street. I escaped but one of my mates was around the corner with his father, and it was a very hard thing for him to witness and I’m not sure he really got over it” (“U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’”). Bono relives the tragedy in “Wolves,” singing, “I’m in a white van as a red sea covers the ground,” and “5:30 on a Friday night / 33 good people cut down.”
The horrific event scarred Rowen and became a catalyst for his heroin addiction. As Bono explained in the album notes, “The scene never left him, he turned to one of the world’s great pain killers to deal with it, we wrote about him in our song, ‘Bad.’ Andy says, ‘Heroin is a great pain killer until it kills you.’” Pain, despair, and heartache experienced in their hometown affected the members of U2 even before they were a band and shaped a corporate conscience within them that would later be the impetus for addressing strife and injustice around the world.
Alongside the Troubles, Dublin also faced pressure from another sector. Throughout the city’s conflicted history, it had suffered the effects of an extensive succession of slums and tenement encampments. In the 1960s, city planners began a very active campaign to reduce the severity of these conditions and to move the city’s urban poor into modern housing. Tens of thousands of people were relocated out of the slums into the suburbs at the outskirts of the city. Though this solved the problem of unwanted and unsightly pockets of poverty throughout the heart of Dublin, the planning was shortsighted and produced unintended results as huge populations of people were displaced and then moved to new communities. Bono lived on the edge of Ballymun, one of the new suburbs. Far from being the progressive solutions they were touted to be, these untried experiments in social engineering became stagnate pools of crime, drug abuse, and unemployment.
As a child, Bono watched the new suburbs being built around his family. Though he lived on Cedarwood Road, a decent street with kind residents and open fields behind his small home, the project to relocate urban families drastically changed his neighborhood. At first, the high-rise apartments seemed bold and modern, but there were inadvertent negative outcomes. Bono remembers, “They took people out of the inner city and forced them to live there and broke up communities and there was a lot of unhappiness and trouble. The towers housed some very heavy gangs, so even though we lived on a nice little road we had two fairly rough neighbourhoods on either side of us” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 16). The projects, including the seven towers, West Finglas, and Ballymun, were dangerous places. In an interview with journalist Michka Assayas, Bono recalls,
Violence, as I told you, is the thing I remember the most from my teenage years and earlier. . . . [The projects] started very quickly to descend into a dangerous place. Lifts would break down. People’d get very upset that you’d have to walk up the stairs. I remember walking up the stairs to see my friends, it was piss coming down the stairs, and stink. These were really nice families, good families, living next to people who were sociophobes, who were feeling freaked out about their new address. So when we used to go for a walk in the fields, we could come across the gangs from the Seven Towers, and that was the jungle. (Assayas, Bono, 112)
Amid the fervor to rebuild Dublin, the communities that became home to tens of thousands of residents lacked shops, gas stations, transportation, and other amenities. Nothing more than huge warehouses for people, these compounds of sterile, cookie-cutter housing units were breeding grounds for vice and crime, leaving packs of teens without purpose or ambition to wander a jungle of cement wastelands.
In addition to the violence, these new housing projects triggered another unplanned consequence: heroin. From the late 1970s into the 1990s, Dublin suffered the destructive effects of drug addiction and crime. Compounded with poor housing and poverty, heroin became commonplace and brought with it uncontrollable waves of vice, including muggings, robberies, and organized crime. Bono recalls,
The drugs came in, round 1978. There was very cheap heroin. The people who were smoking dope ended up smoking heroin, as they gave it to them for nothing. And then when people were really strung out, that became an unbelievably violent place. (Assayas, Bono, 112–13)
It was in this Dublin—a black, murky pool of poverty, unemployment, crime, drug addiction, and poor housing—that four teens began to find their own voices as they placed themselves, whether intentionally or by chance, into a much larger story than each of them could experience on their own. And it was four influences in particular that shaped them into a singularly unique set of artists. First, each had a specific family situation—sometimes supportive and nurturing, other times filled with pain and disappointment—that affected their development. A second influence was the educational experience they shared at Mount Temple, where they all discovered their love for music and for each other. Friends, a third influence, also contributed to their formation, often being the catalyst for creative endeavors and unexpected connections. Finally, musical role models and mentors provided the impetus for the content and style of their young yet visionary artistic journey. Under the constant sway of these cultural influences, four teens began to discover an identity and mission for life.
