1. The article below is one in our series called Into The Heart, columns by U2 fans about U2. This one is written by Bloodraven. Any opinions expressed in this column are those of the individual author. Let us know what you think and feel free to submit your own content to us.

    The Jukebox Band that never was: why U2 is not a jukebox band

    The e+I Tour, like its counterpart, the i+e Tour, has a very strong narrative, which makes it a show almost closer to a Broadway musical than to a rock show. This in turn, leaves the show very little room for variation or surprises, much less for any improvisation.

    But this is not something new. U2 is a weird case of a band that made its trademark playing live, but at the same time is a band that never has been noticed for play any song just out of the blue.

    The reasons for this are many. Not pretending to make an exhaustive list, here’s some of the things why U2 is not a jukebox band.

    It’s never been about the music.
    They didn’t join a band because they saw themselves as musicians, really, and once they were in, right after the first chords they played live, they loved so much the excitement they caused in their schoolmates that they decided to do that for life.

    So it really never has been about playing music, it’s always been about transmitting emotions into their audience. Even more, when some of them hesitated to continue because they couldn’t see the point of being in a rock band, what made them stay was the possibility of using the band as a way to reach an audience to bring a message. That’s always been what drives them in their long career. Create emotions and transmit messages to their audience. To some extent, they value their songs for what they mean, more than for how good they are. Then, it shouldn’t surprise us when they elaborate a set list more focused on which songs are the best at transmitting their message, their narrative, instead of focusing on which are the best songs in their catalogue.

    Our Showman gives you front row to his heart
    When you listen to the first drums of Sunday Bloody Sunday, you start tapping your foot or your fingers, and it’s very easy to start singing “I can’t believe the news today…” even if you have no connection whatsoever with the troubles in Ireland, much less with the Sunday bloody Sunday. But I don’t think Bono finds it that easy. I think he might find it a bit awkward to sing something like that in a karaoke. And the same could be said about many U2 songs. They’re truly personal to our showman. So much that sometimes he even needs to get into a character in order to sing them.
    It’s not just that they bring emotions to their audience, is that they’re also immersed in emotions themselves. He doesn’t sing the songs, he lives them. At least most of them, anyway.This showman is closer to an actor than to a singer, he needs to get into character, even when that character is himself. Then is not surprise that the show is closer to a theatre play than to a rock concert. That’s the way he’s always been.

    Changing the order of the factors DOES change the product
    From their early days on, they’ve known that some songs work better in a sequence than as standalone tracks. The Ocean leading into 11 O’clock to open the show, and the other way around to close it is one of the earlier examples, but soon after they came up with Threw a Brick into Day Without Me.

    But that was just the beginning, like if they were just learning how to do it and they were acquiring the taste of it. As they grew up, they started making it more complex every time. We all know the long lived Bad-October-New Year’s Day-Pride, and how it wouldn’t work anywhere close if they were played in a different order. Each song had a role to play in the emotions of band and audience: Bad crushing everybody’s soul, leaving everyone emotionally exhausted; October let’s you take a breath and makes you think for a couple of minutes that the storm has passed; New Year’s Day had that electrifying beginning that worked like an ECT or an adrenaline shot; and when you thought you couldn’t take any more, Pride comes to make everything ok, putting everybody’s pieces together, making everybody feel brand new.

    They’ve always loved to create those trains of songs that build up into something. They don’t play songs out of order, and when they did it as the 80’s were ending, they disliked it so much that they never went back to that route, and went on to continue cementing their own style instead, these set lists carefully built in which each song is there for a reason and it usually doesn’t work as good in other place.

    But again, it’s nothing new. After that, in the 90’s we had all the Streets segues. And the ZooTV and PopMart Tours, which had song-trains each time more complex, more than the previously mentioned Bad-to-Pride, or the Heart of Darkness that included Bloody Sunday and Exit. Every time they ventured a bit more through this path.
    They’ve always done this and they’ve been evolving it each time, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that finally they have perfected this trade enough that they’ve been pulling these incredible shows where almost all the songs are linked between them.

