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  1. I always recognise the Innocence as the really early years,what about War and TUF,do you consider these Innocence tracks? They done 2 hearts of course in 2015,but Pride and Bad,do you consider these for the Experience parts of the tour.
    Where do you think the border of U2's Innocence ends and Experience begins?
  2. I always thought the Innocence ended at Rattle and hum and Then Experience is Achtung Baby , zooropa, Pop even Passengers. I've see a pattern for the next 2000s albums. ATYCLB = Innocence HTDAAB = Experience NLOTH = Experience and back to Innocence with SOI. SOE is back Experience
  3. Originally posted by kezman:I always recognise the Innocence as the really early years,what about War and TUF,do you consider these Innocence tracks? They done 2 hearts of course in 2015,but Pride and Bad,do you consider these for the Experience parts of the tour.
    Where do you think the border of U2's Innocence ends and Experience begins?
    That's a difficult one... Up for individual interpretation, I guess. Personally, I see a little AND experience on every album...
  4. Originally posted by bushido529:I always thought the Innocence ended at Rattle and hum and Then Experience is Achtung Baby , zooropa, Pop even Passengers. I've see a pattern for the next 2000s albums. ATYCLB = Innocence HTDAAB = Experience NLOTH = Experience and back to Innocence with SOI. SOE is back Experience
    I always thought HTDAAB was innocence. They did revisit a number of old songs on the Vertigo tour too.

    I guess it could be considered to be experience in certain aspects but that's what I thought, going back to their roots, why they wanted to be in a band in the first place...
  5. I would agree on the fact, if you need to part between i and e, than the cutting line would be between R&H and AB. Because one thing you can really see - the boys grew up a lot in that process back in those days.
    But it's also true, they return to their own innocence every now and then. Wouldn't necessarily part ATYCLB from Bomb or No Line. I think all those albums have something from both. Of course, depends on your point of view. Because the innocence always inspires the experience and vice versa.
  6. Interesting question...reflecting on their "Innocence and Experience" phase right now, I've tended to look back and see their whole career arc in terms of the Book of Psalms. I hope people don't mind if I share this here...(bearing in mind that much of this is based on what I've gathered from books like "Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective" by Robert Vagacs and "Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue.")

    As a Bible teacher, I've benefited from the writings of an Old Testament scholar named Walter Brueggemann, who has noted that there are basically three kinds of psalms in the Bible = psalms of "orientation", when one is fixated on God and things make sense; "disorientation," when one feels like God is distant and experiences the brokenness of the self and of the world; and "re-orientation," when we realize God has shown us grace and put us back on the right track through grace. (In a behind-the-scenes look at the video of Bono and Eugene Peterson discussing the Psalms from this past spring, Bono actually mentions this three-fold categorization! http://www.atu2.com/news/behind-the-scenes-more-from-bono--friends-on-the-psalms.html)

    In this light, and from others who have noticed a similar pattern, I see U2's career as:
    1980s = orientation
    1990s = disorientation
    2000-present = reorientation

    Of course, this pattern does not hold entirely. Certain songs from the 80s - like Drowning Man, ISHFWILF or Love Rescue Me, just to name a few - clearly seem to be "disorientation," for example. A song like "40", based on Psalm 40 itself, seems more "reorientation," giving thanks to God for "lifting me out of the pit."

    But overall I find this compelling, going from the youthful idealism of the 80s (ending with "All I Want is You") to the self-reflective irony of the 90s (ending in the darkness of "Wake Up Dead Man") to the emergence of hope and clarity 2000 and beyond (currently ending with "The Troubles", where Bono sings "I'm naked and I'm not afraid, my body's sacred and I'm not ashamed (!)").
  7. Originally posted by bpt3:Interesting question...reflecting on their "Innocence and Experience" phase right now, I've tended to look back and see their whole career arc in terms of the Book of Psalms. I hope people don't mind if I share this here...(bearing in mind that much of this is based on what I've gathered from books like "Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective" by Robert Vagacs and "Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue.")

