LOS ANGELES — U2’s famed white flag would seem to be in storage. The Irish quartet that many have come to consider the Great White Hope of rock and roll has gone through an evolution on stage, as well as on record. According to reports from the European tour front, lead singer Bono Hewson still exhibits his Boy-ish enthusiasm, but gone are the wild banner-waving, climbing-up-the-balcony antics of last year’s breakthrough U.S. assault.
The emphasis now seems to be less on obvious anthems and sensational stage tactics and more on an understated sort of intensity. That stems directly from the comparatively subdued tone of the band’s fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire, which is burning up the charts on both sides of the Atlantic even though the band itself admits that it’s — in bassist Adam Clayton’s words — “a strange record.”
“It generally does take a long time to get into an album,” acknowledges Clayton.
“War was a record about speaking out and just putting your feelings on the line. This is a subtler record, but I think the message is as strong.”
War, of course, was acclaimed for its blatant socio-political themes: “Sunday Bloody Sunday” decried the strife in Northern Ireland and “New Year’s Day” was inspired by Poland’s Solidarity movement. The downplay of such obvious messages in The Unforgettable Fire, in favor of a return to a more impressionistic tableau, has prompted a few prominent critics to attack the new LP as vague and unfocused in comparison. But Clayton regards the album’s direction as a progressive one and not a retreat of any sort.
“I wouldn’t expect the statements on this record to be presented in the same way that they were on the last record. They’re still certainly there, if you’re looking for them,” he says, adding that the band’s modified direction, while less strident, is in no way passive. “I think this is an album of resistance against various forces — you’ve got your Martin Luther King, you’ve got your Elvis Presley — and that comes across probably even in the way that it’s difficult to get into the record.”
For the group’s first studio LP not to be produced by Steve Lillywhite, the band surprised more than a few fans by selecting Brian Eno to helm the project, along with his partner, Daniel Lanois. The resulting sound combines dreamy synthesizers and even a bit of orchestration with the thick reverberation of the band’s first two albums, Boy and October. Even Clayton’s bass is taking more of a shaping role as the mix is less dominated by the Edge, the group’s guitarist. It’s all in stark contrast to the urgent, direct sound of War.
“We wanted to have a bit of that textural sound and atmospheric approach that was on the Boy album, and I think we ended up with it in a much more sophisticated way,” Clayton said. “A lot of the textures on Boy had been sort of overdubbed guitars and basses with treatments on them. And Eno certainly was able to do that on The Unforgettable Fire album, but he was also able to add synthesizer textures, which I think fatten it out considerably.”
Some fans fretted that Eno would bog U2 down in experimentation, or that the resulting record would come out sounding something like Remain in Light, Part II. “That worried us as well,” Clayton admits with a laugh.
“We want to be experimental as much as possible, but we still want to be a rock band,” he continues. “Eno just had a great feel for it, because he was in many ways more conservative than us. He’d keep saying, ‘Well, why are you using four chords there? Why don’t you just use two? It’s much easier.’ So it was very natural. I don’t think either of us had to think very much about whether we were making a new sound or anything — it just came out that way.”
Along with making a switch from Lillywhite, the band also discarded its usual studio setting, Windmill Lane, in favor of Dublin’s Castle Slane — as seen in the first video for the single “Pride (In the Name of Love).” The cavernous recording area was appropriate for the group’s return to its early sound; it’s hard to think, after all, of a band more fit for a concert in a cathedral.
“It was great not being in a recording studio, but just to be in this big old house,” he says. “We had two sets of equipment set up in different rooms for different sounds, and then we had the central room, which was the drawing room, with all the recording equipment in it. It was just a lovely way to make a record.
“OK, ultimately, it was a little laid-back, but the advantage of that was that it meant we could go out and do four or five live takes of a song and then sift through and find the best one. It meant that there were no nerves when you went out to do a take — you knew you had all day.
“Probably the first night I slept there I was a bit nervous in a sort of romantic way, I suppose, an ‘is it haunted?’ type of thing. But really, after I’d spent a few nights there, it was not intimidating at all. It felt like home.”
