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March 29, 1982 : San Francisco Civic Auditorium , San Francisco , CA

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U2 360: 10 Little Things About The World's Biggest Tour

U2 have never done anything on a small scale. Even as they cut their teeth in tiny clubs in and around Dublin in the late '70s, they brought with them a larger-than-life stage presence and an ambition that took years to grow into. By the end of the '90s, U2 boasted three of the highest-grossing tours of all time in The Joshua Tree, ZooTV and Popmart tours. For most bands, this would have been the capstone of a highly successful touring career. But for U2, those tours were just the beginning.

Only a select group of artists have embarked on their most successful tour so late in their career. U2, in perfect style, did exactly that from 2009 to 2011 as they pulled off the highest-grossing tour in music history. When it ended, U2 had racked up $736,421,584 in gross revenue and sold 7.2 million tickets over 110 concert dates. They had performed 62 different songs, for a total of 2,635 song performances. 

Today, June 30, 2019, is the 10th anniversary of the  first date of the tour, and in its honor here are 10 little things about the biggest tour in the world.

1. By The Numbers

It takes a lot of people to execute something of this magnitude. The Claw clocked in at 167 feet high, weighed 200 tons, and cost $750,000 per day to operate. A crew of about 300 people used 180 trucks to ship, assemble, and disassemble it at each city along the way. The articulated screen had over 1 million separate pieces to make it work. Even without the record-setting revenues, the 360 Tour would have been a monster by any standard .

2. W.H. Auden Introduces “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”

One of the more visually interesting elements of show was the laser jacket Bono wore during the encore performances of “Ultraviolet (Light My Way).” Prior to this song, the large video screens featured an animation accompanied by a mechanical recitation of “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden. Originally written as a satirical mourning of a political leader in 1936, the poem took on new meaning as it became a lament for lost love, and a perfect segue into “Ultraviolet.” Unfortunately, this was only featured at a handful of shows in 2009. 

3. Bigger Than The Biggest Stadia

U2’s innovative stage design for the 360 Tour, The Claw, was designed to make a huge stadium feel more like an intimate experience. It wasn’t unusual for the top of The Claw to reach higher than the stadium itself. This became an issue in two stadiums, one in Dallas and one in Montreal. According to Spectrum News and Corus Entertainment, in each city the band paid an additional $2 million to $3 million to raise the Jumbotron TV screens into the rafters, or alter the venue itself, to fit the stage. Other roofed stadiums, such as the Rogers Centre in Toronto, opened the roof to accommodate the show. 

4. Bigger Than The Pope

On September 24, 2009 , U2 played the second of two shows at historic Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in front of huge, packed crowds. So many fans flocked to the shows that the second night broke the Giants Stadium record for the highest single-event attendance. What did they dethrone? Pope John Paul II’s Mass during his October 1995 tour of the United States.

5. Breaking Their Own Records

The Pope’s Giants Stadium record wasn’t the only attendance record U2 set on the 360 Tour. Prior to 2009, the previous U.S. single-concert attendance record was set by U2 on their Joshua Tree Tour show at JFK Memorial Stadium in Philadelphia in 1987. That show was attended by 87,145 fans. Their Rose Bowl show , which was also broadcast on YouTube and later released on home video, broke their own record with an attendance of 97,014. 

6. Space: The Final Frontier

Even before U2 took the stage, the “space” theme was abundantly clear. Even from outside the stadium, The Claw appeared as if it were a spaceship just landed from some other planet. Their walk-up music, David Bowie’s classic “Space Oddity,” set the tone for the night. While the biggest space-themed highlight was the nightly “link-ups” with astronauts on the International Space Station (they were pre-recorded), space imagery was present in the pre-encore visuals too. If you listen to their performance of “Vertigo” on From The Ground Up: Edge’s Picks From 360 , you’ll hear Bono ask the crowd if they’re ready “to get the space station off the ground.” 

7. To The Moon

When it was all said and done, the 360 Tour traveled approximately 55,500 miles from show to show, enough distance to travel the globe 6.5 times. If U2’s tour trucks were a spaceship, they would have made it one-quarter of the way to the moon. (Contributed by Mason Merritt)

8. Breakfast Fruit And Cutlery

The final version of The Claw looked every inch like a landed space station, but its beginnings were far more terrestrial. In fact, its origins lie on Willie Williams’ breakfast table , where he created a rough mock-up of the 360 concept using a grapefruit and a variety of cutlery. 

9. Rarities And New Songs

U2 are not known for playing untested or rare songs on a regular basis. So it was a welcome surprise to see them road-test so many new songs in Europe in 2011. Songs such as “Boy Falls From The Sky,” “North Star,” “Every Breaking Wave,” “Glastonbury,” “Mercy” and “Return Of The Stingray Guitar” all made appearances on stage. Many of them even reappeared in different forms a few years later on Songs Of Innocence . 

10. Google Maps Takeover

Not only did The Claw take over every stadium it was installed in, but it also featured heavily in Google Maps in the weeks before and after each concert. Users were able to zoom into the stadium of their choice and see an overlaid image of what The Claw would look like when it finally landed in their city. While the feature is gone now, you can get a glimpse of what it looked like here .

(c) Betteridge/@U2, 2019

The tech behind U2's record-smashing tour

The U2 360 concerts are huge by any measure. But on Sunday, with what may have been the largest live-stream ever, the tour got even bigger.

PASADENA, Calif.--If you were one of the 96,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl Sunday night for the U2 concert--said to be the largest concert ever held here--you were sharing the experience with at least a few other fans off-site.

There's no way to know yet how many exactly, but it's safe to say millions of people around the world were also watching the concert live on YouTube, a potentially server-crashing Webcast that may have been the biggest live-stream yet.

For months, the band has been on tour with its U2 360 concerts. And to top off the grand claims, it has been called the biggest rock tour in history , at least as measured by the size and cost of its infrastructure--more than $750,000 per show, according to Rolling Stone.

Only days ago, the band announced that it would share the Rose Bowl concert live , with fans across the globe. Just before the band came on stage, a roadie calling himself Rocco got up in front of the crowd of 96,000 and said, "Tonight, you are the ones making history," shouting out that those in attendance would be joined by viewers in "North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica."

Photos: U2 goes global via YouTube

For its part, YouTube wasn't sharing much about how it put together the live stream. Before the show started, there was some discussion among reporters on hand at the Rose Bowl about whether YouTube would be up to the task of delivering the show to so many people, live, on so many continents. But if Twitter is any judge , the live-stream went off almost without a hitch. More to the point, a Twitter feed set up on the official YouTube U2 page showcased comments in a wide variety of languages from Webcast viewers.

Back at the Rose Bowl, in an effort to rally the capacity crowd, the concert-goers were told why this show was chosen by YouTube: "Because right here is where the greatest singers of U2 songs are....Tonight, we need to hear your voices, and to hear you sing. Can you do it?"

In response, the crowd roared its agreement, and indeed, throughout U2's approximately two hours on stage, there were several emotional moments when U2 leader Bono stopped singing and let the audience take over the vocals. These were truly beautiful and awe-inspiring moments, as there is very little on Earth like the sound of nearly 100,000 people singing together.

Ironically, no connectivity These days, you can find out what's happening at just about any event by turning to Twitter. But at the Rose Bowl, this wasn't the case. It turned out that there was nearly no connectivity, and so there seemed to be a dearth of tweets sent from inside the concert. Still, because the show was being watched by millions of people around the world, there is certainly no shortage of posts on Twitter about what was happening.

That's an ironic turn of events, though, and not at all what I expected. I thought there would be a steady stream of tweets emanating from the Rose Bowl, and I had expected to send many of them myself. Instead, this highly tech-centric concert was ground zero for a disconnected audience. We were truly "stuck in the moment," to quote one of U2's hit songs, though I doubt anyone wanted to "get out of it."

