U2 is the band that more than any other has defined my life, "we" have grown up together, so I thought I would wax a bit nostalgic...
It was 1985 and I was working at the outdoor pool when another lifeguard, Sarah Wood, first introduced me to the little Irish band called U2. At the time, they were pretty much unknown in our little hometown. (If it wasn't on the radio, most of us didn't know anything. ) At first I found the lyrics about Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day confusing. But over the summer, as Sarah continued to play her albums over the loud speakers (the only way we lifeguards past the long afternoons) the music and band grew on me. Their political outspokeness and Christian imagery fit well with my evolving teenage personality.
The next year or so, the band released Joshua Tree and suddenly U2 hit the mainstream. Everyone knew the band then, although I think most people still stayed away from the earlier albums.
Then I went to college, fell in love, and then left for a mission. In the early days of my missionary training, it was songs (sung in my head, rock music was banned for missionaries in the MTC) like "A Day without Me"
I'm starting a landslide in my ego
Look from the outside to the world I left behind
I'm dreaming - you're awake
If I were sleeping, what's at stake?
A day without me...."
and " 40"
"I waited patiently for the Lord, he made my foodsteps clear, I will sing, sing a new song...how long, to sing this song...."
that got me through those long MTC days and lovesickeness. I remember trying to translate the lyrics of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" into Thai. Then as I went to Fresno and began working with Cambodian refugees songs like "Mothers of the Dissappeared" and "Pride in the Name of Love" took on new meaning.
At the end of my mission (again no rock music for 2 years....) I started seeing posters for the movie Rattle and Hum displayed in the local mall, and was intrigued, looking forwarded to seeing the movie. People told me they thought Rattle and Hum wasn't that good of an album. And maybe in the first couple of listen through it was a bit of a change. But certainly it didn't take long for me to come to appreciate it as a new chapter in U2. Particular favorites were "Van Diemen's Land:" (I'm always a fan of when the Edge gets to lead vocals), "Angel of Harlem", and "All I Want Is You." More on that last song later.
Achtung Baby was shift in a new direction and frankly I wasn't as enthusiastic about the new direction, but there were still a couple of songs that entered the most memorable song list like "One" and "Acrobat" and "Mysterious Ways".
Zooropa and Pop further went down a path of synthetic pop that I was as not as excited about. Except Zooropa introduced me to Johnny Cash again via "The Wanderer", which I will always be grateful for. And "If God Will Send His Angels", "Staring At the Sun", "Please", and "Wake Up Dead Man" are some of the most haunting songs of disillusionment and shaken faith that are out there, made authentic by the band clear formerly heavy faith based lyrics. These songs spoke to me as my own quest for authentic faith weaved through many dark and turbulent days.
We actually finally got to see U2 live when the PopMart tour came to Salt Lake. In some ways the concert was really great, but that phase of U2 was not the U2 that I had always wanted to see live. So I admit really wishing I could have seen them in the early days or at least pre-Zooropa.
With "All That You Can't Leave Behind", U2 came back to their old self, much to my great satisfaction. This album featured three of my all time favorite songs, especially "Grace", "Peace on Earth", and "Walk On".
...Grace
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything...
...Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things...
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is most remembered as the soundtrack for the then revolutionary idea of the iPod and I know a lot of critics think it is one of the lesser albums, but for me this is actually one of my favorites, for songs like "Yahweh":
...Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing....
We went down to Chattanooga to see U2 in 3D which featured this album and this renewed my desire to see U2 live again.
So I was very excited when I found out that U2 would be in Tennessee on our anniversary. No so excited when I tried to buy tickets and they were sold out instantly. Unwilling to pay big bucks to scalpers who had snatched up all the presale tickets, I had resigned myself to having to stand outside the stadium. But the day before the concert, I went back online to Ticketmaster and found that more tickets had been released, so I quickly snatched them up. (Then quickly called AM to make sure she hadn't bought tickets as well since she had been looking out for them as well.)
So we got to go, and we had fabulous seats. We took JPD with us, as he is a big fan as well. (But he didn't get to go to our anniversary dinner...) It was a hot muggy nights, the crowd was enormous and the lines for the restrooms were so long that I had to make a scary choice, forego the pregame biobreak with the hope that my old man bladder could make it thru the entire concert without an emergency. (Fortunately, I could.)
The crowd was fantastic, the band was fantastic, they played a great mix of old and new songs. Here is the set list:
- Space Oddity (Major
Tome)The FlyThe WandererBeautiful Day (With snippets from the Space Shuttle)Miss SarajevoEncore:
Amazing GraceWhere The Streets Have No NameEncore 2:All I Want IsYou
The band had finished, they had taken a picture and were walking off the stage when Bono decided to call some guy up from the audience. When the guy comes up, I actually initially thought he was drunk because Bono had given him his arm to help him come up and the guy had ignored it, and then he almost fell over the step on the stage. It is only two days later that I read that the man is in fact blind and I guess had been holding up a sign during the concert saying something like" I'm blind but can play, and Let me play a song for my wife".
Anyhow, Bono gives him his guitar, the man says how nervous he is and then he and Bono start in on "All I Want Is You." At the time, knowing that he was doing it for his wife, it was really cool, but now knowing he was blind, watching it on youtube gives me goosebumps...
"You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbour in the tempest
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you..."
At the end, Bono gives the guy his guitar.
