Episode 55: U2’s “Achtung Baby” (1991)

Summary

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Accelerated Culture Podcast - Episode 55 Summary: U2’s “Achtung Baby” (1991)

Release Date: December 7, 2024
Host: Lori & Scott Free
Podcast: AcceleratedCulturePodcast.com

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Introduction

In Episode 55 of the Accelerated Culture Podcast, hosts Lori and Scott Free delve deep into U2's seminal 1991 album, "Achtung Baby." Recognized as a turning point in the band's career, this episode explores the album's creation, its impact on U2's legacy, and its enduring influence on alternative music.

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Background and Context

[05:11] Scott Free introduces "Achtung Baby" as a pivotal album marking U2's reinvention. Previously celebrated for albums like The Joshua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire, U2 faced creative stagnation and internal tensions following the commercial disappointment of Rattle and Hum.

[07:09] Scott provides a brief history of U2's formation in 1976 and their collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, which shaped their distinctive sound. This partnership continued into the production of "Achtung Baby," aiming to redefine the band's musical direction amid a changing global and musical landscape.

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Recording and Production

[21:54] Lori and Scott discuss the band's decision to record at Hansa Studios in Berlin, inspired by the city's rich musical history and the political climate of German reunification. The album's production was characterized by an improvisational approach, with Bono and the Edge experimenting with new sounds influenced by industrial and dance music.

[26:20] Lori highlights the shift from U2's signature "cathedral sound" to a more fragmented and textured production style. This evolution was a conscious effort to address criticisms of megalomania and arrogance, as the band sought to inject irony and self-awareness into their music.

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Track-by-Track Analysis

1. Zoo Station

[30:38] The opening track "Zoo Station" sets a gritty, industrial tone, starkly contrasting U2's earlier work. With aggressive guitar slides and distorted drums, it signals the band's readiness for transformation. Scott notes, "This is a warning shot across the bow... this is not the U2 that you may remember from Rattle and Hum or Joshua Tree."

[34:12] The song references the Berlin Zoo train station, symbolizing a collision of cultures and the band's journey into uncharted musical territory.

2. Even Better Than the Real Thing

[36:10] As one of the album's most commercially successful singles, "Even Better Than the Real Thing" originated from an Edge guitar riff during the Rattle and Hum sessions. Scott explains the lyrical shift to incorporate irony: "Brian Eno was against the song at that point... Even Better Than the Real Thing taps into the intentional spotlight on U2's megalomania."

[39:40] Lori interprets the lyrics as a commentary on society's quest for instant gratification, highlighting the superficiality of modern desires.

3. One

[43:33] "One" emerges as a unifying force within the band, symbolizing reconciliation amidst internal conflicts. Scott reflects, "This is not a song that is about, we are all one and we are all the same. This is saying, we are different, but we have to live together."

[46:46] The song's universal themes have made it one of U2's most covered tracks, resonating across diverse audiences and artists.

4. Until the End of the World

[50:19] Delving into biblical narratives, "Until the End of the World" retells the story of Judas from a personal perspective. Scott connects the song to themes of betrayal and reconciliation, emphasizing its emotional depth.

[54:37] Released as a single in 1991, the track achieved significant chart success and has been a staple in U2's live performances since 2018.

5. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

[56:45] Despite mixed feelings from the band during production, "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" has become a fan favorite. Lori shares her personal connection to the song, underscoring its emotional resonance.

[62:39] The track's enduring popularity is evident through covers by artists like Garbage and its influence on contemporary music.

6. So Cruel

[62:48] "So Cruel" stands out as a haunting love song, blending minimalist piano with intense guitar work. Scott praises the song's lyrical prowess, stating, "This is some of Bono's lyrics at his finest."

[66:00] The song's intricate composition and emotional weight make it a standout track on the album.

7. The Fly

[68:29] "The Fly" introduces Bono's alter ego, a persona built to critique and parody rock star culture. Scott compares it to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, highlighting its significance in U2's artistic evolution.

[74:16] The intentional scarcity tactic used in releasing "The Fly" as a limited edition single exemplifies U2's innovative approach to marketing and media manipulation.

8. Mysterious Ways

[76:18] As one of the album's signature tracks, "Mysterious Ways" exemplifies the perfect pop song with its captivating riff and layered vocals. Lori praises its sensuality and connection between sexuality and spirituality.

[80:17] The song's success is reflected in its chart performance and numerous covers, solidifying its place in alternative music history.

9. Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World

[81:08] This track blends personal narratives with broader themes of connection and disconnection. Scott describes it as a "sweet song," emphasizing its relatable lyrics and melodic composition.

[84:05] The song incorporates feminist slogans and subtle nods to cultural movements, enriching its lyrical depth.

10. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

[85:03] "Ultraviolet" tackles themes of infidelity and secrecy, with Scott highlighting its quintessential "Achtung Baby" sound. The song's metaphorical use of ultraviolet light underscores themes of hidden truths and transparency.

[90:29] The track's intricate layering and emotional complexity make it a cornerstone of the album's narrative.

11. Acrobat

[88:04] Dedicated to author Delmore Schwartz, "Acrobat" explores themes of hypocrisy and personal transformation. Scott notes, "It's a response to his critics and an acknowledgement of the seeming contradictions of being a rock and roll star, a Christian, and a family man."

[89:06] The song's distinctive drum patterns and dynamic guitar work exemplify U2's innovative soundscapes.

12. Love Is Blindness

[91:08] Closing the album, "Love Is Blindness" delves into the dissolution of relationships with poignant lyrics and a haunting melody. Scott describes it as a "heartbreaker," reflecting the band's personal struggles during its creation.

[95:23] The track's emotional intensity and lyrical depth provide a fitting conclusion to the album's exploration of love, betrayal, and reinvention.

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Legacy and Impact

[96:15] Lori and Scott reflect on the album's monumental success and its role in redefining U2's identity. The subsequent Zoo TV Tour is lauded as a groundbreaking multimedia extravaganza, influencing modern concert productions.

[100:04] Despite evolving musical landscapes, "Achtung Baby" remains a testament to U2's ability to adapt and innovate, securing its place in the annals of alternative music history.

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Notable Quotes

• [05:14] Scott Free: "This was a turning point in U2's career. A reinvention for this band and one of the biggest albums ever."

• [26:32] Lori: "The whole sequence... is a journey, it's a musical journey from track one to track twelve."

• [45:04] Scott Free: "Bono recalls that the melody, the structure, the whole thing was done in 15 minutes and that the lyrics just fell out of the sky. A gift."

• [60:32] Scott Free: "But conspicuously missing a denial of you stealing because he needed the cash."

• [70:55] Scott Free: "He's calling home saying, I like it."

• [85:13] Scott Free: "This is the quintessential Achtung Baby era U2 song."

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Conclusion

Episode 55 of the Accelerated Culture Podcast offers an exhaustive exploration of U2's "Achtung Baby," unraveling the complexities of its creation, themes, and lasting influence. Through insightful discussions and poignant reflections, Lori and Scott illuminate why this album remains a cornerstone in the evolution of alternative music.

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Notable Mentions:

• "From the Sky Down" Documentary: A valuable resource referenced throughout the episode, providing visual insights into U2's creative process during the "Achtung Baby" era.
• Books:
  • U2: The Definitive Biography by John Jobling
  • U2: Song by Song by Aaron J. Sams

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For more in-depth discussions and musical journeys, visit AcceleratedCulturePodcast.com.

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Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Lori]

Welcome to the Accelerated Culture Podcast. A sonic journey through the vibrant and revolutionary sounds of the 1980s and 1990s. And now 2024 Webby Honoree for best indie podcast. I'm Lori, along with my co host, Scott Free. And in this podcast we explore how new waves stormed the airwaves in the early 80s and and gave way for the rise of alternative music in the 90s. Find us on the [e-mail] hello, and welcome to another episode of the Accelerated Culture Podcast.

[Scott Free]

I'm Laurie and I am Scott Free.

[Lori]

What's going on, Scott? How you been?

[Scott Free]

Oh, man, it's been a whirlwind.

[Lori]

Yeah, it's been really busy for me too. And you know, my apologies to our listeners that we had to take a two week break, but I ended up going to an academic conference and I just did not have time to put together the episode. So I apologize. Thanks for sticking with us.

[Scott Free]

I had to take a road trip to visit family in Detroit and it was a good break worth taking. But we are back. Oh, we're back, baby.

[Lori]

So before we get started, Scott, I do want to give a couple shout outs. Shouts out. Shouts out. Shout out.

[Scott Free]

Shouts out. Shouts out.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

That's how the kids say it.

[Lori]

You think? Really?

[Scott Free]

They do not.

[Lori]

I didn't think so. All right, so the first one goes to Zach in Trinity, Texas, who hit us up on Facebook. He writes, I'm glad I found your podcast. I've only listened to a few so far, but you are my people.

[Scott Free]

Nice, Zach. Thanks for listening, man.

[Lori]

We've communicated a little bit back and forth via messenger. I sent him an Accelerated Culture podcast in.

[Scott Free]

Very nice.

