Bono reviewing U2 albums

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blueyedpoet

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I found his critique on U2's albums to be very interesting.
- he feels like he didn't finish the lyrics to many songs in the 80s
- "'Stay' is perhaps the greatest U2 song. We never turned it into the single it deserved to be."
- he said that Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are more sonically sophisticated but ATYCLB and HTDAAB have better songs
- about HTDAAB, "It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."
 
blueyedpoet said:
HTDAAB - There's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."
:hmm: That's what I was thinking..... For some reason even though I like all the songs, the album doesn't really strike me as that great.
 
- about HTDAAB, "It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."

Didn't he say that about ATYCLB? I could see that album fitting that description better. Unless he meant there isn't a central theme a la Americas for JT or Edge's divorce/broken relationships for AB.
(though I'd say Bono's life is the theme of Bomb: his father's death, his schoolfriend, his marriage, his Africa work, his faith)

I'd say a matter of taste on finishing the lyrics in 80's and which albums have better songs but :up: for the Stay loving.
 
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No, he said about ATYCLB that the whole IS greater than the sum of its parts.
 
babyman said:
Who better than themselves can be the best reviewer??

I actually tend to think the artist is often the worst reviewer, normally due to "own worst critic" syndrome or coming down with the "must hype recent material" ailment.
 
It is often said in the production buisness that a singer should never judge his own takes. And while there is some truth to this, a singer is able to tell the difference between a Lemon vocal performance and a....uh...Lemon.

The reason I roll my eyes at Bono's comments is that it has been conclusively proven that he can't objectively judge his own music. We all remember the comments pre-HTDAAB that lead everyone 3km down the wrong track. He just can't do it.

Although it is interesting to read his favourites and personal thoughts, it is also dissapointing as all those comments seem to have an air of commercial intent to them. :(
 
blueyedpoet said:
- about HTDAAB, "It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."
these quotes are interesting, but it cracks me up because bono (and other musicians from other groups really) are always saying their latest album is the best album they've ever done. which leads me to wonder if these musicians would rank their favourite albums basically from most recent to oldest?
 
I'm bored out of my mind, so I typed out a transcript of Bono's album reviews from the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Blame any typos on me as I haven't bothered proofreading :happy:

----

Bono On The Record

I asked Bono to assume the role of a music critic and give me his retrospective reviews of some U2 albums and songs.

Boy 1980
One of the Top Ten debut albums of all time. No shadow of a doubt. Spoiled, or let's say soiled, by unfinished lyrics and an Irish singer with an English accent. But it has extraordinary themes and the same theme as our recent album, innocence vs. experience. It's very unusual subject matter for a debut rock & roll album because it's not about losing your virginity; it's about your virginity. One day, I want to finish off those lyrics.

October 1981
A Byzantine attempt to sing your way into the Kingdom of Heaven. Lyrics, not bad. Music, oddly still haunting. Influences, primarily Joy Division, Invisible Girls. A great example of how you can write a song and not know what you're writing about. A song called "Tomorrow" is a detailed account of my mother's funeral. But I had no idea when I was writing it. A six out of ten.

War 1983
Great collection of songs. Strong in content and ideas but poor in lyrical execution. We were trying to be the Who meets the Clash. I spent minutes on these things rather than hours. So "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which was supposed to contrast Easter Sunday with the death of thirteen protestors in Derry on Bloody Sunday, didn't quite come off. And yet melodically and the suggestion of the lyrics stood up to the test of time. I've changed the lyrics when I sing it now just to make it more believable for myself. I don't think anyone else notices. But that's a great song - mostly Edge's song.

The Unforgettable Fire 1984
Now, getting toward some great stuff. Miles Davis' favorite U2 album and one of his top ten albums. We knew there was a more experimental side that was important. Enter Brian Eno and Danny Lanois. Even when the lurics weren't strong, the subject matter was. So now the music starts catching up with the subject matter and beautiful sonic landscapes to get very otherwordly.

"Pride" started out as an ecstatic rant. We looked for a subject big enough to demand this level of emotion that was coming out. We had discovered nonviolence and Martin Luther King, not just in relation to his use of the Scriptures and his church background, but also as a solution to the Irish problems.

There was a lot of emotion in there, but to be honest with you, as a lyric it's daft. It's a missed opportunity. I even get the time of Dr. King's assassination wrong. I said, "Early morning - April four." It was early evening.

