e.g this great article by Neil McCormack...
I was looking over an old school photograph the other day. Sixth year, Mount Temple, 1978. Blurred young faces staring earnestly out of the past in grainy black and white. This one here became skateboard and laser sailing champion of Ireland. This one here wound up in prison for rape. This guy here played football for Leeds United. And these two are in one of the most successful, critically-lauded and essential rock bands of our time.
Superstars aren't born, they arrive fully-formed, usually from America. I have laboured under this delusion for years. People often ask me who, on my travels as a journalist, is the most famous person I have ever met. The question throws me; I am not in the habit of consorting with superstars. Celebrities, perhaps, But is Carole King more famous than Paul Weller? Is Ray Davies more famous than Chrissie Hynde? I usually claim Bob Dylan, a certifiable 24-carat superstar, though I actually only stood next to him once, something not generally construed as a meeting.
The most famous people I have ever met were smiling up at me from the photograph.
I feel like sparks are about to suddenly erupt from my fingers every time I try to write about U2. I fear I could go down in a burst of electrical activity. This isn't just history, it's memory. This is my life. Look at the youthful Bono and Edge, Who knew what lay in store for them, for any of us, back then? Eleven years later they've been, along with schoolfriends Adam and Larry, on the cover of Time magazine. They're in the papers, they're in the charts, on TV and the silver screen. Sometimes, I walk into a stranger's room to be confronted by their picture, pinned to a wall. I always have to stop myself asking, "How do you know them?". Everybody knows them.
The last time I saw U2 live they were onstage at Wembley and I was standing so close it might as well have been the old school gymnasium. They were extraordinary at Wembley but they were extraordinary at the first performance in the gym, back in '76, too. It seems to me they have always been extraordinary, ever when, realistically, they must have been, well, shit. That gig was my first live rock'n'roll and it changed my life. I told Bono so some years later and he could only agree. It changed his life too.
The gap between Wembley Stadium and Mount Temple Gym is, of course, immeasurable. The distance between the same four individuals in Feedback in 1976 and U2 in 1987 is beyond comprehension. What is the same is the spark. "We built ourselves around that spark," said Bono in 1980. It still fires inside them today, spitting white heat at the heart of the matter, connecting them, in some indefinable way, with rock'n'roll greatness. You could feel it, recognise it, believe in it long before it actually exploded the group to life. Many people did. You can feel it, recognise it, believe in it now that the group have attained genuine, irresistible superstar status. Many more people do.
The spark remains constant. Everything else changes. Try listening to U2's 1980 debut album "Boy" back to back with 1988's "Rattle And Hum". Could this be the same group? One determinedly modern, electric combo with big, silvery shards of guitar and stretched, youthful voices, the other a rootsy, rocksy, folksy band with a rough-hewn sound and a growling powerhouse of a vocalist. Over the years the gradual changes can seem almost imperceptible. This is evolution, not revolution. But over seven albums in eight years U2 have redefined and almost completely reinvented themselves.
U2 records are stacked up by my stereo. Twenty-seven of them, including the singles. I've been spinning them all, reminding myself of forgotten pleasures, sometimes opening my eyes to unnoticed weaknesses, trying to see how things look as the dust settles on the rattle and hum. Most of all, catching up on old friends.
I was of the feeling it was out of control, I had a crazy notion it was out of control... U2's debut single, "Out Of Control", remains an appropriate anthem with which to have unleashed the group on the world. The song's central image is of an adolescent realising, as Bono has said, "that the two most important decisions in your life have nothing to do with you: being born and dying." And with that vision of personal anarchy, U2 were fired forward into the unknown. The song became, for a time, the mainstay of their live set, opening and closing their gigs, so it is ironic to recall that prior to the release of the record there was a great deal of uncertainty about which of the three songs recorded should feature on the A-side, the matter eventually being settled by a competition on the Dave Fanning Rock Show. At the time "Stories For Boys" was a favoured contender, a poppier and more structured song that, in retrospect, lacks the life-and-death dimension that gives "Out Of Control" its historic perspective.
------------------
Slane/Lon tour pics
