1. Originally posted by blueeyedboy:[..]
    I'm confused... BB King was talking about "When Love Comes To Town" when he made that comment to Bono.

    Remember, he was 20 when Boy was released, so he actually probably wrote these lyrics when he was 18 or 19!
    He's just saying that just like Bono was writing "heavy lyrics" when he was 27, he was also ahead of his age at 18.
  2. Originally posted by blueeyedboy:[..]
    I'm confused... BB King was talking about "When Love Comes To Town" when he made that comment to Bono.

    Remember, he was 20 when Boy was released, so he actually probably wrote these lyrics when he was 18 or 19!
    Yeah BB King was of course talking about 'When Love Comes To Town'.

    It was just a reference point and general comment that Bono has always been a bit older than his years if you catch my drift, be it in 1980 or 1987 or whenever. And yep, to think that he could have been just 18 or 19 writing some of that stuff, it's very admirable.
  3. Yes. The whole Boy album reflects this!
  4. Originally posted by Caledonia:[..]
    Yeah BB King was of course talking about 'When Love Comes To Town'.

    It was just a reference point and general comment that Bono has always been a bit older than his years if you catch my drift, be it in 1980 or 1987 or whenever. And yep, to think that he could have been just 18 or 19 writing some of that stuff, it's very admirable.
    Got it now. Mind was on idle for a minute...
  5. Had to look for this topic...

    This is the one song I don't like in one of my favorite U2 albums (I enjoy Boy even more than AB or TJT).
    But I never got this song.

    Now...

    Ok, like Cesar said, the live versions were great! a totally different song imho... Edge's guitar is prominently from the start, and the whole song is even anthemic, unlike the studio version -which, yeah, it has its thing, but imho is no match against the live version (U2, overproducing and second guessing themselves since 1980)

    And I'm totally intrigued about this song; (if whatever I say next is wrong OR TOO OBVIOUS, feel free to correct me, like I said, I'm intrigued by it, and I'd love to get more info on it): to begin with, it was changed at the last minute... the album was recorded in July-August '80, but we have audio that as far as in July (Leixlip Castle show) SATT was still being played with full Edge's guitar.

    Then after being included in the album, we don't even know if it was played again (probably it was, we only know like 1/5 of the setlists played between sep-dec of that year, still missing something like 50 shows). But if it wasn't played in the Boy Tour, it was only remixed in order to retire it...

    Why change a very well known song (clearly it was a regular/fixed in the setlists from 78-80) just to retire it?

    The first record we have that it was played, was in March '78, the Church Hall show when The Hype was disbanded and U2 was born. They started the set playing as The Hype and then they started playing a set of only U2 songs.

    My question, again, not sure if totally wrong or totally obvious: is Shadows And Tall Trees the very first U2 song?

    I know that Street Mission, The Fool and Life on a Distant Planet, among others, are know to have been played before this date. But none of them made it 'til the end. LOADP got really close, but still didn't made it.
    It was only Shadows.
    It could've been there before those songs and we just don't have any evidence of it, or, this is the first song they wrote as the 4-member U2 band (the others being wrote by all 5 Hype members).

    If SATT is their first song, then makes absolute sense to me that it was included in the album as a re-imagination of their first ever song just to be retired and never played again.

    Again, if this is wrong or a well known fact, sorry for the block of text, I didn't get the memo...
  6. Originally posted by Bloodraven:Had to look for this topic...

    This is the one song I don't like in one of my favorite U2 albums (I enjoy Boy even more than AB or TJT).
    But I never got this song.

    Now...

    Ok, like Cesar said, the live versions were great! a totally different song imho... Edge's guitar is prominently from the start, and the whole song is even anthemic, unlike the studio version -which, yeah, it has its thing, but imho is no match against the live version (U2, overproducing and second guessing themselves since 1980)

    And I'm totally intrigued about this song; (if whatever I say next is wrong OR TOO OBVIOUS, feel free to correct me, like I said, I'm intrigued by it, and I'd love to get more info on it): to begin with, it was changed at the last minute... the album was recorded in July-August '80, but we have audio that as far as in July (Leixlip Castle show) SATT was still being played with full Edge's guitar.

    Then after being included in the album, we don't even know if it was played again (probably it was, we only know like 1/5 of the setlists played between sep-dec of that year, still missing something like 50 shows). But if it wasn't played in the Boy Tour, it was only remixed in order to retire it...

    Why change a very well known song (clearly it was a regular/fixed in the setlists from 78-80) just to retire it?

    The first record we have that it was played, was in March '78, the Church Hall show when The Hype was disbanded and U2 was born. They started the set playing as The Hype and then they started playing a set of only U2 songs.

    My question, again, not sure if totally wrong or totally obvious: is Shadows And Tall Trees the very first U2 song?

    I know that Street Mission, The Fool and Life on a Distant Planet, among others, are know to have been played before this date. But none of them made it 'til the end. LOADP got really close, but still didn't made it.
    It was only Shadows.
    It could've been there before those songs and we just don't have any evidence of it, or, this is the first song they wrote as the 4-member U2 band (the others being wrote by all 5 Hype members).

    If SATT is their first song, then makes absolute sense to me that it was included in the album as a re-imagination of their first ever song just to be retired and never played again.