A YouTube representative did tell me prior to the show that the service was using 24 cameras to film the concert, as well as 24 additional closed-circuit TV cameras. Further, he said YouTube was offering its stream at three different qualities, so that almost anyone could watch, regardless of the speed of their Internet connection.

Having YouTube produce such a major Webcast is fitting, given the size and scope of the U2 360 tour. Among its facts and figures are tidbits like this: the 360-degree stage--which allowed huge numbers of fans to watch from behind--featured a 90-foot-tall steel structure, topped by a center pylon reaching 150 feet in the air; the innovative video screen atop the stage weighs 54 tons, is 4,300 square feet when closed, and is 14,000 square feet when opened; the screen itself is comprised of more than a million pieces, including components to illuminate 500,000 pixels, as well as 320,000 fasteners, 30,000 cables and 150,000 machined pieces.

The incredible expanding screen The video screen, according to information provided by the band's publicists, is "broken into segments mounted on a multiple pantograph system, which enables the screen to 'open up' or spread apart vertically as an effect during different stages of the concerts."

I didn't think I'd ever seen such a thing before, and it just about made my jaw drop when I noticed it. Already, the screen was a sight to behold, but it didn't seem all that big, especially when I thought back to what I'd seen the band do with video during its U2 3D film.

Well, it turns out I was right: I hadn't seen anything like this before, and neither had anyone else who hadn't been to one of the U2 360 shows.

"The video screen is the first LED screen to be based on a geometric system that allows it to expand in two directions simultaneously," U2 360 architect Mark Fisher told CNET News in an e-mail interview. "Video screens are normally flat panels that track like closet doors, or slatted panels that roll up like garage doors. The 360 degree screen uses a scissor-like motion to expand in two directions. It starts as a solid elliptical ring approximately 20 feet deep, and transforms into form a cone-shaped mesh 60 feet tall."

Fisher added that this is the first time such technology--what he called "transforming geometry"--has been used to "change the shape of a video screen."

And while Fisher said that, in general, the technology behind U2 360 isn't in and of itself new, the way it's being used during the tour most certainly is.

"The show employs a large number of computers and electric motors to control the motion of the screen, and there are large numbers of computer-controlled moving lights," Fisher said. "The video on the screen is also created using powerful computers that 'map' the picture onto the transforming screen. All of this automation and programming is possible because the computers available in 2009 and more powerful, and cheaper, than they were when we created the Vertigo tour in 2005."

Google Earth Another piece of technology used for the tour--at least in a way that U2's fans can interact with--is Google Earth. Fisher explained that the stage's designers decided it would be fun for fans to see the huge structure on Google Earth.

"So we hooked up with the folks that run the operation, and they agreed to let us put 3D models of the stage into the 3D models of the stadiums where it plays," Fisher said. "The 360 degree stage is turned around in each stadium in six days (and) the models stay in each city on Google Earth for slightly longer."

On U2's official Web site, the band explained what is going on with the Google Earth project: "If you're following the tour as it moves around...there's a very cool new feature on Google Earth--a model of the 360 stage, in situ, at the venue, about a week ahead of each show."

The site also explained that the model that fans see could be red, green or blue, with each color corresponding to one of three "steel teams" that "leapfrog each other from city to city to build the stage in each stadium."

Fisher also weighed in on the site with the real reason why the band chose to implement Google Earth: "We thought it would be interesting to put up on Google Earth a piece of portable architecture, which is what this structure is," he wrote. "In a way it's got no practical purpose...except that it's fun!"

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U2’s ‘360’ Tour Gross: $736,137,344!

Tomorrow night in New Brunswick, U2 will perform the 110th and final show of its monster "360" tour, wrapping up not only epic technological and musical achievements, but also going into the history…

By Ray Waddell

Ray Waddell

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Tomorrow night in Moncton, N.B., U2 will perform the 110th and final show of its monster 360 tour, wrapping up not only epic technological and musical achievements, but also going into the history books as the biggest tour ever.

When the final numbers are tallied, U2 360 will record a gross of $736,137,344 and total attendance of 7,268,430, Billboard.com/biz has learned, both the highest tour tallies ever reported to Billboard. U2 broke the Rolling Stones’ previous gross record of $558 million on April 10 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as first reported on Billboard.biz on April 8 .

Creepy Nuts' 'Bling-Bang-Bang-Born' Holds at No. 1 for Ninth Week on Japan Hot 100

The success of 360 is a testament not only to the enduring global appeal of the band, but also its ground-breaking-and risky-360-degree production, which increased the capacities of stadiums by as much as 25%. Details of the tour were first revealed on Billboard.com in March of 2009, when the tour, in support of the band’s 2008 album “No Line On The Horizon,” was still operating under the working title of “Kiss The Future.” By the time it was officially announced on March 9 of that year, the tour carried the “360” title, which longtime band manager Paul McGuinness says is a reference not only to the unique production of the tour, but also a sly nod to U2’s long-term multi-rights deal with promoter Live Nation, “a little private joke to amuse myself at one point.” This was the band’s first tour under that deal, steered by long-time U2 tour producer Arthur Fogel , chairman of Live Nation Global Touring and his Toronto-based team.

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The tour began June 30, 2009, in Barcelona, Spain, and swept across Europe before landing on North American shores on Sept. 12 in Chicago. This was the first time the band had played stadiums on the continent since the PopMart tour in 1997/’98.

As popular as U2 is worldwide, launching a never-before-attempted 360 configuration that would put 7 million tickets in the marketplace in a treacherous global economy was ambitious, to say the least. “I remember when everything was first laid out, the production was conceived, and we came to the realization of what it did to the capacities,” Fogel told Billboard.com/biz backstage at the tour’s 100th stop in Nashville earlier this month. “We were in a meeting in New York, we saw the design, and talked about all the different angles. There was a moment of sitting there and everyone thinking, ‘do you think we’ll sell the tickets?’ My gut was ‘absolutely yes,’ and I remember leaving the meeting and thinking, ‘oh shit.'”

Beyond the huge financial commitment the band and producers had made in launching the massive tour (not to mention a daily nut of $750,000 on the road, according to McGuinness), the aesthetic success of the production and the staging known as “the claw,” which literally surrounds the band with fans, depends on full houses. “There’s nowhere to hide,” Fogel says. “It was definitely scary.”

But sell those tickets they did, all over the world, and Fogel says what he learned form 360 was “probably more so than any other tour, to trust my instincts.”

The launch and execution of 360 were meticulously planned for more than a year, but those best-laid plans were blown up when news came last spring that the tour’s second North American leg would have to be scrapped due to an injury and resulting back surgery for U2 front man Bono. Producers were already on the ground at what was to be the tour’s first stop on that round in Salt Lake City when the news came.

Rejiggering the tour midstream was “challenging,” says Fogel. But the team moved quickly from the initial shock to rebuilding the North American leg for a year later, and did that so expertly that they not only were able to put most fans in the exact seat they would have been had the tour gone off as planned, but also found seven more shows, including the band’s first Nashville stop in 30 years.

“It was difficult at the time, but the most amazing thing through it all was the refund rate across all the shows was only about 9%, which is ridiculous,” says Fogel. “And we resold all those tickets.”

The final North American dates are considered by those involved to be among the band’s best on the tour, and mark a triumphant return to stadiums on this continent after the last stadium run in PopMart, which struggled to sell tickets in some markets. U2 played stadiums internationally but arenas in North America on the Vertigo tour in 2005-2007 the Elevation tour of 2001.

“After PopMart, the strategy was definitely to build back up North America, under-play, create that buzz and that demand, and I think we did a great job with that,” says Fogel, who has now produced four of the top five highest-grossing tours of all time. “To go outdoors in America this time, particularly with this production, is a story in itself. This thing, apart from, obviously, the band, great musicians, great music, great songs, was about creating that buzz in the world about this production. That was the hook.”

