What was the moment...

[Rafiennes]

...when you realized that U2 was the band for you? Was it because of something going on in your life or was it a case of right place, right time?

I'm very curious because some people I've talked to recently that like the band fall in to the category that I was: I used to HATE U2!

I found them annoying and droning...and then I heard With or Without You and I Still Haven't... and was intrigued.

But it wasn't until I listened to the tape (!!!) of JT on a roadtrip for school and read the lyrics along with the music, that I was blown away. Rock and roll and poetry somehow finding a way to entertain me, to take me out of the stinky bus ride back home, to educate me to the world, to transport me into some sort of musical cinema of the mind (boy, that sounds like a bad ride at EPCOT) That was it. I was hooked on this band.

Luckily I had a friend who was very music savvy and she told me that if I was gonna hang around her and try and be a U2 fan, then I had to go back to the begining and work my way up to Joshua Tree. So I did. Went to the store, bought Boy and Cotober and I worked my way up to JT. And I haven't looked back since.

How 'bout you?

 

[reptile]

Gloria video clip when it first came out

I had just never heard anything like that and the way they looked. just felt, hey there is something going on here
Havnt looked back since

 

[blueeyedgirl]

Oi that was my line!

Seeing the Gloria clip and then hearing the first side of October on the radio. Then bought Boy and........

 

[Liesje]

Running to Stand Still

 

[kennerado]

Well I guess I was a casual fan for years but only really started getting into them during the Elevation tour.

 

[zoopop]

Watching Sydney ZOO TV on laserdisc one day after school by myself. Viewing changed my life and love for U2. Then watching Rattle N Hum a few days later, and hearing (seeing) Bad performed for the 1st time I was 17-18 at the time.

 

[hedgehog]

Was only a kid at the time, heard "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" sometime in the mid-90's, loved both songs, then decided to explore U2's other music, been hooked ever since.

 

[matt76]

I was a casual fan, but I remember listening to the first line of Zoo Station and then I was hooked....

 

[jonnytakeawalk]

I'd always liked u2 since I was a kid, I owned the two best ofs but my infatuation with them and desire to hear evry single u2 song only began this year.

I decided to go out and buy 'how to dismantle.' I was initially pretty impressed so slowely I've been getting round to buying all U2's other albums. Ironically enough now I'm realising how ender par 'bomb' is compared to most of U2's other albums. Still it holds a place in my heart for getting me into other U2 albums and some of the best songs I've ever heard

 

[BluRmGrl]

For me it was a progression of events. I fell in love with their music the first time I hear "New Year's Day", which must have been in early '84. Then I saw the Red Rocks concert and got a taste of the band live and how passionate they were (at least that lead singer - man, he was all over the stage! ).

Finally, Pride hit the radio & I began to realize that these guys were singing about IMPORTANT things. Stuff that mattered. My fate as a life-long fan was pretty much sealed at that point. The final nail in the coffin though, was seeing them at LiveAid and then finding out Bono & his wife had actually gone to Africa to help in person. From that point on, I was a goner.

Four guys from Ireland who made beautiful music, brilliant lyrics, and a hot lead singer who wasn't just a pretty face? As I've said before - what was there to NOT like?!?!

 

[U2dork]

For me it was Pride. Well, that and my first exposure to MTV and the Red Rocks videos thanks to the neighbor's cable hook-up. I was almost 10 at the time and it made me realize that music could actually be so much more than the teen-bop crap I was listening to at the time. It brought meaning to music for me. That sounds sappy, but it's true.
I think the teachers I had at the time may have had something to do with that. There was a big focus on Martin Luther King in my primary school. Being so close to Atlanta, a lot of our field trips had to do with visiting various civil rights monuments. When my second grade teacher left to have a baby, one of the substitute teachers we had was Coretta Scott King's sister. I can not for the life of me remember what her name was but I remember her talking with us about him, making him more than just a picture on a wall and a recording of a speech. I think this part of my education made the song Pride stick out from any other song on the radio at the time.

