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Achtung Baby

Started by DJ Bob Hoskins, December 02, 2021, 11:24:01 PM

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DJ Bob Hoskins

Here's a fairly decent BBC Radio 2 (Jo Whiley) interview with Boner and The Hedge on the the 30th anniversary of the album's release:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0011m1w

I think it's U2's best and most interesting album by a long way. I was only 12 when it came out but I can remember the collective "WTF?!" from the music-loving public when The Fly was released. It was as if the band from The Joshua Tree / Rattle & Hum had been kidnapped and replaced by a much cooler band of lookalikes.

The accompanying Zoo TV tour was amazingly innovative for the time, and seemed to capture the zeitgeist perfectly (the dawn of satellite TV / on-demand entertainment / instant global communication and all that jazz). It seems hard to believe now, but there were a few years there in the 90's when U2 really were breaking the mould; making strange genre-bending stuff which also had mass appeal.

That whole 90's period was brilliant. MacPhisto, phone calls to the White House, supermodel hangers-on, releasing an unexpected and even weirder album (Zooropa) while they were still on tour. Top stuff.

Frankly I think they had nowhere to go from there but down. I saw them for the first time on the PopMart tour, and it was amazing, but it already seemed to me that they were struggling to find ways to top the whole Zoo TV thing. Then they did a whole 'back to our earnest roots' about-turn with All That You Can't Leave Behind and I pretty much tuned out at that point.

In recent years, hearing Bono croon that stoopid lockdown song he made (or the one he did for Euro 2020) makes me cringe myself inside out. There was a time, though, that U2 were possibly the coolest band on the planet.

Discuss.

LordMorgan

Yes , I was 10 when the fly came out. It was out I'm sure the same time as Michael Jackson's black or white. Being ten I obviously loved that and the video with the lad from home alone. As a ten year old I found the fly and the video rather unsettling
I think you are correct with their 90s output, although I never much cared for "pop". I thought discotheque was a poor imitation of the stone roses begging you
But baby, zooropa up to hold thrill me kiss me kill me. They were cool as fuck. They turned it completely around.

But aye, Achtung Baby is without doubt their highlight. I absolutely love that record. The 20 year reissue and film was brilliant.

I can't help but blame them for all the awful, pompous stadium rock that followed in the wake of their early success. I assume they must've got sick of all that themselves, hence deciding to go all post-modern and fuck about for a while. But then after that they just went back to being a boring rock band again. Odd.

IMO their best ever song was a throwaway done for a mediocre Batman film - this surely deserved to be a Bond theme at the very least.


DrGreggles

Achtung Baby is definitely U2's pinnacle. Zoorapa is decent too.
Can't say I'm a fan of their other stuff though, but for a few years in the early 90s they got it right.

the science eel

U2 are only the coolest band on the planet in Paul Hewson's head. But the album's fine - and actually I think Zooropa is every bit as good.

DJ Bob Hoskins

Quote from: Ron Maels Moustache on December 03, 2021, 07:48:40 AMI can't help but blame them for all the awful, pompous stadium rock that followed in the wake of their early success.

Not saying I disagree, but just curious which acts you might be referring to? When I think of 80's stadium rock I think more of things like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, and I'd argue that they owed their success more to the L.A. hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe etc. If I think of the post-Live Aid 'sincere' bands who were big in the late 80's I guess it would be stuff like Deacon Blue, Simple Minds, Tears for Fears etc?

In any case I squarely blame U2 for the early-00's wave of bands like Coldplay (although I do like their first album), Keane etc, who seemed to have the 'sincere' part down but not the 'great songwriting ability' part that Joshua Tree era U2 had.

Quote from: the science eel on December 03, 2021, 08:48:19 AMBut the album's fine - and actually I think Zooropa is every bit as good.

I love Zooropa. I like to think of it as the Magical Mystery Tour to Achtung Baby's Sgt Pepper, or possibly the Amnesiac to Achtung Baby's Kid A. It doesn't quite reach the lofty artistic heights of its predecessor, but I like it because a) it's so damn weird and b) while it feels like a continuation of their previous work it also stands up by itself as a real curio of the era. When Numb was released it was another Fuck My Hat moment. Didn't sound anything like U2, not least because Bono doesn't even sing the lead vocal on it.

I never really bothered with the Eno collaboration Passengers at the time, but I think that has aged quite well. I saw U2 perform Miss Sarajevo in Amsterdam on their 2005 tour (apparently at the time of that particular gig it was only the 2nd time they'd ever played it live) and it was by far the best song of the night, even with Bono singing the Pavarotti parts.

markburgle

It's impressive how in tune with the times they were. The 80's were culturally earnest and the 90's were all irony and postmodernism, and here's U2 - a formerly very earnest band - suddenly going ironic and postmodern right at the top of the new decade. Far too early for it be branded bandwagon-hopping.

Makes you wonder - given how huge they were - how big an influence they had on that shift. Was it happening anyway or did they cause it?

Johnboy

Love passengers and pop, they will have their day

greenman

Quote from: Ron Maels Moustache on December 03, 2021, 07:48:40 AMI can't help but blame them for all the awful, pompous stadium rock that followed in the wake of their early success. I assume they must've got sick of all that themselves, hence deciding to go all post-modern and fuck about for a while. But then after that they just went back to being a boring rock band again. Odd.

IMO their best ever song was a throwaway done for a mediocre Batman film - this surely deserved to be a Bond theme at the very least.


I think you could argue maybe Synchronicity era Police maybe have a case for being the real start of earnest stadium rock?

I would say the Eno era U2 of the mid 80's was reasonably ambitious musically even if the weather beaten earnestness was sometimes a bit much. So Acthung Baby wasnt really a shot out of nowhere in terms of a band moving from wholly mundane to more interesting.

Not really an expert on behind the scenes U2 goings on but the anecdote that always gets mentioned is that Eno's main contribution to Achtung Baby was to show up at the studio and erase the tapes of anything that sounded like 80's U2. That does I think ring reasonably true with a lot of the album as well as it does retain a lot of the epic studio rock sesibility, just with a very different sound to it.