    I will follow
    It’s not a secret that Bono admires writers and their big works. Their big narratives. That’s always been an influence in his work. He has always loved a good story. Musically, he always admired Bowie, the guy that came up with Ziggy Stardust, which was way more than an album, it was a story, a narrative, a whole concept. No wonder he and his mates created Lypton Village, which had everything to do with music and at the same time nothing to do with music. Big narratives have always been in Bono’s mind. Big works. From the Bible to William Blake. From the story of “The Two Americas”, to the Zoo TV huge narrative of sensory overload and selfishness. From Pop’s narrative of “starting in a party and ending in a funeral”, to PopMart’s huge narrative of consumerism and shallowness. From Bowie’s Ziggy to Broadway’s Spiderman. Yes, Broadway… let’s not forget that he and Edge created a whole musical. They’ve always been fascinated with big narratives, with telling a full story through music. Then, it’s no surprise that they have continue to push their intentions of creating a big work of art, a big narrative in their shows, instead of settle with a more ordinary and conventional rock show.

    ---

    There’s more things around it. Like they’ve never been the best musicians out there (they learned along the way), so it takes them dozens of rehearsals to play a “new” song, and when they’ve tried to improvise live a not so common song, it usually has ended up in a bit of chaos. In that same note, this wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t as painfully perfectionist as we all know they are, either at the studio or on the stage. The point is that this show shouldn’t come up as a surprise to anyone following the Irishmen’s 40 year career. They’ve been walking towards this point since the beginning, even if it wasn’t that clear a few years ago.

    Also, there’s no point in pretending or hoping that they’d do it any different, because their history shows that this is who they are and always have been, this is what they love to do and always have. This is the kind of projects that they seem to love and consider worthy of being involved in.

    In the end, when the next generation of U2 fans, our kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, look back at the work of this band, this tour will surely be one of the main highlights, perhaps even more than ZooTV (the information overload is not as impressive or original now as it was back in the early 90’s). Once all U2 catalogue is “classic U2”, they’ll be able to appreciate these concept albums and concept tours as a masterpiece and a cult classic, worthy of several rewatches to fully get all references and symbolisms, from the MRI at the beginning while a beam of light scans Bono, to the exit of the stage with the innocence light bulb in There is a Light, mirroring the beginning of innocence.

    Bloodraven
  2. Well stated. Thanks for the read.
  3. First of all, let me congratulate you on this well-thought article. Everything you say is very interesting and worthy of a discussion.
    But I just can't think this tour will, over the years, be better regarded than ZooTV. This tour is not nearly as ground-breaking, ambitious or provocative as ZooTV, and I think I'm being as objective as is humanly possible.
    I think that in 10, 15 years, the public will think about U2 as "that band that composed JT, AB and had that stupid Vertigo song in the radio in all of 2005, whatever happened to those guys afterward?"
  4. Originally posted by cesar_garza01:First of all, let me congratulate you on this well-thought article. Everything you say is very interesting and worthy of a discussion.
    But I just can't think this tour will, over the years, be better regarded than ZooTV. This tour is not nearly as ground-breaking, ambitious or provocative as ZooTV, and I think I'm being as objective as is humanly possible.
    I think that in 10, 15 years, the public will think about U2 as "that band that composed JT, AB and had that stupid Vertigo song in the radio in all of 2005, whatever happened to those guys afterward?"
    Yeah, "the public" will do that.
    And we old fans will always know and feel the impact and dimension of Zoo TV, and U2 in general in the 80's and 90's unlike in the last couple of decades.

    But I think that new generations of U2 fans (not general public) will see it differently, with no nostalgia attached to the older albums, blurring frontiers between Zooropa and No Line eras... I think they'll see the whole i+e+i tour "as one of the main highlights" of their career... "perhaps even more than ZooTV"; the keyword being "perhaps"
  5. Awesome read, Bloodraven (love the new avatar, by the way)!

    This really crystallizes a lot of points that have been floating around in my head. Thank you for helping me realize what I was feeling about how the i+e+i cycle stands in line with their previous work. I had kind of felt that these tours were something along the lines of 'U2: The Musical' and putting the references into how they started out really makes it feel connected. While I can totally understand wanting more variation from night to night with the setlists, I can also appreciate the band's approach here.

    Fabulous piece!