Now that U2 360 is set to close, Fogel says the magnitude of the accomplishment, which he calls a “career highlight,” is “finally starting to sink in.”

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Ed Sheeran breaks U2's record for highest-grossing tour ever

Suffolk singer’s Divide tour has generated over $736m (£607m), and still has 12 dates left to run

Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour has been named the highest-grossing tour of all time, breaking a record set by U2 that had stood for eight years.

Coming off the back of the chart-topping album of the same name, the Divide tour began in March 2017, and will have encompassed 255 shows when it finishes with four homecoming gigs in Ipswich later this month. So far it has grossed $736m (£607m), breaking U2 ’s record of $735m, with 12 dates still left to play.

It has also been named the most attended tour of all time: when it finishes, more than 8.5m people across 43 countries will have seen Sheeran perform, breaking U2’s record of 7.3m.

Writing on Instagram , Sheeran said: “Thanks so much for each and every one of you who have come to a show. 12 shows left, will never forget it.”

Sheeran’s manager Stuart Camp told Pollstar , who amassed the tour data: “What Ed has accomplished is truly incredible … to even be in the same ballpark as [U2] or spoken in the same sentence with a touring act like that is very humbling”.

U2’s record was set in 2011 by their 110-date 360° tour. Rather than focusing on stadiums as U2 did, Sheeran has included more intimate arenas – his average concert attendance is 34,541, around half U2’s 66,091 average. He also rejected VIP areas and sold tickets at a relatively low price, 14.2% lower on average than U2’s, but the sheer number of dates has ensured the record was broken nonetheless.

Sheeran found time to record a new album during the tour, No 6 Collaborations Project , featuring all-star collaborations with the likes of Cardi B, Bruno Mars, Stormzy, Eminem and Justin Bieber. It was released on 12 July and is currently No 1 in the UK and US, while two of its singles, I Don’t Care and Beautiful People, have topped the UK singles chart.

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U2: The boom and bust of the world’s biggest band

‘achtung baby’ was released 30 years ago. the key album of the irish group’s long career reinvented rock music and catapulted them to fame, but it was also their last great record.

“Everything you know is wrong.” The slogan appeared for the first time in the video for The Fly in October 1991, and it would become a refrain of the great Zoo TV Tour (1992-1993). That song, dark, rhythmic, rough and full of intelligent irony, broke radically with the sound and image that U2 had cultivated during the previous decade. The band members – Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. – had already established themselves as the most important rock band in the world thanks to their fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987).

At that time, the four young Dubliners were filling the biggest stadiums on the planet every night, and arousing a religious fervor among the masses. One rung above what even Bruce Springsteen could achieve, they restored authenticity to great rock music delivered on a big scale, and as an added bonus lent it a humanitarian commitment during the cruel decade of the 1980s.

Overwhelmed and plagued by insecurities, however, U2 were not enjoying themselves at all. Their next project, the documentary film and double album Rattle And Hum , backfired. What they meant to sell as a tribute to their discovery of rock’s American roots was anything but humble. Critics began to turn their backs on them and frequently used terms such as “megalomaniacs” and “messianic” to refer to the quartet.

In the 1990s, U2 went into crisis. It began with a performance at Point Depot in their hometown on New Year’s Eve 1989 that was broadcast globally on radio and TV and where they symbolically said goodbye to the Stetson hats of Rattle And Hum , to welcome the new Europe that was emerging after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Relatively fed up with themselves, they arrived at Hansa Studios in Berlin in late 1990, a legendary place where David Bowie and Iggy Pop had recorded. Either they would reinvent themselves, or they would break apart.

The sessions were traumatic until One was conceived, symbolizing the band’s stronger union in a Germany that had just pieced itself back together. Achtung Baby was electronic and rhythmic, with a dark and sexual vibe. It featured Bono’s best lyrics and shifted the paradigm of what successful bands should do to remain influential. In a time of conflict, and with their vulnerability on the surface, U2 achieved the greatest triumph of their career. Even their biggest detractors eventually admitted that there was something interesting there.

It went even further in their live performances. The Zoo TV Tour was a great postmodern game that allowed them to laugh a little at themselves, to add theatrical effects to their show and to anticipate the new information society. With the internet still in its infancy, multi-screen messages scrolled by, and there were simultaneous video duets with Lou Reed. They called the White House, live. Among their list of opening acts they chose the Pixies, Public Enemy, The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Sugarcubes, Björk, PJ Harvey and Pearl Jam, proof that they wanted to nurture the next generation of alternative music.

In the middle of the tour, they did something even more unusual: they recorded and released Zooropa , the unofficial B-side of Achtung Baby . A more radical and risky album, they were only able to play a few songs live a handful of times, though the record deserves to be rescued for The Wanderer , a post-apocalyptic parable sung by Johnny Cash. U2 had become the standard-bearer of creative risk as a symbol of global triumph, a quality perhaps only shared by The Beatles , but even then some were pointing out that the emperor was walking around with no clothes on.

In the penultimate chapter of The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship , a memoir of Charles Bukowski’s last days, the writer describes (without naming names but it’s easy to guess) the night Bono invited him to a concert at Dodger Stadium. “There was a vibrancy there but it was short-lived. It was fairly simplistic. I suppose the lyrics were all right if you could understand them. They were probably speaking of Causes, Decencies, Love found and lost, etc. People need that – anti-establishment, anti-parent, anti-something. But a successful millionaire group like that, no matter what they said, THEY WERE NOW ESTABLISHMENT. Then, after a while, the leader said, ‘This concert is dedicated to Linda and Charles Bukowski!’ 25,000 people cheered as if they knew who we were. It is to laugh.”

U2 would never again have that agenda-setting relevance as a band at the vanguard of their era. Inspiration never resurfaced, and bad decisions began to multiply, until they became a band that arouses as much rancor as admiration. Here is a chronology of their decline in a few unfortunate milestones.

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me , recorded for the Batman Forever soundtrack, was their first bland single since Two Hearts Beat As One (1983). They released a semi-experimental album with the title Passengers , with Brian Eno as a fifth member, but it was quickly forgotten. “There’s a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record,” Larry Mullen would say years later in the book U2 by U2 .

Their ambitious new tour was already booked, but the new album Pop was not going to be finished on time. U2 didn’t seem to know what they wanted, and delayed its release several times. Some songs edged towards a more kitsch, electronic direction, and others harked back to a more mellow, classic pop rock. Meanwhile Bono was losing his voice, and the Popmart Tour was getting out of hand. A massive, expensive set-up for stadiums to make an ironic comment about consumer society seemed to miss its own point quite badly. There was a giant mechanical lemon that didn’t function properly, and the band got trapped inside on more than one occasion. For the first time in years, some concerts did not sell out, and there were boos in Barcelona when they shocked fans with a karaoke performance by The Edge of Macarena by Los del Río .

Bono met Pope John Paul II on a series of visits to meet world leaders as ambassador of Jubilee 2000, a project aimed at ending the foreign debt of Third World countries. Bono let him try on his sunglasses and later declared that John Paul II was the “first funky Pontiff.”

Bono produced his first and last film script for Million Dollar Hotel , directed by his friend Wim Wenders. It garnered the most devastating reviews ever obtained by the German director and even its star, Mel Gibson, said in an interview that it is “as boring as a dog’s ass.” Even Bono himself seemed to agree. Meanwhile, the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind was hailed by fans as a return to form, but with a more mainstream character. They entered into a dynamic that other groups of their generation, like R.E.M. or Depeche Mode, would also end up assuming: the same, only less. They attended the Amigo Awards ceremony in Madrid and delivered a part-playback performance of their new single, Beautiful Day . They were the big stars of the gala along with Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera and the Spanish band Estopa.

