I came across this when I was just checking on a few dates before writing a blog. I was trying to remember the exact date I first saw U2 supporting Wah Heat at the Polytechnic in Manchester with my then lodger Mark Radclifffe.
David Fricke had just written a review of the re issue of U2’s first album, ‘Boy’ for rollingstone.com and it prompted a response from the band’s singer. How cool.
Entering the blogosphere, a review of BOY from the singer who was one at the time of recording. ‘We the members of said post punk combo are very complimented by DAVID FRICKES 4.5 star review of our debut, an album we always believed in. I remember now a generous JON PARELES review from the VILLAGE VOICE in 1980, a line something along the lines of “this is peter pan, I hope they break up before they grow up.” Anyway, as my band mates and I attempt to finish our most complete and radical album yet, here’s my why and what i think is right and wrong about BOY having listened to it for the first time in over twenty years if you start from the pseudo british accent and the little reported fact that the singer sounds like a girl, things don’t look too promising …the annoying gene is present in self consciousness and self immolation… you do want to give the singer a slap for lots of reasons but let’s start with the pretentiousness….the singer has obviously been listening to SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES, JOY DIVISION and a few others whose combined archness and artfulness was just too much for the freckled face teenager from northside of DUBLIN. Neither fully protestant or catholic, IRELAND had left the boy with a face like a baked bean and in search of a nonregional identity. A theme that continues to the present.
You can have everything the songs, the production, the face, the attitude but still not have “IT”. U2 had nothing really, nothing but “IT”. For us music was a sacrament,an even more demanding and sometimes more demeaning thing than music as ART, we wanted to make a music to take you in and out of your body, out of your comfort zone, out of your self, as well as your bedroom, a music that finds you looking under your bed for God to protect your innocence…
I’m proud of this little Polaroid of a life I cant fully recall. As well as the ability to make embarrassing mistakes, the demands of a great debut might be fresh ideas, fresh paint and sometimes for its canvas, a fresh face.
I miss my boyhood.’
Bono, 3rd August 2008
You can read the full reply on rollingstone.com
It reminded me so much of when I heard ‘Boy ‘ and the feelings that it evoked. I thought it was amazing how it stirred a reaction in Bono so strong. It reminded me too of how much blogging makes you miss your childhood, but in the fondest of ways.
‘For I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’ Bob Dylan 1964
