Matthew Joseph Savelkoul ([email protected])
Wed, 09 Dec 1998 18:35:31 -0600
Music has entertained people throughout time, but music can do more
than entertain. It can communicate hopes, fears, dreams, as well as
messages. U2, a rock band from Dublin, Ireland, have always put
messages into their music, songs, and concerts. Messages, for want of a
better term, include commentary on religion, personal issues, and
political issues through their lyrics. The members of U2 are in the
band to create and play good music but also to influence public opinion
- sometimes directly and overtly, while at other times more subtly.
This paper will explore some of the political messages and opinions
found in the songs, albums, and concert tours of U2, as well as
charities that U2 support directly. More so than other musical groups
of the 1980's and 1990's, U2's image and music has changed with the
times, but they have and continue to influence their listening audience
through political messages in their music as well as political
activities and involvement offstage.
Over 75 million albums and twenty years since their formation at
Dublin's Mount Temple High School in 1978 - at the instigation of Larry
Mullen who pinned an ad to the bulletin board - there's little denying
that U2 have cemented their reputation as a classic rock 'n' roll band.
Moreover, by learning to roll with the punches down the years, together
they have shared the memorable victories, and rare defeats, of an
extraordinary career thus far. Remarkably, two decades on, they remain
intact. No one has ever left U2; no new member has ever joined
(Excerpt from the official Island Records website).
The members of U2 are Bono (pronounced BAHN-oh), whose name was taken
from the word Bonovox (Latin for good voice), The Edge, Adam Clayton,
and Larry Mullen, JR. Bono is the lead singer and writes the majority
of the lyrics for the band. Many of the lyrics are a direct commentary
on the political climate in Europe, but Bono addresses controversial
issues in a non-confrontational manner.
U2's third album, War (1983), was by far the most political album put
out by U2. Where their second album, October, proclaimed U2's religious
faith in Christianity, War declared their independence. "Loud, angry
and demanding, the War album and tour would see U2 triumph" (Stokes
36). Every song on the War album contained some sort of commentary on
the politics of Ireland or Europe directly or indirectly. The most
obvious are the first three tracks: "Seconds," "New Year's Day," and
"Sunday Bloody Sunday."
"Seconds" is unique because it is the first song by U2 that features
The Edge on lead vocals. It is a commentary on nuclear war and the
devastating fallout it would produce. U2 were communicating frustration
with the conservative governments that had come to power both in the US
and the UK. The Thatcher and Reagan regimes were both intent on
expanding nuclear weapons in case of possible attack from the USSR.
"I've always felt physically ill at the concept of nuclear fallout,"
Bono says. "We are the first generation of people to have to live with
that possibility. It's all around us, it's in our heads. And it
affects the way people feel about the world. I always saw it in
apocalyptic terms. For the first time, it became possible - it is
possible- to destroy everything" (Stokes 40).
The lyrics of "Seconds" speak to the horror of nuclear war: "Takes a
second to say goodbye, lightning flashes across the sky, east to west,
do or die, like a thief in the night, see the world by candlelight. In
an apartment on Time Square, you can assemble them anywhere...Held to
ransom, hell to pay...A revolution everyday...USSR, DDR, London, New York,
Peking...It's the puppets, it's the puppets who pull the strings...It takes
a second to say goodbye...Push the button and pull the plug...Say goodbye."
If "Seconds" can be heard as a wake up call to the arms race
participants, "New Year's Day" is a love song set against a political
backdrop. "Under a blood red sky, a crowd has gathered in black and
white, arms entwined, the chosen few, the newspaper says, says, say it's
true it's true..." The line "under a blood red sky" evokes images of
sunset, an era fading into dusk, but the violence is there with the
adjective blood; "arms entwined, the chosen few" is a thinly veiled
commentary on the oligarchies that were prevalent in much of eastern
Europe at the time. And if there is any doubt in our mind, Bono further
sings in the rare (never played live and edited from the radio version)
third verse, "And so we're told this is the golden age, and gold is the
reason for the wars we wage. Nothing changes*on New Year's Day."
In an interesting side note on life imitating art, this song would
connect with the zeitgeist in an unexpected way. With the rise of the
Solidarity movement in Poland, 1980 onwards saw a series of strikes
prompting the communist regime in Poland to declare martial law in that
country. Solidarity became an illegal organization and its leaders
were arrested, among them Lech Walesa, future president of Poland.
"Subconsciously I must have been thinking about Lech Walesa being
interned and his wife not being allowed to see him," Bono commented.