Their performance at the Superbowl final became a tribute to the victims of 9/11 and to the United States. Bono began his interpretation of Where The Streets Have No Name by shouting “America!” and concluded it by showing the stars and stripes on the back of his jacket, reaching his peak as an emotional manipulator. Gone were the days when the singer would fly a white flag and say that the only color he saw in other flags was the color of blood.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb delved ever more into epic-sentimental rock designed to please all audiences. The band signed an agreement with Apple and released an exclusive iPod model accompanied by a campaign in which Bono appeared singing Vertigo from screens everywhere. In the documentary From The Sky Down (2011), the vocalist declared that they had started off as punks at age 16, seeing The Clash in Dublin, and there came a time when they realized that they had become the enemy. That was what they had wanted to fight against in Achtung Baby . By now, they were clearly the enemy.

The U2 company moved to the Netherlands to pay less tax , and the ensuing scandal reached the Irish parliament. The members of the group tried to justify the move with unconvincing arguments, including that they were running a global business, or that all companies try to minimize their tax burden.

The group signed a 12-year contract with the multinational promoter Live Nation, which took control of a large part of the product, including management of ticket sales and merchandising. There was something hidden in the small print that would not become known until 2013: their manager Paul McGuinness, the man who had discovered them in 1978 and could be considered the fifth member of U2, would retire as part of the agreement.

They released No Line On The Horizon , the beginning of their trilogy of sadder albums, followed by Songs Of Innocence in 2014 and Songs Of Experience in 2017. Despite the promotional fanfare that accompanied their releases, no particular song became a hit.

The 360º Tour broke records in terms of global box office sales and the sheer scale of the stage set-ups, though this did not necessarily imply artistic health. There was a lot of paraphernalia, but very little substance: fans basically went to listen to old hits rendered tired-sounding by the passing of the years.

U2 performed at Glastonbury. It was their first time at a festival since 1985, and their debut at the British megafestival. Under normal conditions, it should have been a triumphant concert packed with their greatest hits, but the quantity of banners asking them to pay their taxes overshadowed the music. Their performance lacked conviction.

Other megastars were releasing their albums by surprise or posting them directly online (Radiohead, Bowie, Beyoncé), so U2 decided to have their album Songs Of Innocence automatically installed for free on users’ iTunes libraries... without asking for permission first. Instead of celebrating, many users protested angrily because they couldn’t delete the unwanted tracks. Faced with a barrage of protests, Apple was forced to develop an option to get rid of the record. The first spam album in history is still held up today as the perfect example of a completely misguided marketing strategy.

U2′s appearance on the track XXX from Kendrick Lamar’s album Damn was announced. The rapper’s fans protested, while applauding his collaboration with Rihanna on another song. The band’s first nostalgia tour kicked off, celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree . Some fans were happy because the band decided to perform the album in its entirety, but others were bored by the anticlimactic sequencing of the show. Worse still: on their next tour they decided to do the complete opposite and didn’t play a single song from that album.

U2′s latest release is We Are The People , the official theme song of the UEFA European Football Championship performed by Bono and The Edge together with dance music DJ and producer Martin Garrix. The song is so cheesy it’s beyond parody. If at the turn of the millennium Coldplay were hailed as the contender to take U2′s throne, here the theory that U2 are their own tribute band has been confirmed.

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U2’s 50 Greatest Songs

U2 weren’t great songwriters when they first came together as high schoolers in 1976. It took them a couple of years as a second-rate Dublin cover band to even rise to the level of juvenilia like “Cartoon World” and “Science Fiction Tune.” But as the Seventies folded into the Eighties, something clicked and suddenly amazing bursts of inspiration like “Out of Control” and “I Will Follow” began pouring out of them.

The best of the bunch were collected on their 1980 debut, Boy , and within just three years, politics entered their consciousness, leading to “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day.” By the time they cut The Joshua Tree , only seven years into their professional career, they were one of the greatest songwriting collectives of the decade, and once they started to experiment in the Nineties things only got better. In the 2000s they went back to a more stripped-back sound with classics like “Beautiful Day” and “Moment of Surrender,” and in 2014 they told the story of their roots with Songs of Innocence . Here, we count down their 50 greatest songs.

“40”

Bono took this lyric from one of his key influences: King David, who wrote the Psalms. “I was always interested in the character of David in the Bible because he was such a screw-up. It’s a great amusement to me that the people God chose to use in the Scriptures were all liars, cheaters, adulterers, murderers. I don’t know which of those activities I was involved in at the time, but I certainly related to David. I was writing my psalm.” U2’s version of Psalm 40 (“I waited patiently for the Lord”) gave War its big finale and became one of their trusty concert-closing singalongs.

“Numb”

This unique U2 single began as a discarded track from Achtung Baby called “Down All the Days.” “It’s this quite unhinged electronic backing track with a very traditional melody and lyrics,” said the Edge when “Down” reappeared on Achtung Baby ‘s 20th-anniversary reissue. “It almost worked.” What made it work as “Numb” was replacing Bono’s melody with the Edge’s deadpan rapping and lots of errant noises and samples. “What we’re trying to do is re-create that feeling of sensory overload,” said Bono. “So you hear a football crowd, a line of ‘don’t’s, kitsch soul singing and Larry singing [background vocals] for the first time in that context.”

“Acrobat”

“It’s an unusual time signature for us,” said the Edge of Achtung Baby ‘s penultimate track. “It’s like a 6/8 almost, which is a very Irish time signature. It’s used in a lot of traditional Irish music, but in rock & roll you don’t really hear it that much.” Though the Edge spent the run-up to the dance-centric Achtung Baby absorbing the industrial sounds of bands like KMFDM and Einstürzende Neubauten, this song’s rhythm is actually driven by an atypically busy performance from Mullen, who’d been listening to the classic rock of Cream and Jimi Hendrix. The result is a quintessential U2 mix of tradition and innovation.

“North and South of the River”

When Bono wrote “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” he was an angry 22-year-old. But 15 years later, when he penned this somber reflection on the conflict in Northern Ireland, he was more interested in pleading than shouting. “There was a badness that had its way,” he sang. “But love wasn’t lost, love will have its day.” Originally buried as a B side to 1997’s “Staring at the Sun,” this sad ode to peace got its definitive version on Irish TV in 1998, when U2 played a tribute show to the victims of a recent terrorist bombing.

“Sweetest Thing”

“Sweetest Thing” began as Bono’s apology to his wife, Ali, for spending her birthday in the studio, but it became so much more. After releasing it as a B side to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the band gave it a face-lift with rejiggered vocals and new guitar textures for a 1998 best-of compilation. U2 also made a video for the song that featured Bono wooing Ali. After albums like Pop and Zooropa, it signaled a songful return to form, paving the way for All That You Can’t Leave Behind. “It’s pop as it should be – not produced out of existence, but pop produced with a real intimacy and purity,” the Edge said.

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”

Co-produced by British trip-hop artist Nellee Hooper, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” dates back to the Zooropa sessions – on the album’s cover, it’s referred to in distorted purple letters spelling “ISSMEKILLM.” It emerged in 1995 as the lead single from the Batman Forever soundtrack – a rare move into blockbuster work for Bono and the Edge, who had previously done music for artier films by directors like Wim Wenders and Robert Altman. Though Bono originally balked at the idea, the Edge said, “I figured it’d be good for us to be involved in something that’s basically throwaway and lighthearted.” The gamble paid off, and it ended up a bigger hit than anything off Zooropa, thanks to a track that gave their Nineties dance flavors a woozily anthemic feel. Bono sings, “They’ll want their money back/If you’re alive at 33.” On the PopMart tour, the band made stark reference to the dark side of fame by projecting Warhol-esque images of celebrities, many of whom had died young, including Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur.

