Pete The Chop

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

PopFly

War Child
Joined
Dec 19, 2000
Messages
958
Location
Toronto, Canada
Question about this random old U2 b-side.....

Is it true that U2 intended Pete The Chop to be their 'surefire hit single' that they were saving in case it looked like their careers were going to fall apart? I know there was a b-side called 'Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop,' so is that the same song?
 
It's not EXACTLY the same song, though 'Whatever Happened To...' borrows a lot from 'Pete the Chop'.
 
PopFly said:
Is it true that U2 intended Pete The Chop to be their 'surefire hit single' that they were saving in case it looked like their careers were going to fall apart?

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's correct.

I know there was a b-side called 'Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop,' so is that the same song?

No. Pete The Chop was a song U2 played before the release of Boy - and while records from the time period are incomplete, as far as we know, it was the last pre-Boy song to be played live.

Treasure (Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop?) borrows the music.
 
liamcool said:
Damnit, I was supposed to answer!

Yeah, all this is true.

Yeah, it kind of didn't seem right beating you to it, but I was bored.
 
liamcool said:


You arsehole. You on AIM? I don't seem to be getting anything, and I need to discuss..uh...stuff...

I'll be on AIM for a short bit, I suppose. I'm still not well at all and I'm just contenting myself with plodding aimlessly around Interference at the moment.
 
Axver said:


I'll be on AIM for a short bit, I suppose. I'm still not well at all and I'm just contenting myself with plodding aimlessly around Interference at the moment.

You sick?
 
namkcuR said:


You sick?

Yep. Vomiting and diahroea has pretty much sucked all the energy out of me, and in the last few days, I've either been sleeping or going to the doctor for ultrasound or catscan or a blood test. I've gotten sick of lying in bed and my energy's starting to come back, but I'm still feeling miserable.
 
PopFly said:

Is it true that U2 intended Pete The Chop to be their 'surefire hit single' that they were saving in case it looked like their careers were going to fall apart?

I really doubt the validity of this claim. If this really were the case surely Pete The Chop would have been the second single of Pop. :yes:
 
Pete The Chop was a friend of Andrew Whiteway, one of the band's earliest management associates. "Andrew had great fun working with us and avoiding whatever he was supposed to be doing in Trinity College," Edge explains. "He had a couple of friends come over when we played London, and one of them turned out to be Pete The Chop. After the show he came up to us and said I think you should write a song about me. And so we did."

It was the most pop thing that U2 had ever written and when their manager, Paul McGuinness, heard the demo, he thought, "that's a hit single". The people at Island felt the same.

"We said, nobody's ever going to hear it," Bono recalls, "because it would bury the band. And Paul used to get very pissed off that we weren't releasing the song."

"It was very melodic," The Edge adds, "but not really very good."

"So eventually we minced it," Bono laughs. "We turned it around, played it backwards, just sort of fucked it in the ear, and called it 'Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop?'."

That, according to The Edge, was in the days when U2's albums were Top 30 but there was no sign of a hit single. "The new title was a reference to the record company guys who were always saying to Paul McGuinness, 'Whatever happened to "Pete The Chop?" Remember that hit song? (laughs)'."

Appropriately, 'Treasure' was the B-side of 'New Year's Day', the band's breakthrough single in the UK, which was produced by Steve Lillywhite and released in January 1983.

http://www.petethechop.com/about.php
 
Back
Top Bottom