Achtung Baby

Through a combination of zealous righteousness and post-punk experimentalism, U2 became one of the most popular rock & roll bands of the '80s. Equally known for their sweeping sound as for their grandiose statements about politics and religion, U2 were rock & roll crusaders during an era of synthesized pop and heavy metal. The Edge provided the group with a signature sound by creating sweeping sonic landscapes with his heavily processed, echoed guitars. Though the Edge's style wasn't conventional, the rhythm section of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. played the songs as driving hard-rock, giving the band a forceful, powerful edge that was designed for arena rock. And their lead singer, Bono, was a frontman who had a knack of grand gestures that played better in arenas than small clubs. It's no accident that footage of Bono parading with a white flag with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" blaring in the background became the defining moment of U2's early career — there rarely was a band that believed so deeply in rock's potential for revolution as U2, and there rarely was a band that didn't care if they appeared foolish in the process. During the course of the early '80s, the group quickly built up a dedicated following through constant touring and a string of acclaimed records. By 1987, the band's following had grown large enough to propel them to the level of international superstars with the release of The Joshua Tree. Unlike many of their contemporaries, U2 was able to sustain their popularity in the '90s by reinventing themselves as a post-modern, self-consciously ironic dance-inflected pop-rock act, owing equally to the experimentalism of late '70s Bowie and '90s electronic dance and techno. By performing such a successful reinvention, the band confirmed its status as one of the most popular bands in rock history, in addition to earning additional critical respect.

With its textured guitars, U2's sound was undeniably indebted to post-punk, so it's slightly ironic that the band formed in 1976, before punk had reached their hometown of Dublin, Ireland. Larry Mullen Jr. (b. October 31, 1961; drums) posted a notice on a high school bulletin board asking for fellow musicians to form a band. Bono (b. Paul Hewson, May 10, 1960; vocals, guitar), the Edge (b. David Evans, August 8, 1961; guitar, keyboards, vocal), Adam Clayton (bass), and Dick Evans responded to the ad, and the group formed as a Beatles and Stone cover band called the Feedback, before changing their name to the Hype in 1977. Shortly afterward, Dick Evans left the band to form the Virgin Prunes. Following his departure, the group changed their name to U2.

U2's first big break arrived in 1978, when they won a talent contest sponsored by Guinness; the band were in their final year of high school at the time. by the end of the year, the Stranglers' manager Paul McGuinness saw the band play and offered to manage the group. Even with a powerful manager in their corner, the band had trouble making much headway — they failed an audition with CBS Records at the end of the year. In the fall of 1979, U2 released their debut EP U2:3. The EP was available only in Ireland and it topped the national charts. Shortly afterward, they began to play in England, but they failed to gain much attention.

U2 had one other chart-topping single, "Another Day," in early 1980 before Island Records offered the group a contract. Later that year, the band's debut, Boy, was released. Produced by Steve Lillywhite, the record's sweeping, atmospheric but edgy sound was unlike most of its post-punk contemporaries, and the band earned further attention for its public embrace of Christianity; only Clayton was not a practicing Christian. Through constant touring, including opening gigs for Talking Heads and wet T-shirt contests, U2 was able to take Boy into the American Top 70 in early 1981. October, also produced by Lillywhite, followed in the fall, and it became their British breakthrough, reaching number 11 on the charts. By early 1983, Boy's "I Will Follow" and October's "Gloria" had become staples on MTV, which, along with their touring, gave the group a formidable cult following in the US.

Released in the spring of 1983, the Lillywhite-produced War was U2's breakthrough release, entering the UK charts at number one and elevating them into arenas in the United States, where the album peaked at number 12. War had a stronger political message than its predecessors, as evidenced by the UK, college radio, and MTV hits "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day." During the supporting tour, the band filmed their concert at Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater, releasing the show as an EP and video title Under A Blood Red Sky. The EP entered in the UK charts at number two, becoming the most successful live recording in British history. U2 had become one of the most popular bands in the world, and their righteous political stance soon became replicated by many other bands, providing the impetus for the Band Aid and Live Aid projects in 1984 and 1985, respectively. For the followup to War, U2 entered the studios with co-producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who helped give the resulting album an experimental, atmospheric tone. Released in the fall of 1984, The Unforgettable Fire replicated the chart status of War, entering the UK charts at number one and reaching number 12 in the US the album also generated the group's first Top 40 hit in America with the Martin Luther King Jr. tribute "(Pride) In the Name of Love." U2 supported the album with a successful international tour, highlighted by a show-stealing performance at Live Aid. Following the tour, the band released the live EP, Wide Awake in America in 1985.