Psychologists and therapists often use the term family of origin to talk about the family in which someone grew up, including parents, siblings, and any other relatives that occupied a childhood home. All of these relational networks strongly influence how a person develops from child to adolescent and on to adulthood. Like the slow and steady flow of a mighty river carving out a canyon, a family’s influence is inescapable, gradually shaping and forming the lives of each member. Bono, Edge, Adam, and Larry, all from unique and different families of origin, for good or for bad, have been affected in deep and profound ways by the presence of—and the absence of—immediate family members.
Of all the families in U2, Bono’s is the most unusual, even scandalous. The marriage of Iris Rankin, a Protestant, to Bob Hewson, a Catholic, in 1950 was unthinkable considering the religious divisions that had consumed Ireland for centuries. Adding to the salacious nature of their union, the wedding took place in a Protestant church. Iris continued breaking with traditional notions of childrearing by taking Bono and his brother, Norman (eight years older), to a Protestant worship service every Sunday while Bob would wait outside or go to Mass. Years later, Bono reflected on the significance of his parents’ unconventional marriage, especially as it related to Irish sectarianism: “Both my mother and my father didn’t take religion seriously, they saw the absurdity of the fuss made over their union. . . . One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God” (Assayas, Bono, 31). From the beginning, the unconventional nature of the Hewson family seemed to foreshadow the defiant, zealous spirit of its youngest son.
The family’s progressive view of faith shaped Bono’s understanding of life early on, but no single influence was greater than the loss he experienced at the age of fourteen. Iris, at the graveside of her own father (who had unexpectedly passed away), suffered a cerebral aneurysm, collapsed, and died four days later. Bono was distraught as he watched his mother being disconnected from life support systems in the hospital. He remembers,
My mother died and then there were just three men living on their own in a house. That is all it was then, it ceased being a home. It was just a house, with three men killing each other slowly, not knowing what to do with our sense of loss and just taking it out on each other. (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 18)
Iris was never spoken of again. Anger and rage filled the void, with intermittent lulls of silence and denial. Fights were common—fights with Norman and fights with Dad. Amid the awkwardness of normal adolescence, the boy, now thrown into manhood, was overcome by grief, doubt, fear, and hopelessness. Bono sings in “Mofo” as a grown man continuing to deal with the loss, “Mother, am I still your son? / You know I’ve waited for so long to hear you say so.” More recently, in a song bearing her name, he offers a similar sentiment, “Hold me close / Hold me close and don’t let me go.” After his father’s death, Bono made peace with Bob, resolving years of anger and trauma: “In this little church, on Easter morning, I just got down on my knees, and I let go of whatever anger I had against my father. And I thanked God for him being my father, and for the gifts that I have been given through him. . . . I wept, and I felt rid of it” (Assayas, Bono, 23).
Bono was not the only member of U2 influenced by the devastating loss of a family member. “Everything about my life was pretty normal for a while,” says Larry, but then tragedy struck. “My sister died in 1973 and then my mother died in 1976. In some ways, both events defined the kind of person I’ve become. My mother’s death certainly catapulted me in the band’s direction” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 25). Today, Bono and Larry recognize their losses as part of the bond each shares with the other. “The thing that stuck us together,” Bono recalls, “was that I had this experience of bereavement. I had lost my mother when I was fourteen and he had lost his when he was sixteen, and . . . we both ran away with the circus” (Assayas, Bono, 50).
Bono and Larry shared not only the loss of mothers in their teen years but also the unsettled and dysfunctional atmosphere of a grief-stricken, single-father home. Both of their fathers were strict disciplinarians and thought the boys were wasting time pursuing something as frivolous as rock ’n’ roll. Though family situations were similar, the teens reacted differently—Bono raged and acted out his anger, while Larry retreated into his personal space, quietly forging on. In either case, both the extrovert and the introvert suffered a tragedy that eventually propelled them to passionately embrace music as a catharsis for pain. The loss they shared isn’t lost on Bono, who reflects,
The mother is so, so important in rock music. Show me a great singer and I’ll show you someone who lost their mother early on. There’s Paul McCartney, there’s John Lennon. Look at Bob Geldof and what happened to his mother. In hip hop, by contrast, it’s all about the father—being abandoned by the father and being brought up by a single mother. But for me it’s all about the mother. I had rage and grief for my mother. I still have rage and grief for my mother. I channeled those emotions in music, and I still do. (Boyd, “Bono’s Dublin”)
Family situations were much different for U2’s guitar and bass players. For Edge and Adam, parents were more supportive and families had strong and positive relationships. However, none of their parents were, in fact, Irish. Edge’s folks were Welsh but lived in London when Edge was born and then moved to Dublin when he was just a year old. Edge, who obviously has no memory of England, today considers himself fully Irish in every aspect. He, his older brother, Dik, and their younger sister, Gillian, were given a great deal of freedom to explore life, be inquisitive, and engage new opportunities. As a child, Edge was happy and supported.