[Lori]

And yeah, so thanks for reaching out and letting us know that you're listening.

[Scott Free]

You have good feedback, get good swag.

[Lori]

Yeah, there you go.

[Scott Free]

This is not a binding contract, but it could happen.

[Lori]

So then the next one. Now I'm a little embarrassed to say, this was actually from June.

[Scott Free]

Oh, dang.

[Lori]

It was sent to our old email address that we haven't used for some time, and I just happened to be checking it and I saw this great email from Robert Hulson.

[Scott Free]

His name is Robert Halson.

[Lori]

Get out of my head. That's exactly what I was thinking when I read it. But he writes, lori, I just found your podcast and I have to say, it is right up my alley. I was born in 1968, and the early 80s was when I came into my own with music. When MTV came out, it blew our minds. I remember our cable being screwed up and for the first month, MTV played without a picture and we watched it. Then the second month it played without sound and we watched it.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, still worthwhile experience, I gotta think.

[Lori]

Yeah. So he said at the time. This was in June. I am only on episode two, Duran Duran, Rio. But I wanted to reach out to let you know how much I am enjoying it. So many great bands to cover and so many great albums still left to highlight.

[Scott Free]

Robert, stay tuned. The show only gets better the longer you listen, especially once you get to episode 36. Things really level up when your old pal Scott Free is introduced to the lineup.

[Lori]

No lies detected there, so he signs off. Keep it up. I'll be listening. Yeah, so I did reply to him. I felt really bad that this went unnoticed for like six months. So, Robert, I'm sorry, but thank you for listening. Thanks for reaching out and I hope you're really enjoying it.

[Scott Free]

I mean, you know what they say. Better late. That is what they say, right?

[Lori]

Better late than never.

[Scott Free]

Oh, oh. Than never. That explains a lot in my life.

[Lori]

Oh, I see. I see. Okay, then I have one more shout out.

[Scott Free]

Great.

[Lori]

My buddy Jeff, who has been patiently waiting for this episode. Every morning for the past three weeks, Jeff has been poking his head in my office and he just yells, ach. Tongue, baby. He has been waiting and waiting for this episode. So, Jeff, thank you for your patience.

[Scott Free]

Terribly sorry about the delay. Couldn't be avoided, but worth the wait as it gave us a little extra time to research. And yeah, we got a good episode in store for you.

[Lori]

That is a nice segue to the topic of today's episode, which is U2's 1991 album, Aktung Beatty.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, this was a turning point in U2's career. A reinvention for this band and one of the biggest albums ever. Is that accurate?

[Lori]

I. I think it probably is, yeah.

[Scott Free]

It is. To many people's mind, considered U2's best album.

[Lori]

I.

[Scott Free]

And that's really saying something. Coming from a band that also made the Joshua Tree and the Unforgettable Fire.

[Lori]

I'm inclined to agree. This is definitely U2's best album. I confess I really haven't listened to it much over the past 20 years or so. But since you chose this for this episode, I've been listening to it nonstop on repeat. And it brings back a lot of memories and it also brings back a lot of emotions. I have some associations with this album that I'm sure I'll get into when we get into the songs.

[Scott Free]

There is some heartbreak in this album for an album that positioned itself as a lighter, ironic reinvention and thumbing of the band's collective nose at their previous self. Serious megalomaniacal image. It still has some moments of real genuine emotion and legit heartbreak. And we will definitely be talking about these as we go.

[Lori]

Yes, we previously. Trey and I previously discussed U2's Joshua Tree in episode 25 and we did give a little bit of a history of the band. But Scott, do you kind of want to just like give us the Cliff Notes version?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, quick encapsulation 1976 first of all, I had no idea that they went that far back. But in 1976, Larry Mullen Jr. Drummer, pins a musician's wanted ad to the notice board at Dublin's Temple Mount School. And it is answered by three fellows. One, Paul David Hewson, who would come to be known as Bono. Adam Clayton, the bassist, and Dave Evans, who would come to be known as the Edge.

[Lori]

You know Bono is actually short for something, right?

[Scott Free]

I do not know that.

[Lori]

Yeah, it's short for Bono Vox.

[Scott Free]

Oh, interesting.

[Lori]

Bono Vox. Good voice, right?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, he was always that arrogant, wasn't he? All right, so. And this is from U2.com which provides some interesting background information. So on Saturday 25th September 1976, Robert recalls Larry. This odd group of people convened in my kitchen in Artan and that's where it started. So you two has been together since 1976 as teenagers. In those early days, Bono was utterly untrained. Larry Mullen Jr. Was a self taught drummer. Adam Clayton was a decent bass player and the Edge was experimenting with guitar, but was hardly the force of guitar that we know today. A great quote from again you2.com. I suppose a watershed moment would have been seeing the Jam on Top of the Pops, remembers Edge and realizing that actually not knowing how to play was. Was not a problem. Music was more about energy and trying to say something and not necessarily about great musicianship. There's inspiration in there. The kids these days, they're not getting guitars for graduation presents like they used to, but the should not knowing how to play, not a problem. You figure it out as you go and you know, put in 10,000 hours and you're a master. So the band starts working eventually with Brian Eno. And I'm going to go ahead and admit that this is a name that I have only ever seen in print and never heard said aloud. So I may be doing it wrong. Daniel La Noir, Daniel Lanoie. From here on we will just refer to him as Daniel they start working with that pair in late 1983 for the unforgettable Fire. And that collaboration will last for 25 years and sort of come to define the U2 sound that takes over the world. An amazing quote that came out of from the Sky Down. All the British rock and roll people, even the punk rock people, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, they're all art school. John Lennon, art school. Eric Clapton art school. Jimmy Page, art school, they're all art school. Brian Eno was our art school. These were guys who had gone to trade schools and into careers in technology. Bono had failed to do either. And once they dedicated themselves to becoming a band and were learning how to be musicians on the fly, and then hooked up with this amazing world class producer who had produced incredibly important work over the previous 20 years and went on to become the U2 that we knew today with the Joshua Tree, their 1987 album that goes on to sell 20 million copies. And they become the biggest band on earth, gets the Grammy for album of the Year and best rock Performance. With or without you and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Both go to number one on the US singles charts and across the globe, big hits everywhere. The Joshua Tree was very much this Irish band making an American album. And they even characterized it as the two sides of America, the light side and the dark side. They've been touring relentlessly in America ever since the Unforgettable Fire. And they decide to explore American music in Americana and the music that has inspired rock and roll to which they owe this debt of gratitude and team up with B.B. king, make a song about Aretha Franklin, explore the blues, tour blues clubs in America and make a motion picture about that exploration and process. The film and album Rattle and Hum. And while they, the band, were doing this as an exploration, as their discovery of this music and trying to share them, falling in love with this music and going deep with it. The reception from the music critics and the fans was mixed at best. They were considered even more arrogant for trying to introduce America to its own music that it already knew perfectly well. U2 was a target and people took their shots.

[Lori]

So as you mentioned, Rattle and Hum was a critical and commercial disappointment. It got to the point where the band nearly broke up because of artistic differences. The film was a box office flop.

[Scott Free]

$8.7 million draw, I want to say, which was, even by 1989 standards, not huge.

[Lori]

8.4 million is what I have in three weeks. And they cut the theatrical run short. Because it was doing so poorly. There's something else worth note around this time too, and that is the murder trial of Robert John Bardo.

[Scott Free]

Tell me more.

[Lori]

Do you remember Rebecca Schaeffer, the actress that was murdered in 1989? She was in, what was it? My sister Sam. Oh, yeah, yeah. So the guy that did it, Robert John Bardo, part of his defense was that the U2 song exit off the Joshua Tree inspired him to commit his crimes.

[Scott Free]

Fascinating.

[Lori]

Yeah. And so that kind of hung like an albatross around, you know, around their necks. So it was really a really tense time. In 89 and 90, they wrapped up the decade with the Love Town tour. And the tour dates were in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Bono actually picked up a virus in Australia that affected his voice, so they had to cancel some of the tour dates. Larry Mullen Jr. Was complaining that he felt like a human jukebox being forced to play the same hits night after night. And he was finding that it was no longer fun for him to be in the band. Then, of course, the Edge was going through a rough patch. His seven year marriage to a Slyn O'Sullivan was coming to an end. And shortly after the recording of Octung Baby, he moved out of their home briefly staying with Adam before he found his own place in Dublin. So there's a lot going on here. Not just know the response to Rattle and Hum.

[Scott Free]

It's a yeah, it's a yes. And all of that added up to a feeling of creative stagnation, a feeling that they had gotten too big and lost the creative spark that was the fire behind their songwriting process.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah I was a sailor I was lost at sea I was under the waves before love rescued me I was a fighter I could turn on the threat Now I stand accused of the things I've said.

