Politics and Religion in Selected Lyrics of U2: - unipub

Politics and Religion in Selected Lyrics of U2:

From War (1983) to „Miss Sarajevo“ (1995)

Diplomarbeit

Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie

An der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Kathrin NEUHOLD

Am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Hugo Keiper

Graz, 2013

Von ganzem Herzen danke ich meinen Eltern, dass sie mich durch all die Jahre meiner Studienzeit unterstützt haben. Es ist keineswegs selbstverständlich und ich möchte mich hiermit bei ihnen aufrichtig für diese einzigartige Möglichkeit bedanken. Ich möchte mich auch für die motivierenden und bereichernden Gespräche mit meinem Lebensgefährten Mario bedanken, der mir in jedem Moment der Diplomarbeit hilfreich zur Seite gestanden ist und mich in allen Computerangelegenheiten beraten hat. Ein besonderer Dank gilt auch meinem Diplomarbeitsbetreuer Prof. Dr. Hugo Keiper für dessen Hilfsbereitschaft, thematische Aufgeschlossenheit und seiner geduldigen Beantwortung jeder noch so klein scheinenden Frage. Er unterstützte mich weiters oft mit motivierenden Worten und verstand es, meine unangebrachten Sorgen während des Verfassens der Diplomarbeit zu lindern.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ............................................................................... 1

2 U2 – The Band ........................................................................... 4

3 Short History of Ireland ............................................................... 7

3.1 Northern Ireland ............................................................................ 9

3.2 The Troubles ................................................................................ 10

3.3 Anti–Protestantism ....................................................................... 11

4 U2 and Religion ......................................................................... 12

4.1 The Religious Education of Bono Vox, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry

Mullen Junior ....................................................................................... 12

4.2 Religion in the Early Years of U2 ..................................................... 15

4.3 October (1981) ............................................................................ 19

5 U2 and Politics ........................................................................... 21

5.1 War and The Unforgettable Fire (1983–1985) ................................... 22

5.2 Band Aid, Life Aid and “A Conspiracy of Hope” (1984–1986) .............. 25

5.3 The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1986–1989) ........................... 30

5.4 Achtung Baby and ZooTV (1990–1992) ........................................... 35

5.5 Stop Sellafield (June 1992) and Festival Against Racism (January 1993) ..

................................................................................................. 43

5.6 Zooropa (1993) and “Miss Sarajevo” (1995) ..................................... 45

6 Conclusions ............................................................................... 49

7 The Analysis .............................................................................. 51

7.1 Sunday, Bloody Sunday ................................................................. 51

7.2 Bullet The Blue Sky ....................................................................... 60

7.3 Mothers Of The Disappeared .......................................................... 69

7.4 Miss Sarajevo .............................................................................. 74

8 Conclusion ................................................................................ 79

9 Bibliography .............................................................................. 81

1

1 Introduction

For over three decades U2 has been ranking among the biggest

rock acts of our time. Having won 22 Grammy Awards, released

12 studio albums, sold more than 150 million records worldwide

and meanwhile occupying a place in the “Rock and Roll Hall of

Fame”, the band has achieved fame beyond imagination. Soon in

their career U2 decided to commit themselves to more than only

being an ordinary rock ’n’ roll band, which was definitely

connected to their Christian life. After coming to the conclusion

that their religious life was inconsistent with their life as rock

stars, they started to take advantage of their prominence and

consequently interfered in political affairs around the globe. U2,

and in particular Bono Vox, the charismatic U2 singer and front-

man, devoted themselves to all kinds of humanitarian and

political activism. Bono has become a crusader for the world’s

poor and disadvantaged, which has gained him incredible respect

not only from his fans, but also from politicians and statesmen

all over the world. Furthermore the artistic and intellectual

development of U2 resulted in profound lyrics, which are

suffused with scriptural references and reveal U2’s commitment

to social and political change. U2 continuously tries to raise

awareness for the grievances in this world. In their concerts

political appeals are mixed into the set and the songs alternate

with calls to social action. U2 seems to be different from

numerous superficial bands of recent times. This fascinates

millions of supporters, who sometimes also feel the urge to

change the world for the better with their own small good deeds.

Being a U2 fan myself and having already visited four of their

concerts, one of them in their native city Dublin, I decided to

systematically investigate the role of religion and politics in U2’s

2

lyrics in this thesis. I will first provide a short introduction to the

rock band. Furthermore I will discuss the religious background of

U2’s native country Ireland, the secession of Northern Ireland,

the Troubles in the 1960s, and the subsequent anti-

Protestantism, as all of these influences certainly had a huge

impact on the religious development of the band members.

In the subsequent part I present U2’s own approach to religion.

This comprises the religious education of the various band

members and the significance of religion in the early years of

U2’s career. Furthermore I will briefly introduce their second and

most overtly religious album, October.

The final section of the general part of this thesis will be

concerned with the political achievements of U2. I will place

special emphasis on the commitment of lead singer and lyricist

Bono Vox as he is the main initiator of U2’s political activities. I

will then give a short overview of their albums and start with

their most political album, War. Soon after U2 had achieved a

certain reputation, they made the acquaintance of Bob Geldof.

Later on it was Amnesty International, and other aid agencies,

which asked U2 for help to raise awareness for their concerns.

After a while, U2 started to actively support different good

causes by themselves. Apart from U2’s political commitment I

will also give an overview of their music from War until their

song “Miss Sarajevo”.

In the practical part of my thesis I will examine four lyrics of U2

with special emphasis on religious references and political

backgrounds. I will start with their best-known song, “Sunday,

Bloody Sunday”, which focuses on the desperate battle between

Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Next I will investigate

“Bullet The Blue Sky”, a song that deals with the unjustified

3

interference of the USA in the civil wars of Central America. The

following song, “Mothers Of The Disappeared”, is a lament of the

many disappeared sons and daughters who fell victim to the

totalitarian regimes in Central and South America, and honours

the mothers of these children. I will end the analytical part with

the discussion of “Miss Sarajevo”, which focuses on the fearless

inhabitants of war-torn Sarajevo in the beginning of the 1990s.

4

2 U2 – The Band

The first chapter of the thesis will be concerned with a short

introduction to U2. It provides an overview of the band members

and an insight into how and when the band was founded.

Furthermore, it will talk about the band’s initial progresses, their

manager Paul McGuinness, and their long anticipated first record

deal.

U2, the successful rock band from Ireland, achieved more in the

last three decades than most bands ever accomplish. This not

only concerns the world fame of U2, but also their particular

style of lyric writing: veracious lyrics often combined with social

and religious messages. The topics of the lyrics marked a return

to the 1960s, when rock music played a vital role as far as race

relations, sex, drugs, religion, and most notably charitable and

social causes were concerned. Besides the above-mentioned

lyrical motifs in U2’s songs, they produced various anti-war

songs, starting with their renowned anthem “Sunday Bloody

Sunday”, which called for peace in Northern Ireland. U2’s

participation in Band Aid and Live Aid further set the course for

the band’s continued successful career. U2 always tried to make

a difference and were able to accomplish this goal.

It all started when Larry Mullen Jr.’s father convinced his 14-

year-old son, a gifted young drummer, to put up a notice on the

school board to find like-minded musicians in Mount Temple, to

form a band. On Saturday, 25 September 1976, five diverse

personalities, with various, different talents, showed up in the

kitchen of the drummer (cf. McCormick 2006: 34-35). This

afternoon marked the beginning of a new musical milestone. At

the time the band called itself “Feedback”. It consisted of Adam

Clayton on bass, Paul Hewson, who was later nicknamed "Bono

5

Vox", responsible for lead vocals, and Dave Evans, later

nicknamed "The Edge", on guitar. In the beginning The Edge’s

brother, Dick, was also a member of the band. He played guitar

but he soon left Feedback and joined another band in Dublin,

named the Virgin Prunes. Feedback was rehearsing on weekends

and evenings and soon changed their name to “The Hype”.

Considering themselves a punk rock band in the beginning, they

soon decided to perform at school and at various small infamous

venues. After almost two years, the band, who meanwhile called

themselves U2, decided to take part at a talent show in Limerick,

Ireland on March 17, 1978. It was probably the break point of

U2’s young career, as they won the talent show, and they were

suddenly able to record their first demo, and moreover won £

500 in cash (cf. McCormick 2006: 37 – 71). After their success in

Limerick, U2 persuaded Paul McGuinness, a business man from

Dublin, to become their manager. In the years to come U2 was

able to get local supporters in and around Dublin and later also

throughout Ireland. However, they did not manage the final

breakthrough. In 1979, U2 were travelling through England and

performing in different clubs in and around London, but failed

again to arouse international attention. Back in Ireland, their

career was nearly coming to an end, as the boys finally had to

look after themselves and the parents no longer supported them.

In the week after England, they started to sell themselves almost

cheekily for the last time in their young career. U2 went for a

one-week tour through Ireland, after returning from London, and

they sold their visit abroad as successful and worked with the

idea of “U2 breaking the UK”. Furthermore they impressed with

being on the cover of Record Mirror in the United Kingdom and

Hot Press in Ireland. Their one-week tour ended in Dublin’s

National Stadium, which had only been a venue for big,

international, foreign bands up to that time. This was certainly

6

the biggest performance U2 had ever had up to that point,

although it was far from booked up. After the show Nick Stewart,

from Island Records, went backstage and told U2 that he had

unfortunately not been able to see and hear a show of the band

in the UK. Stewart was delighted to offer U2 their first record

deal, their dreams were thus finally coming true (cf. McCormick

2006: 73–117).

7

3 Short History of Ireland

Since one part of the thesis deals with the religious content of

U2’s lyrics, it is useful to discuss the religious background of

their native country Ireland. Growing up in a pious country

certainly influenced Bono Vox, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and

Larry Mullen Jr. The next chapter will briefly talk about the

history of the island in order to provide a better knowledge of its

religious background.

(Many of the following historical facts rely on A Short History of

Ireland by Richard Killeen and will not be separately referenced.)

In the 5th century Christian missionaries, among them Ireland’s

legendary St. Patrick, reached the island and displaced the

heathen religions with Christianity. Soon the country was

invaded by Normans and in the 12th century Ireland was under

Norman-English control. In the early stages, relations between

Ireland and England were peaceful. However, this came to an

abrupt stop with the English Reformation in the 16th century,

when England decided to break loose from the Pope and the

Roman Catholic Church. Irish chiefs, who did not bow to Henry

VIII, were murdered at that time. Consequently Catholic Irish

landowners were deprived of their estates, which were then

given to Protestant immigrants from England and Scotland. In

the following 150 years, Catholic Ireland was vanquished and

religion became a point of fiercer contention, which would

accompany subsequent generations over the next few centuries.

In the 18th century 85% of Ireland’s population, which consisted

mainly of Roman Catholics, had to suffer under reinforced Penal

Laws, which deprived nonconformists of full political and

economic rights, resulting in an escalation of sectarian conflict.

Furthermore the native Gaelic language was banned in schools.

8

In 1801 the English put an end to the Irish parliament and in the

Act of Union “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”

was founded. Catholics were not allowed to hold official

parliamentary positions until 1829. Moreover Ireland’s population

had to struggle with widespread poverty in the 19th century. The

situation was aggravated in 1845 with the potato blight. The

English rulers did not feel obliged to help the Irish populace and

as a consequence about a million people died of the famine and

another million left Ireland to escape starvation and poverty.

At the end of the 19th century Ireland tried to gain home rule and

thus to improve the situation of the Irish Catholic population.

Movements for land reforms and a request to make Gaelic the

official language in school again, rounded out the effort of the

Irish. These demands were met with Protestant opposition and

Ireland came close to civil war. Although the Irish Parliamentary

Party finally won the Home Rule Act in September 1914, the

enactment of the bill was delayed due to the beginning of World

War I.

On Easter Monday 1916 the Easter Rising started and resulted in

a one-week siege of public buildings in Dublin’s centre. The

leader of the revolt was Patrick Pearse, who was supported by

the small Irish citizen army and several volunteers. Pearse read

out the proclamation of the Republic of Ireland at the General

Post Office and set up the Irish flag. This uprising and display of

defiance was brutally quelled by the British, who destroyed the

city centre, executed sixteen leaders, and imprisoned the rest.

The executed men became martyrs for the Irish and nationalism

flourished anew. According to Killeen (2009: 63) “a nation

requires poetry, heroes, and outstanding men and women in

order to furnish itself with pride.” William Butler Yeats was one of

Ireland’s greatest poets and in his poem “Easter 1916” he had

9

already implied, with the phrase, “all changed, changed utterly”,

what was going to come in the next few decades. In 1919 the

Irish War of Independence started. In December 1921 the

Anglo–Irish Treaty was signed by the Irish and the British

government, resulting in the creation of the Irish Free State. It

consisted of the 26 southern counties of the island. The Gaelic

language was restored and became, together with English, the

official national language.

In 1937, the power of the crown came to an end and the

governor-general was displaced by an elected president.

Consequently, the new constitution replaced the title of the Irish

Free State with Éire (Ireland). However, it was not until April

1949 that Ireland became the Republic of Ireland, and thus an

independent country.

3.1 Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has remained part of the United Kingdom. It is

comprised of six of the nine Ulster counties in the north-east of

the island. The unionist majority of four counties preferred to

stay part of the United Kingdom, two counties had nationalist

majorities, which were, however, outvoted. The first unionist

Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Craig, was already

considered to be in favour of a policy of discrimination against

the Catholic minority. This meant that Northern Ireland, from the

very beginning, was a sectarian state. It was dominated by the

Protestant majority, who consequently ruled in their own

interests. To show their contempt, Catholics almost completely

left the political stage. This provided a bigger opportunity for the

government to favour Protestants in the distribution of jobs,

housing, education, and social services. Catholics often moved

from the destitute countryside to Belfast hoping for a job. In the

10

city they often had to endure sectarian harassment in the form

of attacks, vandalism, and occasional riots. From this time

onwards Northern Ireland’s history has shown intermittent

sectarian conflicts between Catholic Nationalists, and mainly

Protestant Unionists

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Northern_Ireland).

3.2 The Troubles

In the 1960s, violence in Northern Ireland increased and the

British government often dispersed unarmed demonstrators by

forcible means. A deadly dynamic developed because on the one

hand there were demands for reform by Catholics and on the

other hand Protestants did not want any changes. As a result

British forces entered Northern Ireland, apparently to keep

peace, in the early 1970s. On January 30th, 1972, British troops

killed 13 Catholic civil rights protesters and a 14th victim died

several months afterwards. This tragedy was soon to be known

as “Bloody Sunday”. This event will be returned to later in the

thesis.