This sense of freedom certainly fostered Edge’s own desire to ask questions and test ideas through experimentation, even when the results were less than desirable. More than once his escapades involved homemade explosives, raging bonfires, or mischievous outings with his brother. “It was the combination of curiosity, wildness, lack of strict parental control, and access to a fully stocked school chemistry lab that led to our experiments, anything really to break the tedium of the Dublin suburbs of the 1970s” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 23). A garden shed in their backyard would later become the rehearsal room for U2, but early on it was also the site of an explosion gone wrong that left Dik with a scar. Fascinated with gadgets and electronics (their father was an engineer), the two brothers spent hours dismantling and building things. Eventually, they built a guitar from plans found in an electronics magazine. The Evans home, nestled safe and sound in the Malahide suburb of Dublin, was idyllic compared to the gale-force storms that raged through Bono and Larry’s families.
Adam was born in his grandmother’s home in England in 1960, an event that came to characterize his entire family experience—full of close relatives, though mostly women. His father, a pilot, was often traveling and not around much. Adam was left at home with a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. “I was the first child, a boy, fussed over by this group of women,” says Adam (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 11). Two sisters soon followed, adding further to the feminine mystique of the home. At age four, the family moved to Kenya, where his dad found work as a commercial pilot. After only a year, Adam’s father relocated the family again, this time to Malahide (coincidentally, the suburb outside of Dublin where Edge lived). Even through a number of living transitions, Adam’s experience with parents and siblings was closer to that of Edge’s than Bono’s or Larry’s, and he was always well taken care of, encouraged to develop his creative nature, and surrounded by music.
Each of U2’s four members had varying experiences with education, starting in different contexts, but, in the end, connecting and thriving because of the remarkable school they attended together as teens. Adam, more so than any of the others, experienced an erratic education. When he first moved to Dublin, he went to the local national school, saying,
[T]hat was pretty much where it stopped making sense for me. I arrived into an Ireland that was subtly repressive. The sky was grey and grim and at school there was a lot of instruction in Irish, a language I didn’t understand. I found it difficult to fit into that system. (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 11)
Even though it was frustrating and inhibiting, it was here that Adam met Edge and the Evans family, though that friendship wouldn’t blossom fully till several years later.
When he was eight years old, Adam’s parents sent him to a boarding school designed to mimic the English system on the opposite side of Dublin. It was equally negative, and Adam kept a low profile there. At thirteen, he changed schools again, this time moving to an Irish public boarding school, and though he still didn’t do well academically, he was delighted to make friends with another boy who had cassette tapes of the latest rock ’n’ roll notables. Adam recalls of his early teen years, “I was getting pretty turned on to music and it always seemed to change my mood; it somehow made it bearable to be in that school situation” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 13). When his parents eventually succumbed to his pleas and bought him a bass guitar, he formed a band and even started writing an Irish rock opera, finally enjoying school. Then came what seemed to be a fatal blow—his parents withdrew him from his expensive private education due to bad grades. “I thought that was it, the musical career was over,” he recalls, “and so I was dispatched to Mount Temple, a comprehensive school in north Dublin, which was not a place where I felt comfortable at all” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 13). He might not have been so depressed about the move had he known what an important place this school would eventually be for him and three other boys.