The Joshua Tree 1987
The lyrics are starting to kick in; now we're getting music, ideas, content and lyrics that'll catch up. We're starting to spent more than an hour on the lyrics. Still, in the cast of, "Where the Streets Have No Name," not more than an hour. And I regret it. However, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is a great song, a great lyric. It's a very complete album, and yet the second half of it drops the ball a couple of times. We did a bad mix on "Red Hill Mining Town," and if anyone cares to, they should imagine Joe Cocker singing it. I was always imagining that he sang that song. There was supposed to be a brass section, but that isn't in it.

Rattle and Hum 1988
Great fun making this album. Living in Los Angeles - Edge had a house. His marriage was starting to come apart, which means it wasn't such a great time for him. But the three of us - we were living off in Hollywood Hills, parking our motorbikes in bedrooms. It was a house about to be torn down, so we could do what we wanted. We were like a bunch of teenagers, spraying lyrics on the wall. I drank a lot of whiskey, I drank a lot of tequila, and I just had a great time. It was the beginning of glasnot, of coming in from the cold.

Anyone else would've just released a double live album. We wrote five new songs, and tried to turn our journey through America into a diary of our discovery of American music. It was like, "Oh crikey, now they think they can play the blues." "When Love Comes to Town" is a pretty good song, though I don't sing it very well - but there you go.

Bands can just get too bit for their boots, and it wasn't perceived as the diary of a fan.

Achtung Baby 1991
It's a great album. Like all great albums, it's almost impossible to figure out how you could've made it. It is way beyong the sum of its parts. Your enemies will define you, so make them interesting. In this case, it starts to be the hypocrisy in your own heart - you realize that's the more interesting enemy.

Before, it was railing against the world, and the wickedness in the work, the lack of justice, that bad things can happen to good people. Now, it's the havoc you're able to wreak in your own life if you allow yourself your heart's desires.

There was a dry rot in the house where we were making the album. And it was a symbol of what was happning - not just in Edge's life with his marriage coming apart, but in all our lives. Getting a little too used to success, not keeping an eye out for its corrosive side. It was Jenny Holzer's line, "Protect me from what I want."

On Rattle and Hum, we sang about desire. On Achtung Baby, we were desire. We let it become us. We thought we were exorcising our demons. We might, in fact, have been exercising them.

You were thinking that is was also time to explore sexuality

Sex is a powerful subject. How is is that we've relegated to the subject to pornographers and the dullest of minds? So our work become more eroticized at that time. It was a them. We don't go after albums like rock bands. We go after albums like film directors: This is the subject, let's get into it. We improvise musically, not thematically.

People are always forcing you to make decisions between flesh and spirit. Whereas I want to dance myself in the direction of God. I got out drinking with God. I am not a person who has to put God outof his ming to go out on the town. It's a key point. The divided soul of Marvin Gaye, Elvis - these conflicts tore them apart. And they don't tear me apart. I reckon God loves all of me.

This is the central conceit of the song "One." I hate - just so you know - the concept of oneess. It's so hippie-shtick. I tired to stop it being called "The One Campaign." The reason a lot of religious groups liked it is because they like that hippie-shtick. But I wrote the opposite song - I wrote, "We're one and we're not the same." It was a bitter pill of a song.

Was "One" about your relationship with your wife or the band?

It's a father-and-son story. I tried to write about someone I knew who was coming out and was afraid to tell his father. It's a religious father and son. "You say love is a temple/Love's a higher law/You ask me to enter/But then you make me crawl."

I have a lot of gay friends, and I've been them screwed up from unloving family situations, which just are completely anti-Christian. If we know about about God, it's that God is love. That's part of the song. And then it's also about people struggling to be together, and how difficult it is to stay together in this world, whether you're in a band or in a relationship.

So you're saying it's a song of anger?

It's quite an angry song. I cannot figure out why people get married to it. It's a song about splitting up.

You sang it for the Hurricane Katrina relief benefit. Why'd you pick it for that?

"We get to carry each other/Did I disappoint you?" There's a lot of anger and rage in it, and people had been feeling that; that's why we wanted to sing with Mary G. Blige. She took it to church.

