Achtung Baby Released Nov 18/19, 1991

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

dazzledbylight

Blue Crack Supplier
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
35,004
Location
in the sound dancing - w Bono & Edge :D
So it will be 30 yrs next year.

I know some fans never totally got over their remake from JT.

I was actually off in a totally different fandom having a great time till the? '90 Recession
hit. So I couldn't afford the cassette till quite later, but I was totally blown away by it when it came out on the radio!
May still be my favorite (with 2 other close ties). Mysterious, dark, intense, powerful.

Only saw one show when friend got a tix, and let me pay her back over a long time. But I did make it to Giants Stadium w my gang. (And either 8 days before or after we saw Springsteen there as well)
We drove from NYC TO GS. It was Perfect Sumner weather - low 80's and dry! I could just feel my mind expanding with anticipation as we headed down the highway to get there...

Incredible show even if I was 3/4 of the way back, and 4/5 up to the top. Wow! The place up shaking!
 
Last edited:
When this came out, I was 14 and my best friend 15 and we (esp. him, at the time a big U2-fan though he'd be embarrassed to admit it now) were waiting -- seemingly forever -- for the next U2 thing. For, like, a year and a half, there was literally no news. Of anything.

Then, "The Fly" was announced, and an album with an utterly bizarre title. (Surely, that was a joke? That can't actually be the name of the album.)

We sat down at the TV to watch the Canadian premiere of "The Fly". Four minutes later, we were both like, "What... was that?"

___________________

On a musical level, this will always be U2's greatest achievement (and by far the most impressive outing by The Edge). That said, I find the '84 and '87 albums to have a "purer" U2 sound -- and a more organic, less 'studio-bound' sound -- and for that reason, those earlier ones will always be a tiny bit more special to me. But from a musical and compositional angle, Achtung is easily their greatest achievement.

It may be my favorite album issued by anyone in the nineties.
 
They looked like total bad asses on the 1991 Rolling Stone cover that also had a great in depth article about the album. If all you knew before that issue was all those black and images of them standing in the desert not smiling you were in for a surprise.
 
Seeing them live on the indoor leg of Zoo TV remains my favourite gig to this day. I got tickets via Propaganda, in the very quaint way of having to tick a box saying which show I’d like to go to and posting it off to them with a cheque.

Simpler times.
 
They looked like total bad asses on the 1991 Rolling Stone cover that also had a great in depth article about the album. If all you knew before that issue was all those black and images of them standing in the desert not smiling you were in for a surprise.
Bwah!
Indeed!

Shocked fan: :ohmy: Who are you!!? And what have you done with my U2???!!!??

I recall hearing The Fly and then seeing the video. Mind was blown.
I didn't have cable so I didn't the vids for a while. Such great stuff!

Seeing them live on the indoor leg of Zoo TV remains my favourite gig to this day. I got tickets via Propaganda, in the very quaint way of having to tick a box saying which show I’d like to go to and posting it off to them with a cheque.

Simpler times.
What was the indoor show like? Depending on the arena what was the difference in the video wall if you saw like the ZOO TV Vid etc?

One of my favorite things on the 360 tour was I had never seen them up close even if I'd seen them since '84. So I got to the outer rail between Bono and Edge.

When it came time for UTEOTW...Edge's bridge stopped right in front of me. :ohmy: :hyper: I was frozen for a sec and then grabbed my digital camera and took pics of him playing as he walked over the bridge!
Absolutely Amazing!!!
 
Last edited:
I won Achtung Baby from my local Rock Station, and it went on constant play on my CD player. I taped it on cassette so I could listen on my train ride into work. i didn't know what to think of it, so different, so radical. Lyrics so deeply personal and passion directed at the flesh instead of the world. It took me about 3 or 4 months to really understand and love this album. Now, it tops my Favorites List of albums...all time. U2 never sounded better, and I'm happy I was alive to witness and experience that time...Zoo TV was AMAZING...never a better time (musically) in my life...:D
 
It was quite an achievement that this album was as successful as it was in the USA. We can't overstate how awful the mainstream pop-chart was Stateside in the very early-90s. Like, it made the mid-80s look amazingly great by comparison.

