When U2 first hit England in the twilight of 1980, a dull cry of relief rose up from rock’s murky depths. U2 were “just what we needed,” a return to dram-rock (music’s equivalent of melodrama). In the phrase of Island’s press leaflet, “a soaring and emotional rock style that was powerful without being either muscle-bound or bludgeoning” (whatever those bludgeoning epithets mean). Live, so it was said, U2 swept audiences into rapture and ecstasy.
Since then, a more widespread and various return to “dram-rock” has emerged. Whether harping back to the Doors (Bunnymen) or to Bowie at his more amply flushing (Associates), this trend has attempted to underscore certain tenets of the straightest rock tradition and revamp them into pop dreams. The common factor is the implicit anti-dance stance.
Some bands — e.g. the Scars — have foundered amiably, while others — like the Bunnymen — have matured with a vengeance. U2 have done neither. October confirms the suspicion that their “intensity” was a simple matter of “density.”
The group has been in the studio all summer with this recording. Perhaps it took them so long because the “intensity” and sheer length of their tours have gone to their heads. The idea behind the rock concert, of course, is to move and excite, and in that context mere volume and exertion can pass for anything. But when it comes to putting this “intensity” on vinyl, the pious, almost hysterical insistence of U2’s music becomes crude and vacuous.
“I know it’s good that we’re not easily digested,” says Bono at the beginning of the year. In truth, nothing could be so easily assimilated and expelled. Boy “cracked” the American charts (again, Island’s term) because it’s exactly the sort of exultant, golden rock music Americans (e.g. Bruce Springsteen) really understand. As reactionaries (with the weight of God behind them), U2 slide into place with immaculate logic. But do not forget the hysteria below the surface: “there’s a lot of Johnny Rotten’s bastard children running the streets…they’ve been sold into bondage” (Bono Vox).
So what is it that the excessive plaintiveness of Bono’s voice and the forced power of U2’s sound is trying to hide? Consider the adventure of dram-rock from the inside. Let’s compare U2’s “Gloria” with, say, “Show of Strength” — the openers, respectively, on October and Heaven Up Here [Echo and the Bunnymen]. Both are conventionally structured tunes, both are curled and laced in swooping guitars — the Edge’s comes from Alan Rankine of the Associates, Will Sergeant’s from Richard Lloyd — and both are sung in pretentious over-emotive voices. The difference is that “Gloria” (and have no fear, it’s not a tribute to Van Morrison) tugs openly, vulgarly at your emotions, thundering down from the nave of the cathedral of sound like trumpet blasts at the gates of heaven: Gloria inexcelsis deo. Inside this wholesome blast of pretty noise (which, faded both in and out, gives itself airs of the absolute) there is no tension of drama of sound itself. Everything reaches out, asserts, grasps at nothing. At the end of each single sounds like a vacuum; there is no turning back into the structure. In the drive towards ever greater emotion, this flagrant emulation of the Associates rings with all the blind need of religious devotion.
“Show of Strength,” on the other hand — learning its lesson from the first adequate reformulation of the rock structure. Television’s “See No Evil” (another “strong” opener) — turns and grows on itself, consciously structuring its components as it moves, floating them round the unspoken theme of the “rock song” and working them into a new intelligence. In the guitar-bass-drum trinity, each level works both for and against the others, questioning the trinity’s logic.
From verse to verse to chorus and back, that structure moves and develops ironically, gleefully — phased and mirrored through its own logic. The joy in the intelligence of this music is mercurial. The rest of Heaven Up Here (save “All I Want”) sucks — it’s certainly not “purely poetry,” as some nut was suggesting — but “Show of Strength”/”With a Hip” — as inverse/obverse double turn on the stigmata of power and drama — leave me speechless. [Ian] McCulloch is one of the great scholars of the structure.
The point is that even the oceanic distance between Hugh Jones’ production of Sergeant and [Pete] De Frietas and Lillywhite’s 100% pure beef production of the Edge and Larry is only a reflection of the gulf between Echo and U2. U2 had their one great moment with Hannett on “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” but there’s no turning back after October.
Bono’s cry on this record — and it’s not even an incantation — is “Rejoice!” But as his own rejoicing voice, straining and waving like an archangel’s wings arches its chords towards the lost paradise — where everything is golden and exultant forever — you start to wonder if maybe you missed something. Where did it go? But “love me, come with me,” says the voice, “this is your voice, my brother, for you too are U2.” Anata mo, anata mo…
Obviously rock doesn’t expire just because groups run out of ways to change it. U2, I guess, will continue to “move” in live performance, just like James Brown. But they will only move on the lightest surface. Their music does “soar” — in fact it wings its way pretty serenely over danger zones like the Fall or the Birthday Party. But then “God” knows, there are other religions.
© NME, 1981.