“There’s No Coming Back From This”

…is what I am naming the latest U2 album; CD; recorded abortion; or what-have-you.

To say that I have been a fan of this band since I was thirteen doesn’t quite cover my relationship to their music. They appealed to me precisely because they were Irish, working class, politically aware, socially conscious, progressive lefties and unique sounding amongst all other bands of their time: the late 70s and early eighties.

U2 seemed to be beaming directly to me in my South Bronx housing project in 1981 with their deadly serious, but unpretentious and relevant music. Back when they had only one album recorded, (but about 8 or 9 b sides of their 45 singles and one-shot songs) I greedily ran out and bought anything I could find by them, bootlegged concert tapes or demos at long gone meccas for adolescent weirdos like me: “Freebeing Records”, “Finyl Vinyl”, and “Second Coming Records.” Of the places I relied on for dispatches from the outer reaches of rock music and records of hard core and Punk bands I wasn’t old enough to go see, only “Bleecker Bob’s” and “Thompson Street Records” remain standing today in New York City.
I’m going there after I write this post.

WLIR, an FM station that was unapologetically operating on the fringes of mainstream taste would play their music in heavy rotation. The Edge’s (prematurely) much derided note-riding and over use of digital delay went on to become the most copied style of guitar playing for almost twenty five years. For a band firmly operating within the “New Wave” of European rock music they had distinctly progressive tendencies that owed more to bands like the Beatles, King Crimson and Pink Floyd (listen to the production on “Boy” and “October” again some time and tell me if you think I’m wrong) than it did to the bands they publicly claimed to be influenced by (Punks like The Ramones, The Stranglers and the Clash).

U2 were just kids with a lot of talent back then. They were Irish white boys in their twenties whose listenership was composed of an army of smug, sophisticated kids scattered around the globe. They were creating a music that was distinctly theirs and no one else’s and I loved them. The red and black U2 patch on my MA-1 flight jacket started more conversations with random strangers when I was in eighth grade than anything I ever said or did. There was a time when fans of this band shared a common sensibility and political awareness.
Along with bands like the Jam, The Damned, The Clash, The Specials, The Saints and strangely enough, Bauhaus, The Misfits and Minor Threat, -they were the soundtrack of my early teenage days when the world was revealing itself to me in fits and starts beyond the beginnings of my own borough’s Hip Hop, which back then was too materialistic and apolitical for my tastes. After Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash cut “The Message,” I had to wait for pioneers outside of the Bronx like RunDMC, Erik B and Rakim and ultimately Public Enemy and NWA before I could embrace Rap openly and defend it as the intelligent, vital music I knew it was, with acknowledgement and my deep respect to the work of Afrika Bambaata.

I lined up to buy the LP for U2’s third album with the only other two classmates who were cool enough to even know who this band was. It arrived on a Sunday morning at a record store I’ve long forgotten on Broadway on the upper Westside of Manhattan somewhere in the 70s, -I want to say 77th street? The owner seemed annoyed and undid the boxes and took our cash on the street before opening his gate for business, angry that we’d made him sell his stock before he could list it for inventory.
The next year, I used all my money from a summer job to buy all of their recordings again, on cassette this time, so I could listen to them on my endless subway rides to and from school on a Sony Walkman.
“October” in particular, was an album I could not go without listening to every single day. I can still play it back to myself, from memory, note for note, in my own head from start to finish.