“No Line on the Horizon”

U2 began work on what would become No Line on  the Horizon in 2006 with veteran producer Rick Rubin. But when those sessions proved unsuccessful, they soon returned to their longtime collaborators Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, traveling to Morocco to began recording as a six-piece band. They nailed the album’s pulsating title track – about a “girl, a hole in her heart” – in a single take. “It’s very raw and very to the point,” the Edge told Rolling Stone . “It’s rock & roll 2009.” Said Bono, “You could have called this album ‘The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress,’ because all the characters are struggling to stay true to their values or want to realize their potential.”

“Lemon”

“‘Lemon’ started out as a disco tune until Brian Eno got through with it,” said Zooropa engineer Flood about this propulsive dance track, a showcase for Bono’s falsetto. Flood credited Eno for coming up with chilly Talking Heads–esque background vocals, “making it a very bizarre folk song.” “Lemon” was originally written and recorded with a drum machine, though Flood ultimately decided to use Mullen’s live drums instead. In contrast to the upbeat art-rock feel, lyrically it was inspired by the “strange experience to receive, in the post, from a very distant relative, early Super 8 footage of my mother,” said Bono, “aged 24, younger than me, playing a game of rounders in slow motion.”

“In a Little While”

When Bono came up with the understated, soul-kissed “In a Little While,” he thought he’d written a simple little tune about stumbling home after a night out drinking and facing the inevitable hangover to come (“Friday night running/To Sunday on my knees”). But the song took on a new meaning when Joey Ramone died of cancer only a year after its release; the singer was a huge U2 fan who loved All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and he had been listening to “In a Little While” in the hospital during his final moments. “Joey turned this song about a hangover into a gospel song,” Bono said later. “That’s the way I always hear it now, through Joey Ramone’s ears.” 

“Volcano”

For 2014’s Songs of Innocence , U2 created a concept album based on their experiences growing up in Dublin. “We wanted to make a very personal album,” Bono told Rolling Stone . “Let’s try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. The whole album is first journeys – first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that’s hard. But we went there.” “Volcano,” which kicks off with a throbbing bass hook written by the Edge, taps the anger Bono felt as a teenager until he joined his band. “You were alone,” he sings. “But now you are rock & roll.”

“Love Is Blindness”

This pulsating, celestial-effects ballad, the concluding track on Achtung Baby , wasn’t originally intended for U2; Bono wrote the song (on piano, which he rarely did) with R&B-soul diva Nina Simone in mind before U2 kept it for themselves. The Edge has said the song has “probably one of Bono’s finest lyrics”; the reference to “a little death,” Bono has said, “can be taken to mean a faint during orgasm but also works as an image of terrorism. … I was mixing up the personal and the political.” The personal factored into the music as well: Recording his solo, the Edge, who was separating from his wife, “played until the strings came off,” Bono said.

“Luminous Times (Hold On to Love)”

A testament to the creative roll U2 were on during the Joshua Tree sessions, this excellent, darkly roiling song about love’s addictive power ended up on the cutting-room floor. (A demo version was used as the B side to “With or Without You.”) The band recorded it without the help of either Brian Eno or Daniel Lanois, arriving at something closer to the shadowy expressionist charge of arty European punk than American blues or gospel. Though “Luminous Times” was never fully completed, the Edge told Eno, “I think this is as good as anything on the album.”

“The Electric Co.”

“The Electric Co.” raged about a friend who’d been tortured with electroshock therapy at a Dublin psychiatric hospital. It was a high point on U2’s 1980 debut, Boy, with reverb-crazed guitar steeped in Public Image Ltd or Echo and the Bunnymen, as well as the “boy” refrain that gave the album its title. Onstage, Bono often threw in a snippet of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” which turned out to be an expensive habit when U2 released it on Under a Blood Red Sky before clearing the rights. (The snippet was cut from later editions.) Bono began replacing “Send in the Clowns” with “Amazing Grace” – a much cheaper option.

“Drowning Man”

“It was the title of a Sam Beckett–style play I’d started about a drowning man,” Bono said about this handsome, haunting piece. But in gestures the absurdist Irish writer might’ve appreciated, there’s no mention of a drowning man anywhere in the lyrics, which conflate romantic and spiritual love, and crib lines from the Bible (Isaiah: 40, to be precise). Etched with the Edge’s acoustic-guitar strokes and capped with a Middle Eastern–flavored violin flourish, the dazzling music points toward the ambitious tapestries of The Joshua Tree ; the Edge described the final version as “perfection. It’s one of the most successful pieces of recording we’ve ever done.”

“Desire”

Drawing inspiration from the Stooges’ raucous, proto-punk classic “1969” (hardly the stuff of hit singles in 1988), Bono and the Edge wrote a song that made the Billboard Top Five and earned U2 one of their first Grammys. Bono has said the tune displayed “the religiosity of rock & roll concerts” as well as his own “lust for success.” Driven by a thunderous Bo Diddley rumble and capped off with Bono’s searing harmonica solo, it provided a sharp contrast to the uplifting expansiveness of The Joshua Tree, let alone anything else on the radio. “I liked the fact that it was totally not what people were listening to,” the Edge has said. “It was a rock & roll record – not a pop song.”

“Until the End of the World”

This dense, tribal-stomp track – which Bono described as being inspired by “a conversation between Jesus and Judas” – defines U2’s nothing-is-simple dictum when writing songs. Bono initiated the riff for a song called “Fat Boy,” but it didn’t go anywhere – until the Edge picked up on it and refashioned the part as the band’s contribution to the soundtrack for Wim Wenders’ film Until the End of the World . Not only did the re-recorded, revved-up new version wind up on U2’s own album as well, but, as the Edge has said, “We told Wim, ‘You can have it, but we want it too. … By the way, we’re borrowing your title!'”

“Gone”

“I’ve written a song now that’s like a two-finger salute to the people who tried to foist a sense of guilt on us because we’re successful,” Bono said. “The thing is, we always wanted to be one of the biggest bands in the world.” On “Gone,” he takes on the price of fame (“You get to feel so guilty/Got so much for so little”) over guitar that’s like a drill boring into glass. “The sounds that a guitar is capable of creating are, at this point, cliché,” the Edge said. “The challenge is to find things you can do with the instrument that are not already used up.” On the PopMart Tour, “Gone” was occasionally dedicated to late INXS vocalist Michael Hutchence. Said Bono at one show, “Going … going … but never gone.”

“Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”

Bono was a close friend of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, and the singer’s 1997 suicide impacted him very deeply. On the soulful “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” Bono carries on a conversation that he never got to have with his departed friend. “I just knew that if Michael had hung around an extra half an hour, he would have been OK,” Bono said. “I feel the biggest respect I could pay to him was not to write some stupid, soppy fuckin’ song. So I wrote a really tough, nasty little number, slapping him around the head. And I’m sorry, but that’s how it came out of me.”

“City of Blinding Lights”

U2 began work on “City of Blinding Lights” during the Pop sessions, but they didn’t get around to finishing it until How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb seven years later. Bono’s lyrics were inspired by his first trip to London with his wife, when they were teenagers, and the band’s first trip to New York, in 1980. “It’s an area of Bono’s lyric writing that I really like,” the Edge said. “It’s cinematic, conjuring up a place and time. New York is a city that really brings you somewhere, a state of mind.” The song got a second life when Barack Obama used it during campaign events in 2008.

“Discothèque”

“We had a great life, we’re listening to a lot of dance music, staying up all night,” Bono told Rolling Stone . “We’re young, our friends around. It was just a wonderful time, and we tried to capture this in songs like ‘Discothèque.'” As the first single from 1997’s Pop, “Discothèque” was the initial volley for the band’s brief late-Nineties foray into electronic music, perhaps the most polarizing moment of U2’s career. The song – which Bono called an “earnest little riddle about love … just disguised as trash” – came equipped with a brittle techno feel and a music video where the band dressed up like the Village People. “We’re actually trying to make a kind of music that doesn’t exist yet,” Bono said of U2’s new sound. “That is a terrifying place to be.” His trepidation was not unwarranted: Reception to the bold change was mixed (“U2 sounded inspired,” said The New York Times. “Now it sounds expensive”); and though Pop debuted at Number One, it fell out of the Top 10 three weeks later, leading some to believe U2 had lost their commercial instincts. “We don’t just live in the U.S.,” Bono told Rolling Stone . “It was Number One in 28 countries. I can’t believe people think that’s not enough. What do they want from us?”