[Scott Free]

There is a movie, a documentary. It is a 2011 documentary by Davis Guggenheim called From the Sky Down. Whether you are a U2 fan or not, this documentary is absolutely fascinating and worth watching as you get to see this band 20 years after the recording of Ak Tung Baby Return to the scene of where it happened, Berlin, among other places, and recreate the experience of creating that music. And watching vintage footage from the actual recording sessions, watching contemporary footage of the band going through these paces and finding themselves in that music again is a fascinating experience you two got. Especially after the Unforgettable Fire and the Joshua Tree got sort of decried as this overblown, over produced, over confident, arrogant, even megalomaniacal rock band. The biggest band on Earth, the biggest rock stars there were, and seeing them record the music back in that 1990, 1991 session that gave rise to Achtung Baby, you see that this band that suddenly became the most polished, the biggest rock band on earth, was literally making it up as they went. It was an improvisational songwriting process that created some of the most iconic songs of the 90s. And especially seeing Bono, who, if the band is seen as overblown and over arrogant, he is the poster child for overblown rockstar arrogance. Seeing him doing this recording where he is literally scatting along to his bandmate's music and watching those noodlings turn into this masterpiece of an album is really inspiring. If you're a musician, if you're at all a fan of the creative process, it's really something to behold. All this is to say, the documentary, absolutely worth seeing. It's where a lot of what Laurie and I are going to be talking about, historical background wise, at least, is going to be coming from. And it's just a good watch.

[Lori]

Scott, you cited that from the sky down documentary, and that is one of the sources that I'm using. But the other two that I'm relying on, there's two books, U2 the Definitive Biography by John Jobling, and U2 Song by Song by Aaron J. Sams.

[Scott Free]

So they started experimenting. Bono and Edge started writing songs together, or at least writing song ideas together, instead of doing this improvisational whole band working together thing. That had been how their songwriting process had worked. When you look at their songwriting credits from, really their entire career, it was largely the entire band in every song. And so instead, if Bono and Edge are starting to work together more closely, and then the rhythm section of Larry and Adam, yeah, are feeling a bit estranged or at least overlooked. And so the idea is presented, I believe, by Brian Eno, that as the band is going to start working on their next album, that domesticity is the enemy, that being too comfortable, that that is the enemy, and that they need to get out of their comfort zone and go someplace else to do their recording. This is all coming in 1990, when the world is changing radically, Europe is changing radically, and they decide that they are going to go to Hansa Studios in Berlin, Hansa Studios, which was a recording studio that produced, among other things, David Bowie's Berlin trilogy, that's Low Heroes and the Lodger. Iggy Pop, I want to say, produced an album there. It's theoretically a creative hotbed. It's, if nothing else, historically musically charged. So this is where they Decide that they're going to go. They're going to do their improvisational songwriting process with Brian Eno and Daniel overseeing it. And this is a curious bit. They have these two superstar producers who have been with them for multiple albums at this point. Brian Eno's role in this is to disappear for a month at a time. Daniel does the bulk of the day to day production and Brian Eno will come in after longer separations with fresh ears and just tell them, I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that. Okay, that works. Maybe go with it. And that is generally how the process worked. So they brought snippets of ideas that they had developed while on the Rattle and Hum tour, on Lovetown tour, and some from even earlier, but mostly going in just with a riff or a kernel of an idea and relying on this improvisational method that they have developed to produce an entire album with mixed results.

[Lori]

The songwriting that you're alluding to that Bono and Edge were doing on their own, they had about a dozen or so demos that they had recorded over the summer in Dublin. So the idea was that they were going to have them polished, ready to go, so when they got to Hansa Studio, they'd be ready to record. What they showed up with was the same material, plus a few half baked ideas, I guess, for new sound.

[Scott Free]

A riff here, a melody there.

[Lori]

Right. And Larry and Adam were not very pleased with this.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, they've been left out of it.

[Lori]

And the fact that they did promise that these would be ready to go and they weren't. There was also another tension that was taking place at the time because band manager Paul McGinnis and the four band members split all their income evenly five ways, flat 20%. But now Bono and Edge were starting to think that this was not fair. Since they were writing most of the songs, they felt that they should be getting a greater percentage. So this was a really, really tense situation. The band arrived on the last flight to Berlin on October 3, 1990, which was the day that East Germany and West Germany were formally reunited.

[Scott Free]

This is a time where east and West Berlin, east and West Germany are reuniting and they're seeing all these people in the street and they're like, oh, it's a celebration. This is the energy we need to make this happen. So this was not a celebration. This was an anti unification protest and the mood was anything but celebratory. And this is sort of their introduction to their time in Berlin and an important tone setting moment yeah.

[Lori]

So at this time, Edge was listening to a lot of German music, including Tangerine Dream, KMFDM and the band whose.

[Scott Free]

Name I cannot pronounce, Einsteuers Ending Neubaten. Probably wrong, too, because we not pick the German.

[Lori]

No, no, no. That was pretty good. Bono, meanwhile, had been listening to a lot of Madchester, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays. Bono and Edge agreed that if they wanted to remain relevant in 1991, they needed to update their style.

[Scott Free]

Adam Clayton, on the other hand, had gone old school and was listening to classic rock, Cream and Blind Faith and, you know, 1960s British rock.

[Lori]

And then something else that was going on too, with Larry Mullen Jr. He had to learn how to play along with a drum machine, because for the first time they were writing songs and performing with the drum machine. And I think there was this fear that he was being replaced by the drum machine.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, I mean, as you were saying, Bono and Edge were interested in Madchester sound and the dance rock that was happening. And while they didn't necessarily think they were going to make a Madchester album, they were wondering how was going to fit into this new soundscape where dance rock is coming to the fore.

[Lori]

Well, I think one of the things that is significant about this is I think that this is a lot more personal in terms of the songwriting. Whereas a lot of the previous songs that they'd written were really kind of, you know, way up here, you know, references to Martin Luther King and lots of references to Jesus. And even though there's some activism on this album that we'll talk about, and there is at least one biblical reference, I feel like that they were kind of getting away from that. I think they were coming back down to earth in some places. It's even just very overtly sexual, some of the lyrics, which is not something that you two did a whole heck of a lot of.

[Scott Free]

They certainly weren't known for it before then. Yeah, like, part of the reason why the band, and Bono in particular, had sort of been become targets for these accusations of arrogance and self importance. Like at the Grammys for the Joshua Tree, Bono talks about Amnesty International and he had been an activist for human rights. And it's laudable, but also it's not relatable. He had sort of become this icon to try to change the world. And that ain't personal, it's important. But.

[Lori]

So there was a joke going around around this time, a musician dies and goes to heaven. He meets Elvis, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, and then suddenly Bono flies by. Hey, I didn't know Bono was dead. The musician says Elvis replies, he's not. That's God. He likes to pretend that he's Bono.

[Scott Free]

A great quote that he talked about how they were going to change their approach for this album was we'd spent the 80s throwing stones at other people. Now we started throwing stones at ourselves. And another great one came from Brian Eno, where they really needed to ramp up the irony that they had none. They had almost no self awareness up to this point. So now they turned the lens on themselves. And if they were going to be accused of megalomania. All right, let's see what that looks like. If you think we're too big of rock stars, we're going to go intentionally bigger. But in so doing, break down what it means to be a rock star and parody it.

[Lori]

And we will see that in some of the tracks that we're going to discuss.

[Scott Free]

Absolutely.

[Lori]

And then I have a quote from the Edge, please, let's get a big fucking chainsaw and cut down the Joshua Tree.

[Scott Free]

Oh, brilliant. Yeah. One last thing about the sound in general. My brother, who I have mentioned in the past, Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave and he and I, a recent trip in the car, were talking about U2. U2 was playing on the radio and he was talking about that U2 sound. And I think he's particularly talking about the Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree era, where the sound is huge, with this cavernous reverb. In particular the edges guitar work with this fluttering lightness, but also layered reverb and delay and how it just sounds like this massive room. And how he had read that you two coming from Ireland and a. And a Christian upbringing, were making music intended to fill cathedrals with its sound and that it's almost church like in its massive sound. And that is not what they were going to be doing for Octung Baby. They were going to be taking, as you said, cues from industrial music. Front 242 Einster sending from electronic dance, early stuff like Kraftwerk, who they had grown up hearing the Manchester sound. And they were going to make not the American music that they had made for Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum, specifically European music. And not Irish and not Christian music, but music for the new Europe that was forming right before our eyes.

[Lori]

And, you know, I think that that's also reflected in the COVID artwork. Because up until this point, most of their covers, if I'm not mistaken, were black and white. I mean, when I think of Rattle and Hum, when I think of Joshua Tree, when I think of Boy, even You know, it's always these very stark black and white pictures. And now for the COVID for Octolo Baby. It's a collage of color photos by Anton Corbin, who we've talked about numerous times on this podcast. And actually, funny story, one of the pictures on the back cover of the album is Adam Clayton, the bassist, naked. And they jokingly almost called the album Adam because of that photo. Some of the other names that they were kicking around, Zoo Station 69 man. And Bono also joked we were going to call the album Fear of Women at one point.

