You don’t hear enough of it.”Įven so, U2 still gave themselves maximum options - throughout the sessions, they’d play relentlessly and kept tape running constantly to capture spirited moments. I think that musical recklessness goes a long way on records.
So what I did was push the performance aspect very hard, often to the point of recklessness. I myself had also grown rather tired of polishing details on records and pursuing the kind of perfection that has become commonplace in much rock music today.
Not long before, the religious band would never have dared such a “heretic” curveball.ĭaniel Lanois was the main “sonics” producer (though Brian Eno was co-credited) on Achtung Baby, and the Canadian told Sound On Sound magazine: “When I started work on Achtung Baby, U2 were interested in creating a more hard-hitting, live-sounding record. On “Until The End Of The World,” frontman Bono takes the role of Judas Iscariot betraying Jesus Christ. Despite that, Achtung Baby is one of U2’s most baldly religious records. Bono’s invention of alter ego The Fly allowed him also to be less chest-beating and subtler.
It was certainly not wished for, but Edge’s divorce of the time proved a catalyst for many lyrics. Many of the lyrics centered on love, sex and betrayal. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a big kiss.”Īchtung Baby was hardly pop frivolity, though. Bono, for all his ‘80s piety and flag waving, came to realize: “Rock ‘n’ roll is ridiculous,” he told Rolling Stone on Achtung Baby’s release.” In the past we were trying to duck that. Lyrically, Achtung Baby was a volte-face for U2.
U2 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD FREE
Maybe as a reaction to “One”, U2 felt free to get more aggressive. “Earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, and linear?” “One” is all those, but if U2 hadn’t dreamed that song up Achtung Baby may have collapsed into nothing.īut after “One,” other songs soon formed. Some think the lyric is schmaltz: but the "one life, with each other, sisters, brothers…" line was later voted the greatest ever song line by VH1 viewers in 2006. “One” is atypical of Achtung Baby in sound, but it did kickstart U2’s creativity. It was a reassuring moment, when everyone finally went: ‘Oh great, this album has started.’ It's the reason you’re in a band - when the spirit descends upon you and you create something truly affecting.
U2 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD FULL
“We were all playing together in the big recording room, a huge, eerie ballroom full of ghosts of the war, and everything fell into place. "At the instant we were recording it, I got a very strong sense of its power,” Edge told Irish journalist Neil McCormick. Bored of hammering at a demo called “Sick Puppy” (that later morphed into “Mysterious Ways”), Edge hit on an off-the-cuff chord progression that would become “One.” U2 were struggling to come up with anything all four felt was good enough. “The greatness,” Bono laughs on the new U2 documentary From The Sky Down, “had left the building.”īassist Adam Clayton admitted in Bill Flanagan’s biog U2 At the End of the World, constant touring in each other’s pockets had taken its toll: “We had to decide how much we liked each other… I’m not saying that was easily resolved.”īut “One” rescued them. But when they turned up, they couldn’t even write a song. U2 had booked Hansa hoping to capture the “greatness” of two of their favorite albums: David Bowie’s Low and Heroes that were recorded there. Achtung Baby got us back to our normality - making dark, very European music with experimental sounds.” Famously, U2 decided to impose new rules for Achtung Baby, the band’s rebirth.īono: “Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad).”īut the sessions, in Berlin’s Hansa Studios nearly collapsed completely. “My view,” he told this author in 1996 “is that Rattle And Hum, for all its traditionalism, is actually our ‘experimental’ record. What to do? As Bono told a Dublin crowd in the late ‘80s: “We have to go away and dream it all up again.”Īs guitarist Edge later reflected, the ‘traditionalism’ of Rattle And Hum was the exception in the U2 canon. U2 suddenly became the most loved/hated rock band on the planet. King duet “When Love Comes To Town”) but many found the album too much of a pastiche.
That ‘toying’ with Americana certainly delivered some hits (“Angel Of Harlem,” the Bo Diddley-esque “Desire,” the B.B. The band had been stung by media criticism of their half studio / half live double album Rattle and Hum. They were a major stadium act, but creatively they were faltering. In fact, its beginnings nearly split the Irish band apart.īy the turn of the ‘90s, U2 were at a crossroads. U2’s Achtung Baby is now acclaimed as U2’s finest achievement, but the 1991 album nearly didn’t get made.
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