“Breathe”

This searing, cathartic song from No Line on the Horizon originally had two competing sets of lyrics: one about Nelson Mandela and the other a more personal tale of redemption inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses . The second version ultimately won out. Co-producer Brian Eno estimated the song went through 80 incarnations in the studio. Live, it was a nightly highlight of the 360 ̊ Tour, even as many other songs from No Line fell by the wayside. “There’s this theme running through the album of surrender and devotion and all the things I find really difficult,” Bono said. “All music for me is worship of one kind or another.”

“11 O’clock Tick Tock”

U2’s third single, made with legendary Joy Division producer Martin Hannett, came out in May 1980 – just weeks before the death of Ian Curtis. As longtime U2 comrade Gavin Friday recalled, “Martin Hannett was like a Womble from hell, smoking spliffs: his hair, the smoke and this extraordinary sound.” Even a hardened pro like Hannett was taken aback by how raw U2 were. “He was scratching his head and complaining to Edge that the rhythm section couldn’t play in time,” Clayton said of Hannett. “And that’s pretty much true.” The definitive live version, recorded in Boston, came out in 1983 on Under a  Blood Red Sky.

“Ultra Violet (Light My Way)”

U2 had so many ideas going into Achtung Baby that one early creation, “Ultra Violet,” wound up being split in two – half of it became “The Fly,” and the other half mutated into this often-overlooked gem. Brian Eno wrote about the song’s “helicopter-ish melancholy,” a phrase that captures both its fluttering majesty and desperation. The lyrics seem to describe a relationship, with Bono insistently repeating the word “baby” – the first time he’d ever sung that word on a U2 song. Said producer Flood, “There was a good deal of laughter about Bono coming out and going ‘baby.'”

“The Unforgettable Fire”

“It was a soundtrack piece I’d been messing around with on the piano at home,” said the Edge of this powerfully atmospheric, multilayered song, which weaves together multiple verse and chorus melodies – “It’s classical, almost.” The title was taken from an exhibit of the same name at Chicago’s Peace Museum, a collection of art by survivors of the U.S. bombings of Japan during World War II that left a strong impression on the band. The song, a favorite of Bono’s father, is “very evocative of a city, in this case Tokyo,” said the singer, “coming like a phoenix out of the ash.” But it’s also a love song, with lyrics – “your eyes, as black as coals” – that may refer to Bono’s wife, Ali.

“Vertigo”

The Edge listened to a lot of the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols and the Who when U2 began work on 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and the influence of those raging guitar bands is very clear on the lead single. “It’s just a great, visceral rock & roll song,” the Edge said. “It’s very simple: drums, one guitar, one bass and the vocals.” Bono’s lyrics were inspired by a vision of an awful nightclub, and the famous intro cry of “ Uno, dos, trés, catorce ” (which translates to “1, 2, 3, 14”) had a similar origin. “There may have been some drinking involved,” Bono said in 2004.

“All I Want Is You”

One of Bono’s most heartfelt love songs, the glimmering ballad “All I Want Is You” is a tender tribute to his wife, Ali. “That’s a song about commitment,” he said. The Edge worked out its pensive chord progression around the same time he and Bono wrote “Desire,” but it took the cinematic string arrangements of Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks to push the song over the top. (Edge called Parks’ contribution “haunting” and “gorgeous.”) “‘All I Want Is You’ is probably the best of what we were trying to do with [ Rattle and Hum ], in that it has a traditional basis, but it was a truly U2 song,” the Edge said.

“Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”

The spare, elegant sound of Zooropa ‘s third and final single was a successful attempt at a tribute to Frank Sinatra. “I mean, no one is going to mistake us for Frank Sinatra’s backing band,” said Clayton. “A very humble little combo sound is what we ended up with, and that really worked.” The song originated in the Achtung Baby sessions, and was revived when German filmmaker Wim Wenders needed a title track to his 1993 movie Faraway, So Close! “The film was about angels who want to be human and want to be on Earth,” said Bono. “But to do so, they have to become mortal. That was a great image to play with – the impossibility of wanting something like this, and then the cost of having it.”

“Mofo”

“We spent months farting around with it,” said Clayton about “Mofo.” “And then we said to Flood, ‘Let’s hip-hop it, let’s strip it back, let’s get a beat together, let’s see where it goes.'” They ended up with the hardest-hitting electronica experiment on 1997’s Pop, big-beat techno redolent of contemporary acts like the Crystal Method and the Future Sound of London. But while the music shot toward the future, Bono mined his past. “It was as if my whole life was in that song,” he said. “It was extraordinary playing ‘Mofo’ live. The song would come to a shuddering halt, and there I was, just speaking to my mother in front of 50,000 of my closest friends.”

“A Sort of Homecoming”

The opening track of The Unforgettable Fire – U2’s first collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois – was worked up in Bono’s actual home, a converted 19th-century Martello defense tower on the Irish coast. Fittingly, the song feels like a military march, albeit one ascending into heaven. It was inspired by the Romanian-Jewish poet Paul Celan, who – like U2 – wrestled with notions of spiritual faith in his work, and who famously described poems as paths “for projecting ourselves into the search for ourselves. … A kind of homecoming.” Above the Edge’s guitar abstractions are some of Bono’s most potent verses, a paddle wheel of images, pledges and chants that conjure a ravaged battlefield of the heart. “A lot of rock & roll is banal ideas well-executed,” Bono humble-brags. “Whereas I think a lot of what we do is really very interesting ideas, badly executed. ‘A Sort of Homecoming’ involved a lot of very interesting ideas, well-executed.” U2 superfan Chris Martin concurred: “I know [it] backward and forward. … It’s so rousing, brilliant and beautiful. It’s one of the first songs I played to my unborn baby.”

“Bullet the Blue Sky”

In 1986, Bono and his wife, Ali, traveled to El Salvador, which was then in the midst of a horrific civil war. There, they witnessed firsthand the brutality of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship, including the sight of F-16 fighters attacking civilian villages. When Bono returned to Ireland and the Joshua Tree sessions, he instructed the Edge to “put El Salvador through your amplifier.” The result was incisive and explosive, with a heavy, tumultuous sound that recalled Led Zeppelin and lyrics that dug into the darkest aspects of American imperialism and racism. “I love America and I hate it,” Bono said. “I’m torn between the two.”

“Out of Control”

U2 were still in their teens when they introduced themselves with “Out of Control” – the song was written on Bono’s 18th birthday. But they were already earnest young men, brooding over childhood angst with lines like “Monday morning/Eighteen years of dawning.” It appeared on their debut release in September 1979, a three-song seven- and 12-inch that cracked the Top 20 of the Irish singles charts. Like a lot of the tunes on Boy, it echoes the goth punk of bands like Joy Division or Siouxsie and the Banshees. Bono once mused, “I would like to do that album again, if nothing else to stop singing like Siouxsie Sioux.”

“Running to Stand Still”

In an essay Bono wrote for Rolling Stone to honor the late Lou Reed in 2013, he cited “Running to Stand Still” as “redhanded proof” of U2’s debt to the hugely influential musician. Lyrically, it’s one of several U2 songs that take on the subject of addiction. Opening with a Delta-steeped slide guitar, the song turns into a fragile benediction with a melody similar to Reed’s Velvet Underground classic “Heroin.” “Running to Stand Still” was improvised almost whole-cloth live in the studio; producer Daniel Lanois later recalled “a really wonderful communication happening in the room at that time.” Said the Edge, it’s “amazing in one go to get that much of a song.”

