U2 has a charismatic leader without portfolio for a singer, an idiot savant for a guitarist, and about the strongest rhythm section you can imagine. Distinctive and impressive today, they started out scruffy and rather anonymous. On the release of their first album, Boy, in 1980 they seemed like just another vaguely new-wave British aggregation of the Simple Minds sort. Bono, the likeable if somewhat self-important lead singer, the Edge, the guitarist who’s parlayed the simple trick of running his instrument through a delay into one of the most distinctive guitar sounds of the last decade, and the big combo of drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton have over the years gotten not just better but smarter and morally responsible as well. They’ve also developed a healthy wariness of stardom that among major bands only R.E.M. appears to share. U2 grew up in the 70s watching bombast replace emotion, ritual replace thought, and pretension replace meaning. They watched, that is, rock ‘n’ roll becoming stupid and careless, and resolved not to be a part of it.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
This is something that’s easy to hit the band on: they were rarely artistically pretentious, but personally they certainly were, most particularly Bono, he of the grandiose gesture, sweeping statement, and dumb move. (During a free concert in 1987 in San Francisco’s Halliday Plaza he spray-painted some graffiti on a noted fountain sculpture.) Also, some charge that the band became megastars only after they conveniently switched their sound from edgy and angular new wave to the more enveloping formalistic grandeur of its latter-day work. But two factors belie this rather uncharitable view. First of all, Bono’s pomposity seems to come out of an otherwise laudable desire to keep perspective on his increasing fame, to be a concerned star rather than an irresponsible one. Also, that musical switch wasn’t as cynical as it might seem: even in the early days there was an equanimity and a sort of generic Christian peacefulness to U2. They never wore the new-wave mantle well; and when these youthful musical illiterates began investigating the past they discovered messages that made sense to them. They’d found what they were looking for.
Now they’re back, with a refreshingly downsized album and tour. Achtung Baby is neither a double album nor a song cycle: there’s no overarching theme, sound, or overview. It is, however, edgy and quite daring, considering the source, and in its song constructions–particularly on “One,” “Zoo Station,” and “Ultraviolet”–it’s fully the equal of the beloved Joshua Tree, by my estimation the band’s best.
The show began, unusually, with the lights up, and Bono made his entrance in black leather and wraparound sunglasses. Then the lights dimmed and the band blasted into “Zoo Station” and “The Fly,” the clanking and grinding centerpieces of Achtung Baby. “The Fly” was accompanied by snippets of text zipping across the video screens: “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” “Free Nelson Mandela,” “Pizza,” and so forth. Certain slogans–“It’s Your World You Can Change It”–drew an enormous vocal response; while the music was as loud as any rock show (and the band’s sound technicians rose ably to the challenge of the Rosemont’s generally ruinous acoustics) nothing the band did could match the pitch of some of the screams.
Back in 1987 Lydon’s moves leaned toward the infantile, tended to involve references to the, um, back end of the human digestive system, and included lots of faux bad boy comments like, “Do ya like your Johnny, then?” delivered in Lydon’s screeching yowl over the rest of the band’s dense, pulsing beats. “Just imagine,” said a friend at that show,”if Johnny Rotten had been able to see himself ten years down the line.”
