What did you think when you first heard Actung Baby?

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Bought it on Thayer Street in Providence in November 1991. Fourteen years old, out with my first girlfriend. Had a play that night so couldn't listen to it until later. Got a ride home, put it in my boombox at 11:00 at night, put on my puny headphones, and still had my mind blown. (I had the same reaction to "Zoo Station" others did -- from "are my headphones not working" to "ohmyGOD!!!!!" in 5 seconds.) Listened through "Ultra Violet," then listened to the whole thing the next day. I knew who U2 was because of "With or Without You" and some of their other stuff, but didn't have many preconceptions. As a result, twenty years later, it still holds true...
 
I was in England at the time. Radio 1 played some tracks on the Friday night, then played tracks every 2 hours or so over the weekend.

The first tracks I heard (after Fly) were EBTTRT, Acrobat and Ultraviolet. I had never been so excited about an album before (Joshua Tree was close) and I kept playing the tracks over and over through Friday night (I recorded them on tape).

The next morning I heard Mysterious Ways and literally ran to my brother's house (4 miles away) with tape in hand to play the song for him. By the time I heard Love is Blindness on the Sunday, I was just blown away with how brilliant a whole album could be.

By the time the CD was released on the Monday, the only track I hadn't heard was Zoo Station so I got another nice surprise :D
 
I regret to say that when I first heard Achtung Baby, I didn't care for it.

I got into U2 with All That You Can't Leave Behind, then Unforgettable Fire, then Joshua Tree, and then Boy and War. So I was not used to any 90's U2 at all, let alone I didn't know that they even had good music during that era! Eventually, I gave AB another listen and though, "Well, this is alright, but I still like JT more".

Listened to Zooropa (which I originally enjoyed better than AB) and POP (which I originally couldn't get into). Then I gave AB another listen. I distinctly remember laying on my floor, staring at the ceiling, with noise cancelling headphones on just getting completely engulfed in the music.

I fell in love and I can truthfully say that Achtung Baby is not only my favorite U2 album, but my favorite record of all time.

And now, 90's U2 is my favorite era. We've got UV, EBTTRT, and Zooropa as pretty decent surprises on this tour. If they bring back Gone, Discotheque, or Dirty Day, I could die the day after and all would be well.
 
intedomine said:
The Fly never got played on Aussie radio though, nor Zoo Station
Click to expand...

U2 have fallen into a funny hole on Australian radio. It hasn't always been that way. I can assure you, for example, if you were paying attention in 1991, you would have heard The Fly on heavy rotation across the board. All those major Achtung singles were monsters, and were played by everyone. But since 2000, they've just... disappeared really. 'Classic' U2 (pre-1990 really) gets played on the Classic Rock stations. Their more ballad-ey stuff of all ages gets played on the Adult Contemporary stations. But both the Top 40 and Triple J ignore them, past or present. And both used to be huge on them. You'd almost laugh now at the suggestion that Triple J would play U2 on heavy rotation, but they used to.

Edit: But then I just looked at some charts, and U2 were the 7th most played act on Australian radio in 2010. Where?
 
Back when I used to listen to Top 40 radio to some degree (being a few years ago), Beautiful Day would often be played (once every few days/week) in amidst the current hits of Top 40 artists.

I found it to be surprising at the time, due to the fact that I couldn't believe they'd play anything older than a few months.
 
:hmm:

I had an unusual pre-AB connected with U2 experience that may have kind of kept me not totally in the loop for the arrival of AB at the time it debuted.

It was a small but real chance to show one of the top people then at Island Records a work up of a cover for what would become R&H.
All I was told was that U2 were gong around the USA making a concert film. This was through a friend of a good relative.

The offer to do this came out of the blue and between trepidation & stunned joy - wile realizing it was not the biggest odds; i worked away at it!

One day on the bus I'd bought the NYTimes and saw an article that this person had suddenly died.
Well there went my chance.:sad:

I never saw R&H in the theater though 2 of my close friends who'd seen U2 and other incredible bands in concert with me raved about it.
Must of been my then buried upset at the whole thing, since I felt then I didn't have the right to be upset b/c of the death.

Anyway I also ended up swinging into SF Fandom a while before this happened, so I was paying much more attention to that during the whole 5 yrs U2 were dreaming it up all over again.

Not sure how I heard about it -- probably over the radio.... so I missed the whole excitement/ that most fans were feeling, missed RS covers etc. :grumpy:
 Also the Big REcession was still running high in the NYC area so i didn't have the $ to get it.

BUT what I heard : ZS, the Fly, EBTTRT, WGRYWH, UTEOTW, maybe Acrobat later....
... I was instantly in love with the album !:hyper:

I had been listening to U2 since 81.... but they were NOT the first major band I followed seriously, and I went through the whole Punk/New Wave scene that started in NYC/CBGB's .

So i'd been exposed to many bands , many styles of R&R and seenover ?280 concerts or more by that time.

AB remains my top U2 with NLOTH either at the same level or slightly below (it varies) and JT would be my #2.

SO glad with borrowed $ I even got to see 1 ZOO-TV show! :drool:
 
I was 16 during the summer of 1996. I had heard One and Mysterious Ways on the radio, as they were still getting tons of airplay in NJ and I was in love with those songs. I also still was in love with HMTMKMKM from the summer before, but have never decided to check out U2's work. 96 was also the summer my parents finally separated and would later divorce, so One really struck a chord with me. So I decided to pick up the album from a local CD store with my hard earned cash from working at a summer camp. I liked most of it at first. One, Mysterious Ways, Wild Horses, Even Better, The Fly, Acrobat, and Until the End. Over the next few months I fell in love with Ultraviolet and some of the others. Zoo Station was the last song to win me over, but when it did, the album became an instant classic that they have never been able to top for me.
I got Pop the following year when it was released and thought it was ok, it later really grew on me, but not like AB did. Zooropa took a lot longer because I was expecting another AB so I really didn't like it, but it did as well. For me AB still brings me back to the mindset I was in during that summer and helped me get through all that shit that was going on. I wish they would put out another AB, but they really don't have to, because that album is absolute perfection.
 