Soon after the paramilitary IRA (Irish Republican Army) re-

emerged to protect the Catholics from official and unofficial

attacks. Additionally they wanted to unite Northern Ireland and

the Irish Republic. Meanwhile, Protestant unionists formed their

own paramilitary brigades. The resultant sectarian violence came

to be known as the “Troubles”. 1972 became the bloodiest year,

as 467 people, including 321 civilians, were killed. About 275

people were murdered each year from 1971 to 1976. In the

1980s the violence decreased, but still continued with 50 to 100

political assassinations yearly. It was supposedly ended with the

Belfast Good Friday Agreement in 1998, when U2 and Ash played

a concert in favour of the agreement. However, violence can

11

occasionally still be found in the cities of Northern Ireland and

unfortunately an end is not yet in sight.

3.3 Anti–Protestantism

In the meantime, a form of anti-Protestantism emerged in the

Republic of Ireland. During the 18th and 19th centuries sectarian

conflict between Catholics and Protestants arose because of land

and trading rights. This changed in the course of the 20th

century. Ne Temere is a convincing example of religious anti-

Protestantism in Ireland. It stated that children in mixed

Catholic-Protestant marriages had to be brought up and

educated as Roman Catholics and that the Protestant spouse had

to implicitly accept it. Meanwhile anti-Protestantism has a

nationalist rather than religious significance in Ireland. For this

reason the real ending of the conflict is not yet predictable

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Ireland).

12

4 U2 and Religion

4.1 The Religious Education of Bono Vox, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Junior

This chapter will talk about the religious education of Bono Vox,

The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. in their respective

families, with special emphasis on the vocalist. Furthermore I will

briefly talk about which faith the four adolescents themselves

tried to pursue later on.

Bono Vox basically grew up in a mixed marriage. His mother, Iris

Hewson, was a Protestant and his father, Robert Hewson, a

Roman Catholic. Bono remarks in McCormick (2006: 9) that at

the beginning of his parent’s love affair, Ireland was on the

verge of a civil war between Catholic and Protestant inhabitants.

The Republic of Ireland was mainly Catholic, and Protestantism

was the enemy’s religion, in other words, that of Great Britain.

Yet his parents were willing to get married and accepted all the

external criticism. It was of course very courageous of Bono’s

parents to carry through this marriage at that time of Irish

history, as the preceding chapter of my thesis has demonstrated.

Bono should have been brought up as a Catholic by law, but his

mother chose to raise him a Protestant. His father agreed to this

decision and on Sundays took Bono and his brother to the

Anglican Church of Ireland, before going to a Catholic service

himself (cf. McCormick 2006: 15). Bono certainly acknowledged

his father’s open-minded attitude to religion and his respect for

his mother’s Protestantism. In Conversations with Michka

Assayas the singer acknowledges that his parents had shown

him that “religion often gets in the way of God” (Assayas 2005:

31).

13

In U2 by U2 (2006: 15) Bono argues “I didn’t feel anything

about God and church, it just didn’t reach me.” After a while his

friend Derek Rowen took Bono to a Catholic Mass. The devout

Catholic wanted to show his best friend that there was actually a

convincing church, hoping this would strengthen Bono’s belief in

God. Bono realized that the Catholic Church offered powerful

sermons and that believers of that church formed a community,

whereas in the Church of Ireland people seemed to worship God

without knowing who or what God should be (cf. McCormick

2006: 15). In this way Bono Vox got to know the Protestant and

the Catholic Church in almost equal shares. In fact the Catholic

services were more convincing for the singer, but he still had not

yet found a proper way to worship God.

In the end it was his mother’s death that manifested Bono’s

religious faith. She died from cerebral bleeding when Bono was

14. He remembered that he read the Bible and prayed to God, in

order that his mother would recover again from the bleeding, but

she died soon after. This was a profound and life-changing

experience for the artist. Bono’s prayers went unanswered and

he recalled being brought to the hospital with his father and his

brother to say goodbye, before they disconnected her life-

sustaining measures (cf. McCormick 2006: 17). This certainly

was a great misfortune for the boy, his brother, and his father

but it, paradoxically, strengthened his belief in God. He

continued to go to church at this stage of life but he only saw

people singing psalms of glory and could not recognize glory in

church itself. Religious services were not enough for his faith in

God. God existed for Bono in the outside world, but not

necessarily in services. Bono continued to pray to God (for

himself) and he even experienced a kind of answer from Him.

According to the artist (McCormick 2006: 20) from 1976

onwards, many people in Ireland were going through a religious

14

experience. This is nowadays known as the “Charismatic

movement” where free-thinking Catholics and Protestants in

Ireland started to worship God together. In Mount Temple,

where Bono and the other members of U2 went to school, for

example, pupils came together and read the Bible. These revivals

caused deep religious experiences in many free thinkers of the

time. In those days Bono started to realign his spiritual life,

which became also the basis for his future lyrics writing, where

he processed his faith in the lyrics of U2’s songs.

As The Edge was born in England to Welsh parents, he was

brought up a Protestant. He reports that he became religiously

aware at the age of fifteen (cf. McCormick 2006: 89). His religion

teacher was the first person he met who was a “born-again

Christian”. The teacher’s conviction reminded The Edge of the

similarly deep Christian faith his maternal grandmother had.

Adam Clayton was, according to The Edge (McCormick 2006: 9),

not fascinated by any religious affiliation. In fact, Clayton

rejected all religious movements and was rather inconclusive in

his understanding of God. Larry Mullen Junior was the only band

member who was raised entirely Catholic. He mentions

(McCormick 2006: 101) that he even was an altar boy when he

was a child.

Except for Adam Clayton, all members of U2 were nurtured more

or less religiously. In a country like Ireland, religion and faith

had a huge influence on people’s way of life. On that account the

band mates also had to struggle with this matter. The next

chapter takes a closer look at this aspect.

15

4.2 Religion in the Early Years of U2

The following chapter will be concerned with U2’s participation in

the “Shalom Fellowship” and the impact it had on Bono Vox, The

Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and subsequently on Adam Clayton. It will

also describe religious life on tour with U2’s first album Boy. At

the end of this chapter it will be revealed why the “Shalom

Fellowship” almost caused the break-up of the young rock group.

In the early days of U2, Bono was open-minded and partly naïve

as far as religion was concerned. He was keen on exploring

different forms of worshipping God. It basically started with the

‘Monday Night Group’. Bono convinced The Edge to join the first

meeting, in which six or seven people participated. They talked

about the meaning of being a Christian, read the Bible, and

prayed to God in order to get divine inspiration. Bono revealed

his strong belief to Larry Mullen Jr. and talked about his

experiences to the drummer after the death of Mullen’s mother.

Mullen began to join the meetings as well. According to The Edge

(McCormick 2006: 101) there existed at first neither a hierarchy

nor rules. Everybody was allowed to attend the meetings, which

actually had no principles. It was a gathering of young people,

but as soon as the group grew bigger, adults from “Shalom

Fellowship” started to come to the meetings.

The “Shalom Fellowship” was basically considered to be a

Christian Association. However, the question arose what

distinguished the “Shalom Fellowship” from the meetings of the

‘Monday Night Group’? Bono admits (McCormick 2006: 101) that

he liked becoming acquainted with new people who were in

pursuit of something that always lay dormant in himself. The

fellowship was a community with supporters who behaved like

first-century Christians. Miracles were everyday occurrences for

them, and they understood how to live a life of faith. Bono was

16

mesmerised by them. The principle Bono doubted about the

Fellowship was that there was “a Pentecostal madness about

them” (McCormick 2006: 101). For this reason he never

completely trusted them. However, he, The Edge, and Mullen

gave it a try. Bono was most impressed by the leader of the

group Chris Rowe, who came from a mission in China. This man

was a powerful preacher and he supposedly had an academic

understanding of the scriptures. The Edge praised Shalom for

exploring the belief system more deeply than the Catholic and

the Protestant church and was for the first time able to

understand different elements in Christianity. He appreciated the

meetings as they provided great support at the beginning of U2’s

career. Furthermore a deep and intimate friendship developed

between the guitarist, Bono, and Larry Mullen Jr. during their

religious exploration (cf. McCormick 2006: 101). Clayton was

sceptical about the Fellowship from the very beginning (cf.

McCormick 2006: 89). U2’s manager Paul McGuinness

remembers the difficult period at the beginning of the summer of

1980. The three band members certainly hid the extent of their

Christian faith from McGuinness, as they were aware that the

manager would not have agreed with the “Shalom Fellowship”.

McGuinness admitted afterwards that in fact he would have been

very troubled (cf. McCormick 2006: 88).

In U2 by U2 the band members talk about their religious life

during their first tour with the album Boy in 1980. Bono, The

Edge, and Larry Mullen Jr. not only had Bibles in their luggage

but repeatedly came together for praying and to discuss religious

matters. The Edge remembers (McCormick 2006: 143) that

Adam Clayton was not able to understand their religious devotion

and soon became an outsider. Clayton was convinced of the fact

that a rock’ n’ roll band in the 1980s should dedicate itself to

other occupations than religion, such as alcohol and partying.

17

The bass player was slightly disappointed although the band

confirmed that this never created too much tension. However, in

retrospect, the drummer considered his religious occupation

during the tour to have been extreme. He came to the conclusion

that as a result of it he misjudged far too many situations.

According to Larry Mullen Jr. there were numerous things that

the band did not dare to do because of rules which were partly

based on piousness and partly self-imposed.

At the time of the production of the second album, October, the

Christian meetings became a serious problem. According to

Mullen (McCormick 2006: 149-150) the meetings with the

“Shalom Fellowship” began to get dubious. Some members of

the Fellowship demanded that Bono, The Edge and Larry Mullen

Jr. looked for a more spiritual occupation than being rock stars.

The prayer meetings became more frequent and it was almost a

duty to be present. As soon as U2 absented themselves, they

needed a valid excuse. Furthermore it was beginning to become

a sort of Christian community where members would live and

work under stringent Christian rules. The three band members

were young and susceptible and for this reason the claims of the

Fellowship sounded convincing at first. However, the more they

did for the “Shalom Fellowship” the more was claimed, and as a

reward it was said that they were closer to God. Meanwhile, it

was starting to sound to U2 more like a sect than anything else.

The weirdest thing was that the reproaches were not made by

church members anymore, but by their own friends.

The Edge was the one who was most influenced. He abandoned

the band without letting anybody know, except for Bono. He

wanted to pursue something more meaningful in life than being a

rock star. His aims in life were to improve spiritually, and to be

led by God. Suddenly he did not believe that he could accomplish

18

both, to serve God and to serve man. For this reason The Edge

left the band and soon after, Bono did the same (cf. McCormick

2006: 150). Once The Edge had left the band, Larry ceased

going to the meetings. Bono and Edge confronted Clayton to tell

him that they had troubles reconciling being rock stars with their

belief system. The bassist instantly had a meeting with Paul

McGuiness, who decided to fix the issue. At first, after discussion

with their manager, The Edge and Bono cancelled the upcoming

tour and the completion of their next album October. After taking

time to consider, McGuinness told the two band members that he

had already booked everything for the next tour, including a

large crew, and that the band had to fulfil their obligations. “If

God had something to say about this tour he should have raised

his hand a little earlier […] So that was kind of the end of it.

They accepted that, and it never happened again.” (McCormick

2006: 151) In retrospect, The Edge realised (McCormick 2006:

152) that the “Shalom Fellowship” was very corrupt. He admits

that being a rock star and developing spiritually was not a

contradiction as such, but that group dynamics often make false

ideas sound believable. It was a necessary lesson he had to learn

in order to find himself and to be able to trust his own values.

Bono confessed that leaving the band was certainly one of the

hardest steps he had ever taken. He remembers (McCormick

2006: 151) that they were on the verge of losing the band.

However, in the end they were regaining it more completely.

After all these incidents, peace gradually returned to U2. The

decision to go on as a band was certainly linked to the

knowledge that they would be able to have a bigger influence on

the world as rock stars than as ordinary people. It will be shown

in “Politics of U2” that this idea proved to be right.

19

4.3 October (1981)

As a result of their religious and inner conflicts, the second U2

album, October, which was released in 1981, tried to make

peace through approaching God in the lyrics of some songs. The

album, and in particular the opening track “Gloria”, is presented

here briefly to finish the discussion of this topic for the time

being. As I will not discuss October in detail in this thesis, I will

just talk briefly about the content of “Gloria” and the

achievement of the whole album.

Bono was convinced that the only way to produce creativity and

spirituality was to be truthful to oneself. “Gloria” sprang from

this conviction. It is first of all about the awkwardness of having

nothing to say and the predicament that U2 had to struggle with

during the production of October (cf. McCormick 2006: 148). The

chorus is in Latin, from the liturgical “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.” The

translation of “Gloria in te domine / Gloria exultate” would be

“Glory, in you Lord / Glory exalt [him]” and it refers to Psalm

30:2 (in te Domine, speravi). There are further references to the

Bible present in the remaining song as for instance “Only in You

I'm complete”, which refers to Colossians 2:9-10. “The door is

open / You're standing there” is a reference to James 5:7-9 (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_(U2_song)). “Gloria” became

one of U2’s lowest-charting singles. Its peak position was #55 in

the UK singles chart in 1981. Bono rated the song 25 years later

with the words, “Wild thing for a twenty-two-year-old. Gregorian

chant mixed with this psalm. It was a stained-glass kind of a

song.” (McCormick 2006: 148) Other songs on the album that

emphasised religion were “Without A Shout (Jerusalem)” and

“Tomorrow”. The title song “October” is a piano piece by The

Edge and it became the only song of the album that got on the

20

The Best of 1980 – 1990 compilation, where it was a hidden

track

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_(album)#cite_note-

ukcert-16). The album became the least popular studio album in

U2’s history, although it reached #11 in the United Kingdom

shortly after its release in October 1981. In the USA, its peak

position was no better than #104. For this reason U2 needed to

improve, otherwise they would have disappeared from the scene.

In the end it was Island Records, their then record company,

who wisely decided not to drop U2 as they recognized that the

band was capable of more (cf. McCormick 2006: 155).

After their experience with the “Shalom Fellowship” the band

members decided to be religiously unaffiliated and to believe in

God in their own ways. They were still positive about the

Scriptures but, as Bono recognized as a child in the first place,

God was to be found in every day circumstances. U2’s songs and

lyrics, for instance, abound in biblical stories and in references to

God. In the practical part of this thesis I will look at these

occurrences in greater detail.

