![]() While the ’00s had some of that, U2 still conducted themselves as a rock-and-roll band that goes into the studio to make a new record, then devised some elaborate production element to take on the road. U2 would come roaring back at the turn of the millennium with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, just at the moment when no one would’ve blamed any of them for sitting back on their piles of money, pursuing “side projects,” and touring every couple of years behind their catalogue. Those guitar melodies became the start of “One,” and the beginning of what would become Achtung Baby - what Bono called “the sound of four men cutting down The Joshua Tree.” And then one day Lanois suggested to the Edge that he combine two separate guitar parts. Every single of member of U2 was convinced at one moment or another in the early days at Hansa Studios - the same place that David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and others have gone to find magic, or at least inspiration - that this was the end of U2. ![]() And it did, but for a while there, it almost didn’t. In the search for that dream, Bono decided that if U2 decamped to Berlin with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, something had to happen. It took tremendous foresight for U2 to take a break, and a fair amount of fortitude to stand onstage and inform your audience that “this is the end of something for U2 … we have to go away and … dream it all up again.” Record companies certainly want bands to keep doing the thing that made them all that money, over and over again. And even after achieving international fame and fortune with The Joshua Tree, their fifth album, back in 1987, they came crashing back to earth with its follow-up, Rattle and Hum, which every rock critic in the world interpreted as U2 trying to teach America about American music.īy the end of the ’80s, U2 could have just kept moving forward with their existing formula, maybe eked out another few years with that pattern. No record label still in business today would have let them release a third album after the battles around the second one, October. The traditional path to success in the music business pretty much no longer exists, and even if it did, a band like U2 would never, ever have gotten the creative control they asked for and received. Yes, they own houses in the south of France, they show up in the occasional gossip column, and Bono jets off to Davos every year, but they are still very much a band. No one has overdosed, no one’s been fired, and no one’s left the group in pursuit of a solo career. ![]() put up a notice at Mount Temple Comprehensive School: “Drummer seeks musicians to form band.” U2 is, at this point, the only rock band of its stature that still has its original lineup. On the occasion of the release of U2’s 14th studio album, Songs of Experience, it is worth noting how remarkable it actually is that this band has remained a going concern for over 40 years, since Larry Mullen Jr.
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