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  1. any chance of reuploading these please
  3. I wonder who originally leaked the hansa sessions it was a pretty vindictivet thing to do , i don't get the appeal for mainly poor quality half baked ideas .
  4. Originally posted by popmarter:I wonder who originally leaked the hansa sessions it was a pretty vindictivet thing to do , i don't get the appeal for mainly poor quality half baked ideas .
    I have a personal letter here from Carter Alan of WBCN who informed me the consensus was the band did it themselves as part of a pre-release promotion of interest that would be Achtung Baby.
    If this is true then it worked! A lot of interest was generated from these recordings.

    I shared the original letter as a scan somewhere here on this site if you can find it.
  5. I have the 3 cd version. Does cd 4 to 7 have complete songs or just riffs and loops?
  6. The 3CD version is a compilation of all 7CD's
  7. The additional 4CD's here are largely drum an synth loops.

    However... one of the CD's does have the full take of 'Sick For Love' - its cut on the 3disc version and the New U2 vinyls as I recall. It also has a demo of 'TTYAATW' being played back to Daniel Lanois, and some chatter there. There are more Salome overdubs on the 7CD set. And Daniel Lanois does some vocal improvising to the back masked track 'Woman'.
  10. Originally posted by ELIZIUM:[..]
    I have a personal letter here from Carter Alan of WBCN who informed me the consensus was the band did it themselves as part of a pre-release promotion of interest that would be Achtung Baby.
    If this is true then it worked! A lot of interest was generated from these recordings.

    I shared the original letter as a scan somewhere here on this site if you can find it.
    That's amazing stuff. I think I remember you posting that here before Elysium.

    I've often suspected this going back to when I first heard these in early 1991. I can remember a few weeks after hearing them (sent to me by a guy in your neck of the woods actually, well a bit further west), there was a little news report in the NME that Paul McGuinness had the FBI and BPI involved in hunting down dealers selling the New U2 vinyls at record fairs and at source.

    To me, if they did self-leak these (either by the band, or Paul, or someone at Island etc) it would make sense in a way - like a form of guerilla marketing and putting the feelers out there for what people liked - although back in 1991 I'm not entirely sure how they'd gauge feedback on the material. That said it's kind of at odds with Paul McGuinness's stance on this material, who I heard he was livid about them - but I don't know maybe that was part of the marketing too!

    It's well known the band were in disarray with which way to go, and struggling for awhile during this period, and these sessions which I actually believe were done at least in part during 1990 at STS in Dublin (if not then perhaps are even entirely from Dublin) and then took them as a reference point to work on in Berlin.

    And the sessions include wildly different styles - for U2 at least - from the FM friendly pop/rock of 'Where Did It All Go Wrong' to the bluesy 'Heaven & Hell' and 'Doctor Doctor' through to heavy rock (even borderline metal maybe) with the likes of 'Sugarcane' / 'She's Gonna Blow Your House Down' / 'Wake Up Dead Man' to almost jazz U2 with the beautiful 'Walk On By' which evolved into 'North And South Of The River' eventually.

    To me I find it crazy to hear people here saying they don't get the appeal. They're far from half-baked ideas to me - it's the genesis of 'Achtung Baby'. And whilst they're not fully-fledged polished songs either and contain a lot of lyrical sketches and Bongolese, they also contain lots of fabulous lyrics and ideas that found their way onto Achtung Baby later on. I know Bono dismissed the recordings as 'Gobbledegook' at the time and said it was like someone reading your personal diary - but if you love U2, and afterall most of us on here surely do - I'm amazed to hear anyone here say they're poor quality or half-baked - it's a fabulous insight into U2's writing / recording process midway into their recording sessions for what is probably one of two of their most famous and revered albums.

    I personally obsessed over these recordings for a long time, and they still get a regular play today almost 30 years later. It was very exciting to hear them way before 'Achtung' dropped and wonder which direction U2 would eventually go with... and the truth is... it was most of those directions... and then some more! With a dash of irony and self-dreprecation for good-measure.
  11. Originally posted by Caledonia:[..]
    The additional 4CD's here are largely drum an synth loops.

    However... one of the CD's does have the full take of 'Sick For Love' - its cut on the 3disc version and the New U2 vinyls as I recall. It also has a demo of 'TTYAATW' being played back to Daniel Lanois, and some chatter there. There are more Salome overdubs on the 7CD set. And Daniel Lanois does some vocal improvising to the back masked track 'Woman'.
    That's a pretty accurate summary of 'all' the interesting bits on cd's 4-7
  12. Originally posted by Caledonia:[..]
    That's amazing stuff. I think I remember you posting that here before Elysium.

    I've often suspected this going back to when I first heard these in early 1991. I can remember a few weeks after hearing them (sent to me by a guy in your neck of the woods actually, well a bit further west), there was a little news report in the NME that Paul McGuinness had the FBI and BPI involved in hunting down dealers selling the New U2 vinyls at record fairs and at source.

    To me, if they did self-leak these (either by the band, or Paul, or someone at Island etc) it would make sense in a way - like a form of guerilla marketing and putting the feelers out there for what people liked - although back in 1991 I'm not entirely sure how they'd gauge feedback on the material. That said it's kind of at odds with Paul McGuinness's stance on this material, who I heard he was livid about them - but I don't know maybe that was part of the marketing too!

    It's well known the band were in disarray with which way to go, and struggling for awhile during this period, and these sessions which I actually believe were done at least in part during 1990 at STS in Dublin (if not then perhaps are even entirely from Dublin) and then took them as a reference point to work on in Berlin.

    And the sessions include wildly different styles - for U2 at least - from the FM friendly pop/rock of 'Where Did It All Go Wrong' to the bluesy 'Heaven & Hell' and 'Doctor Doctor' through to heavy rock (even borderline metal maybe) with the likes of 'Sugarcane' / 'She's Gonna Blow Your House Down' / 'Wake Up Dead Man' to almost jazz U2 with the beautiful 'Walk On By' which evolved into 'North And South Of The River' eventually.

    To me I find it crazy to hear people here saying they don't get the appeal. They're far from half-baked ideas to me - it's the genesis of 'Achtung Baby'. And whilst they're not fully-fledged polished songs either and contain a lot of lyrical sketches and Bongolese, they also contain lots of fabulous lyrics and ideas that found their way onto Achtung Baby later on. I know Bono dismissed the recordings as 'Gobbledegook' at the time and said it was like someone reading your personal diary - but if you love U2, and afterall most of us on here surely do - I'm amazed to hear anyone here say they're poor quality or half-baked - it's a fabulous insight into U2's writing / recording process midway into their recording sessions for what is probably one of two of their most famous and revered albums.

    I personally obsessed over these recordings for a long time, and they still get a regular play today almost 30 years later. It was very exciting to hear them way before 'Achtung' dropped and wonder which direction U2 would eventually go with... and the truth is... it was most of those directions... and then some more! With a dash of irony and self-dreprecation for good-measure.
    A lot of them are absolute rubbish and it's just the band trying out ideas and half baked songs ,I don't believe they deliberately leaked them U2 are such perfectionists that they don't like people hearing all their unused studio recordings ALTYCLB reissue is proof of that ,it was definitely some inside guy working in the studio with them trying to make a quick buck .