21

5 U2 and Politics

U2 is probably the most influential rock band of the last 30

years. They apparently decided to commit themselves to being

more than just ordinary rock ’n’ roll stars, which was almost

certainly connected to their faith. After coming to the conclusion

that their religious life was inconsistent with their life as rock

stars, they started to take advantage of being celebrities. In the

present chapter I would like to analyse U2’s, and in particular

Bono’s political activism.

U2 established their political commitment early in their career. It

all started in the summer of 1978, when the young rock band

protested against Ireland’s anti-contraception laws. Later Bono

Vox met the then Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland,

Garret Fitzgerald, and Bono briefly became a member of the

government committee to investigate the problems of youth

unemployment. However, in this thesis I want to investigate U2’s

political development from when they started to incorporate their

points of view and their attitudes into their lyrics, which started

with the production of their album War.

In the following section I would like to discuss the historical

political commitments, efforts, and achievements of U2. As these

often went hand in hand with their lyric writing and, in

succession, by their albums, I would also like to give a short

overview of their musical development. This not only includes

the respective albums but also the accompanying tours, as these

were used even more so for political statements.

22

5.1 War and The Unforgettable Fire (1983–1985)

In U2’s third album, War, their political interest manifested itself

for the first time in their songs and their lyrics. Bono remembers

(McCormick 2006: 161–162) that during the October tour

several occurrences considerably influenced the band. First of all,

Bobby Sands died on hunger strike. He was a volunteer of the

Provisional Irish Republican Army and was punished for the

possession of firearms. He was jailed in ‘Her Majesty's Prison

Maze’ in Northern Ireland. The aim of his subsequent hunger

strike was to attract international attention, as he and others

were treated as common criminals rather than political prisoners.

Sands died after 66 days of fasting and his death gave rise to

new turmoil in Northern Ireland

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands#cite_ref-0).

After Sand’s death, people were persistently chanting “Bobby

Sands” during U2 concerts. Bono speaks about the occurrence of

a “Provo-mania” at the time. On the one hand he was touched

by the courage of Bobby Sands. Moreover he was able to

comprehend that Catholics in Northern Ireland were struggling

for their rights. On the other hand, he started to be worried

about the numerous destructive incidents and the violence at the

time. He concluded that the Republican movement was becoming

dangerous in order to beat the enemy. Bono remembers that it

was a worrying and hazardous period in Ireland and that

Nationalism became terrifying. Consequently U2 started to

deliberate over the question of what it meant to be Irish.

Furthermore, the band considered how far they believed in non-

violence and at what point in time they would fight back. In

other words, U2 became seriously politicised (cf. McCormick

2006: 161–162).

23

In February 1983 U2 released the album War. Bono remarked in

an interview with NME: “War seemed to be the motif for 1982.

Everywhere you looked, from the Falklands to the Middle East

and South Africa, there was war. By calling the album War we're

giving people a slap in the face and at the same time getting

away from the cosy image a lot of people have of U2.”

(http://u2_interviews.tripod.com/id19.html)

The opening song of the album was “Sunday Bloody Sunday”,

which often led to misinterpretations, especially by Catholic fans

in Ireland. Initially Bono had to introduce the song at concerts

with the sentence, “This is not a rebel song.” (Stokes 2009: 35)

With “Sunday Bloody Sunday” U2 tried to express that it had

reached its climax and nobody wanted to look at the violence

anymore. Bono recalls (Stokes 2009: 36) being asked for

autographs and several chats after a concert in the United

States. He tried to accommodate the fan’s requests and

accidentally almost signed a petition to promote an IRA member

in Ireland. At this point he got scared and said, “As much as I’m

a Republican, I’m not a territorial person.” (Stokes 2009: 36)

When the Irish flag was thrown onto the stage, Bono started to

disassemble it. He got rid of the green and the orange parts,

until only the white piece of the middle was left. In this way it

became a white flag, which was a strong statement (cf.

McCormick 2006: 161 – 162). The song is not examined in

greater detail here because in the practical part of my thesis,

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” will be discussed more extensively.

“New Year’s Day” was another politically motivated song on War.

It originated from a love song that Bono wrote to his newly wed

wife Alison. Later the song was altered and the lyrics got

additional inspiration from the Polish Solidarity movement. For

the first time since the erection of the iron curtain, that

24

movement fundamentally questioned communism. Due to

martial law, its leaders were imprisoned in December 1981. The

comprehensive theme for Bono was that Lech Walesa, one of the

strike leaders, was arrested and his spouse was not permitted to

see him. After U2 had recorded the song in the summer of 1982,

Poland miraculously suspended martial law on the following New

Year’s Day. The line “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day”

suddenly took on a different meaning (cf. Stokes 2009: 39).

“Seconds” was a song about the menace of nuclear catastrophe.

Stokes argues (2009: 38) that the political situation was

worsening at the beginning of the 1980s. American Pershing

cruise missiles had been set up under Margaret Thatcher. The

USA’s president was Ronald Reagan. He was a conservative and

fundamentalist man who was considered to be incapable of

making the right decisions for his country. Reagan supposedly

gave the impression that he could cause an atomic catastrophe

at any second by pushing a button, even if this was not

necessarily intended (cf. Stokes 2009: 38).

War became U2’s first #1 album in the United Kingdom. The

band would prove that they were capable of more. From this

time onwards, U2 started to become one of the world’s leading

rock bands.

U2’s next album, The Unforgettable Fire, was released in

October, 1984. The title refers to a travelling art exhibition the

band had visited in Chicago during their previous tour. It

featured paintings and drawings of surviving victims of the

atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II (cf.

Stokes 2009: 52). U2 paid homage to Martin Luther King, Jr.

with “Pride (In the Name of Love)”. Bono wrote it after he had

read Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. by

25

Stephen B. Oates and a biography of Malcolm X. The two books

contained different viewpoints of the civil rights debate: one was

violent whereas the other was peaceful. “MLK” was the last song

of the album and was again written in remembrance of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. The song, almost a lullaby, had a calming

effect on the listener and was intended to convey hope (cf.

Stokes 2009: 59). The subsequent tour of the album projected

lithographs of the art exhibition of the victims of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, various Japanese writings, and a huge image of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. October again reached #1 in the UK

album charts. It was the first time that U2 also reached #1 in

the album charts on the other side of the world, in Australia and

in New Zealand

(cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unforgettable_Fire_Tour#cite_

note-P55-2).

War and The Unforgettable Fire showed that U2 had established

a political and a social awareness, which already manifested

itself in their lyrics and in particular in their album titles. In the

next part of my thesis I will show how Bono Vox became

acquainted with the political activist Bob Geldof and how this

influenced the lyricist in the years to come.

5.2 Band Aid, Life Aid and “A Conspiracy of Hope” (1984–1986)

In autumn 1984, Bono Vox got a phone call from Bob Geldof,

who wanted to talk to him about the famine in Ethiopia and his

upcoming project (cf. McCormick 2006: 198). This was a crucial

incident, especially for Bono, but also for U2, and this

acquaintance was going to influence not only the life of the

26

singer, but also the career of U2, as the subsequent chapter will

demonstrate.

Geldof and Midge Ure had written “Do They Know It’s Christmas”

in 1984, to raise money for the people affected by mass

starvation in Ethiopia, 1983-1985. Geldof was recruiting

musicians for “Band Aid” to sing on the record and wanted U2 to

join. Bono was delighted and agreed, although the rest of the

band was not part of the decision. Eventually only Bono Vox and

Adam Clayton were free to take part. Further musicians from

Great Britain and Ireland, among them Freddie Mercury, Paul

McCartney, and David Bowie, participated in the song (cf.

McCormick 2006: 198). It was an extraordinary event, although

everybody knew that a conservative British government was not

interested in the distress of an African country. Music seems to

have powerful means of expression and the total sales in the

United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA of “Do They Know It’s

Christmas” went on to prove that. The total was 6,175,000 sold

copies and the proceeds were donated to Ethiopia (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_They_Know_It's_Christmas%3F

#Sales_and_certifications). It was the first time U2, in this case

Bono Vox and Adam Clayton, to be exact, raised money for the

innocent inhabitants of Ethiopia in these dark times of hunger.

Various more fund raisings were to come in the near future.

The first “Live Aid” took place in July of the following year, in

1985. It was again organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to

raise money to fight hunger in Ethiopia. There was a huge

concert in Wembley Stadium in London, UK, and simultaneously

other concerts took place in the United States, for instance in the

John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. Various famous bands

performed for this good cause. U2 was again invited to this great

charity event in London, which later proved to be a huge success

27

for the band. The members of U2 were excited to be on stage for

15 minutes in front of 72,000 people and to talk to celebrities

such as Pete Townshend from The Who, Freddie Mercury from

Queen, Muhammad Ali and many others. U2 were still beginners

compared to the other bands and they were planning to perform

three songs: “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Bad”, and “Pride”.

However, Bono suddenly disappeared during the performance of

their second song, “Bad”. The Edge remembers (McCormick

2006: 205) that after some time on stage without Bono, he

thought the singer had ended the performance early and had

gone back to the dressing room. Mullen and Clayton did not

know how to react either and suddenly panic was seen on their

faces. The next time The Edge was able to see Bono, the vocalist

was climbing over the last barriers to get to the audience. As this

took up a lot of time, the band was not able to play their last

song “Pride”. Because of this, the band and the manager, Paul

McGuinness, had a huge dispute with Bono after the

performance. However, the following day the English newspapers

were all talking about the great performance of Bono Vox at

“Live Aid”. McGuinness said, “It seemed to have been popularly

decreed that Bono and Freddie Mercury had stolen the show.”

(McCormick 2006: 207) As a result, U2’s albums re-entered the

charts and their popularity consequently increased

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_aid).

In the end it turned out that “Live Aid” was not only another

great contribution to the fight against hunger in Ethiopia, but it

also proved to be a big success for U2. Bono’s charming

behaviour towards the audience and his fans had not been so

well known up to that point, and this live appearance gave U2 a

huge boost. The effects of “Band Aid” and “Live Aid” on the

vocalist and lyricist Bono Vox are discussed in the next part.

28

“Band Aid” and “Live Aid” had an enormous influence on U2’s

further achievements and it had a lasting effect on Bono Vox.

One day in 1986, Bono got a phone call from Merrill Weale from

World Vision, and was offered a voluntary job in Ethiopia. He and

his wife Alison did not hesitate and agreed to go there for a few

weeks. The couple took on the responsibility for an orphanage in

Ajibar, North Ethiopia. Bono soon realized that the people in the

orphanage did nothing but wait around. So he developed an

educational programme, helping people learn by using the

performance of one-act plays and various simple songs about

health and hygiene, which Bono himself composed. For instance,

the children were eating seeds that were needed for next year’s

harvest. As Bono had learned some of their language, he

composed a song with the following text: “We can’t eat the

seeds because they’re for next year / If we plant them right

there will be no more tears.” Bono was aware that this was not

exactly poetry, but it fulfilled its purpose. The singer still

remembers the awful sight of starvation, especially of children.

One Ethiopian father even asked Bono to take his son with him

to Ireland, so that he would have a chance of survival. Bono’s

stay in Ethiopia resulted in the awareness that it was not only

civil war and natural catastrophes that had caused the famine,

but that it also was a consequence of corruption. Not only their

own corruption, but also the corrupt relationship between Africa

and the First World, with the old debts African countries had to

pay to the rich First World countries and the trade relations they

had with the developed world (cf. McCormick 2006: 209-210).

This epiphany had a powerful impact on Bono Vox. From this

time onwards he processed his experiences in his upcoming

lyrics and his further political actions, as will be seen in the

following sections.

29

Bono’s next mission concerned Steven Van Zandt’s anti-

apartheid single “Sun City”. As the rest of U2 needed some

recreational time, Bono Vox went to New York on his own to join

“Artists United Against Apartheid” in order to raise public

awareness for that cause. By participating in the project, the

artists agreed to decline any offers to perform in the resort Sun

City in South Africa. In contrast to the other members of U2,

Bono declared, “This was my life for me, this was how I could

justify being in a band, in a certain sense. The life it was giving

me brought responsibilities with it was my rather pious, if true,

mindset.” (McCormick 2006: 210)

The next collective undertaking by U2 was the Amnesty

International tour, which was called “A Conspiracy of Hope”. In

1984 Jack Healey, who was director of the American division of

Amnesty International, asked U2 to do a tour for Amnesty.

Healey was an American human rights activist and previously a

Franciscan monk and Catholic Priest. After U2’s pledge, Paul

McGuinness organised Bill Graham as promoter, who looked for

more artists to join the tour. However, as many artists declined,

Bono Vox had to look for musicians by himself. Eventually, the

artists who participated included U2, Peter Gabriel, Sting (both

with and without The Police), Lou Reed, Bryan Adams and The

Neville Brothers. The Edge was especially delighted to be

performing together with a whole group of artists on a small tour

through the USA. He remembers how Aaaron Neville always sang

“Amazing Graze” a cappella before press conferences started,

and that Healey’s art of rhetoric could silence any cynical

journalist. He talked about the predicament of prisoners of

conscience and he was able to get his messages across, which,

according to The Edge (McCormick 2006: 217), only a skilful

priest could do. On the whole the “Conspiracy of Hope” concerts

were staged six times in June 1986. The tour did not raise

30

money for a collective cause, but it was responsible for raising

the consciousness for human rights and for Amnesty

International, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary.

According to Wikipedia

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_of_Hope_Tour), the

goal of the “Conspiracy of Hope” tour was met, as one month

after the tour the membership of Amnesty International rose by

45,000 in the United States alone. Furthermore, appeals for

freedom were written by numerous concert attendees, which

accomplished the release of two prisoners of conscience a few

months after the tour. One of them was the Nigerian band-leader

Fela Kuti, who was in jail based on a bogus charge of tax fraud.

Nigerian authorities tried to silence the musician by imprisoning

him. Many more were set free after Fela Kuti, and the goal was

achieved (cf. McCormick 2006: 218).

Later Bono Vox recognized that U2 supporters were more

motivated than many other fans. In his view (McCormick 2006:

212) they appreciated the idea of the constructive protest, which

Bono was also particularly good at conveying in his

performances, regardless of whether it was Live Aid, the anti-

apartheid movement or the Amnesty International tour. A new

state of mind was emerging amongst music fans to achieve

change in the world and Bono was glad to acknowledge that U2’s

fans were in the foreground of that development. Music suddenly

had the power to be regarded as a unifying force.

5.3 The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1986–1989)

This section is about the Hewsons’ stay in Central America and

will discuss how two new songs, which appeared on The Joshua

Tree, were the result of this trip. Furthermore it will closely

31

examine the new album. Finally, a short look at Rattle and Hum

will be taken.

In July 1986, Bono Vox and his wife Alison Hewson went to

Nicaragua and El Salvador to work with Central American Mission

Partners (CAMP). CAMP was an organisation for human rights

and economic development (cf. Luersen 2010: 183-184). In the

Nicaraguan Revolution, the Sandinista National Liberation Front

(Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) violently

overthrew the country’s dictatorship in 1979. Afterwards they

ruled the country until 1990. In the 1980s they wanted to

transform Nicaragua’s society and economy based on socialist

principles. The ensuing civil war was fought by the FSLN and

the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, also called the contras, and

other rebel groups. Soon after, the insurgents obtained financial

and military support from the United States of America. Another

socialist government was not going to benefit the USA and its

allies, especially not during the Cold War (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_Revolution). Bono Vox

states in U2 by U2 (McCormick 2006: 219) that he actually

became attached to Nicaragua, which offered a lot as far as

music and culture was concerned. He even acknowledged in a

way the ideas of the Nicaraguan Revolution, as it centred on

several of his interests: Christianity, social equity, and artists in

power. After a certain time the Hewsons went to El Salvador.

There they met with representatives from “Sanctuary”. This was

a collective which gave aid to small farmers trapped by civil war.

Bono had already financially supported the group from afar, and

suddenly the time had come to visit the peasant farmers with

“Sanctuary” himself. Bono and his wife were accompanying

collective members of “Sanctuary” when they were suddenly

caught in crossfire. A hail of bullets was shot over their heads as

they entered a rebel-backed area, as an attempt to warn them.

32

David Badstone, who is now Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Oakland, advised the Hewsons to keep on walking

as if nothing had happened. Further up the hill, government

troops were instructing the inhabitants of a rebel-sympathetic

settlement to leave their homes, as the village was going to be

destroyed. However, instead of leaving, the people stayed in

their houses and many civilians innocently died. At the end of

the day “Sanctuary”, Bono and his wife reached the farming

communities, and the farmers were truly grateful for their help.

Bono digested this experience in the lyrics of the song “Bullet

The Blue Sky”, which I will treat in more detail later in this thesis

(cf. McCormick 2006: 219).

Furthermore, the couple met several members of the Comité de

Madres Monsignor Romero (COMADRES: Committee of the

Mothers Monsignor Romero). It was an organisation of women

whose sons had vanished without any trace after they

disapproved of the military regime that was in power (cf.

Luersen 2010: 185–193). The mothers protested silently, as

their children were presumed to have been victims of torture,

abduction, and murder. Bono reveals (McCormick 2006: 231)

that in El Salvador, members of the opposition often found an

SUV with blackened windows parked in front of their houses. This

was a warning that the government was keeping an eye on the

objector. If they did not change their attitude, someone would

come in, take the suspect and murder him without a judicial

hearing. It was the USA who encouraged and supported this sort

of terror. Chile is example of a country where this had already

occurred before.

Two songs on the new album, The Joshua Tree, emerged from

the trip to Central America. The lyrics of “Bullet The Blue Sky”

implicitly describe the damage the USA caused in Central

33

America. Bono Vox admitted that the new album also had songs

that “described the bleakness and greed of America under

Ronald Reagan.” (McCormick 2006: 218) However, U2 and Bono

did not announce publicly at the time that “Bullet The Blue Sky”

accused Ronald Reagan and his foreign policy, as they were not

willing to be prosecuted in the USA, as John Lennon once was. It

was only after many years that Bono Vox did talk about the real

background of the song. “Mothers Of The Disappeared” was the

second song that was developed after Bono’s journey to Central

America. In the song, the Spanish guitar is used as a distinctive

feature and its lyrics bemoan the missing children in El Salvador

and Chile. It empathised with the many mothers of disappeared

sons and daughters (cf. McCormick 2006: 231).

The theme of The Joshua Tree was America. America, however,

did not only mean the USA, but also Central and South America.

But, for all that, the main focus was on the United States of

America. Lyrical motifs such as deserts, rivers, wind, and rain

described the diversity of the New World. On the one hand, some

lyrics criticised the United States’ foreign policy, but on the other

hand it could be perceived as a tribute to a nation that offered so

many different opportunities. The Joshua tree on the album

cover was a visualisation of this theme and the desert was the

landscape that several lyrics brought to mind. Alongside the

love/hate relationship towards the USA, Larry Mullen Jr.

concedes in U2 by U2 (McCormick 2006: 235) that they used

the Joshua tree on their album cover in appreciation of the effect

American culture had on the band. The United States ultimately

was the biggest album sales market and it probably had more

effect on U2 than the band could ever have on the States. The

Joshua Tree was released on 9 March 1987. According to

Wikipedia

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joshua_Tree#Release), the

34

album went to number one in 22 different countries; among

them were the UK Album Charts and the Billboard Top Pop

Albums chart in the USA. The Joshua Tree was U2’s biggest

success up to that point. Suddenly the members of U2 were

superstars, and had finally realised their childhood dream.

The next success for U2 was that they were featured on the

cover of Time magazine on 27 April 1987, which claimed that the

band was “Rock’s Hottest Ticket” (cf.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19870427,00.html).

U2 was only the fourth rock band, after The Beatles, The Band,

and The Who, to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

Rattle and Hum was a documentary about U2’s journey through

American music with film stock from The Joshua Tree tour, and a

double album of the same name. U2 hoped to get a similar

response to what they had received for their last album.

However, it turned out to be different than they had hoped.

The film and the album were released in October 1988 (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2#The_Joshua_Tree_and_Rattle_a

nd_Hum_.281986.E2.80.9389.29). Both of them received harsh

reviews, especially from American journalists. Although twelve

million copies of the record were sold, it is still considered to be

one of U2’s failures (cf. McCormick 2006: 261). The Rattle and

Hum tour was only performed in Australia, Japan, and Europe. At

the end of the tour, on 31 December 1989, in Dublin, Bono made

a confession on stage. He and all members of U2 were

exhausted. He announced that U2 had reached the end of

something and that “it was either over” or they needed to “go

back to square one and dream it all up again.” (McCormick 2006:

265) I will not go into further detail at this point, as I have

35

decided not to discuss any of the songs of Rattle and Hum in this

thesis.

5.4 Achtung Baby and ZooTV (1990–1992)

The longest break from public performance in U2’s history

ensued. The band did not perform for over two years. The

following chapter is about the album Achtung Baby! and the

respective tour, ZooTV. It will show that U2 succeeded in

changing their music, their appearances and their live shows in

order to escape more effectively from media criticism.

While pursuing the aim of reshaping musically, U2 decided to fly

with the last plane to East Berlin on the evening of German re-

unification, on October 3, 1990. They hoped to find inspiration in

Berlin, but instead U2 soon felt indisposed, as well as depressed.

New songs were supposed to be recorded in the Hansa Studios in

West Berlin, where in the late 70s, their producer Brian Eno had

made an album with David Bowie. However, numerous songs did

not work out and U2 had two varying viewpoints concerning their

prospective songs. On the one hand there was Bono and The

Edge, who embraced a new style, where rock ’n’ roll was mixed

with club music, and on the other hand, Clayton and Mullen were

convinced that those ideas were poor. They wanted to stick to

the style of their previous records. The bassist and the drummer

were obviously afraid of losing their importance for the band.

Bono and The Edge were writing songs, isolated from Clayton

and Mullen, which marked a great contrast to their previous

songwriting habits. Eventually these contentious points again

almost caused the band to break up. It was not until the

composition of “One” that all members of the band regained

their self-confidence. The melancholic song provided strength

and lyrically it spoke about the difference of their personalities.

36

Ultimately “One” was the perfect song for the tough situation U2

was experiencing (cf. McCormick 2006: 272 – 274). In the end

the rock group went back to Dublin and finished Achtung Baby

there.

An electrifying and vigorous style characterised the music on

Achtung Baby. It transmitted the fun of being in discos, of boom

boxes, rock concerts, and raves (cf. Flanagan 1996: 19). The

lyrics, however, conveyed something completely different and

spoke about the beginnings and endings of relationships, love,

sexuality, and betrayals. It also reflected, in an ironic way, the

absurdity of the world at the beginning of the 90s. “Zoo Station”

is the opening song on Achtung Baby. It starts off with electronic

elements and distortion and Bono’s first few words are “I’m

ready, ready for what’s next.” (Flanagan 1996: 19) This was a

confession the vocalist made to prepare the listeners for

something new, a new style of rock ’n’ roll, in other words, the

advancement of U2. It described exactly what this new album

represented, a step into a new direction. According to Flanagan

(1996: 20) a new cohesiveness and narrative coherence could be

found on Achtung Baby. This was due to Bono’s bad habit of

finishing writing his lyrics only at the very last moment. In this

way he got an overview of the upcoming songs. “One” is a song

about the struggle in relationships, and it describes the

difficulties the band went through in Germany. In “So Cruel”

Bono makes a statement about The Edge’s and his wife Aislinn

O'Sullivan’s divorce, which was happening at the time of the

album’s recording sessions. It “deals with possessiveness,

jealousy and obsession.” (Stokes 2009: 98) In “The Fly” Bono

admits his capability for hypocrisy with the line “Every artist is a

cannibal, every poet is a thief”. Furthermore he confronts people

with their own human flaws, instead of addressing a whole

society (cf.

37

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/achtung-

baby-19920109). The last three songs on Achtung Baby,

“Ultraviolet (Light my Way)”, “Acrobat”, and “Love is Blindness”,

deal with the issue of how couples handle disputes and how they

deal with the suffering they both bring on each other (cf.

Flanagan 1996: 20). The final song “Love is Blindness” describes

the end of a love affair and mirrors, according to Stokes (2009:

105), “the emotional climate in which the entire album had been

made.” The tone of Achtung Baby was darker than the tone of

their previous albums and it broached new themes. It was more

personal and it tackled topics of a rock band who were obviously

transitioning into adulthood.

Achtung Baby was finally released in November 1991. In

contrast to Rattle and Hum, reviews from critics were generous

and appreciated U2’s progression. It became one of U2’s best-

selling albums and sold 18 million copies worldwide. It topped

the charts in many different countries and it was often quoted by

writers in surveys as one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll albums.

Furthermore, five commercial singles were successfully released,

including “One”, “Mysterious Ways”, “The Fly”, “Even Better than

the Real Thing”, and “Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achtung_Baby).

U2 had accomplished their goal and reshaped musically.

Although rock music was suddenly mixed with new technological

sounds, they convinced audiences with their new style. It may be

that U2 lost some die-hard rockers, who did not accept the new

sound, but they certainly found enough fans who liked the new

face of U2.

After the release of Achtung Baby, U2 went on tour, which was

referred to as ZooTV. As well as the music, the touring also

38

changed. In accordance with the new musical style, new visuals

and features were used in the set design. U2 started using role

playing and used different disguises to confront their audience in

a way that they had not explored up to that point. These and

further occurrences will be talked about in the following chapter.

U2 approached ZooTV along the lines of “the best way to serve

the age is to betray it”, adapted from Brendan Kennelly’s Book of

Judas. In this way, over the next few years, they did everything

they were not expected to do and reinvented themselves (cf.

McCormick 2006: 279). The name of the tour derived from

“Morning Zoo”, an American radio program, with naughty jokes,

rude telephone calls, and embarrassing tapes of celebrities (cf.

Flanagan 1996: 32). Furthermore the name reflected the

opening song of Achtung Baby, “Zoo Station”. The stage design

was elaborate and especially Bono wanted to represent the new

reality of the 1990s, with numerous video screens, reality TV,

and phone calls to the office of then American President, George

H. W. Bush. In the 1990s, television had become distasteful and

ubiquitous. CNN broadcast the war in Iraq live on TV. In this

way, war came to have the same level of entertainment as

sports programs or movies. Suddenly reality and amusement

seemed to merge in a worrying way. Furthermore a new political

era in Europe began. Communism came to an end and Eastern

and Western Europe started to become reunited. ZooTV also

considered these political developments. TV screens, text, and

imagery tried to create an atmosphere that summed up the

progression of the last decade of the millennium. The decoration

of the stage was called “Motorway Madness”. The stage was

covered with billboards picturing different logos, familiar from

motorways (cf. Flanagan 1996: 32). Trabants filled with

headlights hung from the ceiling, video clips from pop culture,

and glaring text phrases confronted the audience with the

39

sensory overload of the time. The Trabants were used because

U2 recognized that people from East Germany were

discriminated against by people from West Germany. They were

seen as stupid and inert (cf. McCormick 2006: 291). The

Trabants in the stage design indicated that no matter where

people came from, they were all equal. It showed that U2

championed political correctness with the stage design of ZooTV.

It was clearly recognizable that U2 consciously used non-verbal

sign systems in their stage set, as could otherwise only be found

in the theatre. The various visual signs were shown in the props,

the lighting, and the placards (cf. Nünning 2007: 83–84).

U2 did not appear to be human beings of the 80s anymore,

instead they represented the rock stars they had become and

applied Oscar Wilde’s quote “The mask reveals the man.” Bono’s

mask became his sunglasses. He first used them in the video for

“The Fly”, where he tried to appear as such. His black leather

suit and the dyed black hair completed his look of the human fly.

Larry and Adam on tour looked like cops or soldiers. The Edge

completed the picture as salient guitarist, with oversized

knuckledusters, pants with flashy patterns, and a wool cap. He

suddenly appeared like a guitarist from the Hendrix era. A thin

moustache and the goatee completed the guitarist’s conversion

to a psychedelic gangster (cf. Flanagan 1996: 31–32). Suddenly

the members of U2 performed with totally altered faces and

started to embrace their life as rock stars. Larry Mullen Junior

remarked, “Really, we had abandoned our own insecurities. This

was maybe the most political thing we’d ever done.” (McCormick

2006: 291) Moreover, Bono represented different characters on

stage, depending on the location of ZooTV. On the first leg

through America he embodied the Mirror Ball Man. This persona

could be described as the “Showman America”. He was confident

enough to admire himself in a mirror and to give his reflection a

40

kiss. Besides he loved cash and believed that success and much

money was God’s blessing. Being rich, he thought he did not

have any flaws. The Mirror Ball Man was always preaching the

“gospel of prosperity” and he ended it with the proclamations: “I

have a vision! I have a vision! Television.” (McCormick 2006:

294)

Later on, during ZooTV in Europe (U2 called this phase of the

tour Zooropa for several reasons which I will refer to later), Bono

personified Mr. MacPhisto. This persona emerged after Gavin

Friday asked Bono what character the Mirror Ball Man was

supposed to represent. Bono’s staggered answer to this question

was that he represented the devil. During the invention of a new

persona for Europe, Bono was made up with white colour in his

face, red lipstick, platform shoes, horns, and he adopted an aged

British voice. He suddenly perceived in his looks the new

character, whom he called Mr. MacPhisto. It was the devil,

appearing as a rock star. Bono tried to collect different influences

from various characters he saw on stage and that he had read

about. One of them was a character in Cabaret, Joel Grey, who

represented the decadence of the upcoming fascism in Europe.

MacPhisto was certainly also based on Goethe’s Mephistopheles

in Faust, Europe’s most famous symbol of temptation. Mr.

MacPhisto mostly appeared in the encores of the Zooropa tour.

When he appeared in the first concert in Europe in Rotterdam,

MacPhisto’s introductory words were “Look what you’ve done to

me! You’ve made me very famous.” (Flanagan 1996: 229) The

audience loved the satanic Bono and the singer could be satisfied

with the creation of a new diabolic persona (cf. Flanagan 1996:

228-229).

The Edge took pride in the fact that the tour worked with

theatre, role playing, irony, skit and burlesque (cf. McCormick

41

2006: 292). U2 also changed their set design and their own

appearance constantly according to the location of the show. The

guitarist remembers that “Zoo TV wasn’t a set piece, it was a

state of mind. It was constantly evolving and changing and

taking on new ideas as it went.” (McCormick 2006: 295) That

meant that the ZooTV show in February 1992 in America was not

recognizable as the same show as the end of the tour in

December 1993, in Tokyo. “We changed it consciously for each

new area of the world.” (McCormick 2006: 295)

The first leg of the tour was performed in America. The show

opened with a reorganized State of the Union speech by

President George Bush Senior, which was reworked to sound like

Queen’s “We Will Rock You”,

Some may ask, why rock out now? The answer is clear: these are the times that rock man’s soul. I instructed our military commanders to totally rock Baghdad. And I repeat this here tonight… We will, we will rock you!

(McCormick 2006: 296)

This beginning already served as implicit criticism of President

Bush’s war in Iraq. Moreover, Bono phoned The White House in

order to publicly speak to President Bush Senior during every

show on the American leg. Of course, he was only able to speak

to the operator, who did not put him through to the President. At

the end of ZooTV in America, George Bush Senior had lost the

presidential elections to William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton. At Bono’s

last opportunity to speak to the operator of George Bush Senior,

he left a message to the ex-president and said that he would not

disturb him anymore, but that from now on he would bother Bill

Clinton instead (cf. McCormick 2006: 301). Bill Clinton was a

self-declared U2 fan and phoned a radio station when U2 was

giving an interview. He also wanted to meet the band when he

and U2 were randomly staying at the same hotel (cf. McCormick

42

2006: 297). Furthermore U2 was invited to Clinton’s

inauguration on January 20, 1993. Larry Mullen Jr., Adam

Clayton, Paul McGuinness and his wife went to the festivity.

Mullen and Clayton surprisingly performed, together with Michel

Stipe and Mike Mills from REM, at the subsequent MTV party (cf.

McCormick 2006: 301). It proved to be an advantage for U2 to

be acquainted with the President of the United States of America,

especially for Bono Vox. He managed to secure huge debt relief

for African countries after many years with his Jubilee 2000

project. This would not have been possible without connections

to the US President, who was one of the most powerful people in

the world.

Another interesting feature of Zoo TV was the creation of so-

called Video Confessionals during the arrival of the audience.

Each night some members of the audience went into a

leopardskin telephone box and revealed a personal secret.

Before the encores, these secrets were displayed on the screens.

This was a reference to The Jerry Springer Show and was

supposed to have a psychological benefit for the confessor.

Numerous people availed themselves of the telephone box,

which provided another attractive element of ZooTV (cf.

McCormick 2006: 292).

On the whole, U2 and all their partners invested a lot of thought

and many different ideas into the Achtung Baby tour. U2 had

obviously achieved their goal. They were able to say that they

had reinvented themselves successfully. Furthermore the band

was still taking a stand on different occurrences of everyday life

and passing comment on grievances of the last decade of the

20th century in ZooTV. However, they did not transmit their

messages only vocally, but also wrapped them up in visuals.

Moreover, they disguised themselves with masks and makeup to

43

avoid direct public attack. U2 obviously had learnt from their

mistakes and although many people thought they were no longer

active in political and human rights concerns, they were actually

more political than ever before.

5.5 Stop Sellafield (June 1992) and Festival Against Racism (January 1993)

In between the ZooTV tour, U2 also engaged politically in a few

other concerns. The following chapter examines the protest

against a new nuclear reactor in Sellafield in June 1992 and the

Festival Against Racism in Hamburg in January 1993.

In June 1992, the rock band decided to support the Stop

Sellafield protest, and so they became involved in Greenpeace

activism. They played the Stop Sellafield show in Manchester

together with Kraftwerk, Public Enemy, and Big Audio Dynamite

II. It was a concert in protest against the construction of a

second nuclear reactor at the nuclear reprocessing site in

Cumbria, England, of all places. In fact, Sellafield reprocessed

nuclear waste to produce plutonium for atomic weapons, which

was particularly shocking. U2 tried again to raise the awareness

of their fans. On the following day, the rock band took part in a

demonstration, organized by Greenpeace. People donned

protective clothing and stormed the beach of Sellafield,

displaying placards for the media that were present. U2 tried to

make clear that the local inhabitants were living in serious

danger. As a matter of fact, there were also reports of increased

illness in people living on the East Coast of Ireland, across from

Sellafield. It was believed that the Irish Sea was at that time the

most radioactive sea in the world. However, in spite of the

protests, the second reactor in Sellafield was opened (cf.

McCormick 2006: 295–296).

44

In January 1993, The Edge and Bono took part in the Festival

Against Racism at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, where a

concert, a press conference, a theatrical performance, and a

debate about anti-racism took place. In the early 1990s,

nationalism seemed to be becoming popular again. In addition to

hate crimes and right-wing violence, the elections of political

right-wing parties across Europe illustrated this development (cf.

Hagtvet 1994: 241). U2 decided to get involved in this matter.

At the time Germany was experiencing numerous right-wing

activities, and a possible reason for that was the negative

economic effect after the German reunification. Moreover,

skinhead gangs harassed Turks and fascism seemed to be

spreading all over Europe. In France, the paintings of swastikas

on synagogues were reported and the right-wing Front National

party leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, enjoyed abundant support (cf.

McCormick 2006: 303). Their participation in the Festival Against

Racism showed that U2 did not agree with the newest political

developments in Europe and the various fascist subgroups that

were rapidly developing at the time. Throughout the

corresponding tour through Europe, Zooropa, Mr. MacPhisto,

again made mock calls to various people in power. For instance,

he called Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italy’s ex-

dictator Benito Mussolini. He also called Jean-Marie LePen, as

well as the Archbishop of Canterbury to tell him what a great

person he was and that Mr. MacPhisto appreciated that the

church obviously did not have any values (cf. McCormick 2006:

304).

The participation in the protest in Sellafield, England and later in

Hamburg, Germany showed that U2 was politically very active at

the time, although many people thought that they were no

longer so involved. Fascism in Europe was a politically charged

topic in the 1990s. U2 commented on the situation and Bono was

45

not embarrassed to call several politicians and other influential

people during the tour through Europe, to spread his opinions on

the unpleasant political situation of the time.

5.6 Zooropa (1993) and “Miss Sarajevo” (1995) Halfway through their Zoo TV tour, U2 decided to produce their

eighth studio album, which was called Zooropa. U2 had become

used to rock ’n’ roll mixed with electronic elements. They decided

to produce another album which was similar to Achtung Baby!.

The following section will talk about Zooropa, the corresponding

tour, and also about U2’s commitment in Sarajevo with the

subsequent song “Miss Sarajevo”.

The opening song of the album was also called “Zooropa” and it

comprised the lines, “I have no compass, I have no maps, and I

have no reason to go back.” This was U2’s new manifesto. In

Bono’s view it was “the audio equivalent of Blade Runner’s

visuals. If you closed your eyes you could see the neon, the

giant LED screens advertising all manner of ephemera.”

(McCormick 2006: 307) The album was even more experimental

than Achtung Baby. U2 worked once again with a considerable

number of technologies and seemed to finally feel fully

comfortable working with them. “Numb” was the first song

whose lyrics were fully credited to The Edge. The song was about

the feeling people now had with the sheer overload of media.

They were no longer able to feel anything for the pictures they

saw. “Lemon” was a song about a videotape of Bono’s mother,

where she wore a lemon dress. It ultimately became a song

about the act of observing other people in films. "Stay (Faraway,

so Close!)" was actually a song for Frank Sinatra. After Wim

Wenders asked U2 for a track for his new movie Faraway, So

Close, another recording of “Stay” was used for the film. The last

46

song of the album, “The Wanderer” should be mentioned as well.

Johnny Cash sang the lead vocals of the song and the album

ends ultimately peacefully with a song about “intellectual

wanderlust” and the message “It is good to love what you do”,

which provided an antidote to Zooropa’s manifesto of uncertainty

(cf. McCormick: 306 – 308). According to Flanagan (1996: 230)

the album was characteristic for “disjointed, experimental pop.

[…] Sonically, ironically, the finished album is much closer to the

work Eno and Bowie did at Hansa in Berlin in the late seventies

than Achtung Baby turned out to be.”

Zooropa was released on 5 July 1993. It did not contain any U2

anthems; however, it obtained mostly positive reviews. The

album topped the charts in the US, the UK, Germany, and

Australia, to name just the most important countries (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooropa).

The fourth leg of ZooTV began in May 1993 and from now on the

tour was called Zooropa. In the week of the release of Zooropa,

U2 was contacted in Verona, Italy by a young writer and

filmmaker called Bill Carter. He wanted to draw U2’s attention to

the precarious situation in Sarajevo and recorded an interview

with the band members for Sarajevo Television. Sarajevo had

once been a symbol for tolerance. Christians and Muslims (in

other words Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians) lived peacefully

alongside each other. However, in the meantime the city of

Sarajevo had become involved in an obstinate conflict, where the

tolerance of different ethnic groups was tested in the terrible

siege of the city by Serbian military forces. The only goal of the

siege was to trigger ethnic tensions. Horrible terror in Sarajevo

ensued. Women were shot on their way to the market, children

became a target on their way to school and many further

47

attempts on innocent victims occurred (cf. McCormick 2006:

309).

Europe mostly reacted by ignoring the war in Bosnia and

Herzegovina. As far as the political response was concerned, the

English could not agree with the French on what they should do,

and although the United Nations were present in the war zones,

they were only observing the situation. The situation got steadily

worse and Central Europe seemed to be ignoring it. Bill Carter

told U2 that people in the bomb shelters were listening to their

music, as well as rock and dance music in general, to drown out

the noise of shells. In Carter’s view, U2 should go to Sarajevo

and play a concert in the besieged city. Although U2 was on the

verge of doing so, it posed such a risk, not only for the band, but

also for the crew and the audience, that they had to decide

against performing in the city. Instead they signed a contract

with the European Broadcasting Unit, who supplied a satellite

link out of Sarajevo, which allowed people from Sarajevo to

speak to U2’s audiences in Europe every time U2 performed. U2

had no idea what was going to happen during these live

broadcasts, who was going to speak to them next, and what the

people were going to say. They only knew it was going to be “a

really strong dose of reality” (The Edge in McCormick 2006:

310). Maybe it was not always welcomed by the audience to

watch 5-10 minutes of real human suffering. However, in Bono’s

view it was the only way to raise the audience’s awareness of the

terrible war. Paul McGuinness remembers that the worst night

took place in Wembley Stadium, where three women on the

screen said, “We don’t know what we are doing here. This guy

dragged us in. You’re all having a good time. We’re not having a

good time. What are you going to do for us?” As Bono started to

answer they interrupted him and said, “We know you are not

going to do anything for us. You are going to go back to a rock

48

show. You’re going to forget that we even exist. And we are all

going to die.” (McCormick 2006: 311) Neither U2 nor their

audience recovered from this speech in the course of the

concert. However, U2 already supported the “War Child Project”

and soon after the incident at Wembley Stadium, their producers

and the whole crew also started to donate money (cf. McCormick

2006: 309-311).

Two years later U2 released a song about the surreal acts of

defiance of women during the terrible happenings, calling it “Miss

Sarajevo”. It contained a libretto for Luciano Pavarotti, who had

desperately been asking Bono Vox for a song. On 12 September

1995, the song was first performed at the yearly Pavarotti and

Friends concert in Modena, Italy (cf. McCormick 2006: 326). In

1997, “Miss Sarajevo” was finally played at the PopMart Tour in

Sarajevo. U2 was the first band who had the honour of

performing a concert in Sarajevo after the end of the war and

they were delighted to do so

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Sarajevo).

With Zooropa, U2 had again released an album that received

positive reviews from critics. It did not sell as well as Achtung

Baby!, although it topped the charts in several countries.

However, U2 produced a fairly good album in record time and

many music fans were delighted to get Zooropa, even though U2

was still on tour. The satellite link out of Sarajevo was certainly

highly controversial, but it proved to be a way to get the public

interested in the serious issue. “Miss Sarajevo” was a great song

which honoured the courageous women of the city.

49

6 Conclusions

The preceding chapter demonstrated the political involvements

of U2, and of front man Bono Vox. In retrospect, the success of

the band started with the production of the album War, with the

politically charged songs “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “New

Year’s Day”. The numerous performances, be it LiveAid or “A

Conspiracy of Hope”, were crucial points in the history of the

rock band and certainly contributed to their success. The Joshua

Tree was one of U2’s biggest achievements. U2 suddenly

reached the Olympus of the music stars. However, with their

newly achieved self-assurance they suddenly experienced the

effects of the proverb, “The higher you climb, the farther you

fall”. Rattle and Hum was torn up by media, and to continue as a

rock band, U2 needed to take a break and reinvent themselves.

