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U2
Pop
(Island)
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"These days, I hear a lot of rock... but where's the roll?" - Keith Richards YEAH, RIGHT. Chance would have been a fine thing. Pop? Pah! U2 were always a rock band. For all the bollocks they spouted about being a folk band, a blues band, a gospel band, a Gonzo Cod Doo Dah Band, they couldn't even truly be a rock'n'roll band, as they showed on 'Rattle & Hum' - they were too stiff, too sexless (for all Bono's leather keks and Jim Morrison schtick), too earnest to recognise the ridiculousness and fun and funk of it all. They didn't have the 'roll' part of the equation, as Sir Keef memorably defined it. But rock bands made in the '80s can't survive in the '90s without swotting up on some chapters from the pop survival book. The ones called 'Reinvention', or 'Staying In Fashion'. And particularly 'There's Always Been A Drum'n'Bass/Trip-Hop/Bergkamp Piss Pie Remix Element To Our Music'. The '80s breed of dinosaurs can't just lie on their sunbeds by the pool on Sunset and hope that their stray farts will fill Wembley. Besides, most of them come from post-punk stock, and they still care about things like 'credibility', 'integrity' and 'respect' in circles other than Mojo magazine. Ambition bites the nails of success, or something. And if Everything But The Girl can do it, so can you. If U2 were one of the bands who defined the '80s, especially the latter half - stadium conscience rock, the Live Aid aristocracy, po-faced liberal austerity, authenticity chic, nuclear paranoia, American cultural hegemony, etc - then they are only too aware that they can only reflect aspects of the '90s - post-Cold War internationalism, eclecticism and dance crossover culture, irony, post-Thatch apathy, media saturation - from a humbly detached perspective. They wouldn't dare set themselves up as spokesmen for a generation any more. So, yeah, we'll let them in the end-of-millennium party. Not least because 'Pop' is a very fine record which proves they've still got a great deal to bring to it, as a revitalised, recycled, repackaged modern rock'n'roll band. So how could this happen? I mean, just how toe-chewingly awful were U2 in the '80s? Let us count the ways: the flag-waving rebel/icon posturing; the impeccably safe, vaguely hypocritical say-nothing platitude politics; the men-of-the-people pretensions; the authenticity-on-loan of 'Rattle & Hum'; the rubbish poetry; the endless empty rhetoric, empty gesturing and empty pomp and circumstance of the stadium rock anthem style they epitomised. Smashing blokes, though, and when they concentrated on writing basic love songs (see 'The Unforgettable Fire', 'With Or Without You', 'All I Want Is You') they could breach the hardest of hearts. So, moderately awful then. Where did it all go right? No, it wasn't 'irony' that did it. It wasn't dance music, and it wasn't a pair of wraparound shades. It was around the turn of the decade, when they realised they were staring into a huge steaming abyss of naffness. U2 were officially uncool, and there was no point in pretending they could still be the band of the age, since they were so shackled to the '80s in their audience's minds. So it wasn't worth worrying about. Instead, they relaxed, loosened their belts and watched the world go by. More importantly, they relaxed sufficiently to allow a certain funk into their music, they dug into rich seams of genuine rock'n'roll sleaziness and even allowed themselves a taste of camp sexuality. Meanwhile, as by-products, a sense of drama and emotion emerged from the ashes of melodrama and bombast. And, don't choke on your Nicaraguan coffee, they had a laugh. They were still trying too hard. But, for the most part, it worked. There was still a lot of pseudy bollocks and casual hypocrisy inherent in the Zoo TV and Zooropa shows ('Everything You Know Is Wrong'... shaaaadaaap!), but for all the snotty sniffing of the PC police (because we're too thick to deal with a bit of fascist imagery), they
8/10Johnny Cigarettes
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