Zooropa 1993
Wonderful, wild fling of an album. Grand madness. It's really a concept album. A very experimental piece of work. "Stay" is perhaps the greatest U2 song. We never turned it into the single it deserved to be. It's quite sophisticated. The reach and the grasp are both there. Lyrically, a strong album. We were definitely heading into uncharted territory - with the tour, with our band. There was no telling is we could get back from this. We very nearly didn't, commercially.

"The Wanderer" is based on the old Jewish Books of Wisdom. There's one called Ecclesiates, or "The Preacher." We wrote it for Johnny Cash; it's completely electronic. It's remarkable to hear his voice in a Bill Gibson/Cyberpunk sonic landscape.

Pop 1997
An earnest band with political overtones kicks off their boots for dancing shoes. Supposed to be the return to pop from the experimental period that included Passengers and Zooropa. "Discotheque" was supposed to be what "Sledgehammer" was for Peter Gabriel. Great idea for an album. We just misfired - booked the tour before we finished the album and wore out everyone involved on the album.

"Mofo?"

Amazing. Twenty-five century Led Zepplin, industrial barrage and this industrial blues - "Lookin' for the places were no flowers grow/Lookin' for to fill that God-shaped hole/Mother-sucking rock & rill."

Righ in the middle of it, I speak to my mother. And it goes right back to listening to John Lennon when she departed. I've just realizes that. I'm fourteen, and my mother is no longer around for that conversation. And of course, I'm listening to that Plastic Ono Band - listening to that song, "Mother, am I still your son? I've waited for so long to hear you say so." It's a wild thing to be saying to 80,000 of your closest friends.

All That You Can't Leave Behind 2000
Great album. A complete set of ideas. It's an album about essence, about the casting away of the nonessential things and realizing that those essential things are: family, friendship. It all adds up, though the running order's a little odd.

The idea was: What is the essense of our band? If you distill it, what do we have to contribute? For ten years, we'd been doing exactly the opposite. We'd been thinking, "What is it we don't have?" and going after it. Now, in order to keep it fresh, we say, "What is it we do have?" and let's go after that. We've done that for two albums.

I wanted to make a really raw record about the things you just cannot live without. And a really uncool album. I wanted to write a song called "I Love You." I never got to write that song. Who's going to write a song called "Beautiful Day"? You'd want to be unembarrassable. I think it's U2's often as its best when it's very uncool.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb 2004
We wanted to go further with a rock album. Sci-fi punk rock was what we wanted to make originally. So we came directly off the tour into a burned-down basement in Monte Carlo, an old nightclub, and started working up "Vertigo" and "All Because Of You." But as usual, the punk-rock thing doesn't sustain us. We're looking for other dimensions and feelings.

We could've made a dramatic guitar-driven album. But we couldn't get to the magic. It was strange. We had the craft, but we hadn't the magic. And to get the magic, we had to start experimenting again. So songs like "Miracle Drug" came up. We went back to things like "City Of Blinding Lights" and allowed ourselves a wider palette. We're too wily and too emotionally all over the place to just make a regular guitar album.

A lot of the song are paeans to naiveté, a rejection of knowingness. "Original of the Species" starts out as a song written for Edge's daughter Hollie, who's my godchild. "Some things you shouldn't get too good at/Like smiling, crying, and celebrity/Some people get way too much confidence." But it's not sentimental - I eroticized it a bit. It's a lovers song, finally, for most people.

It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me.
 
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KhanadaRhodes said:

these quotes are interesting, but it cracks me up because bono (and other musicians from other groups really) are always saying their latest album is the best album they've ever done. which leads me to wonder if these musicians would rank their favourite albums basically from most recent to oldest?

bono doesn't think their oldest stuff is their weakest. He sings praises about Boy saying that it is one of the top ten debut albums of all-time. And, he gives October only a 6/10.

Furthermore, Bono and other member in U2 have spoken about how they approach albums as films. Their albums are supposed to be themed oriented:

Boy - innocence
October - "Byzantine way of singing your way into heaven," according to Bono
War - um, war
UF - well, it has a peaceful but aching mood
JT - the clashing ideas of America
Rattle and Hum - once again according to Bono, "It's about desire," and "It's a fans notebook"
Achtung Baby - losing paradise in desire
Zooropa - the insanity and grand madness of Zoo TV
Pop - enjoying the surface
ATYCLB - letting go, death
HTDAAB - technically they keep saying it's themes are similar to their first album, but that's really only true of OOTS. And, if you combined that song with COBL you could say the album is about looking back, but the other songs don't fit in with that...the songs are great but there isn't a central theme running along with the songs that elevate them. This album isn't a film - it's a collection of great episodes.
I wonder what they could've done to change it...maybe a different running order? maybe some different songs?
 
