"Into the Arms": U2, America, and the 1980s

Abstract

"Into the Arms":U2, America, and the 1980s M. L. Brillman In the early 1990s, U2 attained their apotheosis. The ZooTV/Zooropa tours, in America and Europe respectively, following the massive success of 1991's Achtung Baby, placed the band in a global space in which audiences told their secrets, broadcast in real time, in confessional booths, and the performers made prank calls to world leaders, everyone in on the fun. In the course of the tour's concerts, Bono's alter egos parodied pop culture and hero worship; he underwent a sea change in artistic persona that was tripartite in nature. It consisted of The Fly, a character as well as the first single from Achtung Baby; ZooTV's Mirrorball Man; and Zooropa's Mr. McPhisto, both of whom represented decadent has-beens, neither earnest nor organic, essentially devil reincarnates, always with a sardonic quip—but the band's political confidence was not always so ubiquitous. In the decade before the two-year postmodern touring circus that constituted ZooTV/Zooropa and cemented U2's status as one of the world's biggest bands, the quartet took three odysseys of identity: the question of their Irishness, their position as a rock group of political conscience, and a search for roots that they had never had. There is a crucial distinction to make about U2: it as always been less of an Irish rock band than it is a rock band from Ireland. Half of the collective are not Irish; The Edge, born David Evans in England, is Welsh, and Adam Clayton, also born in England, is English. Early in U2's career, it was not Irish tradition that gripped Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen Jr., but, rather, charismatic Christianity (Clayton reserved serious doubts); their Christian background was built around a strong fellowship at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, where U2 had formed in 1978, after Mullen Jr. had famously stuck a note on the bulletin board inviting musicians to meet in his family's kitchen. Many of the band's initial themes would be devoted to religion. Such songs as "Gloria," "Rejoice," and "40" contain direct Christian references and evoke a faith predicated on the glory of salvation. The lyrics, however, though introspective, were far from morose, presenting instead a new more hopeful vision of what had been a culturally repressed Ireland. If U2 were going to be labeled [End Page 58] "post-punk," furthermore, one way in which they could squash the by-then hackneyed punk code was by promoting an optimistic outlook. U2 differed from other Irish musicians in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They neither sneered nor jeered, as did Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats. They did not thrust forward their pelvises or dabble in Celtic mythology like Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy. And they did not get drunk to the point of blackout and lament the exile of the Irish emigrant like Shane MacGowan of the Pogues. If U2 followed any Irish musicians' trajectory, it would fall somewhere between Rory Gallagher, who relished playing at home, and Van Morrison, who set out to conquer Britain and America. Around the island, in Dublin and Cork in particular, the early U2 began to garner a nonchalant (or even indifferent) public acknowledgment that they were certain to become the next big rock act to hail from Ireland. Hot Press, a homegrown Irish fanzine, underscored that U2 was the 1980s band tapped by the media to export Irish rock internationally.1 It had been a local contest in Limerick, sponsored by Harp Lager, which secured U2 their first record deal. By the time the band had signed with Island Records in March 1980, listener polls had already established that U2 augured a refreshing promise as their music departed from the nihilism of punk by offering images of grace and redemption. The early catalogue possesses, in fact, very few Irish connotations. "An Cat Dubh" or "The Black Cat" on their debut album Boy (1980) chronicles a feline toying with a dead bird in Dublin—but the city portrayed on the video could be any concrete jungle, and the Irish title is of little relevance to the song...