"Then, when we'd recorded the song, they announced that martial law
would be lifted in Poland on New Year's Day. Incredible." (Stokes 41)
U2's most direct political commentary on the troubles in Northern
Ireland can be found in the anthem "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It starts
out with a militant drum solo by Larry Mullen. Then Bono's voice soars
in, "I can't believe the news today, Oh, I can't close my eyes, And make
it go away. How long...How long must we sing this song? Broken bottles
under children's feet, bodies strewn across a dead end street, but I
won't heed the battle call...It puts my back up, puts my back up against
the wall...And the battle's just begun, there's many lost, but tell me
who has won, the trench is dug within our hearts, and mothers, children,
brothers, sisters torn apart. And it's true we are immune, when fact is
fiction and TV reality, and today the millions cry...we eat and drink
while tomorrow they die...The real battle just begun, to claim the
victory Jesus won."
During the War tour, Bono would begin the song by saying ""For a long
time I have been frightened*Frightened about writing a song about where
I live, the place I live*Ireland and its problems*This song is called
Sunday Bloody Sunday. This song is not a rebel song." For some reason,
many Irish people thought the song was pro IRA (Irish Republican Army, a
political party/terrorist group). Bono would add lyrics to live
performances, often screaming "I'm so sick of it!"
Bloody Sunday refers to two different Sundays in Irish history. The
first occurred on November 21, 1921. The counter intelligence unit of
the IRA, under Michael Collins, identified fourteen British undercover
agents who had been responsible for the systematic killing of members of
Sinn F�in (another political party) over the previous months. Early
that Sunday morning, the IRA broke into their houses and assassinated
them in their beds. In retaliation, armed forces (the notorious Blacks
and Tans and the Regular Royal Irish Constabulary) went to a football
match in Croke Park and opened fire on the crowd. In all, twelve people
(men and women) were shot dead and sixty others were wounded. Hundreds
more were trampled and injured in the chaotic stampede that followed.
The second Bloody Sunday in Irish history was in 1972 in Derry. The
elite Paratroop Regiment of the British Army opened fire during a civil
rights demonstration and killed fourteen unarmed people. Another
fourteen were badly injured or crippled for life. These two incidences
formed the political backdrop for "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
"It was only when I realized that the troubles hadn't affected me that
they began to affect me," Bono reflected at the time. "The bombs may
not go off in Dublin but they're made here." Bono later explained,
"What I was trying to say in the song*was I'm sick of it. How long must
it go on? It's a statement. It's not even saying there's an answer"
(Stokes 37-38).
The ultimate live performance of the song happened on November 8,
1987. U2 was recording a live concert film, Rattle and Hum, in the
United States at the time. On that morning, Remembrance Day, in
Ireland, a bomb was detonated in Enniskillen into a crowd paying their
respects to soldiers from the North who had died in World War II. The
bomb killed thirteen people and injured numerous others.
"Fuck the revolution!" Bono declared on stage in the McNichols Arena
in Denver after the news had come through from Ireland, and the band
proceeded to unleash a cathartic, emotional version of the song which
reflected their anger*at another senseless, brutal act of violence, in
which innocent people had been butchered. "It was the ultimate
performance of the song," Bono confided in 1988. "It was almost like
the song was made real for the day, in a way that it was never going to
be again. Anything else would be less than that" (Stokes 39).
After that performance of the song on the Joshua Tree Tour, "Sunday
Bloody Sunday" was dropped from U2's live set list and wasn't played
much until September 23, 1997 at Kosevo Stadium in Sarajevo during the
Pop Mart tour. U2 was the first major act to play in Sarajevo after the
cease-fire ended the Bosnian/Serbian war there. The song was noticeably
different. It was played on acoustic guitar and sung by The Edge. The
dark drum track was absent and the lyrics were sung in a pleading and
soft tone. The anger of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was no longer there.
This shows how U2 and their songs have changed over the years.
Frustration towards world politics had been replaced by a cautious
optimism.
During the War tour when "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was played, Bono would
take a white flag and march up and down the stage, swinging it,
commenting, "There is only one flag*the white flag." Bono is well known
for going into rants on stage, especially in the earlier years of U2.
These actions would haunt Bono and the band for years as they tried to
distance their personal beliefs from their public personas. It would
take a lot of effort to lose that image. The band succeeded by
reinventing themselves and their music at every turn, on every album.
For U2's fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire (referring to Hiroshima),
Bono wrote the song "Pride (In the Name of Love)." This song was a
tribute to martyrs: those who had given up their lives for what they
believed in. "Early morning, April 4, Shot rings out in the Memphis sky,
Free at last, they took your life, They could not take your pride!"