Bono’s experience with education didn’t fare much better—he got in a fight his very first day of school, an event that foreshadowed the years to come. At the Inkwell, a Protestant school for children, he was a mischievous, energetic, high-spirited boy who was as eager to kick the ball over the fence and into the river as he was to boot it into the goal—never one to miss the chance of a grand adventure, chasing the ball down the cascading rapids for miles. He also went to St. Patrick’s Grammar School, where the antics and pranks continued. Still not happy, he was asked to leave after only a year because he threw dog poop at a teacher. From there, Bono transferred to Mount Temple. This was a very different place with a completely new philosophy of education. “The moment I arrived I felt alive,” says Bono (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 18).
Edge’s family life was a bit more stable and so was his schooling. Just a five-minute walk from his home, St. Andrews National was the school he and his brother and sister attended, though he didn’t live up to the academic reputation of his siblings. “I was just restless and always seemed to be doing stupid things,” he remembers (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 24). One day he was so distracted that he took out a knife and carved his name into a desk, somewhat surprised when the teacher was easily able to deduce who it was who committed the offense. Though he ended up faring better in his early years, he, like Bono and Adam, found something different when he graduated into Mount Temple, a place not at all like the small village school he had previously attended.
Larry, too, had little motivation to excel academically, though his father pushed for application into two of the area’s best Catholic schools. Larry took the exams required for enrollment but was unhappy because each school emphasized academics and sports, neither of which interested him. When his younger sister died, his father relinquished, and Larry enrolled in a less prestigious public school that was close by. It was a new, experimental school at which Larry found a fresh aptitude for education. And it was here, at Mount Temple, that lifelong friendships were made—friendships that would eventually shape the destiny of so many.
It really is a remarkable story: four boys, all disinterested in school, easily distracted, and prone to mischief, none of whom were friends when they entered, serendipitously found their way to a school unlike any other in the Dublin area and once there discovered the support, nurture, and encouragement needed for remarkable artistic and personal development. Mount Temple Comprehensive School, established in 1972 as an experiment in secondary schooling, was less rigid and authoritarian, with teachers and counselors who inspired students to explore, discuss, and question life—curiosity was encouraged, not suppressed! It differed from traditional Irish schools in a number of other ways as well: it was coeducational instead of segregated by sex; it was open to the public regardless of denomination, accepting both Protestants and Catholics; the staff encouraged individuality rather than conformity; there were smaller classes with greater attention to students’ needs. The emphasis wasn’t just on academics but also included development of the whole person, giving special attention to spiritual nurture and formation. Through religious education courses, the Christian Movement (a Bible club for students), and the counsel of trusted teachers who also served as mentors, students experienced a very different kind of faith, not at all bound by common institutional religious structures. Though they didn’t know much of one another, each of the four boys immediately embraced and thrived in this new, progressive model of education, Bono arriving in 1972, Edge in 1973, Larry in 1974, and Adam in 1976. (Bono and Adam were in the same class, Edge was one year behind them, and Larry was another year behind Edge.) As an experimental school, Mount Temple was unique in all of Ireland.
While Mount Temple became a significant space for personal formation, the boys also found identity, solace, and purpose among friendships. Adam and Edge were the first to meet. Both from the same suburb, they had briefly attended primary school together and were already acquaintances. Adam was quite well known at Mount Temple, not because he was overly social but because no one could miss his hippie-like wardrobe—he wore a long sheepskin Afghan coat, had a huge, bushy Afro hairdo, and sported a pair of sunglasses! Bono was also very popular but in a different way. Known by all, he was an extrovert who flirted with the girls, started a drama club, and early on filled the role of a front man, carrying around a guitar he could barely play. Edge had his brother, Dik, and the two were inseparable, often found exploring and experimenting or, worse, blowing something up. Larry, the lesser known of the four on campus and by far the most introverted, was serious-minded about music, retreating into a world where his drums were his close confidants. Nonetheless, it was Larry, prompted by his father, who put out the call for musicians in an effort to form the Larry Mullen Band.
Apart from Mount Temple, the neighborhood was another place for mates to test creative ideas; the asphalt street was a garden nursery for rich relationships, giving birth to networks of friendships, many of which still exist today. Along with Bono, two childhood pals lived on Cedarwood Road in the north part of Dublin. At three years old, long before he took the name Bono, Paul Hewson discovered Derek Rowen, a boy just a year older. The two played at each other’s homes and became lifelong friends. In their teens, they met and befriended another resident of Cedarwood Road, Fionan Hanvey. These three kindred spirits became a kind of incubator for creativity, pushing imagination to the limits in a land of dull banality. This cadre of friends reacted to the neighborhood violence by creating their own club, a gang of sorts that was completely unique to them. Very active in their teen years, they often met in Bono’s garage, a place of sanctuary from the outside world. This group of misfits huddled around the arts and in time came to be known as “Lypton Village.”
