I have a confession to make. Back until about April of 1990 I was a huge U2 fan. It was around that time that I finally couldn’t take Bono’s bullshit any longer and I totally stopped listening to them. I felt so betrayed by their obvious ‘sell out’ tactics that it took me almost thirty years to listen to their older albums again.
When I talk about early U2 I’m talking about their work up to the Wide Awake In America EP which was released in 1985. So anything past that I just flat out refuse to listen to. When Joshua Tree and Rattle And Hum both came out I initially enjoyed them, but something about them didn’t sit right with me at the time. I think it had to do with two main things; trendies who previously would make fun of me all of a sudden liked them and Bono’s ego started to take over the music of the band.
I started getting heavily into U2 around late 85/early 86. It was such a long time ago that I quite honestly can’t remember the exact year. I remember liking New Year’s Day a whole lot when I would watch MTV as a young teen, so I always knew they existed before I started really getting them. One of the things that drew me to them was the fact that they were involved with Amnesty International and seemed to give a damn about social issues. By 1990 all of that was gone, and the band members starting cheating on the wives, dating supermodels and just basically behaved as if their shit didn’t stink. They became a stereotypical example of a band, instead of rising above that kind of shit like they used to.
I realise that bands sometimes majorly change their sound, but the jump that U2 did was a step too far for me. Rather than the original dark post punk sound that they had going on all of their early 80’s albums they basically became a pop band playing really boring music. I know I’m not the only one who felt this way at the time because there were even articles all about how they lost a lot of their original fan base by the time they made Rattle And Hum.
What’s funny is that all of this really pisses off all of the current U2 fans who enjoy their newer albums. The band basically has two separate groups of fans; people who were around in the 80’s who love only their earlier output, and those who heavily support their newer incarnation. I’ve noticed on a lot of U2 album lists that many of the newer fans will list October as the worst U2 album. It’s actually my favorite U2 album because it is very dark and has a genuine heavy post-punk vibe to it. Actually, I think their earlier work all the way to The Unforgettable Fire are solidly post-punk albums that sound a whole lot more original that all of the wannabe post-punk bands around right now.
Did I get a lot of shit for liking them? I did get some flack from the other weirdos in my area, but U2 were actually considered to be an ‘alternative’ band at the time and not mainstream. They were only considered mainstream once Joshua Tree came out. I think some of the songs off of that album are ‘okay’ but they felt very pallid compared to their earlier songs. I actually made a DIY U2 themed denim jacket in high school, and even drew my own U2 back patch. That was my first ever DIY project and I even had some people ask me in high school if I could make the same back patch for them to use. I appreciated that people asked me but I didn’t want anybody having the same design as I had so I turned them down.
During this time U2 were definitely not the only band I listened to. I was also into OMD, Specimen, The Dead Kennedys, The Sex Pistols, 7 Seconds, Love & Rockets, Public Image Limited, Jesus And Mary Chain, etc…. I even went to see The Cure n 87 wearing that denim jacket and nobody gave me shit for it. I think it was more acceptable back then to be into wildly different sounding bands than it is today. These days youngsters want to be put in boxes without any outside influences, which I think is a damn shame. I saw U2 perform live twice in 87, and I’m grateful that I at least got to see them play a lot of their older songs, something which they didn’t do much of after that.
About a year ago I found myself going onto YouTube and listening to early U2. It brought back so many memories that I bought all of their CDs up to The Unforgettable Fire. I didn’t feel anger any longer because I came to the realization that it is perfectly alright to like only one era of a band that has been around for decades. I still own all of their 80’s single 45’s because they are in one of my mom’s closets, and I have searched for and bought some of their rarer earlier vinyl such as the War picture disc. The funny thing is that they are cheaper now than they were in the 80’s.
Does U2 suck now? Of course they do, but I love their earlier albums. I think, in some way, this would piss Bono off and that makes me happy.
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