[Scott Free]

I think it would have been a significantly less popular album. They probably dodged a bullet there.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, Well, I. I think he was just joking on that. But a lot of the themes of the song are about a relationship gone awry. You know, we were talking earlier about how the Edge's marriage was melting down. I'm also under the impression that Bono was having some problems in his relationship. He had said to an interviewer that fidelity or monogamy, I don't remember the word he used, was really not innate to human nature. So kind of implying that maybe he might have messed around a little bit on his wife. So, I mean, there was some tension there. Ultimately, though, they settled on the name Aktung Bedi, which is taken from the Mel Brooks musical the Producers.

[Scott Free]

Really?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

I've learned something today.

[Lori]

Oh, well, good.

[Scott Free]

With that, then, we are ready to do the track by track for Octane Baby. And we might as well start with the first track. I think that's a good idea. Track one, Zoo Station.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm ready to take it to the street Ready for the shuffle Ready for the deal Ready to let go of the steering wheel I'm revving ready for.

[Scott Free]

The crush.

[Lori]

Man, what a fierce opening at the beginning. I mean, it's. It's channeling every industrial vibe that was out there in 1991.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. This is a warning shot across the bow. I mean, this is not the U2 that you may remember from Rattling Hum or Joshua Tree. I was talking earlier about that big cathedral sound with massive reverb and flilting guitars. This is a gnarly guitar slide and that kick drum, which is all distortion and noise. Noisy snare drum like Barry Mullen Jr. Is beating on a hubcap. Like it is gnarly.

[Lori]

Then it settles into more of a. Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Free]

A layer of more recognizable U2 comes in a bit more traditional, jangly edge guitar noodling, but just a bit. And then it turns into effects and more like texture than the recognizable Edge sound. Adam Clayton's bass is rock steady, though dependable. That guy, like, he is a really good, really steady bass player.

[Lori]

And that's important.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Here's the thing. For a band whose rhythm section was worried that they were being left out of the songwriting process and that the band might be coming to an end because of these creative differences, the rhythm section is critically important in this album. It is, as you said, dance oriented. In some ways Manchester inspired, in some ways industrial inspired. But it's a different kind of rhythm they're oftentimes doing. But they are right there in it, man.

[Lori]

So I have a quotation from the Edge. He said, it's basically a very simplistic statement pronouncing that you two was ready to come back out and strut our stuff. And then I found a review in the Los Angeles Times. A gentleman named Robert Hilburn wrote, when Bono begins singing, special effects make him sound as if he is speaking to us from a deep, troubled sleep and preparing for the nightmares of the real world.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Like, Bono's vocals are processed and distorted, almost talk sung, like, through a particularly noisy megaphone. And for the first time in, like, so long, he's almost playful or fun, almost frivolous. This is not the Bono who's here to talk to you about Amnesty International. He's here to make danceable pop rock songs, and that's okay, man.

[Lori]

Do you know anything about Zoo Station? Do you know what it was named after?

[Scott Free]

Yes. The Berlin Zoo train station in the Berlin underground system.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah. Yes, exactly. So it was a transportation hub in West Berlin. And before the Berlin Wall came down in 89, if you wanted to travel to East Berlin by train, you had to go through Zoo Station at night. It was frequented by prostitutes and pickpockets. So it was really kind of this collision of cultures. John Joblin writes, you two used the station as a metaphor, staging their own voyage into the unknown through the eyes of an East German passenger with heavy, distorted riffs and a rhythm that suggested confusion. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

And it's, like, so unlike the U2 that we've come to know. And it is a great way to open this album, just let you know what you're in for, but just scratching the surface.

[Lori]

Yes.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

All right.

[Scott Free]

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. This is the band telling you, like, as you said, as the Edge said, this is the band telling you that they are ready for what's next. The lyrics are literally, I'm ready. I'm ready for the laughing gas. I'm ready, I'm ready For what's next. I'm ready to duck, I'm ready to dive? I'm ready to say I'm glad to be alive. I'm ready, I'm ready for the push.

[Lori]

This was an excellent choice to start the album out right. Yeah. This. The whole sequence. See, this, to me, is where sometimes it can make or break an album. You can have otherwise good songs that are not in a very good sequence, but this whole thing is. Is a journey, you know, it's a musical journey from track one to track 12. And here the journey starting out, and I don't love it.

[Scott Free]

Right there with you.

[Lori]

All right, so the next track, Scott, this one was a single, so some people might recognize this one. This is called Even Better Than the Real Thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Give me one more chance and you'll be satisfied. Give me two more chances, you won't be down tonight. When my heart is where it's always been. My head is somewhere in between. Give me one more chance. Let me be a lover tonight. You're the real thing. Even better than the real thing.

[Lori]

All right, so this one. Steve Lillywhite actually shares a production credit with Brian Eno and with Daniel Lenoir. Right on. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

So this one originally started as a guitar riff that Edge had created during the same recording session as Desire was recorded during the Rattle and hum sessions in 1988. I want to say that sounds about right. Yeah. As was often the case, the music was composed, the riffs, the rhythms, all that. And Bono would sort of scat. Sing the lyrics. It's a great moment in the movie, the documentary, where they talk about how they always have to have tape running when Bono is near a mic, because one, he will say something, he will sing something, and you have to have it on tape because it may never happen again. He is always inventing and coming up with these new melodic lines, coming up with these new inflections and these nonsense words or word salad sometimes. And when they record that, they go back and listen to it, and they then can pluck out, okay, that's a good phrase. This word suggests that word. And then the lyrics build that way. The song originally had as its chorus, there ain't nothing like the Real Thing. But Brian Eno was against the song at that point. He said the song didn't have enough irony. And when they switched it to Even Better Than the Real Thing, this started to tap into this again. Intentional spotlight on the megalomania arrogance of U2. And they were starting to take a look at this super stardom and the Power of rock and the power of pop music. And ironically turning it on its head.

[Lori]

So Bono explained that the song quote is much more reflective of the times we were living in, when people were no longer looking for truth. We are all looking for instant gratification. It's not substantial as a lyric, but it suggests a certain sexual tension and desire to have some fun playing in the shallows. And with our instant gratification society, even better than the real thing, like drugs or pornography or. Or things that maybe fill that void temporarily, that make you feel good temporarily, but it's not real. And then there's this crash afterwards. And I thought that was a really, really interesting perspective.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, Love it. Another thing I love about this song, I distinctly remember it from the time when it came out. So visually arresting was the video for this song. Really spectacular. And visual effects, even today hold up as pretty fucking cool. But from 1991, kind of a mind blower.

[Lori]

It was directed by Kevin Godley.

[Scott Free]

All right.

[Lori]

From Godly and Cream.

[Scott Free]

Oh yeah.

[Lori]

They won two MTV Video Music Awards in 1992. One for best special Effects and one for Best Group Video.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And those special effects, there's two that really leap out. The video opens with a arm coming into frame and the hand, the fist outstretching into an open hand. And the camera's zooming in on that open hand. And each of those fingers becomes an outstretched arm with a hand that outstretches into fingers, each of which becomes an arm. And just this repeating visual going deeper and deeper. Fractal arms happening and just so cool. Especially again, 1990, one mind is just absolutely blown. And then the other is the band doing your relatively straightforward performance, except the camera is spinning. So it. They created a special 360 degree camera rolling rig. The camera is spinning 360 degrees. So the band appears to be spinning over and around and under. And it is this incredible vertigo inducing effect. And just really freaking cool at the time. Just looking at it going, how. How did they do this? And they invented new equipment just for it. Because this band was big enough that that's the type of budgets that they were throwing at this. Also within the video, a preview of the tour that will follow in the middle of the video. Picture within a picture, screens start popping up and aggressive channel changing to all different kinds of programming. As if you are watching a control room in a TV station and these different feeds coming in and narrator voice talking over the video. This will become hugely important in the Zoo TV tour that will follow this album.

[Lori]

So this was the fourth single from the album released on June 8, 1992. The single included remixes by Paul Oakenfold and Apollo 440. The album and single versions use the same vocal track, but the instrumentation is different, and the single places greater emphasis on the vocals near the end of the song.

[Scott Free]

Well, right on.

[Lori]

All right, well, well.

[Scott Free]

Brings us to track three. 1.

[Unknown Speaker]

Did I disappoint you or leave a bad taste taste in your mouth? You act like you never had love you want me to go without? Well, it's too late tonight to drag the past out into the light where walk but we're not the same we get to carry each other Carry each other.

[Scott Free]

Okay. Nobody doesn't know this song. This song was absolutely gargantuan when it came out. Not just as a radio friendly song with not one, not two, but three music videos. It was an event when a U2 1 video would come out on MTV. This song started as just a snippet of another song. That song was entitled Sick Puppy, and that would later go on to evolve and become what we today know as Mysterious Ways. But this was just one of two bridges that the Edge was playing with. It got isolated, spun out, and in a important turning point in this recording session, the entire band really came together and this song happened.

[Lori]

So Daniel Lenoir actually suggested merging those two bridges together. My source says it was while they were working on an early version of track 10, Ultraviolet, but it may be both. I don't know. So when this happened, according to the Edge, he told Q magazine, it was a crucial moment in the development of what became Achtung Baby. Ironically, it went in a totally different direction from everything we'd be working on. But everyone recognized it was a special piece.