After a two-year break, U2 produced Achtung Baby!, which

surprised listeners with a new musical style, as rock music was

suddenly mixed with elements of dance music. The subsequent

tour, ZooTV, offered everything that only big successful rock

groups like Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones had been able to

provide up to that point. As well as the ingenious set design,

with numerous visual and optical symbols, the members of U2

also appeared with altered faces compared to their performances

in the 1980s. The phone calls to people in power, the different

political allusions during the live shows, and the various personas

Bono represented became the main political engagement of a

now obviously grown-up music group. Zooropa was an album

which was produced in the middle of ZooTV. The album dealt

with feelings of relationships and issues that were falling apart,

and had a grimmer atmosphere. U2 was able to convince Johnny

Cash to sing the lead vocals in the last song of the album. This

certainly marked a great honour for the Irish rock band. During

the corresponding tour, which was also called Zooropa, U2

50

turned their attention to war-torn Sarajevo. With the live

broadcast in the evenings of their shows and later with “Miss

Sarajevo”, the band contributed to a huge extent to the public

awareness of the terrible sufferings of the war and was the first

live band to perform in Sarajevo after the war.

U2 had reached many goals in their career. These were not only

of a musical nature, but they had also reached their goal to

make life on earth better, and above all more equal. The

following years saw many more achievements of U2 and Bono

Vox but this would go beyond the scope of this thesis.

51

7 The Analysis

7.1 Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Verse 1 I can't believe the news today I can't close my eyes and make it go away. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long, how long? 'Cos tonight We can be as one, tonight. Verse 2 Broken bottles under children's feet Bodies strewn across the dead-end street. But I won't heed the battle call It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall. Chorus Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Oh, let's go. Verse 3 And the battle's just begun There's many lost, but tell me who has won? The trenches dug within our hearts And mothers, children, brothers, sisters Torn apart. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long, how long? 'Cos tonight We can be as one, tonight. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday.

52

Bridge Wipe the tears from your eyes Wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your bloodshot eyes. Chorus Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Verse 4 And it's true we are immune When fact is fiction and TV reality. And today the millions cry We eat and drink while tomorrow they die. The real battle just begun To claim the victory Jesus won On... Chorus Sunday, bloody Sunday Sunday, bloody Sunday… (http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/127) In “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” U2 took a controversial topic of

Ireland and disapproved strongly of violent measures to

demonstrate a persuasion. Instead they call for an end of

violence and murder in their home country. The song is based on

the two “Bloody Sundays” and Larry Mullen Jr. stated in an

interview that the second “Bloody Sunday” was “the most

famous incident in Northern Ireland and it’s the strongest way of

saying how long? How long do we have to put up with this? I

don’t care who’s who – Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You

know people are dying every single day through bitterness and

hate, and we’re saying why? What’s the point?”

(http://u2_interviews.tripod.com/id18.html) U2 never took a

stand for either Catholics or Protestants and the song is in my

53

view an expression of their conviction that they have enough of

the violent outbreaks.

Two massacres in Irish history form the backdrop to “Sunday,

Bloody Sunday”, one of U2’s most political songs. The first one

happened on 21st November 1920, during the Irish War of

Independence. In the morning of the above-mentioned day, the

original Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed 14 British undercover

agents in Dublin who were responsible for the systematic murder

of Sinn Fein members in the preceding months (cf. Stokes 2009:

35). On the same day, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the

‘Black and Tans’, an auxiliary police force from Great Britain,

exacted vengeance on the IRA by shooting 12 civilians and

wounding sixty others at a Gaelic Football match in Croke Park,

Dublin. The second “Bloody Sunday” occurred in Derry, Northern

Ireland on Sunday, 30th January 1972. During an unarmed civil

rights demonstration, soldiers of the British Army shot in total 26

Irish civilians, among them peaceful protesters and bystanders.

Stokes (2009: 35) reports,

The images of that day remain unforgettable. In particular, footage of the man who would become Catholic Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, holding his handkerchief aloft as an improvised white flag, as he crawls on his hands and knees towards the lifeless silhouette of one of the victims of the slaughter, serves as an emblem of the innocence of those who had been slaughtered.

These two horrible events in the Irish history were revisited by

U2 with their song. Bono Vox had the idea to contrast these two

events with Easter Sunday, the most important feast day for

Christians, thus for both Protestants and Catholics (cf.

McCormick 2006: 164). In the Christian tradition, death was in

control of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. However, on Easter

Sunday Jesus Christ could finally vanquish death and was

resurrected.

54

The general verse form of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is hard to

determine just from listening to the song. For this reason I

decided to stick to the form of the songbook The Best Of U2:

1980-1990. In the book the song is divided into five verses, a

chorus, which is repeated five times, and a bridge between the

third and the fourth repetition of the chorus. The rhyme scheme

of the song is mainly comprised of rhyming couplets.

The theme of the song is the ongoing violence in Northern

Ireland, but also war and murder in general. This results in a

marked isotopy of those issues. Bono Vox uses specific imagery

and allows the listener to feel what the speaker is going through

and what war or a battle feels like. This is enhanced by Larry

Mullen Jr.’s militaristic drumbeat. What is moreover interesting is

the fact that the perspectives are constantly changed throughout

the song. The song starts with a first-person singular point of

view. This is however already changed in the third line of the

first verse, where the listener is included in the first-person

plural “we”. In the first two lines of the second verse the singer

and the listener experience what other people are going through

and the third person is employed. Afterwards, in line 3 and 4,

the point of view changes again to the first person. The

remaining point of views will be inspected in the exact analysis of

the respective verses, the chorus and the bridge. However, the

different perspectives, which are interchangeably used in

“Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, change the focus within the song. On

the one hand, the voice describes personal feelings and

thoughts, while on the other hand the listener is directly included

in the song, whereas the third person is used to convey different

images of the victims.

The first two lines, “I can’t believe the news today / I can’t close

my eyes and make it go away”, allow a direct access to the

55

oppressive emotions of the voice. The anaphora keeps the

listener all the more involved in this mental state. According to

Stokes (2009: 35) the first line was “an introductory line which

crystallised the prevailing response to the series of outrages that

devastated Northern Ireland throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s.”

The next line, “How long, how long must we sing this song?”, is

the hook of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”. It sums up the idea of

why this song has been written. The rhetorical question is

supposed to have a stirring effect on the listener, as is a protest

song against violence. The phrase “How long” is repeated four

times in the third and fourth verse lines. The anaphora and the

general repetition give special emphasis to this question. In the

fourth line “how long” is used as an ellipsis. The question

underlines the fact that, obviously, hardly anybody of the

perpetrators of violence wonders when the battle is going to end.

“’Cos tonight / We can be as one, tonight” could propose a

solution to the afore-mentioned question.

Furthermore, these verse lines resemble the following lines in

the Book of Habakkuk in the Scriptures, “How long, O LORD,

must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you,

‘Violence!’ but you do not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2). They are also

similar to Ps 6:3, “My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how

long?” (cf. http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/biblerefs.html)

(Many of the following Bible references rely on the afore-

mentioned homepage and will not be separately referenced.)

The second stanza lists the horrors of the violence. It might be a

description of the conditions during the “Bloody Sundays” or any

other war. The word “children” is a synecdoche to describe all

kinds of human beings, but the image becomes graphic through

this word. In the four verse lines an extensive use of the /b/-

56

alliterations can be found. The alliteration in “broken bottles”

puts a special emphasis on the image of destruction. All in all the

/b/-alliteration can be found seven times in the stanza, together

with an extensive use of consonance. Another interesting

expression is the English word “dead-end street”. On the one

hand it describes a street with an obvious ending and without

escape, and on the other hand it contains the word ”dead”,

which perfectly goes together with “strewn bodies” in the

beginning of the verse line.

“But I won't heed the battle call” is a statement of resistance

against participation in the violence. For the voice there exists no

need to avenge the dead and to take up any arms to become a

rebel. The voice does not take sides. “It puts my back up, puts

my back up against the wall.” is an expression pointing to the

confusion of the current happenings between Protestants and

Catholics. “To put somebody up against the wall” is a colloquial

expression for executing somebody. For this reason the

repetition of the phrase combined with the colloquial expression

could show that it is not always welcome, and even dangerous,

in Ireland not to take sides.

In the chorus the line “Sunday, bloody Sunday” is repeated four

times and constitutes another hook. “Sunday” is used twice in

each line. In this way the weekday gets special emphasis. The

assonance of the words add to the emphasis. The last line of the

chorus “Oh, let's go” might be an invitation to join in singing the

song or even to take a stand against violence.

In the third stanza appears another /b/-alliteration in “and the

battle’s just begun”, which ties the words “battle” and “begun”

together. This might make a statement about the constancy of

the battle between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The line

57

might also be a reference to the circumstance that the battle in

Northern Ireland had only just begun compared to the

longstanding feud between Catholics and Protestants in the

history of Ireland. The next line “There's many lost, but tell me

who has won?” comprises again a rhetorical question. The line is

a statement about the futility of this battle, as many Irish people

had to die, without any party emerging victorious. “The trenches

dug within our hearts” constitutes a metaphor, which implies

that trenches, which are normally dug in the soil, have

meanwhile been dug in the hearts of the Irish population and

leave scars. The following line “And mothers, children, brothers,

sisters torn apart.” is an asyndeton. A torn-apart family is a

dramatic statement, which again adds to the dark tone of the

song.

Next the chorus is repeated for the second time. Between the

second and the third repetition of the chorus, the hook “How

long, how long must we sing this song? / How long, How long? /

‘Cos tonight / We can be as one, tonight.” intervenes.

In the following bridge the voice encourages a victim to wipe her

or his tears away and addresses her or him in the second

person. In the third line “I'll wipe your tears away” the voice

employs the first person singular and seems to empathise. In the

last line of the bridge “bloodshot eyes” could be a sign of the

lasting crying and the word directly adds to the isotopies of the

song. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation

21:4) is again a quote from the Bible, which is supposed to

convey comfort (cf. http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/biblerefs.html).

The next stanza starts with the line “And it's true we are

immune”, which reveals that the Irish are no longer affected by

the battle between Catholics and Protestants. After being

58

confronted and troubled by it for several centuries, they do not

and cannot worry about the constant terror anymore. The

paradoxical statement “When fact is fiction and TV reality”

suggests that in the meantime facts in the news sound more like

fiction as the Irish got used to the constant terror in Northern

Ireland, which is only shown in the news on television. The /f/-

alliteration of “fact” and “fiction” again intensifies the statement.

“And today the millions cry” is a hyperbole and employs a third

person plural having a distancing effect on the listener or reader.

The voice does not seem to be affected anymore. In the next line

“We eat and drink while tomorrow they die” “we” is used to

describe the situation of the onlookers, which seems to be the

voice and the listeners, who eat and drink their meal while other

people, who are stricken with terror, have to die. The line is also

an ironic reference to the New Testament, which states „If the

dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

(1 Corinthians 15:32)

The first line of the last stanza “The real battle just begun” might

indicate that the meaning of “battle” is shifting from the military

battle to the battle of reason. In the case of Northern Ireland,

this would demand a mutual understanding between Catholics

and Protestants and that they pocket their pride. Furthermore,

another /b/-alliteration occurs in the line. “To claim the victory

Jesus won” is a resumption of the previous statement and could

imply that Jesus acted in the name of love until his crucifixion,

through which he beat death, which is commemorated on Easter

Sunday. The verse line might be connected to the following

quote from the Bible, “Death has been swallowed up in victory

[…] But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our

Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15: 54ff) The song’s last verse thus

ends with a reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the

Scriptures, implying the final defeat of death.

59

All things considered “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is a song which

combines the political interest of U2 and their strong faith in God

and the Bible. The connection between Sunday, the most

important day of the week for Christians, Easter Sunday, the

most crucial Christian feast day, and “Bloody Sunday” is a

convincing approach to the topic. It is also remarkable how many

/b/-alliterations occur linking the title to the lyrics. Well-chosen

poetic devices, comprehensible images, and shifting perspectives

and focalization made it U2’s most successful song. It is the most

overtly political song U2 had written up to that point and an

appeal to lay down the weapons and to stop war, as no war can

be won without violence and death.

60

7.2 Bullet The Blue Sky

In the howlin' wind Comes a stingin' rain See it drivin' nails Into the souls on the tree of pain. From the firefly A red orange glow See the face of fear Runnin' scared in the valley below. Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue Bullet the blue. In the locust wind Comes a rattle and hum. Jacob wrestled the angel And the angel was overcome. You plant a demon seed You raise a flower of fire. We see them burnin' crosses See the flames, higher and higher. Woh, woh, bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue Bullet the blue. Suit and tie comes up to me His face red like a rose on a thorn bush Like all the colours of a royal flush And he's peelin' off those dollar bills Slappin' 'em down One hundred, two hundred. And I can see those fighter planes And I can see those fighter planes Across the tin huts as children sleep Through the alleys of a quiet city street. Up the staircase to the first floor We turn the key and slowly unlock the door As a man breathes into his saxophone And through the walls you hear the city groan.

61

Outside, is America Outside, is America. America. See across the field See the sky ripped open See the rain comin' through the gapin' wound Howlin' the women and children Who run into the arms Of America. (http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/27) The civil wars throughout Central America, the widespread

poverty, as a consequence of the American economic blockade,

and the US support of the war against communism induced U2 to

write a song about this severe situation. The result was “Bullet

The Blue Sky” with symbolical lyrics, which on one side describes

the horrors of war and on the other side criticises the USA

blisteringly.

The Nicaraguan Civil War in the 1980s was a typical proxy war of

the Cold War. It was conducted between the Frente Sandinista

de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) and the Contras, where the FSLN

pursued the socialist reformation of Nicaragua’s society and

economy. The Contras were rebel groups which received

financial and military support from the USA. Socialism was of

course not in the interest of the USA and fearing that it could

advance to its own borders, they did everything to suppress it.

The number of deaths is estimated to be 30.000 during the

Contra war from 1981 to 1989. Similar events happened in El

Salvador. In 1979 the Revolutionary Government Junta El

Salvador nationalised companies and privately owned land. The

government was, however, soon dissolved as it was not able to

militarily repress people who fought for more liberty and social

rights. The United States financed a second junta to stop the

spreading of communist and leftist ideas within the population

and to replace El Salvador’s political system. In 1979 the

62

Salvadoran Civil War ensued between the military of El

Salvador’s government, which was financially supported by the

USA, and five left-wing guerrilla groups, collectively named

Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. The war persisted

until 1992 and about 75.000 people were killed. As already

mentioned before, Bono Vox and his wife Ali travelled to

Nicaragua and El Salvador to see the misery with their own eyes.

