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Irish rock band

"The message, if there is a message in our music, is the hope that it communicates," U2's lead singer, Bono, announced to Jim Miller in Newsweek. Something of a rarity among popular rock groups, U2 emphasizes spiritual values and social and political conscience in its songs, which "speak equally to the [civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama] of two decades ago and the Nicaragua of tomorrow," according to Jay Cocks of Time. Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, the group won some international attention with the release of its 1980 album, Boy, but it was not until 1983's War— which featured the protest songs "New Year's Day" and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"—that U2 began to gain a large following of rock fans.

Though the foursome, consisting of Bono, guitarist Dave "The Edge" Evans, drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., and bassist Adam Clayton, is credited with bringing ideals back to a genre often primarily concerned with the celebration of worldly pleasures, Bono admitted to Cocks that he "would hate to think everybody was into U2 for 'deep' and 'meaningful' reasons. We're a noisy rock-'n'-roll band. If we all got onstage, and instead of going 'Yeow!' the audience all went 'Ummmm' or started saying the rosary, it would be awful." In Miller's opinion, Bono and U2 need not worry: "Playing droning clusters of notes and using chiming, bell-like timbres, as well as abrasive, buzz-saw textures, the Edge creates an electronic wall of sound that has an elemental power. . . . For all the nervous jangle of the music, its sheer scale and Celtic overtones create a weird, primordial resonance." Whether it be the words they are singing or the sound of the music they play, in the words of Christopher Connelly in Rolling Stone, U2 "has become one of the handful of artists in rock [and] roll history . . . that people are eager to identify themselves with."

The group began in 1976 when Mullen was expelled from a Dublin high school marching band for having long hair. Frustrated at not having an outlet for his drum work, he posted a notice on the school's bulletin board asking for others who wanted to start a rock band. Of the several students who came to his house to audition, Mullen told Cocks: "I saw that some people could play. The Edge could play. Adam just looked great. Big bushy hair, long caftan coat, bass guitar and amp. He . . . used all the right words, like gig. I thought, this guy must know how to play. Then Bono arrived, and he meant to play the guitar, but he couldn't play very well, so he started to sing. He couldn't do that either. But he was such a charismatic character that he was in the band anyway, as soon as he arrived."

At first the boys saw the band as a recreational activity, practicing on Wednesday afternoons. Clayton was the most serious about making a success of it, and found a manager, Paul McGuinness, for them in 1978. After that, they struggled to obtain opening gigs for popular Dublin bands. "You see," Mullen confessed to Cocks, "we couldn't play. We were very, very, very bad." They steadily improved, however, and, after Bono had pushed the band's tapes upon several recording executives, U2 landed a recording contract with Island in 1980. Boy, their first album, gained them an appreciative audience in their native country and Great Britain, and one single from it, "I Will Follow," received air play in the United States. U2's second album, October, did not sell as well. The production was rushed, because Bono, who serves as the group's main lyricist, had his book of lyrics stolen from him—the group had to hurry to release the pilfered songs before the thief could. Also, as Bono revealed to Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone: "We were, during October, interested in other things, really. We thought about giving up the band. . .. We wanted to make a record, and yet we didn't want to make a record, because we were going through a stage where we thought, 'Rock [and] roll is just full of shit, do we want to spend our lives doing it?'"

U2 came back big, however, in 1983 with War, which included the hits "New Year's Day" and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday." "New Year's" concerns the domination of Poland by the Soviet Union; "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" takes its theme from the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, particularly from "a massacre of civilians by the British" in that troubled country, according to Connelly in Rolling Stone. War not only established U2 as a favorite of U.S. audiences, but as a rock group of social conscience. The band appropriately debuted "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" at a concert in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Bono took to waving a white flag on stage during performances. He told Connelly it was supposed to be "a flag drained of all color"; Connelly interpreted: "as if to say that in war, surrender was the bravest course."

The Unforgettable Fire, U2's 1984 effort, continued in the idealistic vein of War, especially in its hit single "Pride (In the Name of Love)," a celebration of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Taking its name from a series of paintings by survivors of the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, it also included more eclectic selections such as "Elvis Presley and America," which Miller labeled "an all-too-effective evocation of Presley's catatonic stupor in his last days." Though, as Miller pointed out, "some critics have poked fun at the lyrics of the songs" on Unforgettable, it became U2's biggest selling album until it was usurped by 1987's The Joshua Tree.

The Joshua Tree, lauded as "U2's .. . best album" by Cocks, includes the hit singles "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Also on the disc is "Bullet the Blue Sky," a protest song inspired by Bono's trip to El Salvador. According to Cocks, "you can still hear the ache of fear in his voice, the closeness of the memory." In 1988, the group released a film and corresponding soundtrack album, Rattle and Hum, chronicling their 1987 world tour. As Jeffrey Ressner reported in Rolling Stone, "the picture is neither a straightforward concert movie nor a traditional rock documentary," containing footage of U2's visit to Presley's mansion, Graceland, and of the band singing with a church choir in Harlem, New York. U2 has also taken an active roll in many rock benefits, including the Live Aid effort for Ethiopian famine relief, and shows to raise money and awareness for Amnesty International, an organization seeking to help political prisoners.

—Elizabeth Thomas