[Scott Free]

This is just from the Wikipedia, the Edge said suddenly something very powerful was happening in the room. It was like we'd caught a glimpse of what the song could be. Bono recalls that the melody, the structure, the whole thing was done in 15 minutes and that the lyrics just fell out of the sky. A gift.

[Lori]

Incidentally, Brian Eno did not like this track at first. He thought it was boring. There's a couple different ways of interpreting this song. So Bono has said that it's a conversation between a father and a son. According to the Edge, it was a conversation between a gay young man and his father who's having a really hard time dealing with his sexuality. It's a song about AIDS. And when they released this as a single on February 24, 1992, they donated the profits to various AIDS research charities. Now, before I had read that, when I was looking at the lyrics for this, I had a completely different idea of where these lyrics were coming from. And I think that that's the beauty of most of the songs on this album. Is it getting better or do you feel the same? Will it make it easier on you? Now you got someone to blame? To me, that's pointing to the strife within the band, the way they were fighting with each other, the way that they were going off in different musical directions. We're one but we're not the same. Well, we hurt each other, then we do it again. So they're one band, but they're four separate individuals. And that's kind of what I was reading between the lines.

[Scott Free]

This is not a song that is about, we are all one and we are all the same. This is saying, we are different, but we have to live together, not because we want to, but because there is no other choice. And so we must get along.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And the other thing about the theme is they were doing this with the experience in Germany, and it could be interpreted as being about German reunification.

[Lori]

Yeah. See, there's so many different levels to this song, isn't there?

[Scott Free]

And, you know, when I heard it back in the day, I just thought it was a more traditional love song about a love with a very uneven power dynamic. There's a set of lines from this one that have always stuck with me, and particularly because this is where Bono lets loose in the song. Love is a temple, Love is a higher law. Love is a temple, Love is the higher law. You ask me to enter and then you make me crawl And I can't be holding on to what you got when all you got is hurt like he's so good, man.

[Lori]

So this song did reach number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It reached number one on the US album Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts. It's also one of U2's most covered songs. So I found covers by Cowboy Junkies, Joe Cocker, Johnny Cash, Eddie Vedder, Melissa Etheridge, Keith Urban. Mary J. Blige performed a version with U2 in 2005 as a part of a Hurricane Katrina benefit. And that version was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with vocals in 2007.

[Scott Free]

Now, it did not win, just nice to be nominated.

[Lori]

Okay, sure. But here's the thing that blew my mind. Noel Gallagher of Oasis called one the greatest song ever written.

[Scott Free]

I mean, it is a pretty great song.

[Lori]

Yeah. But Noel Gallagher is not exactly known for being complimentary to other Artists. So if he's calling it that, it must be something pretty epic, something special. Yeah, yeah. To me, this is really kind of the most Joshua Tree like track on the album.

[Scott Free]

Well, it is a departure from the rest of this album, but it has a folky sort of feel to it that doesn't even really fit in on Joshua Tree, where they were doing this big rock anthem stuff. Yeah. Stadium rock at that time.

[Lori]

The Unforgettable Fire, then earlier.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah. But just one last thing.

[Lori]

Yes.

[Scott Free]

It was the recording of this song that brought the band back together, that the formerly somewhat estranged feeling, Larry Mullen Jr. And Adam Clayton were both now back in on the process and that this improvisational blank page approach that they were using was working again. And this was a turning point for the band.

[Lori]

Yeah, absolutely. Again, lyrically, one, we're one, but we're not the same, Right.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I guess that brings us to the next track, eh?

[Lori]

Yeah. Yep. The next track is called until the End of the World. Let's listen.

[Unknown Speaker]

I will see you in quite a while I was down the hole Just passing time less time we met was a low lit room we was close together as a riding groom we eating food, we drank wine Everybody having a good time except you. You were talking about the end of the world.

[Lori]

Oh, I love this song so much, Scott. I love this song.

[Scott Free]

Now this one, to me, feels like it would not be out of place on the Unforgettable Fire.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

Maybe the rhythm is a little different, but the guitar style, the vocal style.

[Lori]

I could see it.

[Scott Free]

I guess Vano is not going big in this one. It's a little more personal and up close on the mic. But, you know, musically, this one feels like it could be from an earlier era.

[Lori]

Yeah. Not the least of which is because it's returning to a biblical theme. You know, this is the story of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion being presented from the point of view of Judas.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I saw first from Jesus, verse from Judas and then the suicide of Judas.

[Lori]

Bono actually said in nme, I played Jesus for so long, I decided I needed a break. Yeah, the first verse, I think it is from the perspective of Judas. We ate the food, we drank the wine. Everybody having a good time except you. You were talking about the end of the world. That kind of sounds like, you know, Jesus talking about kingdom and all this kind of stuff.

[Scott Free]

Jesus always bringing the party down.

[Lori]

I took the money, I spiked your drink so took the money as the 30 pieces of silver Right in the garden I was playing the tart I kissed your lips and broke your heart. Well, that was the kiss that Judas gave Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane to betray him to the Pharisees or to Pilate. And then, you know, I love this line from the third verse. In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they'd learn to swim. Ooh, I love that line. Yeah, but relatable at the very end, the very last line, I reached out for the one, I tried to destroy you. You said you'd wait till the end of the world. I really went down the rabbit hole with this. When I was researching this. This track. There's a biblical school scholar named Bart Ehrman. He wrote an entire book about the Gospel of Judas that was discovered a few decades ago. And he wrote, maybe Judas had a crisis of faith triggered by Jesus's enigmatic references to his own coming demise. And out of bitterness, he turned on his master. Maybe his hopes were dashed. Maybe he rebelled. Maybe he turned on the one he had loved out of despair or anger or raw frustration.

[Scott Free]

Damn.

[Lori]

And that comes through in these lyrics so much, doesn't it?

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Well, now, that's all heavy stuff. That just makes what I'm going to say feel pretty throwaway, but okay. Well, you know, pretty lightweight. But the song got its title from the Vim Vendors film Until the End of the World. Vendors had asked you to. To contribute a song to the soundtrack to that film. Bono and Edge developed a guitar riff that Bono had written in 1990, but that had never really gone anywhere. Once the rhythm section of Larry and Adam were brought in, they realized they really had something. And Bono said to Vendors, you can have it, but we want it, too. And so it appeared on both the soundtrack for that film until the End of the World. Pretty great soundtrack, by the way. If you have not heard it, seek it out. There's some really good stuff on there. And then also on October, baby.

[Lori]

So that demo that you mentioned, it was called Fat Boy. When Vendors approached them, the Edge was the one that pulled out the old demo from 1990, Fatboy, and revisited it. And then they. They built it up.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, right on.

[Lori]

So this was released as a single on November 18, 1991. It went to number four on the US Alternative Airplay chart and number five on the US Billboard album Rock Tracks chart.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Good stuff.

[Lori]

Yeah. So this one really resonates with me on a very personal level, even before I realized it was about Judas.

[Scott Free]

In the way that you also betrayed Jesus.

[Lori]

Shut up. Topic for another podcast. No, no, no, but like I kissed your lips and broke your heart, you. You were acting like it was the end of the world around the time that this came out, this album came out. So I know I have a tendency to say, oh, I was madly in love with this person, or, oh, I was so in love with that person. But truly, I believe that there are three great loves that people will have in their lifetime. And this was my first true great love that I associate this song with and a couple other songs on the album, too. We'll actually see a little bit more of this with the next song, too. So this is one of those that just really kind of gets me right here and resonates on a personal level.

[Scott Free]

Same. Very relatable. This album in general is very much wrapped up in my memory of my girlfriend at the time. And a lot of the emotions, good and bad, that are threaded throughout this album really tied into that relationship.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Next up, track five. Who's gonna ride your wild horses.

[Unknown Speaker]

Just out of reaches. Who's going to drown your blue sea?

[Scott Free]

Take copious notes on every song for the track by track portion of this podcast. And the entirety of my notes here are. Man, I freaking love this song. The band and the producers do not share my sentiment.

[Lori]

Oh, okay. So Steve Lillywhite, who has a production credit on this song along with Daniel and Brian, he said the band originally hated the song. The version that made it onto the album, the band doesn't care for.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, So I do have a page open. This is just from the Wikipedia. But Lily White recalls that they hated that song. I spent a month on it, and I still don't think it was as realized as it could have been. The Americans had heard it and said, that's your radio song there. Because they were having trouble with some of the more industrial elements of the album. It's almost like a covers band doing a U2 moment. Maybe because we tried too hard.

[Lori]

Interesting.

[Scott Free]

And they did, as you said, go through a lot of versions of this song. And the album version most closely resembles the original demo.

[Lori]

A gentleman named Paul Barrett remixed it with the band, and that became the single. The single is known as the Temple Bar Edit. Temple Bar being the neighborhood in Dublin where they did a lot of the recording after they got back from Hansa Studios. The band preferred the Temple Bar edit. I'll be honest. So do I. Well, first of all, it doesn't have that kind of weird droning sound in the beginning that the album version does. The Temple Bar Edit is brighter sounding. There's Like a. I think it's a piano. It's some kind of stringed instrument, but I want to say it's a piano that's like punctuating every measure of the song. It's just. To me, it's a much, much better version.