These lines are a reference to Martin Luther King, JR. During the ZOO
TV tour (a commentary on media and information overload) of 1992-1993,
clips of Doctor King speaking were inserted into the song and played on
the dozens of television screens on the stage. Before King's speech
started, Bono would say, "Let the King sing*" Actions like these left
little doubt that U2 had abandon their political roots for their new
"techno-glossy" image.
In 1987 came The Joshua Tree, U2's most commercially successful album
to date. Although mainly a spiritual journey, two songs from the album
were full of overt political commentary.
"Bullet the Blue Sky" included the following lyrics: "See them burning
crosses, See the flames higher and higher" Bono is addressing the Ku
Klux Klan here and how violence and racism is still prevalent in
America. During the ZOO TV tour, these lyrics were accompanied by
images of flaming crosses slowly morphing into flaming swastikas, with
Bono intoning "Don't let it happen again!"
Bono also incorporated a speech into the song. On the Pop Mart tour,
Bono comes out in a rag tag army uniform with an umbrella that is inside
out, with the American flag painted on it. He prances blindly around
the stage saying: "This guy comes up to me, His face red like a rose on
a thorn bush, Like all the colors of a royal flush, And he's peeling off
those dollar bills, Slapping them down, one hundred, two hundred, three
hundred!" At this point, he takes the umbrella and winds up a golf
swing "Four! And I can see those fighter planes, And I can see those
fighter planes, Across the mud huts where the children sleep, Through
the alleys of a quiet city street, You take the staircase to the first
floor, Turn the key and slowly unlock the door, As a man breathes into a
saxophone, And through the walls you hear the city groan...Outside is
America...Outside is America...Across the field you see the sky ripped
open, See the rain through a gaping wound, Pounding on the women and
children, Who run into the arms, for the arms, of America." Bono then
goes into a rendition of "America," saying over and over sarcastically
"I want to live in America. America!" Bullet the Blue Sky is an attack
on America's military policies of unwanted intervention, of staying
neutral but selling arms, and of going back on their word (the rendition
of the "red faced", lying American).
Another song from The Joshua Tree is an attack on Gen. Augusto
Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile. His men rounded up dissenters
and protesters and imprisoned and killed them. The song is called
"Mothers of the Disappeared." "Midnight, our sons and daughters, were
cut down and taken from us, hear their heartbeat, we hear their
heartbeat. Night hangs like a prisoner, stretched over black and
blue...In the trees our sons stand naked, through the walls our
daughters cry, see their tears in the rainfall." During the Pop Mart
tour, U2 performed in Santiago, Chile and were joined on stage for a
special live performance of this song by the real Mothers of the
Disappeared, who made pleas to the government for change (Moss).
U2's next album, Rattle and Hum, included "Silver and Gold", a track
addressing Apartheid in South Africa, and "Van Dieman's Land," a song
about Irish unemployment.
It was with the release of Achtung Baby in 1991 that U2 drastically
reinvented themselves again. They now had a urban, faster paced sound.
They had started putting up masks, facades to separate themselves from
public life. Bono commented, "We got it all backwards. Most bands
start out with the simple songs and move towards more meaningful stuff
as they mature." In reality, their songs were just as politically
relevant. "One" addresses the topic of AIDS and acceptance, while "Love
is Blindness" attacks terrorism and suicide at the same time.
After the ZOO TV tour, which was ripe with sayings like "Everything you
know is wrong," "beLIEve everything," and "Religion is a Club," Zooropa
was released. This was more of a social commentary on how cultures have
become numb to violence as a result of media overload. The track
Zooropa, however, dealt with the politics of the European Union to some
extent.
Next came Passengers: Original Soundtracks Volume 1, an experimental
album that featured the track "Miss Sarajevo" with guest singers Brian
Eno and Luciano Pavarotti. It was a tribute to the innocent people
(particularly women) caught up in the war in Bosnia. "Is there a time
for keeping your distance? A time to turn your eyes away? Is there a
time for keeping your head down, for getting on with your day... Is
there a time to run for cover?" All the proceeds from the sale of that
single benefited War Child, a charity that helped war orphans with
medical care and finding new families.
In 1997, U2 reinvented themselves again with the release of Pop, their
most sophisticated, and, on the surface, superficial record. Labeled
incorrectly in the press as techno dance music, it was nothing of the
sort. U2, ever anxious to shroud themselves in artificial public
images, unveiled their Pop Mart tour in February 1997 in a press
conference at a K Mart in New York City. "We believe in trash, we
believe in kitsch," Bono stated at the press conference.