I've known about U2 since 2000, but I didn't get hooked until I heard Vertigo on the radio. After buying the album 'HTDAAB' November of 2004 when it came out, there was no going back. I acquired 'The Best of 1990-2000' first and then 'The Best Of 1980-1990', and then came 'Achtung Baby' after hearing 'Mysterious Ways. I stayed up all night the night I bought it and nearly ruined my hearing. Achtung Baby was a sign to me of good years and a sign that U2 knew how to kick some serious ass. :love:
 
my aunt got me the cassette and i popped it in and upon hearing zoo station i thought the tape was defective and called my aunt in to listen. was around 8-9
 
I don't exactly recall my first listen but I think I thought it was pretty cool. It was somewhere in 2009 after NLOTH came out. I'd already heard a lot of great things about the album so I had high expectations. It didn't disappoint but it didn't blow me away either. EBTTRT was the song I liked most at first.

Anyway, it's my favourite album now.
 
The first time I listened to it, I'd only heard the 80s Best of, ATYCLB and HTDAAB. I sat on the bedroom floor and talked with my brothers through most of it, so I didn't catch everything. But I did recall thinking it sounded very dirty, and I remember one moment in UTEOTW where I thought to myself, wow, this is dark stuff. The first song I went back to was The Fly. Who knew Edge could do solos like that?
 
I listened to it once, then again, and again, and again :)

It's about as perfect as an album could be.

(even on cassette)
 
"Holy shit, now this is more like it!"

I wasn't a rabid fan of the 80s material at the time, my appreciation for that came later. It was AB that first grabbed and held my attention and made me an uber fan. The first song I remember hearing is Mysterious Ways - such a cool, funky, unU2-like song - and I ran out and got the CD immediately. It was love at first listen, and began my long time love affair with the band.
 
I remember the total silence from the U2 camp since the end of Lovetown, so it was, what 2 years, between that and The Fly being released. And it was released on limited edition, ie I think it was on sale for a month only and then deleted. So I bought the single and loved it and saw the video on Countdown or Rage or something and went "holy crap, check out Bono!!!!" :drool:

So by the time AB was released I was :hyper: Bought it the week it came out (on vinyl of course, can't imagine those piccies being reduced to CD size!) and played it and played it and played it.

And to me it wasn't a huge shock after JT and R&H. It felt more natural and expected a change in their music than the change between War and UF. I think by then I was more used to U2 mixing it up. And also they had exhausted their "american love affair" by R&H. They weren't very good at pretending they came from teh Mississippi delta and it was good they stopped!

And I love you more than ever cobbler....
 
at my grandmother's house where one of my aunts still lived...i was about 10 at the time. found the cd in my aunt's room, and popped in the CD. didn't get the shock value because i wasn't aware of much of U2's old stuff,i pretty much accepted it for what it was right away. thought it was mad cool. later on I got JT first, then Zooropa, and then I got AB...and by that time I appreciated it on a whole different level...and also for the first time became aware of an artist's versatility. it was a very easy album to love. next album was UF...another departure...by that point i knew i had to get all of them.
 
I rarely post (long time lurker!), but this topic is great, I figured that I would share my experience. I had been a fan since '87 and had bought all the records and was waiting impatiently for the followup to Rattle and Hum. I vividly remember hearing the name 'Achtung Baby' on Good Rocking Tonight ( a late night music show here in Canada), thinking cool, the new album is coming! I remember waiting around in a small record shop that had the radio on and the announcer said here is the new U2 single, 'The Fly'. I didn't know what to make of it. Then I bought the album the first day it came out, put it in my walkman and went 'WTF' is this! I remember thinking during the first listen wondering where all of Edge's guitar sounds went and what was going on with Bono's singing. Anyway, that album changed everything musically for me, what I listened to, everything. It's still my favourite and probably always will be.
 
I remember the days before the internet, when A B came out...Radio 1 in UK had a u2 day to mark its release. The first I heard from it, when was then DJ Gary Davies, opened his show, with Zoo Station. He didnt say who it was tho, he challeneged listeners to guess who it was. I remember hearing the opening guitar riff (which was rather aptly described as sounding like a car backfiring) and i was thinking...WHAT THE F.............
You really had to have been about at the time of the JT and R&H to be able to comprehend the enormity of the change of sound and direction. God....i farking LUV u2 :drool::heart::love::hyper::heart:
 
gman said:
I remember the days before the internet, when A B came out...Radio 1 in UK had a u2 day to mark its release. The first I heard from it, when was then DJ Gary Davies, opened his show, with Zoo Station. He didnt say who it was tho, he challeneged listeners to guess who it was. I remember hearing the opening guitar riff (which was rather aptly described as sounding like a car backfiring) and i was thinking...WHAT THE F.............
You really had to have been about at the time of the JT and R&H to be able to comprehend the enormity of the change of sound and direction. God....i farking LUV u2 :drool::heart::love::hyper::heart:
Click to expand...

I remember that day so well. I think So cruel was my initial fave.

For about five years before and ten years after that day every day was U2 for me!
 
"There's a better band than Guns n Roses??"

I was 12. It was 1993. And GnfnR are awesome.
 
I felt that i belong to U2 FOREVER. I am now the BIGGEST fan of U2 in the whole wide world because of Achtung Baby.
 
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