While U2 had become one of the most successful rock bands of the '80s, they didn't truly become superstars until the spring 1987 release of The Joshua Tree. Greeted with enthusiastic reviews, many of which proclaimed the album a masterpiece, The Joshua Tree became the band's first American number one hit and its third straight album to enter the UK charts at number one; in England, it set a record by going platinum within 28 hours. Generating the US number one hits "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," The Joshua Tree and the group's supporting tour became the biggest success of 1987, earning the group the cover of respected publications like Time magazine. U2 decided to film a documentary about their American tour, recording new material along the way. The project became Rattle & Hum, a film that was supported by a double-album soundtrack that was divided between live tracks and new material. While the album Rattle & Hum was a hit, the record and film received the weakest reviews of U2's career, with many critics taking issue with the group's fascination with American roots music like blues, soul, country and folk. Following the release of Rattle & Hum, the band took an extended hiatus.

U2 reconvened in Berlin 1990 to record a new album with Eno and Lanois. While the sessions for the album were difficult, the resulting record, Achtung Baby, represented a successful reinvention of the band's trademark sound. Where they had been inspired by post-punk in the early career and American music during their mid-career, U2 delved into electronic and dance music with Achtung Baby. Inspired equally by late '70s Bowie and the Madchester scene in the UK, Achtung Baby was sonically more eclectic and adventurous than U2's earlier work, and it didn't alienate their core audience. The album debuted at number one throughout the world and spawned Top 10 hits with "Mysterious Ways" and "One." Early in 1992, the group launched an elaborate tour to support Achtung Baby. Dubbed Zoo TV, the tour was an innovative blend of multi-media electronics, featuring a stage filled with televisions, suspended cars and cellular phone calls. Bono devised an alter-ego called the Fly, which was a knowing send-up of rock stardom. Even under the ironic guise of the Fly and Zoo TV, it was evident that U2 was looser and more fun than ever before, even though they had not abandoned their trademark righteous political anger.

Following the completion of the American Zoo TV tour in late and before the launch of the European leg of tour, U2 entered the studio to complete an EP of new material that became the full-length Zooropa. Released in the summer of 1993 to coincide with the tour of the same name, Zooropa demonstrated a heavier techno and dance influence than Achtung Baby and it received strong reviews. Nevertheless, the album stalled at sales of two million and failed to generate a big hit single. During the Zooropa tour, the Fly metamorphosed into the demonic MacPhisto, which dominated the remainder of the tour. Upon the completion of the Zooropa tour in late 1993, the band took an extended break. During 1995, U2 re-emerged with "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," a glam-rock theme to Batman Forever that was produced by Nellee Hooper (Bjork, Soul II Soul). Later that year, they recorded the collaborative album Original Soundtracks, Vol. 1 with Brian Eno, releasing the album under the name the Passengers late in 1995. It was greeted with a muted reception, both critically and commercially.

Many hardcore U2 fans, including drummer Larry Mullen Jr., were unhappy with the Passengers project, and U2 promised their next album, to be released in the fall of 1996, would be a rock & roll record. The album took longer to complete than usual, being pushed back to the spring of 1997. During its delay, a few tracks, including the forthcoming first single "Discotheque," were leaked, and it became clear that the new album was going to be heavily influenced by techno, dance and electronic music. When it was finally released, Pop did indeed bear a heavier dance influence, but it was greeted with strong initial sales, as well as some of the strongest reviews of U2's career. In late 1998, the group returned with Best of 1980-1990, the first in a series of hits collections issued in conjunction with a reported $50 million agreement with Polygram. Three years after the mediocre response to Pop, U2 teamed up with Eno and Lanois once again to release All That You Can't Leave Behind in fall 2000.