There is a very subtle criticism of war throughout Pop. One can assume
it is directed towards Northern Ireland, but Bono's lyrics never mention
the place by name. At times his lyrics seem purposely ambiguous to make
up for the overtness of "Sunday Bloody Sunday." For instance, "Staring
at the Sun": "Intransigence is all around, military still in town.
Armor-plated suits and ties, daddy just won't say goodbye." "Daddy" most
likely refers to Britain and the country's unwanted intervention in
Irish politics. Other lyrics in the same song criticize a blind loyalty
to "your flying colors, your family tree, and all your lessons in
history."
"Please", another track from Pop closes with a recollection of some of
the months in which Pop was recorded, with lyrics reflecting the
breakdown of cease-fires in Ireland at the time: "September....streets
capsizing...spilling over, down the drain, shards of glass, splinters
like rain, but you could only feel your own pain...October...talking
getting nowhere...November, December, remember*Are we just starting
again?" The song also seems to blame Northern nationalists for an
unwillingness to change: "Your Catholic blues, your convent shoes, your
stick-on tattoos, now they're making the news, your holy war, your
northern star, your sermon on the mount, from the hood of your car..."
Bono criticizes the Irish in "Please" for failing to see the bigger
picture: "Love is bigger than us, but love is not what you're thinking
of," and on "Staring at the Sun," he asks "Will we ever live in peace?"
Bono also addresses the hypothetical thoughts of former soldiers and
terrorists now trying to live a normal life: "To the ones staring at the
sun, afraid of what you'll find if you took a look inside, not just deaf
and dumb, staring at the sun, I'm not the only one who'd rather go
blind."
In "North and South of the River" (a b side on the "Staring at the Sun"
single), Bono weaves a love story between two people through song,
separated not by the real river that divides Belfast, but by an
artificial river*the invisible border erected between Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Throughout their musical history, U2 has committed themselves to
creating change through their songs. By reaching out to a receptive
audience all over the world through radio, television, and their tours,
they have convinced people to sign up and join Greenpeace, Amnesty
International, and they recently donated all the proceeds from their new
single "Sweetest Thing" to the Children of Chernobyl fund. On May 19,
1998 John Hume and David Trimble, representing opposing factions in
Northern Ireland met onstage during the YES! Concert put on by U2 and
Ash (a Northern Ireland band). Bono stood triumphantly between Trimble
and Hume and held their hands up in victory. The peace referendum
passed. On October 20, 1998, three members of U2 took to the streets of
Dublin, urging people walking by to sign a new Amnesty International
petition to be sent to the United Nations with a minimum of sixty
million signatures, one million alone from Ireland (Bradley).
On Friday, November 20, 1998, U2 performed "North and South of the
River" live for the first time for the Late Late Show television
tribute to the victims of the Omagh, Northern Ireland bombing. "The
only grain of hope that you can possibly glean from this terror," Bono
said, "is that this has to be the end of it. That was the moment that
marked the end of The Troubles. We have to believe that - the
politicians, the police and the paramilitaries and priests and whoever,
that they will go that extra mile now to understand their adversaries
and then go one mile further. That is the only thing that we can hope
for" (Balz). Their appearance on the Late Late Show was their first
public appearance since the Tibetan Freedom Concert and the YES! Concert
in the spring of 1998.
Despite constantly reinventing themselves, U2 is nevertheless U2. They
still stand for the same values they believed in during the War album:
peace, acceptance of others, and an end to hatred, violence, and
bigotry. Just because U2's sound and image has changed, underneath the
band members haven't become glamorous rock stars, nor have they "sold
out" in any way. U2 and their songs have matured with age, but they
haven't changed a bit. They just want us to think so.
Works Cited
Balz, Dan. "In Name of Peace, U2 Rocks in Belfast. Concert Sounds Note
for Northern Ireland Accord." Washington Post 20 May 1998 <http://www.atu2.com/news/
archives/98/yes/washpost.html>
Bradley, Una. "Bono leads human rights campaign. U2 star in new
Amnesty appeal launch." Belfast Telegraph 20 Oct. 1998
<http://www.atu2.com/news/archives/98/aidrive2.html>
Moss, Chris. "Mothers greet U2." Buenos Aires Herald 5 Feb. 1998
<http://www.atu2.com/news/archives/98/mothers/mothers3.html>
Stokes, Niall. U2: Into the Heart. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1997.
U2: The Best of Biography. 3 Nov. 1998. Island. 23 Nov. 1998
<http://www.island.co.uk/u2/biog.html>
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