    As a Bible teacher, I've benefited from the writings of an Old Testament scholar named Walter Brueggemann, who has noted that there are basically three kinds of psalms in the Bible = psalms of "orientation", when one is fixated on God and things make sense; "disorientation," when one feels like God is distant and experiences the brokenness of the self and of the world; and "re-orientation," when we realize God has shown us grace and put us back on the right track through grace. (In a behind-the-scenes look at the video of Bono and Eugene Peterson discussing the Psalms from this past spring, Bono actually mentions this three-fold categorization! http://www.atu2.com/news/behind-the-scenes-more-from-bono--friends-on-the-psalms.html)

    In this light, and from others who have noticed a similar pattern, I see U2's career as:
    1980s = orientation
    1990s = disorientation
    2000-present = reorientation

    Of course, this pattern does not hold entirely. Certain songs from the 80s - like Drowning Man, ISHFWILF or Love Rescue Me, just to name a few - clearly seem to be "disorientation," for example. A song like "40", based on Psalm 40 itself, seems more "reorientation," giving thanks to God for "lifting me out of the pit."

    But overall I find this compelling, going from the youthful idealism of the 80s (ending with "All I Want is You") to the self-reflective irony of the 90s (ending in the darkness of "Wake Up Dead Man") to the emergence of hope and clarity 2000 and beyond (currently ending with "The Troubles", where Bono sings "I'm naked and I'm not afraid, my body's sacred and I'm not ashamed (!)").


    Very good observations...
  8. Originally posted by Welsh_Edge:[..]
    I always thought HTDAAB was innocence. They did revisit a number of old songs on the Vertigo tour too.

    I guess it could be considered to be experience in certain aspects but that's what I thought, going back to their roots, why they wanted to be in a band in the first place...
    I rather see it a yearning to want innocence back.

    "The place i started out from, I wan't back inside" seems to reffer to it? Altough its all in a matter of speaking.
  9. Originally posted by mofothethird:[..]
    I rather see it a yearning to want innocence back.

    "The place i started out from, I wan't back inside" seems to reffer to it? Altough its all in a matter of speaking.
    "Time won't leave me as I am. But time won't take the boy out of this man"
  10. Well, the Elevation Tour and Atomic Bomb had a hard time avoiding some element of experience, being overshadowed by Bob Hewson passing away. So with songs like Kite, Sometimes You Can't Make It, and One Step Closer, the 'experience' is quite inescapable - I like the observation that Atomic Bomb is about wanting innocence back, that makes a lot of sense to me, as it's clearly an element of certain songs, but on others the experience and darkness of life and loss overpowers any such desire. I know SOI has Iris, which has similar themes, but it deals with them in a way I think is more 'innocent' than how SYCMIOYO does. Even ATYCLB, which predated Bob's death, is really a pretty dour record in its own right - Wild Honey, Beautiful Day (depending on your reading of it - I actually think it's a rather bittersweet song), and Elevation are the only songs on it that aren't downers, while Peace On Earth, When I Look At the World, and New York are some of their absolute most disorientated songs ever.
  11. I think it's a clever 'theme' for albums and tours that are linked. Loved the way it worked out live last year. Hope that the band are creative and do something surprising next time. For me it ends late 80's. They explored so many sides of music, first crawling and never afraid of learning. In the 90's they started to walk faster and faster.....yes towards experience maybe (running).
    The nice thing is, it's personal. So everybody has their own interpretation.
  12. Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:Well, the Elevation Tour and Atomic Bomb had a hard time avoiding some element of experience, being overshadowed by Bob Hewson passing away. So with songs like Kite, Sometimes You Can't Make It, and One Step Closer, the 'experience' is quite inescapable - I like the observation that Atomic Bomb is about wanting innocence back, that makes a lot of sense to me, as it's clearly an element of certain songs, but on others the experience and darkness of life and loss overpowers any such desire. I know SOI has Iris, which has similar themes, but it deals with them in a way I think is more 'innocent' than how SYCMIOYO does. Even ATYCLB, which predated Bob's death, is really a pretty dour record in its own right - Wild Honey, Beautiful Day (depending on your reading of it - I actually think it's a rather bittersweet song), and Elevation are the only songs on it that aren't downers, while Peace On Earth, When I Look At the World, and New York are some of their absolute most disorientated songs ever.
    Agreed with all of this, which is why I admitted earlier that my own way of categorizing these eras isn't completely clear-cut.

    Even so, if still taking the biblical "orientation > disorientation > re-orientation" pattern into account, experiencing "re-orientation" doesn't necessarily mean that all is now totally fine...it just means one is able to live in gratitude - and hope - even in the midst of sometimes continued confusion and loss. ATYCLB and onward express this, I think, with SOI being the culmination of a"second naïveté", in a sense...being "born again", in Christian language.

    Of course, I also ponder all of this even as one who thinks Pop and the whole 90s experimenting was vastly superior to ATYCLB and what has followed...