I also find it interesting that Bono feels like Streets isn't a finished lyric...that's kind of what i like about it. Songs like Streets and Bad are not technically great poetically like say some of Billy Corgan's lyrics, but the emotion provoked by the words are far superior. It's almost like there is a stronger power to Bono's words when he just paints landscapes instead of details.
 
blueyedpoet said:
bono doesn't think their oldest stuff is their weakest. He sings praises about Boy saying that it is one of the top ten debut albums of all-time. And, he gives October only a 6/10.
i think you may have misread what i said. like i said, i find it humourous that bono and others always hail their latest album as their best work yet. that's all.
 
VERY Interesting, thanks for this.
After reading this I dont think they'll play Mofo again... We quite often just want them to play our favourites, but if you think about the content of that song it wouldn't fit now.
I don't think Bono feels he can sing a lot of those songs again, not physically, but emotionally...
 
i was just going off on the line about ranking their stuff from newest to oldest. i just wanted to show that he thinks their oldest is strong and stronger than their second oldest.
But i agree that it is interesting that he finds HTDAAB the best collection of songs. Whenever an artist creates something new, and he/she is into sharing it with others, they seem to always be excited by their latest. I think it's just a part of what it is to be human.
edit: "going off" sounds like i was raving and ranting. I mean i was referring to that particular line
 
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chrissybaby said:
VERY Interesting, thanks for this.
After reading this I dont think they'll play Mofo again... We quite often just want them to play our favourites, but if you think about the content of that song it wouldn't fit now.
I don't think Bono feels he can sing a lot of those songs again, not physically, but emotionally...

I'm not exactly holding my breath, but how does Bono's remarks give you an impression that they won't be playing Mofo? What am i not seeing?
 
chrissybaby said:
VERY Interesting, thanks for this.
After reading this I dont think they'll play Mofo again... We quite often just want them to play our favourites, but if you think about the content of that song it wouldn't fit now.
I don't think Bono feels he can sing a lot of those songs again, not physically, but emotionally...

I think you're way off the mark here, as the band have been confirmed soundchecking Mofo, and Bono told a fan that "it's coming, it's coming" - though of course, Bono being Bono, it may remain soundchecked but not played live. It's not totally written off like you imply though.
 
Oh, here's another bit.

Bono's Best of U2

What are your favorite songs?

"Stay," "Miss Sarajevo," which we recorded with Luciano Pavarotti. "Until the End of the World," "Vertigo," "Beautiful Day," "Electrical Storm." There's another obscure one called "Your Blue Room," on the Passengers album, which really haunts me. The work in the Eighties is at a very high level melodically, really strong stuff. But all I hear is unfinished lyrics.

What are the three best U2 albums?

Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and then it's a toss-up between All That You Can't Leave Behind and Atomic Bomb. They're full of better songs than Achtung Baby and Joshua Tree, but they're not sonically as sophisticated.
 
Axver said:


I think you're way off the mark here, as the band have been confirmed soundchecking Mofo, and Bono told a fan that "it's coming, it's coming" - though of course, Bono being Bono, it may remain soundchecked but not played live. It's not totally written off like you imply though.

Thank god for the Rollingstone interview! It's breathed some new life in the discussions around here!

I just want to point out that somewhere in the interview, Jan asks him about Mofo. Nurse Chrissi made some scans of the interview in Pleba and now for the life of me I can't find it.

I've been trying not to read the whole thing before my issue arrives in the mail but I remember reading that part and the part about how there was a "no coffee for you" rule for Bono at one point. :lol:


edit:
:der: I just realized it's in the part that QB typed out :der:
I swear I thought it was in another part of the interview.
:der::der::der:
 
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Queen Bee said:
Oh, here's another bit.

Bono's Best of U2


What are the three best U2 albums?

Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and then it's a toss-up between All That You Can't Leave Behind and Atomic Bomb. They're full of better songs than Achtung Baby and Joshua Tree, but they're not sonically as sophisticated.


:up: Bono :yes:

I agree with Bono :yes:
 
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