[Scott Free]

I'll have to give it a listen.

[Lori]

This. This is the song on the album that just reminds me so much of this first love. He literally said something like this to me. You're dangerous. Because you're honest. You're dangerous. You don't know what you want.

[Scott Free]

Well, you left my heart empty as a vacant lot for any spirit to haunt. That one fools me.

[Lori]

He did that to me.

[Scott Free]

Well, turnabout.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you tell me things I know you're not supposed to. You leave me just out of reach and I'll go. The favorite version.

[Scott Free]

Oh, the best. The best comes later. And I think we're going with the same one.

[Lori]

Do you want to take it?

[Scott Free]

If. If you don't mind. Yeah. Well, you stole it because I needed the cash and you killed it because I wanted revenge. Well, you lied to me because I asked you to. Baby, can we still be friends?

[Lori]

Yes.

[Scott Free]

Kills me.

[Lori]

For the record, I did not kill anybody. For the record. Okay.

[Scott Free]

But conspicuously missing a denial of you stealing because he needed the cash.

[Lori]

Moving on. So, yeah, I mean, this song. Oh, my gosh, I just. All the feels for me same. Who's going to ride your wild horses? Who's going to drown in your blue sea? Who's going to ride your wild horses? Who's going to fall at the foot of the. You know, I'm reading this as. And I guess I probably was when I was 18 and 91, is kind of a wild, free spirited woman. Can't be tamed. And there's definitely this kind of contentious relationship there. Oh my God, I love this one so much.

[Scott Free]

And closing it out. Who's going to ride your wild horses? Who's going to drown in your blue sea? Who's going to taste your saltwater kisses? Who's going to take the place of me?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

I mean, it's a testament to the power of this album that it can evoke those kinds of feelings still. What are we looking at? 30. Oh my God, 33 years later. Gotta be kidding me.

[Lori]

Oh, yeah. So this song reached number 35 in the USA and I was very surprised, pleasantly so to. To see that Garbage did a cover of this on that 20 year anniversary tribute album that was released. Because Garbage, as you know, Scott, is one of my all time favorite bands, and I worship at the feet of Shirley Manson. But Garbage have also cited Ach Tongue Baby as an influence. As a matter of fact, when they were recording their fifth album, not yout Kind of People, in 2012, they were listening to Ach Tongue Baby on repeat.

[Scott Free]

I feel like that's all we can say, or all we should say before we start naming names and specific crimes of the heart.

[Lori]

Yes. Well, then that brings us very naturally to the next track. So cruel.

[Unknown Speaker]

The men who love you, you hate the most they pass right through you like a ghost they look for you but your spirit is in the air maybe you're nowhere in love, you say in love there are no rules oh, love, Sweetheart, you're so.

[Scott Free]

Oh, God, this song kills me so hard.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Oh, man. Let's just start with the music. This is the closer to side one, if you're the vinyl type, and I am recently picked up a reissue of this. So good. But it starts so minimal. Just that piano and that heartbeat of a drum machine. And then this big Larry Mullen drum fill comes in. And then the drum track. It's spare but pounding. And then Bono's voice, relatively straight and earnest. It is a stripped down, very sad and haunting and a little bit dark love song. This is not a conventional love. This is about obsession and a wild imbalance of power.

[Lori]

Love hurts.

[Scott Free]

Love hurts.

[Lori]

There's also a guitar effect on here. I know if it's a pedal or what. It's just amazing, though. It reminds me of the guitars. Speaking of garbage in Vow by Garbage, I don't know, it might even be a reverse reverb. I know we throw that term around.

[Scott Free]

A lot, I think. I don't think it is. But if. If it's the one that I think you're talking about, the song builds it layer on layer on layer. And then the verse that starts with. You don't know if it's fear or desire. That rhythm guitar comes in. It's like, distant, as if it's through a staticky radio. It's a more industrial sound than we usually get from the Edge, but it's this. So cool.

[Lori]

Brian Eno brought in Nell Catchpole, who has collaborated with him on other tracks before. But Nell is playing violin and viola, so I found some interesting quotations about this one. So Adam Clayton says this is his favorite song on the album, and Bono said people thought it was too traditional. One more attempt at writing a song for Roy Orbison, But Flood found a way of making it feel like it was on the Same album Flood being the sound engineer again, so it could have been really out of place, but it's not.

[Scott Free]

Oh no.

[Lori]

And all these lyrics. Oh my gosh.

[Scott Free]

Oh, Nick's kill me.

[Lori]

Uh huh.

[Scott Free]

Go for it.

[Lori]

Desperation is a tender trap it gets you every time you put your lips to her lips to stop the lie her skin is pale like God's only dove so screams like an angel for your love Then she makes you watch her from above and you need her.

[Scott Free]

Like a drug I will see your all of that. And she wears my love like a see through dress her lips say one thing her movements something else oh, love like a screaming flower Love dying every.

[Lori]

Hour and you don't know if it's fear or desire Danger, the drug that takes you higher oh my God. Yeah. This, I think, is some of Bono's lyrics at his finest.

[Scott Free]

I will agree with that.

[Lori]

Anything else you want to say about so Cruel?

[Scott Free]

I think we've bared enough of our souls on this one.

[Lori]

Yes. But man, those three songs, that little stretch until the end of the world, who's gonna ride your wild horses and so Cruel, oh my gosh. I mean, that is just for me, like 1991 through 1993 completely collapsed into three songs.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

So.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, with ya.

[Lori]

Yeah. Hey, Scott, what's next?

[Scott Free]

Well, what's next is a big tonal shift. The first track on side two, track seven on the album, the Fly.

[Unknown Speaker]

Won'T believe anyone else if they. A secret or something you tell another person. So I'm telling you.

[Scott Free]

Right? So at this point, from our 2024 vantage point, when you say Bono, you see that guy with the gigantic black glasses and the leather jacket, or the fur jacket and the leather pants and whatever else, that was an invention for this album and the tour that came out of it. And. And that Persona, it's not Bono. That is a Persona he puts on and that is the Fly. And this song is essentially his theme song, his coming out and unleashing this very intentional, self conscious parody of a rock star on the world.

[Lori]

So. So when you're talking about Personas, I mean, what comes to mind is like David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke. Absolutely right. And these pers. So for our listeners, if you're kind of wondering what. What is. What is he talking about? That's the best analogy that I can make there. Yeah, he did explain Bono. He said, the way I saw the Fly was like an obscene phone call from hell. But the guy likes it there. He's calling home saying, I Like it?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, that's perfect. And in from the sky down, the 2011 documentary, he talks about this character and the crafting of it. And it's. It's a longer quote, but I think it's worth the. Worth the ride here. If we're being accused of megalomania, let's do some judo. Let's use the force of what's attacking us. So then we got a voice, this character, the fly, to go with the glasses, if you're going to go there. And I just decided we're going to go there. But I couldn't do it without some armor on. If I was going to expose my heart, I need the right kind of armor to protect the rest of me. So let's give him a rock star. Let's have fun with this. I took Lou Reed's glasses and Jim Morrison's pants and Elvis's jacket and a little bit of his haircut, and it was like, identikit, rock star. You know, assemble yourself. And actually, it was incredibly freeing.

[Lori]

I like it.

[Scott Free]

Right?

[Lori]

I like it.

[Scott Free]

And, like, you can see all of those pieces in the. The fly that he created for this song and for the album and for the tour that would follow it. And we've come to just associate that with him now. But it was a very intentional choice to shine a light on this rock star that he had become, or at least that he was being perceived as, and to blow it up and make a cartoon of it. And it was incredibly effective.

[Lori]

Now, let me ask you. And this is something that, you know, again, I revisited this album for the first time in at least 20 years. Does this song sound like an INXS song to you?

[Scott Free]

I mean, you see in excess a lot of places, but, yeah, I could give it to you.

[Lori]

Yeah. I mean, he really seems like he's channeling Michael Hutchence, and actually, Michael and Bono were very good friends around this time. In 1991, Michael moved to a chateau on the south of France, and Bono was his neighbor. So they were actually very good friends. Apparently, Bono and Michael Hutchins and Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran were, like, really tight and getting into all kinds of mischief together.

[Scott Free]

Nice.

[Lori]

So I kind of wonder if maybe there might not be a little bit of in excess influence on this song.

[Scott Free]

I believe it.

[Lori]

Whether there is or not, I think it's a fantastic song.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I mean, it is a different vocal delivery that he did. It was this sort of no longer blasting like he often did and was known for. It was a little more guttural. Growled into the mic again, held with the mic held close. And then later that falsetto that comes in in the chorus. But yeah, it's a. It is a reinvention. And you know, he is talking in the lyrics about this reinvention and about being a rock star. It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest it's no secret ambition bites the nails of success Every artist is a cannibal Every poet is a thief all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief oh, wow. Like he's just laying it out there about what he's doing.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found something interesting. I did not know about this series. So it was released on October 21, 1991. So it predates the album. It was the lead single from the album. But what I didn't realize, they released it as an unlimited one week only single. People could order as many copies they wanted that first week, but then after that first week, they would not manufacture any more copies.