Reinventions rarely come as thorough and effective as Achtung Baby, an album that completely changed U2's sound and style. The crashing, unrecognizable distorted guitars that open "Zoo Station" are a clear signal that U2 have traded their Americana pretensions for postmodern, contemporary European music. Drawing equally from Bowie's electronic, avant-garde explorations of the late '70s and the neo-psychedelic sounds of the thriving rave and Madchester club scenes of early-'90s England, Achtung Baby sounds vibrant and endlessly inventive. Unlike their inspirations, U2 rarely experiment with song structures over the course of the album. Instead, they use the thick dance beats, swirling guitars, layers of effects, and found sounds to break traditional songs out of their constraints, revealing the tortured emotional core of their songs with the hyper-loaded arrangements. In such a dense musical setting, it isn't surprising that U2 have abandoned the political for the personal on Achtung Baby, since the music, even with its inviting rhythms, is more introspective than anthemic. Bono has never been as emotionally naked as he is on Achtung Baby, creating a feverish nightmare of broken hearts and desperate loneliness; unlike other U2 albums, it's filled with sexual imagery, much of it quite disturbing, and it ends on a disquieting note. Few bands as far into their career as U2 have recorded an album as adventurous or fulfilled their ambitions quite as successfully as they do on Achtung Baby, and the result is arguably their best album.

—Stephen Thomas Erlewine

"If you give a pop star a shit pile of dough and he refuses to self-destruct, I think it is a bit wet," said a smoking, slicked-back, black-sunglasses-clad Bono in a 1993 interview on the UK music show "Naked City". "I think it's part of the deal. If they don't die on a cross by 33, I'd ask for your money back." Like many of the knowingly audacious quotes from the singer and his U2 mates during this period, it's a little tough to deduce the exact level of sincerity involved. And that was the whole idea. In the early 1990s, U2 were sending up the idea of a "rock'n'roll star." They were offering themselves as an ironic, postmodern band for similarly confused times. They were making fun of themselves and their own humorless, slate-faced 80s reputation.

A year after Bono's casual quip about pop stars dying on a cross, Kurt Cobain killed himself. And in Nirvana's final video, for "Heart-Shaped Box", Cobain could be seen making wild eyes in front of one. Achtung Baby and its accompanying Zoo TV tour lived within the slippage between perception and reality. "Sometimes you can get far closer to the truth of what you're trying to say by highlighting what it isn't as if it were true," said the Edge on "Naked City". "That's assuming we know the truth-- 'truth' is one of those words that's lost its meaning." In the 80's, U2 seemed endlessly in search of a definite truth, whether in peace or god or love or some ambiguous combination of the three. Famously, they didn't find it. But the quest was thrilling-- at least until 1988's album and film Rattle and Hum, which found the group looking and sounding spectacularly self-serious while gawkily paying tribute to some of their American heroes like Elvis Presley and B.B. King. The resulting critical backlash caused these open-hearted Irishmen to reflect, and they weren't crazy about what they saw in the mirror. "We looked like a big, overblown rock band running amok," says Bono in an excellent new documentary called From the Sky Down that chronicles the band's pivotal turn-of-the-decade moment. And while that might seem like an aptly derisive opinion of today's incarnation of U2, it's important to remember that these guys originally came out of the cacophony of rule-breaking post-punk, a realm where bloated arena rock was the enemy.

So they went away and tried to come up with a new way to seek some truth. Achtung Baby is rightly known as one of rock's greatest reinventions because it was so complete. Sure, U2 changed their sound from chiming melodics to lurching, distorted rhythm. But they also changed their attitude, their demeanor, their look, their ideas on how to deal with celebrity. All of a sudden, they were funny, sexy, a bit dangerous-- three things few would've associated with U2 in the 80's. And yet, at their core, the band's values remained constant. They were still ethically minded and interested in the real-life connection between living beings. But the way they went about projecting those core tenets flipped. In TV-news parlance, their attitude switched from "60 Minutes" to "The Colbert Report".This new era was conveniently spelled-out on Achtung's first single "The Fly" with the Edge's metallic skronk and Bono's conspiratorial, effected whisper of lines like, "It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest/ It's no secret that ambition bites the nails of success." And just as the album goes lengths to both fulfill and upend rock'n'roll myths with thorny tales of deep betrayal, questioned fidelity, and ambiguous artifice, this coffee-table-book sized, 6xCD, 4xDVD set both props up Achtung and pokes a few holes in it, too.

