![]() They opened with two songs off the latest album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” the crowd pleasing “City of Blinding Lights” and lead single “Vertigo.” After a mixture of well-known classics (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Beautiful Day”) and more obscure early songs (“The Electric Co.” and “Gloria”) Bono went into one of his trademark spiels about building a better future- only it wasn’t. The band mixed serious political statements with light-hearted moments during the latest stop on their Vertigo Tour. They charted a middle path whereby they went back to their political activism and earnest songwriting, but kept enough humor in their act so that they stayed grounded and likeable.Ĭase in point: Friday’s performance at Madison Square Garden. Inevitably, U2 veered too far with the self-parody, and the 1997 album “Pop” and the ensuing “PopMart Tour” earned the band even more criticism than they got for “Rattle & Hum.” (Okay, we get it! You’re making fun of American consumerism! The gigantic golden arch is about as subtle as The Howard Stern Show during midget week.) The New Music Express called the PopMart tour a “ludicrous hullabaloo” that showed “how far they had traveled from Planet Reality”, and the most infamous moment of the tour (other than opening night when an under-prepared U2 had to restart “Staring at the Sun” on live television) was their Derek Smalls moment when they were trapped inside the gigantic lemon.Īs any philosophy student who has studied Hegel or Marx will tell you, the next step for U2 was predictable. In fact, one of Bono’s stage personas during the Zoo TV tour was a TV evangelist-type character who was a little too into himself (sound familiar?). The band still stood for certain causes (every album insert had lists of charities and non-profit organizations for fans to donate time or money to), but the preaching was gone. They forged a new electronic-influenced sound with “Achtung Baby.” They dropped the “holier than thou” act and embraced irony and satire. The movie was a flop and the vultures were circling.Īs such, when the 90s rolled around, a chastened U2 did a complete 180. Critics and fans hate it when bands do the latter and “Rattle & Hum” seemed to be U2’s “bigger than Jesus” moment. But it’s one thing to be anointed as the best band in the world and another to proclaim it to be so. ![]() ![]() After all, “The Joshua Tree” was a bona fide phenomenon that turned the band from a well-regarded band into the biggest band of the 80s. Arguably, U2 deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as those legends. And, to prove they weren’t just trying to cater to America, they also had a shout-out to the Beatles (the first line in the movie is Bono introducing the band’s cover of “Helter Skelter” by saying: “Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles, we’re stealing it back!”). King ( he performs on “When Love Comes to Town”). Instead, most critics were turned off by what they interpreted as U2 trying to place themselves in a pantheon with American legends such as Elvis Presley (the band included footage of a recording session at the famous Sun Studios in Memphis), Billie Holiday (“Angel of Harlem” is about her), Jimi Hendrix (his version of “The Star Spangled Banner” is used as the intro to “Bullet the Blue Sky”), Bob Dylan (he co-wrote “Love Rescue Me” and the band did a cover of “All Along the Watchtower”) and B.B. Bono launched into an emotional rant during the middle of the song condemning the bombing and yelling “F- the revolution!” ![]() In fact one of the high points of the film was the band’s emotional performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that took place hours after the Remembrance Day Bombing that killed 11 in Northern Ireland on November 8, 1987. It wasn’t their outspoken political views that got them in trouble. U2 realized that in 1988 after critics savaged their concert film “Rattle & Hum,” accusing the band of being pretentious and over-indulgent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |