How did you first become a U2 fan!!!

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Tanya

The Fly
Joined
Mar 16, 2002
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85
I remember I was 14 years old and an old friend of mine was spending the night at a friend of mines house that I hadn't seen since I was in the forth grade. Well my friend that I hadn't seen inyears called me and asked me if I liked U2 I told her they were okay but I really liked the horses song. So she invited me to a laser light show with her. They played all the hits from War- Achtumg baby. And then I realized Iknew every song played ,but I didn't know who did it. Then I felt like a total a** because I had liked their music for awhile I just didn't know who they were. My friend made me video tapes and cassettes and as they say the rest is history
 
Shame on me, but I just discovered U2 two years ago.

I liked the HMTMKMKM vid cos it was cool drawn, but I didn't really know U2.

And then I heard BD and Elevation and Stuck and I fell in love with the music and then with Bono. ;)
 
December

It all started with Mary (Quiggs) taking me to downtown Indianapolis to hear Bono speak for the DATA tour. I bought my first three CD's that weekend and now I am here on PLEBA thanks to her!!

~Shannon~
 
Oh, it all started while playing cards with some friends. One of them, Sheila, who doesn't like U2 at all was humming Elevation all the time, especially the whoohoo part. I asked which song was it and she told me it was Elevation by U2 so when I came back home I downloaded it. I fell in love with the song, it was the coolest thing I had ever listened to! So the next day I bought ATYCLB. I fell in love with Bono as soon as I had the CD on my hands, they call it love at first sight :sexywink:
Two weeks or so later, went on holidays with my family and one day we went to a huge shop with all the U2 CDs and I decided to buy The Joshua Tree. At that poing I became a real U2 fan and proud of it!
 
To answer your question - I first became a U2 fan when
I was 15 back in 1984 when the Unforgettable Fire
album came out and like they say the rest is history!

Love
Heather
UK
 
I got a copy of JT on April 1, 1995...my parents bought me the CD. I sat and listened to it 3 times straight. I'd never done that with any CD before. I didn't even listen to music that often. That CD changed my life. :heart:

Wow...April 1st...my U2 Anniversary is coming up soon!

8 years...incredible...

Seems like forever. :D
 
I'd have to say I was a late bloomer. I fell in love with PRIDE but never knew the name of the song so I let it go. Then when I heard Beautiful Day on the radio I liked it but never really thought much of it. After that, I heard Elevation and I loved it, the tune never went out of my head so my friend told me that the video was cool and that I should watch it. So I downloaded it and I loved it, downloaded a lot of songs, listened to them and was hooked! I stayed up a lot during that period of time, watching a fuzzy MTV2 on my television for a video and I think around 2 in the morning they played PRIDE... was I happy or what?
Oh... rambling too much again ^_^, that was the starting of my whole addiction. Pretty quick for a girl who lived around Rap and Hip-Hop her whole life.
 
I was about 4and my mom was cleaning and I was under foot, so to get me out of her way she put on a tape of Bee Gees videos to and in the middle of the video for jive talkin it cut out and New years day started. I remember I kept getting up and hitting the rewind button and watching it over and over again.

Hehe that laser light show was a hoot!!!

OOOOOOOOOOWWWW COOOOOOOOOOKIE CRISP:lmao: :lmao:
 
I had always heard U2 songs on the radio, and I always liked them, but I never knew who they were by. Like 2 years ago when Beautiful Day came out, my local radio station had a contest where if two U2 songs played in a row, you could call in and win a copy of ATYCLB. So then I started hearing all these songs that I had loved forever and realized that they were by U2. So I bought a copy of ATYCLB and the Best of 1980-1990 and fell in love! :D
 
I heard Sunday Bloody Sunday...loved the song and bought the War album and fell in love with Bono's voice. It's as simple as that and I have been a fan ever since which is almost half of my life. My love and admiration of the band has remained one of the most consistent things since then.
 
Hmmm...I have told this story so many times already, but what the heck...

I was first introduced to the world of U2 back in 1987 when my mom bought JT. I've been hearing their music around my house for years, especially AB...After my mom saw a ZooTv show in 1992 I remember she came home and was sort of in a daze. Back then I thought she was strange, but now I totally understand.

I went to my first U2 show on 6/27/97 with my parents and my cousin and from that day on I was hooked!
 
stoooooooory-time!!!!!

:shifty: uh...yeah...

when i was (checks back of shirt to find year...it's a concert shirt, which has the dates on the back, it's the band live--cos if i know what year i saw them play, i can figure out when i started listening to u2)...how old was i in 2000? 16. so a year before that...when i was 15, which was less than 4 years ago (more than 3 and a half, but not three yet), live was my favourite band. and i figured that since i'd read so many interviews and articles where either ed kowalczyk or chad taylor were talking about u2 being one of their favourite bands, so i figured i should check out some of their (u2's) music...not to mention that when i saw live in concert, kowalczyk (the singer) was talking about the band's favourite bands and he was running around the stage yelling "u2! u2!" alternating makeing a 'U' with his hand and holding up two fingers for the 2 part...borrowed october, zooropa and JT from the library, and copied them to cassette tapes and stuck them on the shelf in case some day i might feel like listening to them someday. at this point i knew streets, WOWy, and still haven't found..and i thought there was no way on earth that that was a guitar making that sound, so they must have been a bad 80s synth pop band. and i knew that someone i didn't like had gone to see a popmart show, so they must have sucked if that guy liked them...

so....let's go forward about a year....no onger 15, i'm 16...i was listening to everclear one night, and all of a sudden the cd player broke. i'd heard beautiful day a few times, and liked it, but didn't WANT to like it. still convinced they were some bad 80s band and i'd be better ff not hearing more of their stuff...but my cd player broke, and i only had access to the radio and a tape player. and the radio sucks in general. decided it was time to listen to some u2...totally random choice. i could have decided "oh maybe i'll listen to godsmack" cos i had that album on a tape for god knows what reason (i HATE godsmack now...maybe i liked them...i don't know...i don't REMEMBER liking them). i had some mix tapes with other singles on them, and a tape of sarejevo which i taped off the radio--all "just in case i like them some day"...and i went with JT, and a cross between in god's country (especially the intro) and bullet the blue sky got me hoooked. then october. or maybe zooropa, i forget which i listened to next...i think it was zooropa...and then i killed my sarejevo tape cos i listened to it non-stop...and then my friends came to visit with late birthday presents, only they hadn't gone shopping, so we went to the mall, and my best friend bought me ATYCLB and her sister bought me the war album...

i'm still working on figuring out the equation by which my love for the band's music has increased. since i've only been a fan for a couple years, it's probably an exponential equation, though
 
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Wertsie, it's really cool that your parents like them too! :cute:

Interesting story IWB. :D

Ehm, mine is long and I can't quite place the events in exact order, but I'll try!

The first I remember about U2 is seeing Red Rocks on TV when I was what... 10? And I thought that was the coolest place for a concert. I should have gotten hooked then but I didn't. :mad:

For some reason, I can't remember when I first heard some of their songs, like Pride, NYD and WOWY... but I can remember those songs being a part of my life, it was so normal to hear them and think they were very cool... WOWY has been one of my favorite songs forever. OK, still not a die hard fan...

When R&H came out, I saw some of the videos and I really liked Desire and Angel of Harlem. I should have become a big fan then, but I didn't. :tsk:

A long time after that, I got the soundtrack for the movie "Reality Bites" and I fell in love with AIWIY. I don't know why I didn't go looking for more U2... I just didn't.

Well, there was a long period of time when I thought U2 had broken up... In Puerto Rico, I can't remember hearing anything on the radio from the Zoo era... :huh:

I heard and loved HMTMKMKM, and I was thrilled to hear from U2 again. But after that, they disappeared on me once more... The Pop era didn't exist for me.

All this time I was wasting my time listening to hair metal bands, Bon Jovi and that sort of stuff... :tsk:

I think the next time I saw U2 was on the VH1 Legends thing, I think that first aired around 1999? :confused: I was really intrigued about their story, the fact that they had been together for so many years... I didn't fall in love with Larry then or thought they were particularly cute... BUT that did make me interested in hearing more from them. I think after that I went and bought the Best of 1980 - 1990 and I listened to it a lot.

Some time later I saw another VH1 or MTV special about the best songs or something like that and someone was talking about One, saying that was the best U2 song ever, etc... so I decided to buy Achtung Baby. I was kind of shocked by it and I only listened to it in the background while I was at work... I only liked One, and the chorus of WGRYWH seemed to come to my mind a lot, but that was it.

I heard BD on the radio a lot and I kinda liked it, but when I went to the record store with my neighbor and had almost decided to buy ATYCLB, he told me that he had listened to most of it and that it wasn't very good. I didn't buy it. :madspit:

At a Christmas party in that same neighbor's house in 2001, we started talking and I discovered that not only had he bought ATYCLB, but also this DVD from one of the concerts of their latest tour (it was Boston, of course) and that it was awesome and I had to see it. I borrowed it, saw it and loved it. Elevation (and Larry) really grabbed my attention, I couldn't stop singing that song in my head. A few weeks, early 2002, I got ATYCLB, then the Elevation DVD and R&H, then all the commercially available videos, all the albums, books... everything I could find.

I also searched the internet like crazy for Larry pics... found Zootopia, then Interference and I became the crazy fan that I am today. :happy:

I forgot this bit! One night, I sat down in my room, put on my headphones and really listened to Achtung Baby... That was a life changing experience, one of the best moments, ever... I get chills just thinking about it!!!

So, it's almost a life long muuuuuuusical journey to truly "find" U2... it was fate, or God, and I thank him for that.

Ok, you can wake up now, my rambling is over! :laugh:
 
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Man, it's been almost a year since I became a fan already.

Wow. Time really flies.

Course, that's nothing compared to how long some of you have been fans, but still...

Anywho, how I got into U2...well, I'd heard U2's music all the time on the radio when I was little (the big singles, that is). I liked the stuff I'd heard, thought it was great and all, but just never really thought to get any further into it.

Then one night a couple of years ago, I'd been listening to the radio, and I heard "Angel Of Harlem". And I thought the song rocked. I loved it.

And then I heard that song occasionally up through last May (which is when I consider the beginning of my U2 fandom), and finally I decided to get it on a CD I was making, along with a few other U2 songs I liked (one being "Stuck In A Moment", which I have a personal liking of because it helped me through my junior year with a crush on this guy that I had).

And while I listened to those two songs, along with the others, something clicked.

Then in June of last year, they showed the Elevation: Live From Boston concert on the Fox Family channel (which I'm still kicking myself for not taping). By then I'd started to like Bono more (thanks to the "When The Stars Go Blue" video-Bono's charisma and sweetness in the video made me take a lot more interest in him than I'd had before-I liked him, thought he was cool, but after seeing that video, I really started liking him more), so that was one reason why I wanted to watch the concert, the other being that it just looked interesting and I wanted to hear more of their songs, after getting interested from the few I'd heard thus far.

I watched the concert, I liked the songs I heard, and those I had never heard before, I found out what they were called and downloaded them.

Then in July, I got The Joshua Tree, which I loved (and still love).

And I've been a fan ever since all that stuff happened. :).

Angela
 
My cousin who's a music major got me 2 CDs for my 15th birthday back in '97. One was "Regatta De Blanc" by police and "Achtung Baby". I listened to them maybe once but forgot about them soon after....when the best of 1980-1990 came out, I fell in love with the pictures on the back cover .... so I got the CD and found out every song I liked was by U2 i just hadn't noticed it before.
 
My process took a while. It waited for the right moment and time.

I was ten during ZooTV. My first conscious memory of U2 was when my sister and I were watching TV, and it showed a clip of Bono dressed as the Mirrorball Man. My sister shook her head when she saw him and mentioned how ridiculous he looked. I also remember hearing "Mysterious Ways" and "One" on the radio, and really liking them. I didn't become a U2 fan at that point. When I was little, whatever was Top 40, I liked :rolleyes:.
I do not remember Zooropa coming out, so there is a bit of a dry spell there.

For some reason, I remember hearing about U2 just when AB was released. I guess I had a sub-conscious memory of hearing ISHFWILF and WOWY on the radio. And also "Pride", that was probably when "In the Name of the Father" came out. Also, my family is of Irish background, so my sister and I paid extra attention to this band simply because they're from Ireland!

Then HMTMKMKM came out, and I really liked that one.

When Pop came out, I had no interest in U2. I remember they weren't cool that year, and that there was a backlash against them. It seemed to me then that they were some old rock band trying to act cool even though they were better off retired. You know, they were heavy into electronica and treated themselves as something special and their PopMart props looked like a desperate attempt to be cool or something. It seemed ridiculous to me. And, I had heard that their PopMart TV show got bad ratings, and their videos were not on TV, and none of their songs were on the radio. It was a sucky year from them, and I wasn't a fan, but I still had my interest!

Then the Best of 1980-1990 came out, and so did "Sweetest Thing". I liked the song, my sister bought the CD, but I wasn't really listening to them. They still seemed to me an old rock band trying to be cool. Maybe I thought that was because of Bono's colorful, pimp-like outfit in the "Sweetest Thing" video. But I knew there was potential for them to still be great, and I still had my interest, and somehow, I knew I was going to like them someday. I just knew! :shrug:

Then BD came out, and that song sealed it! I am now a huge fan of the band, own nearly all of their CDs (just 4 more to go), and
I'll always a loyal fan of U2, even if they do get bad again someday :laugh:

And that's the story of my conversion! :wave:
Perle
 
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flaming june said:
[

The first I remember about U2 is seeing Red Rocks on TV when I was what... 10? And I thought that was the coolest place for a concert. I should have gotten hooked then but I didn't. :mad:

B]

I saw Red Rocks on TV also when I was a little kid:yes: That was like the first time I ever saw what U2 looked like, but I wasen't like oh Edge Bono there so cute, cuz I dont think I even liked boys yet. The lusting after them came years later.
 
flaming june said:
Wertsie, it's really cool that your parents like them too!

Interesting story IWB.
Ehm, mine is long and I can't quite place the events in exact order, but I'll try!

The first I remember about U2 is seeing Red Rocks on TV when I was what... 10? And I thought that was the coolest place for a concert. I should have gotten hooked then but I didn't.

For some reason, I can't remember when I first heard some of their songs, like Pride, NYD and WOWY... but I can remember those songs being a part of my life, it was so normal to hear them and think they were very cool... WOWY has been one of my favorite songs forever. OK, still not a die hard fan...

When R&H came out, I saw some of the videos and I really liked Desire and Angel of Harlem. I should have become a big fan then, but I didn't.

A long time after that, I got the soundtrack for the movie "Reality Bites" and I fell in love with AIWIY. I don't know why I didn't go looking for more U2... I just didn't.

Well, there was a long period of time when I thought U2 had broken up... In Puerto Rico, I can't remember hearing anything on the radio from the Zoo era...

I heard and loved HMTMKMKM, and I was thrilled to hear from U2 again. But after that, they disappeared on me once more... The Pop era didn't exist for me.

All this time I was wasting my time listening to hair metal bands, Bon Jovi and that sort of stuff...

I think the next time I saw U2 was on the VH1 Legends thing, I think that first aired around 1999? I was really intrigued about their story, the fact that they had been together for so many years... I didn't fall in love with Larry then or thought they were particularly cute... BUT that did make me interested in hearing more from them. I think after that I went and bought the Best of 1980 - 1990 and I listened to it a lot.

Some time later I saw another VH1 or MTV special about the best songs or something like that and someone was talking about One, saying that was the best U2 song ever, etc... so I decided to buy Achtung Baby. I was kind of shocked by it and I only listened to it in the background while I was at work... I only liked One, and the chorus of WGRYWH seemed to come to my mind a lot, but that was it.

I heard BD on the radio a lot and I kinda liked it, but when I went to the record store with my neighbor and had almost decided to buy ATYCLB, he told me that he had listened to most of it and that it wasn't very good. I didn't buy it.

At a Christmas party in that same neighbor's house in 2001, we started talking and I discovered that not only had he bought ATYCLB, but also this DVD from one of the concerts of their latest tour (it was Boston, of course) and that it was awesome and I had to see it. I borrowed it, saw it and loved it. Elevation (and Larry) really grabbed my attention, I couldn't stop singing that song in my head. A few weeks, early 2002, I got ATYCLB, then the Elevation DVD and R&H, then all the commercially available videos, all the albums, books... everything I could find.

I also searched the internet like crazy for Larry pics... found Zootopia, then Interference and I became the crazy fan that I am today.

I forgot this bit! One night, I sat down in my room, put on my headphones and really listened to Achtung Baby... That was a life changing experience, one of the best moments, ever... I get chills just thinking about it!!!

So, it's almost a life long muuuuuuusical journey to truly "find" U2... it was fate, or God, and I thank him for that.

Ok, you can wake up now, my rambling is over!


:blahblah:


















J/K FJ!!!!!!!!!!! :laugh: :hug:

Great story... never knew it! ;)


As for me, I knew who U2 were in the 80s... my stepdad, especially, liked them and had their CDs, and I saw their videos on MTV and stuff, but at the time, I couldn't understand why all the girls thought Bono was so cute :huh:

But that all changed in the fall of 1991 when I heard Mysterious Ways, saw the video and bought AB. Bono was now the sexiest thing I had ever seen. :tongue: My stepdad got me tickets to the Zoo tour for my birthday that year (I :heart: him for that!) and it was the BEST show I have ever seen. I still think it's the best show I've seen. :yes:

And I've been a fan ever since... though all these years I've been a fan of their music only (except for that small crush on Bono)...I didn't know much personal info about the guys or their personal lives....it wasn't until I saw the VH1 Legends show in December 2001 (?) that I knew the full story and history of the band. I was absolutely intrigued by what I learned from that special and turned to the Net to find out even more *personal* info on the band, and found Zootopia, I met flaming june on the Zoo and she introduced me to PLEBA... the Legends special is also when I *discovered* Larry and just how hot HE is! :tongue:

And that's MY story. :D
 
I think I've told mine before, too but here goes anyway!

I've always known all the words to the popular 80's radio songs- SBS, NYD, WOWY, etc. I always liked them, too. And then it was 1989 and the New Kinds on the Block came along...but anyway...

For a long time, I didn't connect 80's and 90's U2. I LOVED One and Mysterious Ways but I didn't think it was the same band that sang WTSHNN and Pride. I remember hearing Numb on the radio late at night and changing the channel real fast because it freaked me out when I was the only one awake in the house. :lol: I had an artist friend who was completely obessed with the HMTMKMKM video, and I taped the song off the radio and we giggled at the end (oh, to be 16 again!) and I didn't connect THAT U2 to the U2 that sang One. For some reason, I did connect them to the U2 the local DJ's made fun of during PopMart and I thought maybe they weren't such a good band anymore.

For like four months. I went off to college and met the girl down the hall who had U2 all over her room. Her leg had even appeared in an issue of Propaganda wrapped in a yellow cast her brother painted a big U2 on.

By the fall of 2000, I had connected my 3 U2's, learned they were always and forever a really good band, and even their names. We listened to ATYCLB continuously after it came out, and when my friend came back from semester break with the UK version with The Ground Beneath Her Feet, we were convinced we were the only ones in America who knew that song. (For some reason, she had no notion of The Million Dollar Hotel, I guess.)

We saw the Elevation Tour in Philly on June 12, when Bono admitted to feeling crappy but still ran laps around the heart and reached out to us, in the very last row at the rooftop of the arena. I was hooked.

Fall 2001 was a rough emotional time for me. I stood in the heart on Halloween and sang and cried and felt something other than sad and numb and the rest is history. I scare my family and friends, but I am addicted to everything about U2 and the way their music makes me feel.
 
For me it was JT times really ..I had listen to "The Unforgettable Fire" and just could not get enough of it . Then I was working for a friend in NY and got a chance to meet larry (at the time I didn't know its was him) I just thought that he was dropping off some tapes for us to master. Later my friend told me who he was (boy did I feel dumb)!! Then I saw The JT tour and was hooked for life..
 
erised said:



:blahblah:


J/K FJ!!!!!!!!!!! :laugh: :hug:

Great story... never knew it! ;)

I was absolutely intrigued by what I learned from that special and turned to the Net to find out even more *personal* info on the band, and found Zootopia, I met flaming june on the Zoo and she introduced me to PLEBA... the Legends special is also when I *discovered* Larry and just how hot HE is! :tongue:

And that's MY story.

:eyebrow: I know you just wanted to use that new smiley... :p

I turned you into a PLEBAn... Awwww! :cute:
 
It was with Achtung Baby... I was 12 years old. The first time I ever saw them on TV was in the One videoclip... the version where Bono is sitting at a bar. I was like:"My god... this is what the singer looks like... :drool: "

And I've been a fan ever since. When I bought the Joshua Tree right after, I discovered that it was U2 that made my favorite song of all time (when I was a child) I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For I was just so stunned... I knew that it wasn't a coincidence and that they would always be my #1 band.

If I'm a musician today, it's because of them... if I am who I am today... it's because of them... I'm getting sentimental, aren't I?
 
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