The Zoo TV Tour was a great postmodern game that allowed them to laugh a little at themselves, to add theatrical effects to their show and to anticipate the new information society. It went even further in their live performances. Even their biggest detractors eventually admitted that there was something interesting there. In a time of conflict, and with their vulnerability on the surface, U2 achieved the greatest triumph of their career.
It featured Bono’s best lyrics and shifted the paradigm of what successful bands should do to remain influential. Achtung Baby was electronic and rhythmic, with a dark and sexual vibe. The sessions were traumatic until One was conceived, symbolizing the band’s stronger union in a Germany that had just pieced itself back together. Either they would reinvent themselves, or they would break apart. Relatively fed up with themselves, they arrived at Hansa Studios in Berlin in late 1990, a legendary place where David Bowie and Iggy Pop had recorded. It began with a performance at Point Depot in their hometown on New Year’s Eve 1989 that was broadcast globally on radio and TV and where they symbolically said goodbye to the Stetson hats of Rattle And Hum, to welcome the new Europe that was emerging after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bono, the frontman for U2, during the ZOO TV Tour in the 1990s. Critics began to turn their backs on them and frequently used terms such as “megalomaniacs” and “messianic” to refer to the quartet. What they meant to sell as a tribute to their discovery of rock’s American roots was anything but humble. Their next project, the documentary film and double album Rattle And Hum, backfired.
Overwhelmed and plagued by insecurities, however, U2 were not enjoying themselves at all. One rung above what even Bruce Springsteen could achieve, they restored authenticity to great rock music delivered on a big scale, and as an added bonus lent it a humanitarian commitment during the cruel decade of the 1980s. – had already established themselves as the most important rock band in the world thanks to their fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987).Īt that time, the four young Dubliners were filling the biggest stadiums on the planet every night, and arousing a religious fervor among the masses. The band members – Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. That song, dark, rhythmic, rough and full of intelligent irony, broke radically with the sound and image that U2 had cultivated during the previous decade. “Everything you know is wrong.” The slogan appeared for the first time in the video for The Fly in October 1991, and it would become a refrain of the great Zoo TV Tour (1992-1993).
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