Before R.E.M.'s Out of Time hit #1 on Billboard in May 1991, the preceding #1 albums, for well over a year, had been by: MC Hammer, New Kids on the Block, Mariah Carey, and Vanilla Ice. (And R.E.M.'s brief run at the top was then usurped by Paula Abdul.)

U2 and Nirvana each got one week in at #1 on Billboard, but 1992 carried on with remarkably garbage music at the top of the charts, with Garth Brooks, the Wayne's World soundtrack, Def Leppard, Kris Kross, Billy Ray Cyrus, and The Bodyguard soundtrack dominating.
 
It was quite an achievement that this album was as successful as it was in the USA. We can't overstate how awful the mainstream pop-chart was Stateside in the very early-90s. Like, it made the mid-80s look amazingly great by comparison.

Before R.E.M.'s Out of Time hit #1 on Billboard in May 1991, the preceding #1 albums, for well over a year, had been by: MC Hammer, New Kids on the Block, Mariah Carey, and Vanilla Ice. (And R.E.M.'s brief run at the top was then usurped by Paula Abdul.)

U2 and Nirvana each got one week in at #1 on Billboard, but 1992 carried on with remarkably garbage music at the top of the charts, with Garth Brooks, the Wayne's World soundtrack, Def Leppard, Kris Kross, Billy Ray Cyrus, and The Bodyguard soundtrack dominating.





“Mysterious Ways” and “One” were enormously successful, on the radio all the time, and the reason I became the fan that I did. It was also exactly the same time that I discovered REM, and became the fan that I did.

I think the lesson is that disposable music for (some) teenagers has always been around and always will be, and it’s meant to be enjoyed — we shouldn’t be snobby about it, because most people listen to music for fun and pleasure. But there is some popular music built to last, which is what U2 and REM were up to at the time. And it certainly has.
 
I think the lesson is that disposable music for (some) teenagers has always been around and always will be, and it’s meant to be enjoyed — we shouldn’t be snobby about it, because most people listen to music for fun and pleasure. But there is some popular music built to last, which is what U2 and REM were up to at the time. And it certainly has.
Oh, for sure.

But I was just thinking as I typed that post (above), of those 4 "artists" -- Hammer, Kids, Mariah, Ice -- is anybody listening to any of them now? Mariah Carey went on to have a long and super-successful career (er... she's still going now, right?), so I suppose some of her dedicated fans still listen to hits comps of her early stuff. But those other three? Paula Abdul's second album? Kris Kross?

The very early-90s was just horrid at the mainstream, top-40 level in the USA. Things did improve considerably towards late '92 and into 1993, as the mainstream (briefly) swung more towards more credible, artistically-valid musical acts.

So, it's remarkable that after three years away (a really long time, back then), and with -- by mainstream American standards -- a very left-of-center album with a single ('The Fly') guaranteed to turn off top-40 radio, U2 was able to do as well as they did.
 
I suppose some of her dedicated fans still listen to hits comps of her early stuff.

for sure, nobody listens to mariah anymore except dedicated fans listening to compilations of her early stuff. that's why she only has 23 million monthly listeners on spotify.

surely a serious, great artist like U2 blows those numbers out of the water, with (checks notes)... 15.7 million monthly listeners.

:rolleyes:
 
for sure, nobody listens to mariah anymore except dedicated fans listening to compilations of her early stuff. that's why she only has 23 million monthly listeners on spotify.

surely a serious, great artist like U2 blows those numbers out of the water, with (checks notes)... 15.7 million monthly listeners.

:rolleyes:
As I said, I wasn't even aware if Mariah Carey was still going nowadays (bit off my radar), but she certainly had a long and successful career. Anyway, how many of those 23 million spotify listeners are listening to her 1990-91 stuff, which is the relevant matter. Also, how are Ice, Hammer, and the New Kids doing?