Then came their fourth album.
“The Unforgettable Fire” was the first sign that the egos of these then young men might have caught up with the unprecedented hype they were receiving. “The Hype” incidentally, was U2’s original name in Ireland and so I guess all things do come full circle eventually.
In 1985, I remember watching Live-Aid at my friend’s house (because we didn’t have cable in the Bronx back then, only HBO service) while their performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was cut off by commercial. Then U2 proceeded to waste the rest of their slot and quite a bit of the follow up act’s time (they may have bumped the Special Beat Service out of a chance to take the stage) by performing one of the most appropriately named songs in their catalog to date: “Bad.”
“Bad” was one of the first, inarguably self-indulgent songs U2 composed. At best it’s just preachy and condescending, but it also represents the beginning of a long insufferable period where Bono began screaming lyrics at me. “Bad” is long, ponderous, and well… just “Bad.” This song also marks the beginning of Bono and The Edge taking an almost Lennonist (the Beetle not the Communist) stance of pretentious superiority over their audience. As with John and Yoko’s “Revolution Number 9” they were trying something, their motives probably unclear even to themselves, but they insisted you listen to it, repeatedly until you “get” its profundity and appreciate the song.
I have never been able to stomach “Bad.” For their part, U2 included it on every EP they could, with ever longer, ever insufferable extended variations, live, remixed etc., ad nauseum from 1984 to 1986. I stopped buying their EPs during this time.

The three albums that followed, “The Joshua Tree”, “Rattle and Hum” and “Achtung Baby” were the records that tore them far from the insider audience that on the one hand chastised people for not knowing who they were, and on the other hand were dropping them in a juvenile response to their colossal mainstream popularity. These records/CDs established U2 firmly as an arena band on the scale of The Who and the Rolling Stones. It established them as crafters of songs that tapped into the very heart of rock and roll. But these records also contain certain songs that exemplify just how horrible and lackluster their songwriting could be. Their potential on the last of these albums was frightening.
I submit to you: “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” or for that matter “The Fly.”

Then came three of the worst records ever recorded by anybody, from one of the best bands ever to play Rock and Roll of any kind:
“Original Soundtraks 1”
“Zooropa”
and “Pop”
I responded with only two words when my then girlfriend Barbara, played the “Zooropa” cassette for me: “Holy shit.”
But it wouldn’t end there. Bono was concocting stage personas like "The Fly", "Mirror-Ball Man", and "(Mister) MacPhisto".

Give me a fucking break.

The richest citizens in Ireland and the most famous rock band on the planet were attempting to point out the pitfalls of commercialism and the dangers of the media to me?

How?

By becoming victims of their own distorted self image and collapsing under the sheer metric tonnage of their egos?

For the first time, U2 did not possess the requisite sophistication that their music and lyrics demanded. They didn’t seem to understand the concepts they were attempting to communicate. They left their now immense global audience wondering:
what the fuck did any of this have to do with music?
Watching their multimedia concert clips of the “ZooTV” and “PopMart” tours was like being held at gunpoint by a fast talking idiot who was gripping the pistol backwards. You were just hoping it would all backfire in front of you.
I’ve always referred to “Zooropa” as “The Unforgivable Fire,” but I’ve always been too pissed off to laugh at my own joke. While I hated earlier songs like “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “Angel of Harlem,” I’ve never written them off as failures, simply as things U2 recorded that I didn’t like. But I have to insist that much of what U2 did in the 1990s pushes the boundaries of what intelligent people can bring themselves to call music.

Then in 2000, a baffling but eagerly welcome return to form, a return to seriousness; a return to making music for this band. “All That You Can't Leave Behind” was what many the world over had been waiting for since “Achtung Baby” first frightened, then impressed them in 1991 depending on which tracks they were listening to.

“How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” came in 2004.

At the age of 36, I knew U2 would never be my band again, I couldn’t own them like I did when I was a little kid. Nor would I want to. I was just impressed at how well they had gotten back on course, like they’d never done any of that embarrassing puerile concept rock in the 90s. Their then recent performance on SNL of “Elevation” was like seeing old friends again. Old friends I missed terribly.

Now this shit.

“No Line on the Horizon” is it for me. It is simply an inexcusable, indefensible waste of time. It's one of those rare records that is so bad it offends.

I don’t know what rationalizations go on in the mind of someone as accomplished and talented as these guys when they are faced with their own mediocrity. Clearly, they are no longer strong enough to say “no” to their own bad ideas.

But I am.

-SJ