The harrowing sights and experiences prompted Bono to process

them in a song. After coming back from Central America Bono

decided to write a song sounding like “Hell On Earth” and said,

I described what I had been through, what I had seen, some of the stories of people I had met, and I said to Edge: “Could you put that through your amplifier?” I even got pictures and stuck them on the wall. I brought in film of the horrors and put it on a video and said: “Now, do it!”

(http://www.atu2.com/news/u2-lists-top-10-political-u2-

songs.html) This resulted in the composition of “Bullet The Blue Sky”, and

Bono’s angry lyrics corroborate the indictment of the USA.

“Bullet The Blue Sky” is the fourth song of The Joshua Tree.

Keeping in mind that the album was dedicated to the USA, it is

astonishing that U2 did not back off from criticising the foreign

politics of the country. Although the USA is never directly

mentioned in the song, it was later admitted by U2 that “Bullet

The Blue Sky” was an accusation of Ronald Reagan, his

government and the ruthless fight against communism.

„Bullet The Blue Sky“ is made up of four sung verses, a chorus,

which is repeated twice, and three half-spoken sections at the

end of the song. The rhyme scheme of the first four verses is a

simple 4-line (ABCB) and the chorus is comprised of two identical

63

rhymes. The first half-spoken section has six lines and contains

one rhyming couplet. The second half-spoken section features

eleven lines. The first two and the last two lines are identical

rhymes and the other three rhymes constitute rhyming couplets.

The concluding six lines do not rhyme at all.

In the first two verses the voice of the song seems to speak

directly to the reader or listener. The identity of “it” in the third

line of the first verse is not yet known. “See” appears in every

sung verse. This could be an imperative statement to look at the

horrors of the war, which are well realised in the imagery of the

song. The fourth verse addresses someone more directly with

the personal pronoun “you”. It is still not discernible who the

addressee is. The “we” in the third line of the fourth verse most

probably includes the speaker and the reader, who is against war

and notably against prejudices and racism. “We see” would also

provide the personal pronoun of all “see[s]” in the previous

verses. The remaining communicative situation will be discussed

in the according sections of the lyrics.

The theme of the song is the terrible civil wars in Central

America which were waged with the help of the United States to

fight the rise of communism. According to @U2

(http://www.atu2.com/news/u2-lists-top-10-political-u2-

songs.html), The Edge produced a song that “sounds like fighter

planes, bombs dropping and exploding, and buildings being torn

apart. With its punch and counter punch drum beat, and

industrial sounding guitar, it doesn't take much to imagine a little

of the horror.” Numerous images throughout the song

symbolically show everyday life in the war zone. This starts in

the first verse with “the howlin’ wind” which is used to recall the

fighter planes in the air, “the stinging rain” describes the bullets,

and “drivin’ nails / Into the souls” is a Christian imagery that is

64

reminiscent of the crucified Jesus Christ. In the given context

this might mean that innocent victims of the war are being shot

to death. “From the firefly / A red orange glow” symbolises a

fighter plane which is dropping a bomb. The words “face of fear”

carry an /f/-alliteration and underline the fact that the war

victims are overcome by anxiety.

The chorus consists of the repetition of “Bullet the blue sky” in

the first and second lines and “Bullet the blue” in the third and

fourth lines. The two identical rhymes accentuate the heavy /b/-

alliteration. “Bullet” has a negative connotation and is primarily

associated with murder and death. The positive connotation of

the “blue sky” almost constitutes an antithesis to the word

“bullet”. The sky is often used as an equivalent to heaven or to

God’s residence. A blue sky, in contrast to a grey, a dark, or a

cloudy sky, also has a positive connotation.

The first two lines of the third verse, “In the locust wind / Comes

a rattle and hum.” symbolise the fighter planes in the air, which

make a terrible and daunting noise. Furthermore the “locust

wind” is to be found in the Book of Exodus (Ex. 10:1–20). The

plague of locusts is the eighth of the “Ten Plagues”, in which the

wind brought a locust swarm to Egypt, after the Pharaoh’s

refusal to obey God’s orders (cf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt#8._Plague_of_loc

usts_.28.D7.90.D6.B7.D7.A8.D6.B0.D7.91.D6.B6.D6.BC.D7.94.2

9:_Ex._10:1.E2.80.9320). The next two lines, “Jacob wrestled

the angel / And the angel was overcome.”, are also a reference

to a biblical story in Genesis. Jacob, who was later called Israel,

became, after wrestling with an angel who was not able to

overpower him, the progenitor of the tribes of Israel.

The fourth verse is a literal accusation of the addressee, “You

plant a demon seed / You raise a flower of fire”. This means that

65

it is no wonder that the offspring of the addressee might be evil,

as it is encouraged to act in this way. “We see them burnin’

crosses” is probably a direct reference to the Ku Klux Klan, as

they use the burning of crosses as a symbol of intimidation. “We

see the flames higher and higher” constitutes a double climax,

which firstly reinforces the image of burning and secondly

intensifies the visualisation of the gruesome symbol of the Ku

Klux Klan. The afore-mentioned facts indicate that the addressee

is most probably the USA.

The first half-spoken passage uses the possessive pronoun “his”

and the personal pronoun “he” for the first time. This means that

the addressed “you” in the previous verse might be a man. The

prepositional pronoun “to me” in the first line of the half-spoken

part is the first instance in which the speaker employs the first-

person singular.

The first half-spoken part, using the image of “suit and tie”,

describes a distinguished man who approaches the speaker. In

“his face red like a rose on a thorn bush” the speaker employs a

simile to describe his ruddy complexion. Furthermore the words

“red” and “rose” carry an /r/-alliteration to emphasise the colour

red. In the next line another simile is used in “like all the colours

of a royal flush”. A royal flush is a poker hand, which describes

the hand of Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten. Although there is a

widely held belief that a royal flush is only built of hearts, which

would be a clear recurrence of the colour red, it is possible to

have a royal flush in every suit. This means that hearts and

diamonds are indeed red but that spades and clubs are black.

This combines the two statements “a rose on a thorn bush” and

“all the colours of a royal flush” since both similes contain the

colour red, yet still they suggest something painful as a thorn

bush and something dark and evil as the colour black. “And he’s

66

peelin’ off those dollar bills” is the last trait in a negative

characterisation of a key player amidst the poor and helpless

victims of a war.

In the next half spoken passage the speaker does not employ

symbols anymore. Instead, the fighter planes are used as such in

the phrase “And I can see those fighter planes”. The phrase is

repeated twice, in order to stress it. The following lines

accentuate the gap between the planes in the air and the

vulnerable victims on the ground. It shows a difference in class,

prestige, and reveals the inferiority of the victims. In the second

sentence of this part the focus shifts from outside to the inside of

a house. The first-person plural “we” is employed and an

accommodation is entered. However, it is not clear at that stage

whether the “we” includes a second or more other persons, or if

the speaker wants to include the reader. In the room a man is

breathing into his saxophone, which shows that inside life is

going on as always. According to Stokes (2009:66) the phrase is

a reference to “the liberating sound of John Coltrane’s

saxophone”. The next line, “And through the walls you hear the

city groan.”, emphasises this disparity between inside and

outside: while inside stands for the everyday life of the

inhabitants of Central America, the outside stands for war and

the intrusion of the enemy. The next lines reveal who the enemy

is: “Outside, is America”. America describes the United States of

America, as Bono later stated. At the time it was, however, not

possible to use the exact name of the country to avoid legal

prosecution. The line is accentuated through repetition and the

identified enemy is even more stressed in the last line “America”.

Suddenly the lyrics receive more coherence. This dénouement

explains who is meant with “you”. Hence the man described in

the first half-spoken part is Ronald Reagan, the then President of

the United States of America.

67

In the third and last half-spoken part, the insistent use of “see”

in the preceding verses becomes clear. As the first three lines all

begin with “see”, it most probably serves to express that all evil

deeds of the USA are clearly visible to everybody even though

nobody dares to stop them. In the second line the sky is ripped

open as a result of the many bombs and bullets that have been

shot through the sky. In a way the sky has suffered from the

destructive warfare, hence the rain seems to be “comin’ through

the gapin’ wound”. Certainly the two lines bear references to the

Scriptures and the “gapin’ wound” could be again a reference to

the wounds of the crucified Jesus Christ. The phrases “Howlin’

the women and children / Who run into the arms / Of America.”

have two different meanings, as the word “arms” is a homonym.

On the one hand, they run into the arms of the USA which

pretend to support the good cause of the Civil Wars in Central

America. On the other hand they run into the arms of the war

which is waged between their own country and the USA, which

fight a battle against communism. As “howlin’” is already used

for the wind in the first verse line, it mournfully concludes the

song in the last section.

Many sensory perceptions occur in the lyrics of “Bullet The Blue

Sky”. The reader, and even more so the listener, is able to hear

the war in Central America. Seeing is a vital part throughout the

whole song and numerous images relate the feeling of

surrounding happenings and emotions to the described scenes.

The numerous ellipses in the lyrics show a certain brokenness,

which enhances the atmosphere of the song and the

disappointment in the USA. The text uses several isotopies in the

literal sense. Firstly, isotopies occur with the semantic reference

of weather and nature. In the third verse religious events are

described and next the interlacing of men made evil and nature

68

is mentioned. The first half-spoken section is a conglomeration of

a human being, nature, man-made objects, and lastly of money.

In the second half-spoken part science combines with the horrors

of war, civilisation, and human beings. In the end of this section

the lyrics are finally brought to a structural and emotional climax

with “America”. The USA subsumes all preceding semantic fields.

The concluding lines are a short recapitulation of the preceding

lines.

In “Bullet The Blue Sky”, U2 accomplished to present a song

which delineates the horrors of war and simultaneously criticises

the United States of America, as they were not supposed to

participate in the civil wars of Central America. By using religious

imagery to depict the US warfare and their own grievances U2

hints at the hypocrisy of this country. “Bullet The Blue Sky” was

played at almost every live performance in the last 25 years. It

was however not released as a single. By now, the topic of the

civil wars in Central America might be outdated but wars with

hypocritical US involvement can still be found in present times

and U2’s fans respond well to this topic.

69

7.3 Mothers Of The Disappeared Midnight, our sons and daughters Were cut down and taken from us. Hear their heartbeat We hear their heartbeat. In the wind we hear their laughter In the rain we see their tears. Hear their heartbeat, we hear their heartbeat. Night hangs like a prisoner Stretched over black and blue. Hear their heartbeats We hear their heartbeats. In the trees our sons stand naked Through the walls our daughter cry See their tears in the rainfall. (http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/89) Bono’s journey to Central America happened one month after the

Amnesty International tour, “A Conspiracy of Hope”, in which U2,

among other bands, promoted the importance of human rights

and Amnesty International itself. In El Salvador Bono

encountered members of COMADRES (CoMadres) whose sons,

daughters or relatives were missing. It is assumed that about

8.000 people disappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War.

Enforced disappearance occurs “when a person is arrested,

detained or abducted by the State or agents acting for the State,

who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their

whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law.”

(http://www.amnesty.org/en/enforced-disappearances) This

does not only imply doubtful chances for the abducted persons,

but also for their family and friends, as most of the time they

never learn what has happened to the disappeared persons.

70

According to Amnesty International enforced disappearance also

infringes several human rights, including

the right of security and dignity of person the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman

or degrading treatment or punishment the right to humane conditions of detention the right to a legal personality the right to a fair trial the right to a family life when the disappeared person is killed, the right to a life

(http://www.amnesty.org/en/enforced-disappearances)

Forced disappearances did not only happen in El Salvador, but

had already occurred in Argentina and Chile before. On that

account Bono Vox wrote “Mothers Of The Disappeared”. U2

empathised with the many mothers and relatives of the

disappeared and wanted to pay tribute to COMADRES and other

committees for relatives of disappeared men and women.

“Mothers Of The Disappeared” consists of four verses. The first

and the third verse have four lines, the second and the fourth

verse three lines each. The song does not have an ordinary

chorus, with a hook which should convey the theme of the song.

Instead, the humming of the dark back vowels [ou] by Bono

supports the mood of grieving. The guitar solo by The Edge

further emphasises the lyrics and adds to the melancholy. The

humming of “ooh” appears after the second and after the fourth

verse of the song. Except for the identical rhyme in the

structurally analogous place in the first and third verse and the

identical internal rhyme in the second verse, there is no visible

other rhyme scheme in “Mothers Of The Disappeared”.

The voice of the song mostly speaks in the first person plural and

represents, as the title anticipates, the mothers of the

disappeared men and women. An interesting circumstance is

71

that the passive voice is used, as soon as a reference to the

disappeared occurs. In this way, the song solely speaks about

the victims and never about the perpetrators.

The first verse immediately introduces the missing sons and

daughters. The word “midnight” provides an instant of time in

which the gruesome happenings started. The metaphorically

used moment traditionally describes the onset of the witching

hour, a time of horror and grief. The second line “Were cut down

and taken from us” compares the disappearance of the sons and

daughters with the lopping of trees. It is a metaphor for the

strong emotional attachment of mothers to their own children

and describes that this attachment was cut down like branches of

a tree. The following imperative phrase “Hear their heartbeat” is

addressed to other understanding mothers or generally to the

understanding public. The last line includes the personal pronoun

of the first person plural “we”. Furthermore “Hear their

heartbeat” does not only alliterate but also contains an internal

eye rhyme. The “heartbeat” symbolises that the disappeared

might still be alive. Furthermore it reveals the unconditional love

of the mothers to their children. The second and the third verse

conclude with the same two phrases.

In the second verse various symbols are employed to describe

the perpetual, spiritual presence of the disappeared children. The

effects of “wind” can be heard but still remain invisible. This also

applies to the missing children. In this way the children’s

laughter can still be heard in the blowing wind. “Rain” symbolises

melancholy and weeping. The second line of the second verse

depicts the soothing quality of the mothers of the disappeared,

who are reminded of their crying children when it rains. This

could, however, also mean that they can feel the tears of their

tortured children.

72

The following simile “Night hangs like a prisoner” is also a

personification. It states that the darkness of the night is

persisting for many hours in the most oppressive time for

mourners. The next line enhances the simile with “Stretched

over black and blue” where black has the negative connotation of

suggesting death and evil. Those two lines can also be viewed as

a description of the suffering of the abducted children. They

could have died from being hanged and/or tormented until they

were black and blue.

The last verse offers a possible location of the dead corpses and

also of the alive victims. “In the trees our sons stand naked”

expresses that the woods might be a place of the hidden

corpses. “Through the walls our daughters cry” is a last hope

that the daughters might still be alive behind a prison wall. The

last line differs from the last lines of the previous verses. It

reveals that the disappeared still linger among the minds of the

forsaken mothers, as the mothers are able to see the tears of

their children in the rainfall.

