"It was meant to invoke the whole feel of north Africa, of Morocco, and I didn't think that was achieved as well as on other albums, where the atmosphere hits you. I would never call any of U2's work a failure, and I did not."
I agree and disagree, I consider it as an incomplete but successful Mediterranean album more than a failed North-African album. I explain my point of view, these two continents are face to face and this French-Arab guy who escapes on his bike, rue du Marais (marais is a mix of water, ground and vegetation, swamp in english i think) and travels through France and Spain - both countries with strong historical bounds with North Africa, they mixed many times more or less violently- to reach the sea and join its other side. This side where he or his parents were probably born then crossed the sea to get a job like a lot of people legally or illegally still do a few decades after they fought for and got their independance. The album has a side of the coast with classic European rock/pop tunes and some sounds influenced by Fez on the other coast (UC, MOS, F-BB, COL and the more dancing CT live version maybe), Magnificient, a love song, being the bridge between both continents/cultures, with a rock start and a more transe ending. I would have loved EBW to be included because of the sea reference of course (especially the line "every sailor knows that the sea is a friend-made-enemy" to remind that many people die every day while they cross this sea) and an other song like Magnificient but overall, I find this album cohesive because of its diversity, it's similar to the boiling mixed Mediterranean culture with many religions, sounds, perfumes, colors, races, etc living together around this piece of water. So yeah, he's right, it doesn't sound exotic as expected, it's much more subtle in my opinion than just exoticism, it sounds like two worlds colliding, kissing, interpenetrating or unable or just reluctant to do so The evil trilogy CT, SUC and Boots expressed it well, i don't like them but i don't consider them as alien, they're just not well expressed but these people lost in a dizzy world are not out of context at all. The people partying on one side of the Mediterranean sea and just a few miles away there's a civil war like in Algeria or Yugoslavia, it existed, it's really a strange place, not rationnal at all i guess for outsiders and difficult to understand. I'm not sure - i don't know of course, i just suppose- if they and their team (Steve included, judging by his comment on the atmosphere) understood the colossal masterpiece they had in their hands (an album about cousin civilizations, former colonies, immigrants, an erupting burning hot area about to explode or to offer to the world an amazing united mix of cultures, like the pregnant chick in NLOTH, about to give birth, that's the way i feel this album but i can be wrong and overread) if they had pushed the project a bit more or if they were aware of that but found too difficult to achieve it, or found it too serious or even too unpersonal and awkward for rich rock stars to write about that and fully, clearly devellop it into a double album.
Absolutely. In addition, I don't think I am playing the victim, though if people like BVS wish to reach that conclusion, that is their prerogative. I am simply standing up for the idea that nothing should be beyond debate.
