U:2 EVERYDAY PEOPLE

U:2 EVERYDAY PEOPLE

“People are always trying to make us something. Why won’t they accept us as being four people? There's no plan to the group. The music’s a reflection of the four people...People want singers, especially, to take their clothes off in public. I do it every night. Maybe I have to do it, because I’m just that type of person. I have to do it because I’m trying to understand what’s going on in my life.”

Bono, CREEM, 1983

Just four ordinary guys from Dublin, Ireland, in an extraordinary position only a handful of other just plain folk have been able to achieve; folks like four lads from Liverpool and that guy from New Jersey. U2 has the power to electrify the world and launch rock ’n’ roll into a new era.

“It was never our intention to have the #1 album or be on the cover of Time magazine,” said Bono at U2’s Michigan appearance earlier in the summer. The band’s fifth studio effort, The Joshua Tree, should prove to be the most important album of 1987, but Bono says the best is yet to come. Until that time, The Joshua Tree has exceeded all expectations.

It’s an album filled with unanswered questions, addictions, and war—both a military war and the war within our hearts. Bono, who says he wrestles with himself for a living, delves more into the personal relationship between a man and a woman and the undeniable need to love and cling to someone no matter what hurts have happened.

Evidence of this is in “Red Hill Mining Town,” “Trip Through Your Wires,” and “With Or Without You”—their first #1 single. Bono has said he's more interested in the workings of a relationship, what keeps a couple together, why they love in the first place. He also writes about the world at large.

Bono was in El Salvador and Nicaragua earlier this year, and he saw first-hand how U.S. policies actually affect those countries. The bombings didn’t seem to affect the people he was with, but Bono was terrified when he heard the shelling. Out of that fear came “Bullet The Blue Sky.”

A new maturity in U2’s music is subsequently emerging, which evolved from keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground—on Dublin soil.

U2 was born in 1976 when Larry Mullen, Jr., posted a notice on the bulletin board of Mount Temple, a public high school in Dublin, asking if anyone was interested in getting a rock band together. About six or seven students showed up for the audition in the Mullen kitchen, among them Adam Clayton, David Evans and Paul Hewson (the latter two became known as the Edge and Bono).

And, even though none were particularly good musicians, they were chosen because they had that certain “something,” especially Bono. As soon as he walked in the door, with his intensity and charisma, it was obvious who would be the leader of the band.

Adam Clayton, on the other hand, got in solely on his modern looks. He used all the right words and carried the right equipment, but the fact was he didn’t

even know how to play the bass.

The band may have never materialized if Clayton hadn’t continuously hustled to keep Bono and the Edge from straying and by contacting manager Paul McGuinness, who is still their manager today. McGuinness admits the band was very bad at first, but being a great musician was never as important as the individuals in U2.

U2’s popularity grew steadily with each album, with bold songs of serious and intense political subjects such as “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day.” With The Unforgettable Fire’s “Pride,” U2 finally broke into the Top 10. Like Bruce Springsteen, the passion and power in their live performances gave them the most notoriety.

Bono cares about his audience, and he will even stop a show if he thinks they’re getting hurt. In Detroit, when a security guard was roughing a few fans who rushed the stage, Bono came to the rescue yelling, “Leave those kids alone. These people pay our wages!” When the scuffle stopped, he said, “I never want to see that guy ever again at a U2 concert. We can take care of each other. The music's bigger than me or you or stadiums.”

But U2 is weary of fans who read too much into their music or look to them for all the answers. They don’t want to be worshipped, they want to be regarded as everyday people. They don’t live life in the rock ’n’ roll fast lane. All of U2 still reside in Dublin, Ireland, living modestly, with their wives and families. (Both Bono and the Edge are married. The Edge has three daughters and Larry Mullen, Jr. has a girlfriend who sometimes joins him on tour.) Dublin is a sanctuary for U2. After conquering the world, the people there will always bring them back down to earth if they get too filled with their success. They can also lift their spirits, like after U2’s Live Aid performance.

Bono spontaneously jumped into the audience to embrace a young girl. He watched the replay of the show and he was “sickened. I thought the band was going to fire me.” They were depressed, thinking they had embarrassed themselves in front of millions of people, but those at a local Dublin pub told them how well they had done.

U2 has beliefs, but they don’t want their fans to blindly accept them as gospel. U2 wants them to think for themselves. They have their causes like Amnesty International and civil rights, and they encourage fans to get involved and make a difference.

When U2 opened The Joshua Tree tour in Arizona, their beliefs in equality almost led them to move the shows elsewhere. Arizona governor Evan Mecham had issued an order to rescind the state’s observations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. King is one of Bono’s heroes, but U2 decided the governor’s views weren’t necessarily the same as the rest of Arizona’s. They stayed in Arizona and donated money to the Mecham Watchdog Committee, a group that wants the governor recalled.

The band did a short tour of the U.S. before a full tour of Europe and they’re returning this fall for a more extensive U.S. tour. But when they return, will the popularity get out of hand as it did for Springsteen? U2 know how high expectations can run, but in the end they stress only the music as being special, not the person who wrote it. He’s just an ordinary guy.

As Bono said in CREEM, in 1983, “A lot of people have nothing to say, and they say it all the time. There’s a lot of people flying flags, wearing badges, all over this country, when they’d do better just shutting their mouths. Everyone knows that when music reaches that crescendo, it’s like an arrow that cuts through you. It’s in the music that people realize there’s more than just getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home, taking the kids out for a walk, and going to sleep again. There’s that richness. Music expresses what’s great about man.”

Sharon Harrow