Take the album's much-ballyhooed place of origin, Berlin's Hansa Studios. This was the location that played host to David Bowie and Iggy Pop's electronic-inspired masterworks Low and The Idiot. And Hansa is located near the Berlin Wall, which had only recently been breached when U2 set up there in the fall of 1990. Perched literally in the middle of historic liberation, U2 were meant to find inspiration in the world events around them and turn that spark into a new version of the band for a new decade. It's a great backdrop for a great story. But it didn't really go down that way. "We're there, and greatness has left the building," Bono recalls in From the Sky Down, which features the band returning to Hansa earlier this year in preparation for their headlining set at Glastonbury. While Berlin did inspire bits of the record-- "Zoo Station" was named after one of its prominent train terminals-- it hardly lived up to its lofty reputation. This serves as a lesson for U2, a band that shamelessly worships past rock heroes, to move past such naïve mythologizing. "Berlin was a baptism of fire," says bassist Adam Clayton in the documentary. "It was something we had to go through to realize what we were trying to get to was not something you could find physically, outside of ourselves, in some other city-- that there was not magic to it and that we actually had to put the work in and figure out the ideas and hone those ideas down." This newfound pragmatism would help them to move past their fantasies about the sanctity of rock. So while Berlin played a part on Achtung Baby, it did so in surprising ways; though "One" was mostly written in a burst of inspiration in Hansa, most of the album truly came together once the group went back home to Dublin. Most of the audio bonuses in this set are unfortunately superfluous, and don't offer much in terms of insight.

There are two CDs filled with dance remixes, and while U2 were at the vanguard of big time rock bands embracing the notion of the remix, even the most devout rave nostalgist would have little use for six remakes of "Mysterious Ways". The disc of bonus material and B-sides is disappointingly slight, and another filled with early versions of every song on Achtung offers a few revelations-- an Irish jig-style version of "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World" has an easy charm, but generally, it's easy to see why these attempts were improved upon later. Achtung's even more electronic and weirder follow-up, 1993's Zooropa-- which was recorded in a creative frenzy during a break in the Zoo TV tour-- is also included, though it's generally (and somewhat unfairly) glossed over in all the accompanying materials. The worthy additions in this "super deluxe edition" are nearly all visual. There's Anton Corbijn's gorgeous and colorful photography that covers its case, as well as a big, sturdy 84-page book. And then the four discs of video: It Might Get Loud director Davis Guggenheim's new 90-minute doc From the Sky Down, every video from the era, a full live gig taped in Australia in 1993, interview shows (like "Naked City"), and, best of all, a playfully subversive TV special from 1992 that includes live footage from the Zoo TV tour as well as goofy interludes that play up the surrealism and insanity of the whole project. Moments like the "Even Better Than the Real Thing" video, with the band playing in a glass case while fans look on outside, successfully tie in all the pomo flourishes U2 were chasing.

The group was at the forefront of bringing huge video screens into the live arena, and some of the tricks they pull off-- Bono "dueting" with a static-y Lou Reed or flipping channels to live local stations-- still look impressive. And for all the technical wizardry of the stage setup, the band still uses it to complement the music rather than overshadow it. Even 20 years on, the tour looks like something to behold, a singularly inventive experience that no band-- including U2 itself-- has been able to really expound upon in a meaningful way. In the Zoo TV special, which originally aired during Thanksgiving weekend in 1992, a "news commentator" covering the show dubs it "the most significant and exciting TV event since the Gulf War." Some of the ideas behind Zoo TV and Achtung Baby were inspired by the television coverage of that initial Gulf War in 1991, and the bizarre reality of being able to switch channels from home shopping to MTV to the bombing of Baghdad. U2 recognized the dangers of this idea, when war turned into just more filler for the burgeoning 24-hour TV-news cycle. And instead of preaching against it in a high and mighty fashion, they embraced that chaos in an effort to expose it. Of course, our collective information overload has been upped exponentially since thanks to the internet, making the flashes of words and slogans that backed U2 during their live campaign seem eerily prophetic. Talking about the Zoo TV audience in the "Naked City" interview, drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. says, "They're coming to a rock'n'roll show and watching television, what more can you ask for?" He's joking, but as we go to arenas and see singers on big screens through our cellphone cameras, the question begins to answer itself.

— Ryan Dombal, Pitchfork