    Again, if this is wrong or a well known fact, sorry for the block of text, I didn't get the memo...
    It's tricky, right? Because for example "Trevor" was played since 1978 and this became Touch, which was released as a b-side to 11 O'Clock Tick Tock,
    so you can also say that "Touch" was the first U2 song.
    Silver Lining was played as early as 1979 and then became 11 O'Clock Tick Tock.
  7. Originally posted by cesar_garza01:[..]
    It's tricky, right? Because for example "Trevor" was played since 1978 and this became Touch, which was released as a b-side to 11 O'Clock Tick Tock,
    so you can also say that "Touch" was the first U2 song.
    Silver Lining was played as early as 1979 and then became 11 O'Clock Tick Tock.
    But Trevor's first known appearance is after SATT's... The only ones we know that appeared earlier are (What's Going On), Street Mission, The Fool, (The TV Song), and Magic Carpet.
    And we know that all those were written by The Hype. The first U2-as-is show, was the one when we first know SATT were played...

    I can't see any reason to include in Boy a song as old as SATT when they had fresher (and IMHO better) songs than that, much less a reinvented (and IMHO crippled) version of it, and much less just to -apparently- ignore it in the tour.

    Unless it was an homage to their first ever song
  8. At this point is speculation. We don't know the complete set of 1978-03-20. They played Trevor in April. Do you think they didn't have that song by late March?
    I think we can only know what was U2's first "batch" of songs.
  9. Off course is speculation, we don't know if Tonight was ever played live, or even if The TV Song actually exists or not.

    But if we speculate about which one was U2's first song, SATT certainly has a better case than Trevor/Touch (which is a superior song IMHO), and I think a better case than any other song.

    What I'm speculating is that they consider SATT their first song and that's the reason why they decided to give it a special place in their first album before retiring it (despite being newer and better songs, and even better versions of the song itself)
  10. Originally posted by Bloodraven:Off course is speculation, we don't know if Tonight was ever played live, or even if The TV Song actually exists or not.

    But if we speculate about which one was U2's first song, SATT certainly has a better case than Trevor/Touch (which is a superior song IMHO), and I think a better case than any other song.

    What I'm speculating is that they consider SATT their first song and that's the reason why they decided to give it a special place in their first album before retiring it (despite being newer and better songs, and even better versions of the song itself)
    This is really intriguing. It really adds to my respect for this song (for a long time I couldn't stand it, but it's gradually become one of my favourites on Boy, go figure), if it is indeed U2's 'first' song.

    However, I think it's worth pointing out that 'U2' had appeared before the 1978-03-20 show, where The Hype 'officially' disbanded. The Limerick talent show that won them an audition with CBS was two days prior, and the band appeared as U2, though I don't know whether Dick Evans was present or not - I'm inclined to think he wasn't. This show also contains the earliest confirmed performance of Life On a Distant Planet (AKA The Magic Carpet, etc), so if The Hype never performed it, it's entirely possible it's a true U2 original as well (although it never made it to any official release, of course, so Shadows is a more 'worthy' contender - although I would consider Life On a Distant Planet a 'better' song, certainly my favourite from the early days).

    I am now curious as to whether Shadows was ever performed FOLLOWING Boy's release - on one hand, there's a lot setlists missing from the end of 1980, as you point out. But on the other, the Boy Tour featured pretty static setlists, so I'm not sure how likely it is there would be a song that's only being played at a few shows and that they just happen to be the ones that are missed; all the other Boy songs are known from this time.
  11. Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:[..]
    This is really intriguing. It really adds to my respect for this song (for a long time I couldn't stand it, but it's gradually become one of my favourites on Boy, go figure), if it is indeed U2's 'first' song.

    However, I think it's worth pointing out that 'U2' had appeared before the 1978-03-20 show, where The Hype 'officially' disbanded. The Limerick talent show that won them an audition with CBS was two days prior, and the band appeared as U2, though I don't know whether Dick Evans was present or not - I'm inclined to think he wasn't. This show also contains the earliest confirmed performance of Life On a Distant Planet (AKA The Magic Carpet, etc), so if The Hype never performed it, it's entirely possible it's a true U2 original as well (although it never made it to any official release, of course, so Shadows is a more 'worthy' contender - although I would consider Life On a Distant Planet a 'better' song, certainly my favourite from the early days).

    I am now curious as to whether Shadows was ever performed FOLLOWING Boy's release - on one hand, there's a lot setlists missing from the end of 1980, as you point out. But on the other, the Boy Tour featured pretty static setlists, so I'm not sure how likely it is there would be a song that's only being played at a few shows and that they just happen to be the ones that are missed; all the other Boy songs are known from this time.
    Yes, The Magic Carpet (Life on a Distant Planet) is a better song as well (I think they had easily 5-10 songs better than the original SATT, that's sort of my point, there's no real reason to include it).

    My point would not be if SATT was the first song they played as U2, but that they considered it to be their first song (absolute speculation on my part I know).
    Either because it was the first they wrote, or for whatever reason that they had, but that'd be what I'm speculating, that they considered it the first.

    About being played in the Boy Tour, before the album release... there were more than 30 Boy Tour shows before October 20, and we don't know what they played in more than 20 of them. So even if the setlists we know are very static, there's a chance that they had played it in a couple of shows (obviously not a regular).
    But if the inclusion in Boy was indeed a farewell gesture, I don't think it would've been played.
  12. I don't really get the intrigue... but I still love Shadows And Tall Trees, and I think it's a very powerful song with great imagery and some fantastic instrumentation by these very young guys. The only thing that bothers me about it -actually about most of Boy- is the very 80's-sounding kind of production, not being a fan of New Wave and all. Well, and the "artificial" change in speed and key towards the end of the song. But other than that it's an incredible album closer, and I don't care if it's the first or the 4th or the 17th real U2 song, I love it either way