U2-A Diary

Since today’s the 25th anniversary of the release of U2′s War album, I thought I’d post the diary entry for February 28, 1983. This is from the completed and edited manuscript, so should be exactly as it will appear in print later this year. This is also one of those entries that begins with a live date, thus the opening line about playing in Edinburgh.

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February 28
- Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh, with the Nightcaps.

U2 releases its third studio album, War, produced by Steve Lillywhite. It features Peter Rowen on the cover, reprising his role from the Boy album. But the innocence of the first cover is replaced on War with a photo that shows the child scarred and afraid. The music is louder and more aggressive than the band’s first two albums, and sounds nothing like the smooth pop and synthesizer artists that are taking over the charts. War sees U2 addressing the world around them more directly than ever. In addition to ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, songs like ‘Seconds’, ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘The Refugee’ are grounded in Cold War and conflict, hardly the subject matter of most songs on the radio at the time.

Bono explains the “uncool” War

“It was incredibly uncool to make this record, and it completely freaked out most people – Geldof being one of them. I remember Geldof saying, ‘What are you at? I mean, this is pop music we’re talking about, and you’re taking on these ideas.’ All these people – Sting. They were doing the do-do-do-do/de-da-da-das! So this was a break, this was not cool – for a band to take this position.”

War debuts at number one in the UK, U2′s first chart-topping album. It debuts at number 91 in the US, and eventually climbs as high as number 12.

Reviews for the album are very positive. “U2 may not be great intellectuals,” writes J.D. Considine in his four-star Rolling Stone album review, “and War may sound more profound than it really is. But the songs here stand up against anything on The Clash’s London Calling in terms of sheer impact, and the fact that U2 can sweep the listener up in the same sort of enthusiastic romanticism that fuels the band’s grand gestures is an impressive feat.”

“It is a major leap forward,” says Liam Mackey in Hot Press, “conceptually and technically, quickly persuading this listener to the view that it totally eclipses their previous two albums. I’ll even go a step further and proclaim War, among the major albums of the last few years.”

But Sounds magazine isn’t convinced: “War suggests a tired U2, a U2 that perhaps hasn’t quite sorted out the variances between live and recorded rock music.”

Tracks: ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘Seconds’, ‘New Year’s Day’, ‘Like A Song’, ‘Drowning Man’, ‘The Refugee’, ‘Two Hearts Beat As One’, ‘Red Light’, ‘Surrender’, ’40′

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That’s all!

Okay, I promised to post a book sample showing an album entry, and a couple readers suggested I post The Joshua Tree. That sounds as good as any to me, so here you go. :)

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March 9

U2 releases The Joshua Tree, their fifth studio album. The album cover features another cinematic Anton Corbijn photo, this time showing the band in black-and-white in the California desert. With U2′s stature at an all-time high after Live Aid and the Conspiracy of Hope Tour, anticipation for The Joshua Tree is sky-high. U2 delivers a tour de force that tops the charts, produces number one singles, earns U2′s first Grammy awards, and vaults the band into the stratosphere. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois produce again, but The Joshua Tree has little of the ambience and lack of focus of The Unforgettable Fire. On the contrary, U2 tries and succeeds in crafting a thematic album with tight, direct lyrics and the best songwriting of U2′s career.

[SIDEBAR]

Edge explains U2′s plan for The Joshua Tree

“We felt on this record that maybe, options were not such a good thing, that limitation might be very positive. So we decided to work within the limitations of the song as a starting-point. Let’s actually write songs. We just wanted to leave the record less vague, openended, atmospheric and impressionistic. Make it more straightforward, focussed and concise.”

The Joshua Tree becomes the fastest selling album in British music history, selling 300,000 copies in its first two days and reaching number one. It enters the U.S. chart at number seven, U2′s best debut yet and first Top 10 album, and quickly climbs to number one.

Sensing that U2 is about to reach superstar status, Island Records throws all of its marketing muscle behind the album. Island president Lou Maglia calls it “the most complete merchandising effort ever assembled” in his career. $100,000 is spent on store displays alone. It’s the first album to be shipped on vinyl, cassette, and CD simultaneously. (Typically, CDs hit stores several weeks later than records and cassettes.) It’s also the first album to sell one million CDs in the U.S.

Album reviews are almost universally positive. In the Boston Globe, Steve Morse describes The Joshua Tree as U2′s “most challenging work to date. It’s another spiritual progress report, enwrapped in music that strikes a healthy balance between the lushness of their last album, 1984′s The Unforgettable Fire, and the more volcanic rock of their early years.”

Says Los Angeles Times‘ critic Robert Hilburn: “The Joshua Tree finally confirms on record what this band has been slowly asserting for three years now on stage: U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago — the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. In this album, the band wears that mantle securely.”