“Gloria”

The greatest rock anthem ever sung in Latin? Ecce  Bono! In the early days of MTV, “Gloria” was the video hit that put U2 on the map for American kids; in this 1981 clip, the startlingly young lads jam on a barge in Dublin’s Grand Canal for a crowd of scruffy locals. On “Gloria,” Bono wails about teen religious fervor (“ Gloria in te domine “), with a nod to Patti Smith’s 1975 reinvention of Van Morrison’s Sixties classic, while the Edge plays psychedelic slide. The idea to sing in Latin came after listening to an album of Gregorian chants owned by their manager Paul McGuinness. “It’s so outrageous at the end, going to the full Latin whack,” Bono said. “Wonderfully mad and epic and operatic.”

“Walk On”

Inspired by the plight of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, “Walk On” is about the strength it takes to make a great sacrifice for a just cause. A section from the song’s spoken-word intro gave U2 the title for one of their most inspirational albums: “And love is not the easy thing/The only baggage you can bring/Is all that you can’t leave behind.” “It is a mantra, really, a bonfire of the vanities,” Bono said. “Whatever it is you want more than love, it has to go.” Aided by a soaring guitar melody (one of the Edge’s best of the 2000s), “Walk On” charted all over the world and won a Grammy for Record of the Year. Live, it became a nightly tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released in 2010.

“Zooropa”

“The opening was the audio equivalent of Blade  Runner’ s visuals,” said Bono of the gibbering, media-disseminated voices at the beginning of U2’s futurist opus “Zooropa.” “If you closed your eyes, you could see the neon, the giant LED screens advertising all manner of ephemera.” For the track itself, engineer Joe O’Herlihy recorded jams from soundchecks on the Zoo TV Tour, the Edge combed them for backing tracks, producer Flood mixed in bits from a separate studio jam, and Brian Eno added synths. “It was a time when everyone was all indie and gray and dull,” said Bono. “It’s amazing to be walking around these modern cities like Houston or Tokyo – and embracing it.”

“Mysterious Ways”

In 1991, it would have been hard to imagine U2 as anything close to a dance band, but “Mysterious Ways,” a Top 10 hit from Achtung Baby , proved that was more than possible. Brian Eno, who played a huge role in their transformation, aptly described the song as “heavy bottomed and lightheaded.” The track was built out of Clayton’s swooping bass part, which had been taken from an unreleased song called “Sick Puppy,” and the rhythms on the finished track, complemented by co-producer Daniel Lanois’ congas, give the song a swaying pulse. Bono’s lyrics – an ode to the power of female allure – are as joyful as he would ever get.

“Please”

Fourteen years after “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2 released their second single to address the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland (Mullen’s drumming on the bridge even seems to allude to the 1983 hit). Producer Howie B, who Mullen called U2’s “disco guru,” had taken the band to dance clubs to help usher in their electronica experiment Pop . For “Please,” he played them a beat rooted in a loop of Mullen’s drums from the sessions for another Pop tune, “If God Will Send His Angels.” Bono constructed a melody, and the song promptly fell into place. “Once the band got it, boom,” said Howie B. Bono called it “a mad prayer of a tune.” 

“Every Breaking Wave”

Fourteen years after “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2 released their second single to address the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland (Mullen’s drumming on the bridge even seems to allude to the 1983 hit). Producer Howie B, who Mullen called U2’s “disco guru,” had taken the band to dance clubs to help usher in their electronica experiment Pop . For “Please,” he played them a beat rooted in a loop of Mullen’s drums from the sessions for another Pop tune, “If God Will Send His Angels.” Bono constructed a melody, and the song promptly fell into place. “Once the band got it, boom,” said Howie B. Bono called it “a mad prayer of a tune.”

“Pride (In the Name of Love)”

This anthem of resistance and love was inspired by a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. ( Let the Trumpet Sound ) given to Bono by Rolling Stone writer Jim Henke. The soaring melody and chords popped out during a soundcheck in Hawaii; Bono described the lyrics as just a “simple sketch.” But it took flight in one of the band’s first recordings with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders added stirring backing vocals. Before a late-Eighties concert in Arizona, Bono received a threat that he’d be killed if he sang the song. He sang it anyway.

“New Year’s Day”

“New Year’s Day” was U2’s breakthrough, complete with a video where they ride horses through the snow. (The Edge later admitted it was actually four women with scarves over their faces riding those horses.) The surprising musical inspiration: Clayton trying to figure out Visage’s New Romantic disco hit “Fade to Grey.” But “New Year’s Day” was a salute to Polish union leader Lech Walesa, jailed in December 1981, when the government outlawed his Solidarity movement. (In 1990, Walesa became Poland’s first democratically elected president.) “At the same time, it’s a love song,” Bono said. “Love is always strongest when it’s set against a struggle.”

“Even Better Than the Real Thing”

Originally conceived around the same session as 1988’s “Desire” – and based around a riff the Edge called “about as close as we could or would ever want to get to the Rolling Stones” – the song, first called “The Real Thing,” was transformed during the sessions for Achtung Baby . Starting with its whirring-siren intro, the track took on a shadowy, throbbing energy, driven by the Edge’s effects pedal. Bono said his lyrics were “reflective of the times we were living in, when people were no longer looking for the truth. We are all looking for instant gratification.”

“I Will Follow”

“It’s coming from a very dark place,” Bono said of the opening track – and crowning moment – on U2’s debut, noting that it was inspired by “real anger and an enormous sense of yearning.” Written about the love between a son and his mother (Bono’s died when he was a teen), it gave stomping U.K. post-punk a heraldic urgency. “I remember picking up Edge’s guitar and playing the two-stringed chord … to show the others the aggression I wanted,” Bono recalled. “The percussion in the drop was a bicycle spinning, wheels upside down and played like a harp with a kitchen fork.” “I Will Follow” quickly became their live trump card; the Edge recalled a Boston gig where they played it three times, as set opener, closer and encore, to a rapturous crowd. “We left the stage feeling incredible.”

“Moment of Surrender”

The standout track from U2’s 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon, and the song that ended nearly every show of their two-year U2 360 ̊ stadium odyssey, is a seven-and-a-half-minute meditation on addiction. (The term “moment of surrender” is Alcoholics Anonymous lingo for the instant in which an addict admits helplessness.) “The character in the song is a junkie, so that’s where I got it,” Bono told Rolling Stone in 2009. “I know a lot of people who have had to deal with demons in courageous ways. Maybe there’s a part of me that thinks, ‘Wow, I’m just an inch away.'” Producer Daniel Lanois, who has struggled with his own addiction issues in the past, came up with the chorus melody. The rest of the song was written during an impromptu jam, with the band improvising the version that ended up on the album out of thin air in one take. “That spirit blows through every now and then,” Bono told Rolling Stone as U2 were preparing to release No Line on the Horizon . “It’s a very strange feeling. We’re waiting for God to walk into the room – and God, it turns out, is very unreliable.”

“With or Without You”

“It doesn’t sound like anything else of its time,” the Edge said of the first single from The Joshua Tree. “It’s not coming from an Eighties mentality. It’s coming from somewhere completely different.” With its stark sound and low-key video, “With or Without You” cut through the bloat and slickness of Eighties rock (“It whispers its way into the world,” Bono said), giving U2 their first Number One hit in the U.S. and turning the band into reluctant pop stars. “You don’t imagine hearing it [on the radio],” Clayton said. “Maybe in a church.” The song’s lyrics were sparked by heroes of the U.S. civil rights movement and the “new journalism” of the 1960s. Yet “With or Without You” – rooted in a simple bass groove and an ethereal guitar that frames Bono’s yearning vocals – remains one of U2’s most universal songs to date, a meditation on the painful ambivalence of a love affair. Bono insisted it was “about how I feel in U2 at times: exposed. I know that the group thinks I’m exposed and that I give myself away. I think if I do any damage to U2, it’s that I’m too open.”

