U2-A Diary

This was fun: Jose from U2Spain.es asked me to answer some questions about U2 Diary for sharing with their readers. You can read the interview in English or Spanish.

Thanks, Jose, for the chance to talk about the book!

Many weeks ago, I asked you for your best guess on what the first entry in U2 Diary will be. You may have noticed that I never gave you the answer. I will below.

But telling you that information is not the main point of this post; the main point is to show you something you may already know: U2 fans are amazing.

Of all the fans that have helped with the research for this book, probably no one has done more than a guy in Ireland named Donal Murphy. (You may know him from the comments here on U2Diary.com, or from various message boards and mailing lists.) After one of my lengthy “calls for help” posts, Donal emailed me privately with the results of his research. If I remember correctly, he had gone to his local library and looked up old Irish newspapers on microfiche to find the hidden nugget of information I was seeking. I couldn’t believe it!

Then he did it again after I posted another batch of questions. It got to the point that, a few weeks ago, I sheepishly emailed Donal and asked if he wouldn’t mind making one more library trip for me. I had a problem: I was suddenly unsure of the very first diary entry in the book.

That entry is for the wedding of Bob Hewson and Iris Rankin*, a mixed-faith marriage that was controversial for its time, and had an undeniable impact on their son, Paul, his future outlook on religion, life, everything, and on the band Paul would join at the age of 15. In Eamon Dunphy’s book, he gives very specific details about the wedding — the church, the neighborhood, and the date, which he gives as August 6, 1950. Then, while reading U2 by U2, I noticed a photo of that wedding with a caption indicating it took place in 1949. ACK!

You can’t have the very first entry in the book be wrong, I thought. So I asked Donal if he would investigate for me. Here’s his account of what happened after that:

Matt asked me to look into the matter for him. The date was not available anywhere on the web, and the only leads were Dunphy’s date of August 6th 1950 and a photograph of their wedding day in U2 by U2, labeled 1949. To be honest, my initial reaction was Dunphy probably had it right; he had the date, the church name and the address of the church. But Matt had to get it checked.

First off was a check on the Irish Times Premium Plus website. This gives access to every scrap of the Irish Times. I was hoping that there might be a marriage announcement. No luck. On reflection, in the Ireland of the 1950′s the average person did not put marriage notices in the paper, these were more for wealthy people. In any case, the Hewson’s wedding was an extremely rare event. A Catholic marrying a Protestant was a rare event, but a Catholic marrying a Protestant in a Protestant church was extremely rare. So it was always a long shot it would be publicly announced in a newspaper.

At this juncture, I told Matt that the only place the information could be found was in Church and State records, none of which are available online.

I then started off with what we had, the name of the Church – John The Baptist Church in Drumcondra. I am not used to searching for churches or religious organisations, but I found a church with the same name, but in a different parish – Clontarf. (At the time I assumed Dunphy had the wrong church.) I telephoned the Reverend at this church, and he told me that he did not have records going back to 1950, so he gave me the number of the Representative Church Body (RCB) Library, a Protestant organisation with extensive archival material. They did a search for me but found nothing.

Where to next?, I thought. Well, it then occurred to me that maybe I had the wrong church, but the person in the RCB had suggested the name of another Reverend who was stationed in a church of the same name but in Drumcondra. The records for this church were not in the RCB library but were held at the church. I telephoned him, and as he was recently retired, he gave me the name of the church treasurer, who also has access to the marriage records. His name is Brian Freeman. When I told him I was trying to track down the marriage date of Bono’s parents, he immediately replied, “Rankin/Hewson”. I thought YES, I am finally talking to the right person. Within minutes he had looked up the records and confirmed the date as August 19th 1950 – married by the Reverend Fergus Day.

Eureka! Amazingly Dunphy got it wrong; he had the right church, right address but somewhere along the line the date in the book is wrong. Even more amazingly the year listed in U2 by U2 is wrong. Brian Freeman sent a confirmation of the date to me. (see photo below)

It was very interesting tracking all this down, and nice to see that the correct date will finally be in print for the first time.

Thanks to all who helped me in getting this information, the various Reverends I spoke to, the RCB library and Brian Freeman.

See what I mean? Are U2 fans amazing, or what? At right is the letter that Brian Freeman sent to Donal, with confirmation of the wedding date of Bob Hewson and Iris Rankin. You can click the thumbnail to see a larger version.

Donal emailed me after each step of the process he describes above, and never once did he sound like he was ready to give up. These were just minor obstacles to overcome, and overcome them he did. August 19, 1950 — the things you learn.

Donal, thank you for all your help on U2 Diary — but especially this one.

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*In the survey I did many weeks ago, many of you suggested the first diary entry should be the date U2 first played together — either in 1976 as Feedback or 1978 as U2. You might wonder why I’m going back to 1950 and this wedding, and to that question I would simply say this: The history of the United States didn’t begin on July 4, 1776. There were a great many things that happened earlier to make July 4, 1776, possible.

Of course, I should also add a disclaimer: My editor may decide the book shouldn’t begin with the Hewson/Rankin wedding, in which case all of the above is a moot point. :)

I presume you know the story about Bono getting a death threat from someone who promised to shoot him during a gig as U2 played “Pride (In the Name of Love)”. I’ve always been under the impression that was during the Joshua Tree tour. There was a discussion about this incident on one of the mailing lists recently, but no one had any firm evidence pointing to a specific date.

Well, I just found this old NME article which might be the first time the story was ever told:

There was one notably frightening occurrence when touring The Unforgettable Fire across the southern states of the U.S. This meant playing “Pride (In the Name of Love)” in cities that had been segregated a mere two decades previous, cities harboring more than their unreasonable share of loose-nut white supremacists.

(Bono talking:) “There was a guy who said if we played that song, that was it, he was gonna take us out. He got organised, he got in touch and said, ‘Don’t do it. If you do, we’ve got people there.’ The FBI, or whoever, were taking it very seriously. I remember singing the tune, thinking, ‘Oh, this is interesting.’ But I was fine about it, no problem. Then after the show, Paul (McGuinness, manager) came backstage and said, ‘Um, look, it’s actually the second night he said he was going to do it.’ So I had to do it all again, and not to be melodramatic about it, but I was a little freaked. I didn’t even look at the crowd. And when it was finished and I looked up, I saw Adam was standing in front of me for the whole thing! I mean, Adam’s so posh, right? He’s not grown up with any sense of the street, but I have to say when it comes to digging me out of a few situations he’s there.”

So, now we know it could be either the Unforgettable Fire tour or the Joshua Tree tour. And we know it was in a city in the southern U.S. where U2 was playing two shows. That limits the choices to:

May 3-4, 1985: Fort Lauderdale, FL
April 2-4, 1987: Tempe, AZ
April 7-8, 1987: Houston, TX
November 23-24, 1987: Fort Worth, TX
December 8-9, 1987: Atlanta, GA

Tempe, AZ, isn’t considered the “south,” but one of the people on the mailing list was sure it was those first couple shows of the Joshua Tree tour. If the quote above is correct, and it was on the Unforgettable Fire tour, Fort Lauderdale is the only city in the south that U2 played twice.

Anyone have information that would help get to the exact date this happened?

Has anyone ever seen a mention of the exact date of this video shoot? All I have is that it happened in mid-October, 1993.

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. :)

————-

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.