In Hot Press, longtime supporter Bill Graham writes: “The Joshua Tree rescues rock from its decay, bravely and unashamedly basing itself in the mainstream before very cleverly lifting off into several higher dimensions. They’ve been misunderstood occasionally, even by their committed supporters — but after The Joshua Tree, with its skill, and the diversity of issues it touches, one thing is absolutely clear: U2 can no longer be patronized with faint and glib praise. They must be taken very seriously indeed after this revaluation of rock.”

Jon McCready of NME says the album is “a better and braver record than anything else that’s likely to appear in 1987.”

Tracks: Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, With Or Without You, Bullet The Blue Sky, Running To Stand Still, Red Hill Mining Town, In God’s Country, Trip Through Your Wires, One Tree Hill, Exit, Mothers Of The Disappeared

After their TV taping last night, U2 appears at the Makin’ Tracks record store in Belfast at midnight, signing autographs and speaking with about 200 fans who are there to buy The Joshua Tree on its first day of release. (The crowd would likely have been bigger if not for a local radio DJ mistakenly announcing that the album release had been delayed a week.) In London, more than a thousand fans line up at midnight outside a record store to buy the record as early as possible — one of the fans in line is singer Elvis Costello.

Anyone up for a sample diary entry from the book?

I thought I’d post the diary entry for July 13, 1985 — U2 at Live Aid. This is one of the longer diary entries, I think. (The album entries are all pretty long, too.)

In addition to the text I’m writing, I hope to have a lot of “sidebars” in the book — these are typically going to be where pertinent quotes from the band or others involved will be used to explain and expand on what I’ve written. For the purpose of this blog post you’re reading, I’m going to put that text in blockquotes so it’s separated from my text.

So, here we go … hope you likey. :)

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July 13
- Wembley Stadium, London. Live Aid: London and Philadelphia. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof organizes the concert to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia. U2 are set to play at Wembley Stadium in London, about halfway through the day’s lineup. Tickets are sold for £25, but £20 of that is advertised as a donation to the Live Aid charity. Touts outside the stadium are getting as much as £80 for a ticket. Official souvenir stands offer Band Aid videos, Live Aid posters, programs, and shirts – all of which include the line, “This Saves Lives.”

At about 5:20 p.m. London time, Jack Nicholson stands on stage at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and introduces U2 at Wembley Stadium. The crowd roars and what seem like dozens of U2 flags are waving in the air. The band’s planned set is “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “Bad” and “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” but U2 only manage to play the first two in their allotted 20 minutes.

“Bad” lasts an astonishing 14 minutes. During the song, Bono breaks one of Geldof’s rules — don’t leave the stage — when he climbs down to ground level to dance with a girl in front of the crowd. It’s one of the most memorable moments of the entire two-continent event, but it leaves the rest of U2 angry with Bono; they never had a chance to play “Pride,” the hit single that many of the billions watching on TV might know.

[SIDEBAR]

Bono: “Larry told me he was going to stop playing”

“I was trying to find an image that would be remembered for the day. I was not happy with just playing our songs and getting out of there. I wanted to find that moment. Of course, afterwards, I got a terrible time from the band. I was almost fired. Because I had climbed on roofs, I had left stages before, I had climbed on PA stacks, I had jumped into the crowds, I had physical confrontations in crowds, but this was the worst one for them, to leave them for what felt like hours, apparently. Larry told me he was going to stop playing. This was a big show for our band, there were a billion people watching, and we didn’t do our big song. Everyone was very annoyed with me, I mean, very annoyed.”

Bono is so depressed that he reportedly thinks about leaving U2. He decides to take some personal time to sort through his feelings and emotions. He escapes to the Irish country, to a small town where Ali has family. There, Bono meets a sculptor who is working on a statue called The Leap, inspired by Bono’s dance with the young girl at Live Aid. Bono rethinks the idea that he had made a mistake.

An estimated 1.5 billion TV viewers around the globe see U2′s performance. Many journalists pick U2 and Queen as the top performances of the day. The band’s album sales rise worldwide after Live Aid, and U2 later wins Rolling Stone magazine’s Readers’ Poll award for Best Performance at Live Aid.

At the request of the UK press, the band issues the following statement about their participation at Live Aid: “U2 are involved in Live Aid because it’s more than money, it’s music…but it is also a demonstration to the politicians and the policy-makers that men, women and children will not walk by other men, women and children as they lie, bellies swollen, starving to death for the sake of a cup of grain and water. For the price of Star Wars, the MX missile offensive-defense budgets, the desert of Africa could be turned into fertile lands. The technology is with us. The technocrats are not. Are we part of a civilization that protects itself by investing in life…or investing in death?” Hoping for something more quotable, many in the media ignore the band’s statement.