 

[Theedge070]

Had to have been Beautiful Day for me. The bridge lyrics (See the bird with a leaf in her mouth, after the flood all the colors came out) made me appreciate how beautiful everything is and can be.

 

[innocent_eyes]

With or without you....had the joshua tree in 94 and played this song...and still haven't found...and streets...on repeat, all night, everynight!!

 

[MsMofoGone]

I heard "New Year's Day" back in '83 played on the radio ... that's all it took, then I was hooked.
Bono's scream at the beginning of this song ... absolutely CLASSIC !!

 

[annatheduck]

being quite young, i only got into U2 a few years ago. i'd bough atyclb and the '90s best of, but i became a "proper" fan after seeing the boston-concert on tv. 'sunday, bloody sunday' to be percise. i've no idea why, but it just felt like the most amazing song ever at that moment and i felt i'd discovered something really special.
that literally made me buy all of their albums in the space of a couple of months. i was broke, but happy.

 

[miss becky]

I knew the popular songs (Pride, the JT singles) but it wasn't until Achtung Baby came out that I fell. And fell hard. By the end of that first listen to Zoo Station, I was deeply in love with all things U2. I made it my mission in life to buy all their music and listen to it, as quickly as I could. That was fourteen years ago, and I've never looked back!

 

[Ifeelnumb84]

The roots of my U2 listening go back as far as 1993, when I remember hearing Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses on the radio. Being only 8 or 9, and not really caring about music, I didn't think much of it.
Then when I was 11 or 12 I heard Pride on the radio a lot, and then started listening to my sister's Joshua Tree cassette and being pretty impressed.
If I had to narrow it down to one moment, I couldn't. So I'll say there were two points that got me hooked. The first was the first time I put Pop into a CD player and heard Discotheque (and the rest of the album). The second, which I think came after the first, was hearing the WAIA version of Bad on the radio and thinking "IS THIS U2? WHAT IS THIS?! THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING!"
I've been hooked since that point, sometime in '97 or '98.

 

[OnFire]

I was there from nearly the beginning but would have to say I was a casual fan in the 80's. I just missed catching them as a club act through a college friend who was a fan from day one. I caught a UF tour concert that I was unimpressed with although I'd have to say I had a bad attitude towards it, I thought I was in an arena full of lemmings watching an electric folk band that was all sincerity and and no chops (saw what must have been the origins of PLEBA there). I liked JT alot but not as much as some other friends of mine and to this day I still have not seen the film verion of R&H, I thought they had created and starred in their own version of Spinal Tap.

Then the 90's came along with AB and Zootv. With AB I was like, "finally, they became a rock band" and not only that but one that could transcend the genre with brilliant lyrics and themes. As far as Zootv goes, setlists, shmetlists, that was the most brilliantly conceived and executed rock and roll tour ever, period. End of story.

I haven't missed a show in my town since the zoo came by but the funny thing is that now I go to shows to hear the old 80's songs. I guess it's just because it takes me back to my youth, seeing the same band with all of it's orignal members intact playing the songs I grew up with.

 

[RavenBlue]

I really got into U2 in high school when I was having a rough time. I used to watch the Rattle and Hum video all the time and listened to the Joshua Tree on the way home on the bus.

I bought the Pop cassette in '99 and it pretty well became my Grade 12 soundtrack. I connected with so many of the songs on it.

Edge's guitar riffs have always been special to me.. they're a voice all of their own. I'm just a once in awhile guitarist but I remember the first solo I ever learned was Sunday Bloody Sunday.

 

[Bonochick]

April 1, 1995. I first heard The Joshua Tree.

 

[00Kevin]

listening to a bootleg from the joshua tree tour

 

[starvinmarvin]

My testimonial:

I first fell in love with U2 during Christmas 1987, when I was 12 years old. My Uncle Rod gave me a cassette of The Joshua Tree, which I wore out from repeated listenings. He told me that he was concerned about some of music I was listening to, and he wanted me to hear some contemporary music that was actually good. I guess I have him to thank for my U2 obsession.

I fell even harder in love when I first heard Desire on the radio. I practically camped outside of the local record store waiting to pick up a copy of Rattle and Hum.. And when the movie came to my small town's theatre, the intensity of my love for U2 was very high. This inspired me to seek out all of the band's early albums, and I remember being particularly smitten by SBS on Under a Blood Red Sky.

I hated Achtung at first, but I really gave it a chance and it grew on me in a big way. Within a year or so it became my favorite U2 album, although I wasn't lucky enough to see Zoo TV when U2 came to Vancouver in 92. The town I lived in was 5 hrs away, and it was on a school night, so I couldn't go. I also loved Zooropa when it came out, although the Lemon video made me cringe.

The band definitely lost my interest with Pop. I hated Discotheque when I saw the video for the first time, although now I understand the irony behind it and actually find it quite amusing today. For the first time, I wasn't even sure if I wanted the latest U2 album. I borrowed a friend's CD, and was very disapointed with what I heard. The electronica was fine with me, but to my ears it sounded so uninspired, and Bono sounded like a shadow of his former self. The band seemed to be trying to be something it wasn't. They sounded like old farts trying to stay relevent. I didn't even make a copy of the CD. It wasn't until after ATYCLB rekindled my love for the band that I was able to go back to Pop with a new perspective. It has grown on me, although I feel it is one of the weaker albums.

Now, of course, the last two albums have knocked me head over heals in love with U2 again. I don't care what any one says, but I feel that ATYCLB is the third best U2 album.

 

[Carmelu2fan]

I heard "New Year's Day" back in '83 played on the radio ... that's all it took, then I was hooked.
Bono's scream at the beginning of this song ... absolutely CLASSIC !!

OMG!!! That was the same thing that happend to me!!! I was very young but I could feel Bono's passion and the Edges guitar sounded like nothing I have ever heard before!

 

[Exit thru Wire]

Im another new u2 fan in relative terms. I first heard them from The Sweetest Thing, I HATED it, its grown on me but certainly did not get me into them. Then I heard Beautiful Day a couple of years later, liked them more but not hugely. Then Electrical Storm in 2002. I loved this song, I know its not up there with the greats, but i thought it was good so bought the 90-00 best of, was intrigued, and have been into u2 since.

 

[Jack In The Box]

I'm a young fan too, when I heard ATYCLB I realized that U2 was the band for me, for so many reasons... its beauty, its melody, its passion...

 

[Axver]

Well, I've been a casual fan all my life: born the year of the Joshua Tree in the country of One Tree Hill. I get this feeling it was meant to be.

The Best Of 1980-1990 was my first CD. I always held U2 in the highest regard; no matter what I was hooked on during my preteen/early teen years, I always considered U2 to be the greatest band, the be-all and end-all. After all, it was my general assumption that everyone else did too as that's the typical opinion that I grew up around.

Then there were three moments that turned me from a casual fan into a fanatic. When I saw the Best Of 1990-2000 advertised on TV, I knew I had to have it - more U2! I put it in my CD player and was listening happily when suddenly this song began: Gone. It was then that I knew I needed to buy more U2 and fast.

Not long after that, one of my mother's friends gave me old videos of Under A Blood Red Sky and Rattle And Hum. I was absolutely blown away by 11 O'clock Tick Tock and Bad. I was literally breathless after Bad. That was the point when I knew I needed every single thing U2 had ever released and more.

And here I am today ...

 

[popmart86]

POP

 

[namkcuR]

I break it up into several moments in time...

The first moment is a humid, muggy, drizzly overcast summer's day. I don't remember the year, but it had to have been 1995 or 1996-ish. There was a video on TV, I think it was Corbijn's 'One'. Oddly, in my memories, I remember seeing the video but not hearing it. But I remember not liking it(gasp).

The second moment is in a car, my older brother was driving, I was in the passenger seat. I think this is 1997. He was only 18 and I was 12. A song started playing on the radio, I don't remember which song it was, and my brother said, 'is this U2? it sounds like U2. (song plays a bit more) Yeah, this is U2.' I said 'U2 sucks' - a statement I am deeply ashamed of today. He replied, 'U2 is SO much better than any of the bands you listen to'. Mind you, the music I listened to at the time was Matchbox 20 and Quad City DJ's, a crap rap group that was popular for five minutes because they did a song for Michael Jordan's 'Space Jam' movie. That was the end of that embarassing conversation.

The third moment is the big one. My mother is Turkish, I am half-Turkish, so every few years we go back to Turkey. We stay with my grandmother in her apartment there. Well, we were there in July 1998, and when we weren't out doing something, I was usually watching Turkish music video channels. One day I was watching one, and one of the commercials was sort of advertising some of the artists the channel played videos of, and one was U2. The song/video they played 10 seconds of in the commercial caught my attention. Either the next day or a couple days later(I don't remember exactly), they actually played that video. We were close to the end of our visit and I was really homesick. It was mid-afternoon and I was laying on the couch there watching the music videos, and all of a sudden they played that video. And that song/video that had caught my attention was in fact that band U2 that my brother had liked so much, and the song was nonother than WOWY. I was fascinated. I loved it. During the next few days(which were very near the end of our stay there), that channel also played the videos for SBS(From Red Rocks) and Angel Of Harlem. I enjoyed them all. During the 12-14 hours of flying(two flights plus short layover) we did on the way home, I got thinking, that I had remembered seeing some U2 cassettes in my brother's cassette tape collection. When we got home, one of the first things I did was to look through his tape collection(he was at college at the time) and indeed, I found two U2 cassettes, UABRS and JT. Which brings me to moment #4.

The fourth moment is actually several moments over several days following my return home, listening to JT, and hearing those songs for the first time. The first four tracks were the greatest pop/rock music I'd ever heard outside of the Beatles. The rest it grew on me as well. I loved UABRS too. By now it was August 1998. Judging by the time frame, you can see where this is going.

The fifth moment is in early November 1998. After having seen many commercials and promos on TV for U2's Best Of 1980-1990, I had to have it. I remember the voice-over for one of those commercials said something like 'They were the band that defined a decade' - always loved that line. Anyway, I asked my mom for it. She got it for me on the way back from somewhere she was at, but it was the one-disc version. She asked me if that was the one I wanted or if I wanted the two-disc version. I didn't know why, but I wanted the two-disc version. I'm glad I made that choice. So she took it back the next day and got the two-disc. I listened to the Best Of 1980-1990 craploads that winter and from then on I had to collect everything the band had ever done. And I did, in this order: 80-90, AB, Pop, War, October/TUF(same day), R&H, Boy, Zooropa, WAIA, and then JT/UABRS CD(same day, all I had had was cassettes of those), Passengers. I had all of that by August/September of 1999. And I've been hooked ever since.

And that's how it went.

 

[tiggytoos]

It was 1988ish, I had a huge crush on the guy who worked at the video store, I always came and asked what he "recommended". I rented whatever he said was good. I was a serious "metal-head" at the time and he highly recommended the Red Rocks video, I rented and really didn't even have the intention of watching it. One night I put it in the vcr out of sheer boredom I have to say that video literally changed my life - I don't remember the video guy's name, but I've been madly in with Bono ever since. Thanks video dude, wherever you are!!!

 

[1stepcloser]

about 3 years ago i saw a guy on a telent programme do a rendition of WOWY and although his performance was poor, the greatness of the song struck me so i got the 1980-90 CD. and i got the 1990-2000 CD around the same time because i really liked Electrical Storm. i only really listened to the song i'd heard of though on both albums (which wasn't many at the time).

the moment i realised that this band was very special was when i listened to the final track on the 1990-2000 CD - The Fly. an awesome song that changed my perception of U2 and started the 'collecting everything possible that's U2' phase