Bono again uses sense perceptions to convey the despair of the

mothers and the suffering of the disappeared. The auditory

sensation already appears in the beginning of the song with the

sound of rain hitting a roof. From the very beginning it looks as if

the rain continuously represents the tears of the disappeared

and their mourning mothers. In the last line of the lyrics the

reader and the listener is even encouraged to see the tears of

the missing sons and daughters in the rainfall. The hearing of the

heartbeat constitutes another auditory sensation. Another

interesting occurrence is the usage of two points in time at night.

The lyrics start out at midnight. As mentioned before it describes

the onset of the gruesome happenings. The simile in the third

verse “Night hangs like a prisoner” also expresses that night

73

does not seem to end any time soon and it depicts the infinite

waiting time everyone knows from sleepless nights. Night

furthermore symbolises death, despair, sadness, and loss of faith

which sets the oppressiveness of the song.

“Mothers Of The Disappeared” was not only performed in the

“Joshua Tree Tour” in 1987 but also in four further concerts in

South America in the “PopMart Tour” of 1998. In Argentina and

Chile numerous mothers of the disappeared came on stage with

photographs displaying their children. One of those concerts took

place in Santiago de Chile. As U2 recognized that the ticket price

was far too expensive for a lot of fans in South America, U2

decided to broadcast the concert live on television. When the

mothers came on stage each of them held up the picture and

proclaimed the name of the disappeared son or daughter. After

that Bono addressed General Pinochet and said, “General

Pinochet, God will be your judge, we will not. But at least tell

these women where are the bones of their children?” (McCormick

2006: 348) As everyone was able to see this on television it

certainly influenced many Chileans. Furthermore two months

later numerous mothers went with the pictures into the Chilean

Parliament and said that they wanted to know where the bones

of their children were buried. This protest soon brought the

opposition parties to power and the new Chilean Ambassador

informed U2 that the broadcasting of their concert called the

protest idea back into the mind of the people (cf. McCormick

2006: 348). U2 accomplished to influence the Chilean public in a

positive and peaceful way. Many years after its composition

“Mothers Of The Disappeared” eventually contributed, at least in

Chile, to the implementation of one of U2’s aims.

74

7.4 Miss Sarajevo

Is there a time for keeping your distance A time to turn your eyes away Is there a time for keeping your head down For getting on with the day Is there a time for kohl and lipstick A time for cutting hair Is there a time for high street shopping To find the right dress to wear Here she comes, heads turn around Here she comes, to take her crown Is there a time to run for cover A time for kiss and tell Is there a time for different colours Different names you find it hard to spell Is there a time for first communion A time for East 17 Is there a time to turn to Mecca Is there a time to be a beauty queen Here she comes, beauty plays the clown Here she comes, surreal in her crown Dici che il fiume trova la via al mare E come il fiume giungerai a me Oltre i confini e le terre assetate Dici che come fiume Come fiume l'amore giungera L'amore e non so piu pregare E nell'amore non so piu sperare E quell'amore non so piu aspettare Is there a time for tying ribbons A time for Christmas trees Is there a time for laying tables And the night is set to freeze (http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/86/)

75

English translation of the Italian lyrics: You say that as a river finds its way to the sea And as the river you'll find your way back to me Beyond the borders and the thirsty lands You say that as the river As the river, you say that love will find a way But love, I'm not a praying man And in love I can't believe anymore And for love I can't wait anymore (http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/songinfo.src?SID=245) As described above, in 1993 U2’s attention was drawn to the

precarious situation in war-torn Sarajevo. Bill Carter, a

filmmaker, photographer, and journalist from California,

approached U2 during their Zooropa tour in Verona, Italy. U2

was at the time not able to perform in the besieged city. For this

reason the band decided to have a satellite link out of Sarajevo,

Bosnia, and they broadcasted Sarajevans live during their Zoo

TV Tour to raise the awareness of their audience of the terrible

war.

Bill Carter worked in the humanitarian aid organization “The

Serious Roadtrip” and distributed food and medicine in different

conflict areas. He decided to stay in Sarajevo for six months and

lived with people who tried to continue their life despite the siege

of their city. Carter started to work for the Sarajevan television

and helped U2 to organise the satellite link out of Sarajevo. In

1995 Carter made the award-winning documentary film Miss

Sarajevo out of his recorded video material. The camera in this

documentary “follows the alternative scene of artists, young

people and the people determined to live as normal a life as they

could under the most difficult and dangerous conditions.”

(http://www.billcarter.cc/#!__films)

76

Bono was executive producer of the documentary and suggested

calling the film Miss Sarajevo after the beauty pageant, which is

featured in the documentary. The contest happened during the

siege of the city and the competing Sarajevan women were

carrying a banner with the words “DON’T LET THEM KILL US!”.

The song “Miss Sarajevo” was not only written for the

documentary but it was also a song in honour of the brave

residents of the city, who tried to go on with their everyday life

despite the ferocious war.

Besides six verses and a refrain, „Miss Sarajevo” moreover exists

as an Italian libretto, written for the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. This

libretto can be found in the end of the song between the second

and the third refrain.

“Miss Sarajevo” is another song about people living in a war

zone. Unlike “Bullet The Blue Sky”, it does not blame anybody

for the war. In contrast, the song especially approaches the

public of Europe to have a closer look at the atrocious war in

Bosnia and praises the exceptional dealing of Sarajevans with

the situation. The inhabitants were engulfed by violence but tried

to go on with their lives in spite of the bombings and killings in

their city. Throughout the song words that apply to what was

happening in Sarajevo, such as war, death, and murder are

avoided. This makes the language soft and empathetic.

The voice in the lyrics directly addresses the readers and

listeners. The recurring rhetorical question throughout the song

is “Is there a time [for / to…]?”. The insistent posing of the same

leading question arouses attention and makes the reader or

listener feel involved. The deeper implication of the rhetorical

question is that in fact there is no appropriate time for doing

something. The overall message should be that the addressed

77

activities can be done, as long as people feel comfortable to

stage a beauty contest, find time for praying or for other

celebrations in our often cruel world.

In the first verse the voice directly speaks to the listener or

reader. It wants to open their eyes and calls attention to the

gruesome happenings in Sarajevo. It says that there actually is

no time for disregarding or ignoring a war. The voice almost tries

to make the reader or listener feel guilty about ignoring the war

in Bosnia. The second verse already speaks about the

preparation of the women for the beauty contest. It poses the

question if there ever is a time for such pleasures. On that

account it should not matter whether there is war or peace. The

refrain gives the reader an affirmative answer and speaks about

the beauty queen who is taking her crown. The crown is not only

an acknowledgment of her beauty but also of her courage and

her life-affirming attitude.

Two phrases with religious content can be found in the fourth

verse. The first one is a reference to the Roman Catholic

tradition of the first communion, where children receive for the

first time the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The second

reference is to the Islamic tradition of facing Ka’bah in Mecca

during prayers. Both references are again attached to the

question “Is there a time […]? The obvious answer is again that

there is a time for it as long as time is provided for it. The

reference to both religions is also a sign for the erstwhile

peaceful coexistence of Christians and Moslems in Sarajevo. In

the second chorus it is said that the beauty contest is a

distraction from the war outside the building and amuses the

people by providing diversion. The beauty queen almost seems

to be surreal in those circumstances. Furthermore shells can

probably be heard outside, while the beauty pageant takes place.

78

The Italian libretto completely differs from the English lyrics. It is

a story within a story and seems to describe the feelings of a

lover who was carried away by the war from his girlfriend. He

obviously abandoned all hope that he will ever return from the

battlefield. The horrors of war have destroyed his ability to pray,

his belief in love, and his willingness to wait.

The last verse poses once more the question if there is time for

amenities like Christmas with a tree and a big celebration. The

song finishes with the phrase “And the night is set to freeze”,

which seems to state that the bleakness of war has not yet come

to an end.

In an interview Bill Carter said about his documentary,

I believe it works because a spirit is captured in that film that is timeless. Again, the war is just a backdrop, it could be any war, the point is the vitality of the human spirit to survive, [to] laugh, to love, and to move on, that is something we will be addressing always.

(http://www.u2interference.com/forums/f262/interview-bill-carter-author-and-filmmaker-88958.html)

The vigour to survive and to carry on with their life is also

captured in U2’s “Miss Sarajevo”. It has accomplished to draw

attention to the siege of the city. Furthermore it is a life-

affirming song, and it pays attention to the war-torn inhabitants

of Sarajevo and Bosnia, in a way they have not seen before.

79

8 Conclusion

The present thesis has shown various aspects of the Irish rock

band U2. Apart from providing an outline of important political,

religious, and cultural backgrounds to the band’s development

from the beginnings up to the year 1995, special emphasis is

placed on the detailed analysis of four representative songs,

”Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, “Bullet The Blue Sky”, “Mothers Of

The Disappeared”, and “Miss Sarajevo”.

The skilfully constructed lyrics, which use rhetorical and other

poetic devises to enhance and underline the effect of the various

arguments quite often, have a powerful effect on the listener. Of

course, since songs are intermedial texts, the words interact with

the music to create the overall effect and to make it more

effective in terms of the usually political message underlying and

motivating U2’s work.

I have shown that, for instance “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, U2’s

most successful song, uses many comprehensible images, as

well as shifting perspectives and focalization to captivate the

listener. Furthermore, figures of repetition are frequently used in

the analysed songs to underline their various concerns and to

give special emphasis to them.

In performance another dimension of the songs is added. In

Ireland, Bono tore apart the Irish flag, in order to be left with the

white part, as a sign for peace. In Chile mothers of disappeared

sons and daughters came on stage, holding up photographs of

their children. In this way U2 is directly speaking to the audience

and expressing that they care about the problems in this world.

U2 perfectly know how to influence and involve the audience in

their performances.

80

Still further aspects of the work of U2 might be worth examining

in future academic research, as for instance their engagement in

the fight against extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa. However,

this thesis has efficiently shown their engagement in politics over

one and a half decades and has furthermore given an insight into

the use of religious references in the lyrics of this time.

81

9 Bibliography

Printed Literature

Assayas, Michka (2005). Bono on Bono: Conversations with

Michka Assayas. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Flanagan, Bill (1996). U2: At The End Of The World. New York:

Delta Book.

Hagtvet, B. (1994) “Right wing extremism in Europe”. Journal of

Peace Research 31.3: 241.

Hal, Leonard, ed. (1999). The Best Of U2: 1980-1990. London:

Wise Publications.

Killeen, Richard (2009). A Short History of Ireland. Dublin: Gill &

Macmillan.

Luerssen, John D. (2010). U2 FAQ. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books.

McCormick, Neil, ed. (2009). U2 by U2: Bono, The Edge, Adam

Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. New York: It Books.

Nünning, Ansgar and Nünning, Vera (2007). An Introduction To

The Study Of English and American Literature. Stuttgart: Klett.

Stokes, Niall (2009). U2: The Stories Behind Every U2 Song.

London: Carlton Books.

U2 (1999). The Best Of 1980-1990: Guitar Tab Edition. London:

Wise Publications.

82

Werlich, Egon (1979). Poetry Analysis: Great English Poems

Interpreted. Dortmund: Verlag Lambert Lensing.

Online

“Achtung Baby“. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achtung_Baby.

[2012, September 24].

“Bobby Sands”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands#cite_ref-0

[2012, July 31].

“Bullet the Blue Sky”. [Online]

http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/27

[2013, April 5].

“Christianity in Ireland”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Ireland [2012, July

16].

„Conspiracy Of Hope Tour“. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_of_Hope_Tour

[2012, August 20].

“Do They Know It’s Christmas”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_They_Know_It's_Christmas%3F

#Sales_and_certifications [2012, August 8].

“Enforced Disappearances” (2013). [Online]

http://www.amnesty.org/en/enforced-disappearances

[2013, January 29].

83

Gardner, Elysa (1992). “Achtung Baby-Album Review”. [Online]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/achtung-

baby-19920109 [2012, September 10].

“Gloria”. [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_(U2_song)

[2012, July 16].

Greer, Miranda (2008). “U2 Lists: Top 10 Political U2 Songs”.

[Online]

http://www.atu2.com/news/u2-lists-top-10-political-u2-

songs.html [2013, May 5].

“History of Northern Ireland”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Northern_Ireland

[2012, July 16].

“Live Aid”. [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_aid

[2012, August 9].

“Miss Sarajevo”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Sarajevo [2012, October 10].

“Miss Sarajevo Lyrics”. [Online]

http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/86/

[2013, March 11].

“Miss Sarajevo Lyrics (Translation)”. [Online]

http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/songinfo.src?SID=245

[2013, March 11].

“Miss Sarajevo – A Film By Bill Carter” (2011). [Online]

http://www.billcarter.cc/#!__films [2013, March 11].

84

“Mothers Of The Disappeared”. [Online]

http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/89

[2013, May 5].

“October (album)”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_(album)#cite_note-ukcert-

16

[2012, July 17].

Pancella, Angela and Neufeld, Tim. “Bible References in U2

Lyrics”. [Online] http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/biblerefs.html

[2013, January 11].

„Plague of Locusts”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt#8._Plague_of_loc

usts_.28.D7.90.D6.B7.D7.A8.D6.B0.D7.91.D6.B6.D6.BC.D7.94.2

9:_Ex._10:1.E2.80.9320

[2013, April 10].

“Sandinista Revolution”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_Revolution

[2012, August 17].

Smith, Devlin (2004). “Interview With Bill Carter”. [Online]

http://www.u2interference.com/forums/f262/interview-bill-

carter-author-and-filmmaker-88958.html [2013, February 10].

“Sunday Bloody Sunday”. [Online]

http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/127

[2012, December 4].

85

“The Joshua Tree and Rattle And Hum”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2#The_Joshua_Tree_and_Rattle_a

nd_Hum_.281986.E2.80.9389.29 [2012, September 5].

“The Joshua Tree Release”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joshua_Tree#Release

[2012, August 20].

“The Unforgettable Fire Tour”. [Online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unforgettable_Fire_Tour#cite_

note-P55-2 [2012, August 3].

Thrills, Adrian (1983).“War & Peace”. [Online]

http://u2_interviews.tripod.com/id19.html [2012, August 3].

“Time Magazine”. [Online]

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19870427,00.html

[2012, September 5].

“Zooropa”. [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooropa

[2012, October 8].

White, Lucy (1983). “Larry Interview’”. [Online]

http://u2_interviews.tripod.com/id18.html [2013, January 1].