[Scott Free]

Interesting approach.

[Lori]

According to Mark Marot Marrot. M A R O T from Island Records. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, Marc. That's what really pushed that track to number one because people didn't want to play it on radio because it didn't have the big chorus. Yeah. So it was that scarcity, right? This limited edition, one week only that he attributes to it moving the number one. So it was.

[Scott Free]

That's one of the things about this album again, that very intentional. And is it ironic when you're doing it for real, like exploitation of the commercial system that they're doing it in. Like to create an intentional scarcity, to create a demand for the product. To admit that it is a product and that the lyrics of that product admit that it's a product. Like it's just one step below Sig Sig Sputnik levels of absolutely crass butt ironic, tongue in cheek parody of the whole process.

[Lori]

I was just going to mention Sig Sig Sputnik. I'm glad you did.

[Scott Free]

I freaking love Sig Sig Sputnik.

[Lori]

All right, so back to it. As I mentioned, number one on the Billboard U.S. alternative Airplay chart, 61 on the U.S. billboard Hot 144 on the U.S. dance Singles sales chart, and number two on the mainstream rock chart.

[Scott Free]

Not their biggest in general or even off this album. But yeah, it is a fine announcement of their intent and the new direction the band was going. It's no secret that the stars are falling from the sky the universe exploded because of One man's lie Look, I gotta go. Yeah, I'm running out of change There's a lot of things. If I could I'd rearrange. And then he did.

[Lori]

That's all I got for this one.

[Scott Free]

That's play.

[Lori]

All right, so. So next up is another fan favorite, Mysterious Ways. Let's listen.

[Unknown Speaker]

Underground. Eating from a can you've been running away what you don't understand look, look she be there it's all right it's all right all right she moves in mysterious ways it's all right it's all right all right she moved.

[Scott Free]

Okay, so this is one of those songs we don't need to talk about in great detail, although we probably will because it's one of those songs that you have heard so many times you can probably, if you're anything like me, press play in your head and hear it note for note, start to finish. So as I mentioned earlier in the context of one, this song was originally called Sick Puppy. And originally it was really just a baseline in search of a song. They said this one falls into the perfect pop song category for me. Like there's a reason you've heard it so many times that you can just play it in your head. It's because it's just right.

[Lori]

Yeah, it's definitely heavily, at least. The original demo of this song was very heavily Manchester influenced. Now here's the quotation from that documentary that I couldn't identify. The idea was to do something that had its roots partly in club culture. Something very rhythmic.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And it's got that mid tempo dance beat.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

101 bpm, that's for you, Zabe. But that combination of the drum machine, Larry Mullen Jr's actual drum kit playing, and these congas over it, like. Yeah, this feels like it's approaching Madchester territory for real. And that guitar riff is just impeccable, unimpeachable. Bono's doubled octave vocals, that's a technique that they used more on this album. He would sing the lead, but then also sing it just an octave higher. But here he would do that in this. Not his normal register. He would do it like in this falsetto. And then especially at the beginning, just that super simple two note chord keyboard part. It's like a chintzy organ, but that with all that rhythmic stuff happening, it's just an amazing lead in. Then as the song goes on, Edge's multi layered guitar work really shines here. It still has that reverb thing, but not the huge reverb that they were doing that was big enough to fill a cathedral like in their earlier work. This is sparer and smaller, like they're trying to fill, like a subway station or something. Yeah, yeah. It just. The sound like Eno and Daniel Lenoir really make this song work.

[Lori]

Lyrically, this seems to be, I mean, it's very sensual, but it's very much about, I think, the link between sexuality and spirituality, for sure. And there's so many good lines in this one, but I think my favorite one is to touch is to heal. To hurt is to steal. If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel on your knees.

[Scott Free]

Loy.

[Lori]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. No, I really dig this one. And, you know, again, I forgot how much I love some of these songs, especially this one. So thank you for picking this one.

[Scott Free]

Oh, yeah. Happy to.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah. So this was released as the second single two weeks after the album release on December 2, 1991. It went to number nine on the US Billboard Hot 100, number one on the US Alternative Airplay chart, and number one on the US Mainstream Rock chart. It's been covered by Snow Patrol, and I was very surprised to learn it was also covered by kmfdm. I'm going to have to track that one down.

[Scott Free]

I could see it. Just go real hard with it.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, that could work.

[Scott Free]

Okay. I feel like that's all we need to say about that. So let's say something about the next thing. That is track nine. Trying to throw your arms around the world.

[Unknown Speaker]

Six o'clock in the morning. You're the last to hear the warning. You've been trying to throw your arms around the world. You've been falling off the sidewalk. You live smooth but you can't talk. Trying to throw your arms around the world. We're going to run to you, run to you, run to you. You're scared. Going to run to you, run to you. Brought you woman.

[Scott Free]

Okay, see, now, my initial 1991 reaction, and even when re listening to it for this session, was, that is a really sweet song. And then I wrote the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on this one. It is a tongue in cheek song about stone stumbling home drunk after a night on the town. And I guess that just goes to show you how often I don't listen to the lyrics.

[Lori]

I actually have a quotation from Bono about that. He said it's a song about drunk ambition, but in the funniest sense, not so much megalomania, but just the ambition to get home in one piece. It was written in Australia, staying Up all night and missing my baby.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. And like, I thought I just heard the chorus and thought that was the sweet part and that must be what the song is about without listening to the rest of the lyrics. I'm gonna run to you run to you Run to you woman I will. But then if you actually listen to the lines of the first verse, you've been falling off the sidewalk. Your lips move but you can't talk. Yeah. I am not very observant, but I co host the podcast. Anyways.

[Lori]

That run to you, run to you chorus. Is there a female backup vocalist or is that Bono doing a higher voice?

[Scott Free]

You know, can't really tell. It's so. So reverbed and high and in the background of this huge sonic space they create that. I don't know.

[Lori]

All right. I mean, I like to think that it's a female vocalist, that they're singing to each other. You know, I want to run to you but I didn't see anything in any of the credits, so they don't.

[Scott Free]

Give a lot of work to people who aren't one of the four of them. So I'm going to guess it's Bono.

[Lori]

Yeah. There's one line in that song that's really notable. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, it was very popular at the time.

[Lori]

Well, it was coined in 1970 by Arena Dunne, and then Gloria Steinem made it popular. It's a slogan for the 70s feminist movement.

[Scott Free]

I do recall. I recall the T shirts.

[Lori]

Yeah. That's all I got for that one.

[Scott Free]

I think it's plenty.

[Lori]

Okay, so then next up is Ultraviolet Light my way.

[Unknown Speaker]

Don't you cry oh child, wipe the tears from your ey. You know I need you to of is strong and the day is as dark as the night is long Feel like trash, you make me feel cream I'm in the black, can't see or be seen. Baby, baby, baby, light my way. All right now. Baby, baby, baby, light my way.

[Lori]

Okay, so I'm going to start this off with a quote from Bono. Jealousy, infidelity, love rears its ugly head. Again.

[Scott Free]

Yes. I'm going to say this. This is the quintessential octom baby era U2 song. Yes. I'm not necessarily saying it's the best. I mean, the chorus is one of the ultimate rock lyric cliches. Baby, baby, baby. But between that guitar line, the departure from the self seriousness of the old U2 again, see, the chorus of Baby, baby, baby and a pretty straightforward but still complex enough dance Rock beat. It really sums up what Achtung Baby was trying to do, and it does it really well. Throw in that vocal doubling and tripling by Bono and yeah, this is about as Achtung Baby as an Achtung Baby song gets.

[Lori]

Okay, so thematically, topically, we've seen a lot of songs about problems with relationship. John Joblin called this song a desperate we for guidance and reassurance in a decaying relationship. But the really interesting one that I read was actually from Adam Clayton. He explained that it was about infidelity, but the title of the song, Ultraviolet, he said it might have something to do with those stamps that you get on your hands when you go to a nightclub that only show up under ultraviolet light. If you tell your partner you were out working late, those stamps can bust you.

[Scott Free]

Whoa.

[Lori]

Isn't that interesting? Presumably you'd have to have an ultraviolet light.

[Scott Free]

I do have an ultraviolet pen light, but you know, I have it for going to the Upper Peninsula and trying to find Uber light rocks.

[Lori]

Oh, oh, that's interesting. You know, I had one. Because you can detect cat urine stains.

[Scott Free]

Also fun.

[Lori]

Not as fun. Believe me, finding the source of the pee is not fun.

[Scott Free]

We don't necessarily need to include this in the episode, but funny we shall see.

[Lori]

Speaking of cats, look at this dope over here. Can you see this?

[Scott Free]

Oh. Mesmerized by the Christmas tree.

[Lori]

He's been staring at this tree for like a half hour now, plotting how.

[Scott Free]

Could I get in there and wreck it.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, don't give him any ideas.

[Scott Free]

I don't need to give cats that idea.

[Lori]

Okay, so we got two tracks left.