(end)

You’ve probably heard the news that opera legend Luciano Pavarotti died Thursday morning at home in Italy. I thought I would share the U2 DIARY entries that mention Pavarotti; together, they paint a picture of the friendship U2, and particularly Bono, developed with the star tenor.

September 12, 1995

Bono and Edge are joined by Brian Eno and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti at the latter’s “Pavarotti and Friends” concert in Modena, Italy, to perform the new song “Miss Sarajevo,” featuring vocals by Pavarotti. U2 later performs a version of “One” complete with classical orchestra. The concert is an annual event hosted by Pavarotti and is a benefit to raise money for the children of Bosnia.

Miss Sarajevo is also the title of a documentary directed by Bill Carter, who had appeared via satellite from Sarajevo during U2′s Zooropa tour concerts in 1993. The 31-minute film is produced by Ned O’Hanlon and Bono, and is partially financed by U2. When the program airs on TV, it begins with an introduction by actor Liam Neeson provides and introduction, and closes with U2′s video for the song “Miss Sarajevo.”

December 21, 1997

Bono appears with Luciano Pavarotti at the opening of a cultural center in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

April 8, 2003

The U.N. confirms that Bono and Luciano Pavarotti will perform together at the Italian tenor’s annual charity concert near his hometown of Modena, Italy. This year’s concert, to be held May 27th, is slated to benefit Iraq war refugees. Bono and Pavarotti sang together in 1995 to aid children in Bosnia.

May 25, 2003

Bono arrives in Italy in advance of a performance with Luciano Pavarotti in Modena. Today, they rehearse “One” with a full orchestra, and then practice a new version of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”

They do a news conference after rehearsal, and then Bono and others have dinner at a restaurant that Pavarotti owns in the country. There, Bono joins the house band to sing a bit of “Unchain My Heart.”

May 27, 2003

Bono makes a solo appearance at the Pavarotti and Friends concert in Modena, Italy. His performance includes “One” with an orchestra backing, and a duet with Pavarotti on “Ave Maria.” Bono has written new lyrics for the song that reflect the ongoing situation in the Middle East:

Ave Maria
Where is the justice in this world?
The wicked make so much noise, mother
The righteous stay oddly still
With no wisdom, all of the riches in the world leave us poor tonight

And strength is not without humility
It’s weakness, an untreatable disease
And war is always the choice
Of the chosen who will not have to fight

The concert raises an estimated £1 million pounds for Iraqi war refugees. It’s Bono’s second performance at Pavarotti’s concert — he performed with Edge and Brian Eno during the 1995 concert.

December 13, 2003

Bono and Edge, with their wives Ali and Morleigh, respectively, are on hand for the wedding of Luciano Pavarotti to Nicoletta Mantovani in Modena, Italy. Initial reports suggest that Bono sung for the couple during the reception, and London’s Evening Standard eventually reports that Bono sang “All I Want Is You”, changing the lyrics to the more topical “When the pasta has run dry/And the wine no longer gets you high/All I want is you.”

July 16, 2005

On the third of three nights in Amsterdam, U2 surprise the 50,000 on hand by performing “Miss Sarajevo” for the first time since 1997. Bono sings the operatic verses that were handled in the studio by Luciano Pavarotti.

August 21, 2006

A day after visiting Sarajevo, Bono visits Luciano Pavarotti — who sang with U2 on the song “Miss Sarajevo” — at the tenor’s home in Italy. Pavarotti is recovering from surgery for pancreas cancer in July.

I like when little things come together perfectly. Here’s an example of what just happened, and how it helped fill a small hole in the book:

1.) I’m reading this article to get some background about U2′s deal with ESPN for those World Cup soccer/football commercials last year. The article mentions that Bono and Paul McGuinness were looking at the scripts for those commercials while U2 flew from Los Angeles to Monterrey earlier in 2006 during the Vertigo Tour.

Ding! That deserves a mention. Not hugely important, but it should be in the book. It adds a little more detail to the process and development of U2′s relationship with ESPN.

But where to find out the day of that flight?

2) Where else, but Willie Williams’ tour diaries on U2.com. After poking around a bit, it becomes obvious that the band flew to Monterrey on February 10, 2006.

So, we have a new diary entry for the book, which looks like this:

February 10, 2006

Though much of the crew is already in Mexico, U2 flies from Los Angeles to Monterrey today. During the flight, the band reviews the scripts for a series of World Cup commercials ESPN wants to air later this year. The scripts call for each band member to provide voice-overs for a set of five commercials.

As I said, sometimes it’s the little victories…..