Though no one can recall why that name was chosen, naming was an important exercise for the gang; naming was a creative act in and of itself, offering an opportunity to reframe each of their lives. In this imaginary society, Derek Rowen was renamed “Guggi,” Fionan Hanvey took the name “Gavin Friday,” and Paul Hewson became “Bono” (though the nickname had many iterations, including “Bonavox” and “Bono Vox”). Lypton Village eventually expanded, embracing other cultural malcontents in search of artistic freedom, including “Strongman” Trevor Rowen, “Guck Pants Delany” Andy Rowen, “Dave-iD” David Watson, “Pod” Anthony Murphy, “Bad Dog” Reggie Manuel, and “Clivejive.” Later in an unofficial capacity, Dave Evans was named “Edge/the Edge,” while Larry received “Jamjar,” and Adam was dubbed “Sparky” and “Mrs. Burns,” among other nicknames (though Larry and Adam’s monikers don’t stick like Dave’s). Dick Evans, Edge’s brother, was also renamed “Dik.”
“There are a lot of odd and unique elements to the U2 story,” notes Neil McCormick, “but the existence of Lypton Village is among the most extraordinary” (McCormick, “Boy to Man,” 19). The Village provided a strange and remarkable escape from the political, religious, and ideological conservatism of Dublin. Bono remembers,
[T]he alcohol level in our neighborhood was so high, people going to the pubs a lot, and we were young, arrogant, and probably very annoying kids, but we didn’t wanna go that route. The pub looked like a trapdoor to somewhere very predictable, so we wouldn’t drink. We used to watch Monty Python. We invented our own language, gave each other names, and we’d dress differently. (Assayas, Bono, 114)
This artsy, surrealist rabble of rejects stood defiantly against the established culture, “an indication,” says McCormick, “of just how bold and original Bono’s response to the world was, before he even became a rock singer” (McCormick, “Boy to Man,” 19).
Painting and playing music were common activities in the early days but soon progressed to performance art with bananas, drills, ladders, and impromptu installations using anything available for props. Their stage could be street corner or city bus, it was all the same. Irony reigned. As a middle-aged adult, Bono reflected on the experience with what in retrospect might be seen as a mission statement for Lypton Village: “Humour was our best weapon, followed eventually by music. . . . Your enemies define you, so choose them carefully. Never pick an obvious fight” (Bono, “Bono’s Teenage Kicks”). The list of Village members who went on to make a living in the arts is astounding and worth noting. In addition to U2, Gavin Friday, Guggi, Dik Evans, Strongman, and Pod formed the Virgin Prunes, a band that matured alongside U2 and enjoyed a prominent though much briefer career. Guggi later found success as an avant-garde artist. Gavin Friday continued in music and has had a meaningful career as a singer-songwriter, actor, and poet. Other friends and schoolmates, though not formal members of Lypton Village, also found careers in the arts: Peter Rowen, Guggi’s brother, became a professional photographer; Neil McCormick set out on a very successful career in music journalism; Steve Averill formed the Radiators from Space, one of the first punk bands in Ireland, and became a highly acclaimed graphic designer who has designed or supervised every U2 album cover; Christopher Nolan, a paraplegic student at Mount Temple, went on to be a notable and influential author and poet; and last but not least, Alison Stewart, Bono’s eventual wife, became an activist and businesswoman, cofounding EDUN, a fashion brand promoting fair trade in Africa. The legacy of artists from Mount Temple and the Cedarwood Road area is certainly not coincidental. A product of their times, this tribe of witty, creative adolescents, never satisfied with the status quo, sought out and prompted one another to defy common assumptions of their monochrome culture and moved out in force through the power of their own imaginations to change their world.