[Scott Free]

Well, that brings us then to track 11. Acrobat.

[Unknown Speaker]

To take the cup to fill it up to drink it slow. Can't let you go. I must be. I go back to talk like this. Don't act like that. You can dream, so dream out loud and don't let the bastards grind you down.

[Scott Free]

This is another one that feels like it would fit in on an earlier album, although maybe a little harder than those. Mostly because Larry Mullen is really just banging it out here. I think it was Daniel Lenoir who talked about this in the film and how Larry Mullen is largely a self taught drummer and that consequently he plays wrong. And that is actually the quote. But that makes his drum lines so distinctively his own. He's one of those drummers like on the same sort of level as Phil Collins where you hear his drumming and you're like, yep, that's him.

[Lori]

It's distinctive.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, interestingly. The drum pattern, according to Wikipedia, was actually taken from I still haven't found what I'm looking for and slowed down, so it's not a sample. But they took the same drum line and replayed it, but at a slower pace. And that's what you get for Acrobat.

[Lori]

Oh. In an interview in 2005, Bono cited this as his favorite song on the album. Really? Yes. He called it both a response to his critics and an acknowledgement of the seeming contradictions of being a rock and roll star, a Christian, and a family man.

[Scott Free]

Explain.

[Lori]

Well, okay. The quotation I have is, it's a song about your own spirit spleen, your own hypocrisy, your own ability to change shape and take on the colors of whatever environment you're in. Like a chameleon. The title Acrobat is, you know, bending over backwards to try to make something fit. You know what I mean? Let's see. Yeah. I'd break bread and wine if there was a church I could receive in Because I need it now to take the cup to fill it up to drink it slow I can't let you go and I must be an acrobat to talk like this and act like that.

[Scott Free]

Hmm.

[Lori]

So the song is dedicated to Delmore.

[Scott Free]

Schwartz, not a name I'm familiar with.

[Lori]

Okay. Well, he was an author, and the line in Dreams Begin Responsibilities was the title of Delmore Schwartz's short story from 1935. However, Schwartz actually took the title from William Butler Yeats, and William Butler Yeats took it from an old play. So this line in Dreams Begin Responsibilities been borrowed and used throughout literature and theater. The other thing I found interesting, Scott, you're the liner notes guy.

[Scott Free]

I usually am.

[Lori]

You usually are. Lou Reed was thanked in the liner notes for his input on this song. And I know that Lou Reed was a big fan of Delmore Schwartz, so I don't know.

[Scott Free]

Interesting.

[Lori]

Yeah. I don't know if there's a connection there. Something else I found out. In 2015, a Twitter poll asked fans to name the song they most wanted to hear you two play in concert, and overwhelmingly, Acrobat was the most requested.

[Scott Free]

Song, and it is one of the most played songs.

[Lori]

I think it's one of the least played in 2018. At the opening night of U2's new tour, the song debuted live and would be played at every show. Maybe U2 did see those U2 requests. So prior to 2018, they had never played it live. Oh, there's a U2 gigs dot com. They're saying all U2 songs by number of times played in concert. Acrobat has only been played 99 times live according to this one. All right, so, Scott, that leads us to the final track of the album, Love is blindness.

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't want to see won't you have the night around me on my heart, Love is black.

[Scott Free]

Man. This one is a heartbreaker and even more so when you know the story behind it.

[Lori]

Oh, well, I don't know the story behind it. So what have you got?

[Scott Free]

The Edge's marriage has fallen apart and.

[Lori]

Oh, yes, that's right. Some people have speculated that the song is about the Edge's marriage breaking down. Now, he responded, I'm not denying that it has had an influence, but I think there's a lot of stories there. And it's not just my story fair.

[Scott Free]

But it is his story.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

As well as other people's. So, yeah, his marriage had fallen apart. This had been talked about in the documentary. From this guy down. These folks, the band members and their significant others had known each other for so long, many of them since they were teenagers. Edge had been married for seven years before his marriage fell apart. And this band is such a tight knit clan and their significant other is right there with them. They are a community. So when the Edges marriage split, it was like all of the band members lost a family member. And so you can hear the heartbreak in this song. The lyrics can be a little bit vague, but you get a sense of how the relationship has fallen apart. There's one one set of lyrics that kill me a little bit. In a parked car on a crowded street. You see your love made complete. Thread is ripping, the knot is slipping. Love is blindness.

[Lori]

So originally this was written for Nina Simone, of all people, who I absolutely adore. But the band decided they liked it too much to give it away. You know, I would have loved to hear Nina Simone's take on this one, actually. I know there was another jazz singer that recorded it, Cassandra Wilson.

[Scott Free]

Oh, interesting.

[Lori]

Yeah, so I'll have to check that one out. Back to the biographer, John Joblin, Just because I love the way he phrased this. Drenched in complete pathos. The final track as a moody atmosphere lyric piece with guitar feedback hanging in the air like a thick fog before exploding into some kind of sonic death chant.

[Scott Free]

Right. Like it is said that the Edge broke two guitar strings during the recording of his solo towards the end of the song. And it's like the song is like this sweet, sad waltz and then eventually the Edge is just ripping through it with this Machine gun guitar solo, but mixed high end in the back, so it's not like ripping right in front of you. It just becomes another layer and another texture in it. Yeah, this song is a hard onto the album.

[Lori]

Sounds symbolic, what you just described, right. Tom Morello of Rage against the Machine has cited this song is one of his favorite performances by the Edge.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. All right, that brings us to the end of the album.

[Lori]

Powerful stuff.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Great album. And, you know, this band had already been the biggest band on earth with the Joshua Tree before it. And then this album was. Was also absolutely huge, to the point where this isn't even alternative anymore. This is a legacy alternative band that has now become so mainstream that they have to rebel against themselves and the mainstream to create a new new mainstream. And it's stretching the definition of alternative. But because they are the band that they have been in the previous decade, kind of got to give it to him. And they go on from this album to tour and to essentially reinvent what a stadium and eventually arena show looks like. The Zoo TV tour was a revelation, a multimedia extravaganza, and man, was that show a lot of fun.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Free]

All right. So among the gags, it was Zoo tv. So this was one of the first shows to introduce gigantic video screens as a backdrop and important component of the show. And it was not just cameras on stage or in the house shooting the band. So you're seeing them big behind it. It was a multimedia show. The concept is that they are traveling with a TV network as seen in the Even Better Than the Real Thing video that we talked about earlier. They would play different shows on the screens behind them and voices of narrators would come on and video clips and Bono would actually flip channels and they would be able to tune in to live stations from the town that they were performing in. And it made for some amazing surreal moments. One of them, I actually saw this show, the Zoo TV Tour, on March 27, 1992 at the palace of Auburn Hills outside of Detroit, Michigan. Amazing show. The show is actually well known in YouTube folklore. This from YouTube gigs.com the show goes down in U2 folklore as the Pizzas for Everybody concert. When Bono is doing his usual channel hopping before Even Better Than the Real Thing, he comes across an ad for Speedy Pizza and decides to call them and order 10,000 pizzas live from stage. During the break between the main set and the encore, a cart containing a hundred boxes of pepperoni pizza are wheeled on stage and the boxes are thrown to the audience. I was far too high up in the back and did not receive a pizza. And I'm a little salty about it to this day. But it's an amazing stunt, even for a massive arena show. There is still spontaneity built into it. And this level of multimedia and interactivity sort of changes how concerts work, the level of production that you see today. I mean, Taylor Swift's eras tour owes a huge debt to the U2 Zoo TV tour. It was an amazing show and that's all I have to say about that. So have these U2 fellows gone on to do anything interesting since?

[Lori]

No, I don't think anyone ever heard from them again.

[Scott Free]

Well, they had a good run.

[Lori]

There was that residency they did in Las Vegas at the Sphere recently.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I do regret having not seen that Sphere show. Friends of mine did go see it and said it was absolutely, mind blowingly incredible.

[Lori]

So, Scott, what's your favorite track on the album? I know you kind of hinted at it.

[Scott Free]

I feel like I stated it outright, but I share the same opinion as does Adam Clayton. So Cruel is my favorite, hands down.

[Lori]

And yours, who's going to ride your wild Horses? Is not only my favorite song from this album, but it is my favorite U2 song of all time.

[Scott Free]

Whoa.

[Lori]

All right, all right.

[Scott Free]

I feel like I knocked it out of the park with this album. Pick.

[Lori]

Yeah, right. This is good.

[Scott Free]

It makes up for Primus.

[Lori]

So I guess, Scott, we'll be back in two weeks for our last episode of 2024.

[Scott Free]

Whoa.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Is that right?

[Lori]

Yeah. December 21st.

[Scott Free]

All right, well, we will surprise you with what album we're getting into on that one. Something to look forward to.

[Lori]

Surprise ourselves.

[Scott Free]

Surprise ourselves.

[Lori]

We have no idea. Glue.

[Scott Free]

It's going to be hard to top this one, but we'll come up with something.

[Lori]

Okay, well, everybody, thank you so much for listening and see you back in two weeks. Goodbye. From me.

[Scott Free]

And from me.