The result of the unusual U2-Eno collaboration has drawn decidedly polarized reviews from the band’s champions in critical circles. Wrote Gavin Martin in England’s New Musical Express, “The Unforgettable Fire, recorded away from the glare and remorseless grind of the business, in a cautious way bespeaks a rebirth for U2.” A different viewpoint was taken by a number of American critics, such as the Los Angeles Times‘ Robert Hilburn, who said, “Unfortunately, many of Hewson’s lyrics — especially on ‘Elvis Presley and America’ — are unnecessarily ethereal and vague.”
It is little difficult to discern just what Bono is saying — both thematically and literally — in the “Elvis” song.
“Well, you’ve just sussed it out,” responds Clayton. “You can’t work out what he’s saying, right?” Right. “Could anyone work out what Elvis Presley was saying? That is the whole point.” Say what?
“Elvis Presley was an inarticulate man, except when he was performing his art and he got behind the microphone and he sang with that voice and moved his body in that way. Then everyone thought, ‘Wow, this is a very interesting guy — we want to interview him.’ So you interviewed him, and everyone said, ‘Oh, the guy’s stupid.’ He couldn’t communicate in real life except when he was moving and singing, and I think the song says that. Evidently it says that, if everyone’s so pissed off at it,” Clayton laughs.
The other new song that frequently gets slammed is a short, rather spacey-sounding instrumental titled “4th of July.” Says Clayton, “I find that (criticism) odd. I find the song incredibly graphic. In a funny way, I think however one feels about that track is in many ways a part of the whole album, because I get a real celebration feeling off it — which is a lot subtler than writing a song called ‘A Celebration’ (a War-era single).”
Both “4th of July” and “Elvis Presley and America” were studio improvisations, as were a good deal of Hewson’s lyrics on the October album. U2 has earned a reputation for songs that come together in such loose fashion, but Clayton stresses that planning is as vital as spontaneity in the development of the band’s material.
“Certainly there is a lot of talking things out and figuring on how we all feel about music and trying to decide where we all want to go,” he says. “If you’re trying to be creative, you have to have a perspective. Because otherwise, every idea you ever had, you work on; whereas you’ve got to decide which of the ideas to work on and get some kind of streamlining to where you’re going. You have to be that aware, otherwise you won’t be able to perform properly.
“In the studio, things are limitless as to what you can do, but you can’t just put something on a record because you think it might be nice or because you’ve got some guy sitting in the studio who happens to play saxophone. You have to be kind of selective about what you do.”
Clayton seems perplexed by the response to The Unforgettable Fire in some U.S. circles, even though the album is firmly entrenched in the Top 20. “Funnily enough,” he says, “this record hasn’t really been given the attention in the States that War was, which is very strange because War was really slagged in Britain and did well in America. This one’s done really well in Britain and the reviews haven’t been so hot in America.
“But also, I think we’re entering a different phase in terms of the way America sees us anyway. I think now we’re at a stage where radio is going to be a much more important medium (than the press).”
Clayton’s relegation of the American press to secondary importance shouldn’t be taken to mean that he holds the British press in any higher esteem. To the contrary. His reaction to the Melody Maker/NME/Sounds style of journalism: “I think it stinks. I wish somebody reviewed those papers every week. (But) ultimately people are really not bothering to buy those anymore. You get sick of all that negative reaction to bands and stuff and just think ‘Why bother?’ Unfortunately, you’re an asshole if you’re still into music, according to those papers.”
The month of December finds U2 coming over to greet the American press and public with a mini-tour of the States, concluding with stops Dec. 15 in San Francisco and Dec. 16 in Long Beach. Clayton indicates that the current stopover signifies an end to an era for the band in this country.
“We had a month where we could come to America,” he says, “and we didn’t want to do a big sort of arena tour. We wanted to come in and do all the sort of smallish places that we’d played before as a sort of end to that side of it, and then come back and do a larger tour in 1985.” As the October of U2’s career gives way to spring, the band return to the States at the end of the winter to set a fire in the larger halls of the land.
© BAM magazine, 1984.