While families, schools, and friends all played a significant part in shaping the four members of U2, there were many musical influences as well. All the boys grew up in homes that appreciated music. Adam has said that the two dictating forces of his life are women and music, each of which was powerfully present in his family. His grandma was a pianist in a dance band, and his aunts played contemporary music on reel-to-reel tapes and records. He tried piano lessons but didn’t have the aptitude of his grandmother, so he soon quit. Bono’s grandmother had a piano that he would experiment with, and she also introduced him to traditional Irish music. His father, on the other hand, filled the house with opera, often conducting an invisible ensemble of instruments and vocalists, waving knitting needles through the air, lost in a world of librettos. Bono calls it the “heavy metal” of his childhood. His brother had a reel-to-reel player, so the two would listen to current rock tunes of the day. Edge’s home was filled with music as well. His mom, an alto, and his dad, a tenor, sang in the church choir and encouraged the children to sing and play instruments. When he was seven years old, his mom bought him a little toy guitar, and though he knew nothing about tuning or fingering chords, he’d wave it around and pretend he could play. A couple of years later, she purchased his first real guitar at a yard sale for a pound. Larry’s mother was a concert pianist and started him with piano lessons when he was eight, though he wasn’t interested in learning scales and theory and quickly gave it up. At nine, he began drum lessons with Joe Bonnie, a well-known Irish drummer. Larry especially liked the military-style drumming, later joining the Post Office Workers Band, which focused on orchestra and marching band standards. He loved being in uniform, marching down the street with a snare strapped to his side. Though still unaware of each other, all of U2’s members mention a very similar set of rock ’n’ roll influences during their early teen years, listening to musical heroes such as the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Eagles, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and Led Zeppelin. Their choice of music was sophisticated for their age, not the stuff of 1970s pop or disco.
Although the band’s families valued and encouraged music, Ireland’s culturally conservative ethos didn’t allow for much musical creativity or expression, and the country’s isolationism kept it fairly secluded from the arts and media of Britain and Europe. Dublin, however, did offer a small oasis of global inspiration. In the late 1970s, a new form of music—indeed, a complete new culture of discontent—was making its way from London, across the Irish Sea, and washing up on the shores of Dublin. Rather than try to restrain the oncoming wave, as most of conservative Ireland would prefer, Adam, Larry, Edge, and Bono could see that this new style called punk was a force to be harnessed, like a surfer on a board atop a swelling wave.
The first outside sounds of punk were coming in bits and pieces from the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash, bands that demonstrated not so much a mastery of their instruments but, more importantly, a passion for the music they were playing, including a very theatrical and engrossing stage presence. The first homegrown punk bands—though Irish punk didn’t carry the full weight of its British counterpart, again due to the island’s isolation—included Bob Geldof’s Boomtown Rats, the Radiators from Space, and, in Belfast, Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones (both more known for their commentary on the Troubles than the Dublin bands). Additional influences on U2 from this period include Television, XTC, Patti Smith, the Buzzcocks, and other local Irish rock legends such as Rory Gallagher and his band Taste, Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy, and the Horslips.
One final note could be made here about musical influences: the inspiration did not always come from other bands or singers but often from the limited music-related media musicians were able to receive. While much of Ireland had very restricted and often censored forms of television (RTÉ) and theater, Dublin was able to receive the BBC from across the sea, which gave musicians access to Top of the Pops, a weekly program featuring live performances of popular bands. The British also produced NME (New Musical Express), a popular music magazine, and Sounds, a weekly pop/rock newspaper. Not readily available in Ireland, these imports were cherished by young music visionaries. But most notably, Dublin’s own Hot Press, a music magazine founded in 1977, played a significant role in the development of the country’s rock scene and particularly in the growth of U2. Specifically, two men from Hot Press had a formative impact on U2: Niall Stokes, the magazine’s founding editor, and Bill Graham, a music journalist often credited with discovering the band. Each championed U2, closely following their development, publishing reviews, and offering advice to the rising stars.
Through these four major influences—family, schooling, friendships, and musical heroes—Bono, Edge, Adam, and Larry began to find meaning and purpose, being shaped by the consistent, often unconscious forces permeating a complex and dynamic urban center in the 1970s. Dublin was the perfect place at the perfect time for the emergence of U2, a band like no other before. Neil McCormick has said of U2 in this critical era, “They don’t have to be the best musicians. They just have to be the right musicians” (McCormick, “Boy to Man,” 14). So true. They were, indeed, the right musicians, with an abundance of passion, an all-engaging presence, and enough spirit to share with anyone who would listen. Musical ability would soon follow. And so would the albums.