My point was: very early-90s mainstream music was dire. A low-point in American popular culture.
 
for sure, nobody listens to mariah anymore except dedicated fans listening to compilations of her early stuff. that's why she only has 23 million monthly listeners on spotify.



surely a serious, great artist like U2 blows those numbers out of the water, with (checks notes)... 15.7 million monthly listeners.



[emoji57]



Yes, but half those listeners are gay men singing along to “All I Want for Christmas is You.”





(Not that I’d do that if I had any singing ability whatsoever)
 
It was definitely shocking. I was 16, and at that age waiting 3+ years for new music feels like a long time because it is a quarter of your waking life. I skipped school and went to buy it at the mall. I had this boom box with detachable speakers and I just lied there with my head in between them. Not gonna lie it took a while to grow on me. For a while the only tracks I listened to were 4, 7, 8 and 10. You know what those are. Eventually I warmed up of course. Ok this is U2. Still don’t care for the album version of One as much as any other iteration.
 
What was the indoor show like? Depending on the arena what was the difference in the video wall if you saw like the ZOO TV Vid etc?

It was f*cking incredible. The energy, the noise, the atmosphere, I've genuinely never been at another U2 gig like it. The small (relatively speaking) venue helped - those indoor Zoo TV shows sounded much more raw, dirty & angry than the outdoor ones did and they were obviously right at the end of that stage of the tour so they were well rehearsed but also very relaxed.

Some of the indoor stuff on YouTube gives a flavour of it, especially the opening intro in to Zoo Station.
 
Last edited:
The “I could have lost you ...” intro from the indoor shows was epic. Judging by the bootlegs, they were incredible shows. Less polished and less formulaic than the outdoor leg. Raw and unbridled.
 
Yeah these shows were something, saw 2 indoor (Worcester & Providence) and 2 outdoor (2 of the 3 Foxborough) shows.
At the Providence show was on the floor right along the B stage.
Would be impossible to recapture the magic of these shows now, so don't know what they could/should do for an AB30 tour were it to come to fruition. Playing the album in sequence like they did with Joshua Tree would be cool, but as far as recreating the staging and being able to recreate the energy of the band, they'd have to come up with something a bit different I think.
 


Ah cool - I remember this from bootlegs from years ago but didn't think I'd ever really heard it.

Somewhat related - I watched the first half of the ZooTV Washington DC proshot show on YouTube yesterday and... the way everyone but Larry keeps royally fucking up New Years Day - ESPECIALLY Adam playfully mean-mugging Edge as Edge can't find his place in the song - is pretty hilarious. I wonder if that's the reason the show was never released.
 


Ahhh, thanks for providing. I certainly remember the refrain, but never really knew that's what he was saying.

Is it a snippet of something known? Would B sing it live into microphone? It sounds so identical every time that it seems like perhaps it was played with the 'interference ' over PA. Did it only appear on a certain leg of ZooTV Or certain shows?
 
I was 16 when it came out and faked sick from school so I could go get it as soon as the mall opened. Didn’t even know what the album cover looked like so I had to search around. They kept “featured” albums on a display behind the counter. Now that I think about it, previous first listens of a U2 album had all been on cassette, so this was new. I didn’t have a CD player in my car so I had to wait a million years to get back at home. I lied on the floor and set the stereo speakers on either side of my head. Didn’t love it because it was such a departure, but of course it grew on me eventually. On track 10 when he whispers “All right now” is an unforgettable moment for me. I lived in one of those third-tier American areas, so it was nearly a year later that I saw them live for the first time. Then another nine years, then another .. 16.
 
Ahhh, thanks for providing. I certainly remember the refrain, but never really knew that's what he was saying.

Is it a snippet of something known? Would B sing it live into microphone? It sounds so identical every time that it seems like perhaps it was played with the 'interference ' over PA. Did it only appear on a certain leg of ZooTV Or certain shows?

I’ve no idea where it came from but yes, he sang it live (with distortion?) in to the mic on the indoor legs. He’d come on, start that, then the rest of the band would come on and kick in to Zoo Station.
 
Back
Top Bottom