“Where the Streets Have No Name”

Opening with nearly two minutes of the Edge’s shimmering guitar, the first song on The Joshua Tree is an evocation of freedom at its most open-ended. The Edge came up with the basic track in his home studio, with the finished product growing out of a characteristically painstaking process that proved so trying, co-producer Brian Eno later said half the time recording the album was spent on that song. “We had this giant blackboard with the arrangement written on it,” Daniel Lanois told Rolling Stone . “I felt like a science professor conducting them.” Bono later said, “It contains a very powerful idea. You can call it ‘soul’ or ‘imagination,’ the place where you glimpse God, your potential, whatever.” For its iconic video, an homage to the Beatles’ final performance, the band played atop a Los Angeles liquor store, tying up traffic for hours. “It’s been ripped off hundreds of times,” recalled director Meiert Avis. “But the excitement comes from the rebellion; the taste of freedom lights up the fans and the band.”

“Bad”

“Bad” is a powerful song about a painful subject. Bono wrote it to address the rampant heroin abuse that was crippling recession-plagued Dublin during the early Eighties, basing his lyrics on the experiences of people he knew personally. “I’ve always had a real respect for responsible people,” Bono said, discussing the song. “But I also have a real respect for irresponsible people. There is that side of me that wants to run.” The hypnotic, Velvet Underground–inspired track took just three takes to record, with Brian Eno adding keyboards and minimal overdubs. But “Bad” really took off live as a surging communal hymn; radio DJs have been choosing the version on the 1985 concert EP Wide Awake in America over the studio version for decades, and the triumphant 12-minute version U2 played at Live Aid in 1985 (during which Bono brought a woman out of the crowd and danced with her) became one of the festival’s most memorable moments. Recalled Adam Clayton, “It’s only after six months of touring it and talking to different people that you get to the inner truths of the song.”

“Sunday Bloody Sunday”

“There’s been a lot of talk about this next song,” Bono famously tells the crowd in the version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that appeared in Live: Under a Blood Red Sky. “Maybe too much talk.” It was a new level of ambition for U2: “We were trying to be the Who meets the Clash,” Bono later said. His inspiration: the 1972 massacre when English soldiers shot and killed 14 unarmed protesters in the Northern Irish town of Derry. “We realize the potential for division in a song like that,” the Edge told a journalist. “So all we can say is that we’re trying to confront the subject rather than sweep it under the carpet.” It wasn’t the first song about Bloody Sunday – John Lennon and Paul McCartney both had protest records in stores before 1972 was over. But U2 made it a grand statement of militant Christian pacifism, with Larry Mullen Jr.’s martial drums, violin from Steve Wickham – a stranger the Edge met at a Dublin bus stop – and Bono waving a white flag onstage. As Bono told Rolling Stone at the time, “I’m not interested in politics like people fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love.”

“Beautiful Day”

After spending the Nineties creating music that didn’t sound anything like the anthemic albums that had won U2 a massive audience during the Eighties, the band decided to kick off the 2000s by getting back to basics. “There was a big debate over the guitar sound on ‘Beautiful Day,'” the Edge said. “That was really the sound of U2, the sound we made our own and abandoned. Whether or not we should bring it back became a real talking point.” The group ultimately combined an unmistakable stripped-down sound with co-producer Brian Eno’s electronic flourishes, and Bono wrote a set of lyrics about the importance of embracing painful moments that were inspired by Australian preacher John Smith. “He talked to me about how depression is a nerve end,” said Bono. “Pain is evidence of life.” “Beautiful Day” exploded onto radio in late 2000; it won U2 a Grammy for Song of the Year and helped their transcendent comeback album All That You Can’t Leave Behind win Record of the Year. When Bono accepted one of the awards, he said the band was “reapplying for the job of the best band in the world.”

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

“The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God,” Bono told Rolling Stone . U2’s second Number One single revels in ambivalence – “an anthem of doubt more than faith,” Bono has called it. The song was typical of the arduous sessions that went into creating The Joshua Tree : Originally called “Under the Weather,” it began, like most U2 songs, as a jam. “It sounded to me a little like ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ played by a reggae band,” the Edge recalled. “It had this great beat,” producer Daniel Lanois said. “I remember humming a traditional melody in Bono’s ear. He said, ‘That’s it! Don’t sing any more!’ – and went off and wrote the melody as we know it.” The song’s lyrics were full of religious allusions, classic images steeped in the tradition of American gospel music that the band filled with new meaning and purpose. “I was rooting around for a sense of the traditional and then trying to twist it a bit,” Bono told the magazine in 1987. “That’s the idea of ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.'”

“One”

In a catalog devoted to exploring romantic love, spiritual faith and social justice, no single U2 song unites all these themes as potently as this supreme soul ballad. “It’s [about] coming together, but not the old hippie idea of ‘Let’s all live together,'” Bono said. “It is, in fact, the opposite. It’s saying, ‘We are one, but we’re not the same’ … [and] we have to get along together in this world if it is to survive.”

The lyrics, informed by tensions within U2 at the time, “fell out of the sky, a gift,” recalled Bono. “‘One,’ of course, is about the band.” The music, born of paired Edge guitar riffs, was painstakingly sculpted by producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who added tension to the gentle beauty. The result is an immaculate balance of the intimate and anthemic. The understated rhythm section and Edge’s rainbow hues map Bono’s journey from the near-whispered opening (“Is it getting better?”), to the bridge where he declaims “love” in a cracked holler, to the falsetto outro, all pain and fierce hope. “One” reflects many geopolitical rifts – it was recorded in Germany, as the Cold War was coming to an end, and mixed in Ireland. Bono later recalled “going around Europe when stuff was going on in Bosnia, sometimes 300 miles from where we were playing.” Released as a single to benefit AIDS research, it spoke to families riven by the disease and to all embattled lovers. Singers from Johnny Cash to Mary J. Blige have covered it, Michael Stipe memorably sang it at an MTV event celebrating Bill Clinton’s inauguration, and Axl Rose called it “one of the greatest songs that’s ever been written,” adding that, when he first heard it, “I just broke down crying.”

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U2 in Atlanta: An oral history of the band and the city’s shared journey

Photograph by Adrian Boot

On a muggy May evening in 1981, a group of musicians pulled up to the curb across from the Fox Theatre and started lugging their instruments into a nightclub where the Georgian Terrace parking deck now stands. Until 1979, the venue had been known as Alex Cooley’s Electric Ballroom, and hosted Fleetwood Mac, Patti Smith, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. Its replacement, the Agora Ballroom, was a cavernous room where the four young men from the north side of Dublin—singer Paul “Bono” Hewson; bassist Adam Clayton; guitarist David “The Edge” Evans; and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., none older than 21—introduced Atlanta to their debut album, Boy , a collection of post-punk anthems that contrasted sharply with the New Wave dance beats, soft rock, and soul ballads crowding the Top 40 at the time.

Seven months later, the band was back for a second show. In a 1981 interview with Bono for Muzik! magazine, Atlanta journalist Tony Paris wrote about the frontman’s desire to be heard on mainstream radio and for fans to leave room for his lyrics—about defiance, God, the death of his mother—to “sink in.” British photographer Adrian Boot, who toured with the band that autumn, captured images of U2 members mugging along West Peachtree Street in front of the former Sans Souci club, a jukebox dealership, and an old-school filling station. The next night, the band shook the Agora rafters with the single “I Will Follow” twice during its 60-minute set. Today, listening to a YouTube bootleg of that concert from 37 years ago reveals just how little U2’s core sound and spiritual evocations have changed in almost four decades.

Atlanta, a forgettable stop to less perceptive musicians from across the pond, offered a complicated soul, divided by its Civil War past, civil rights present, and global aspirations. When U2 played the Agora on December 1, 1981, the city was coping with the aftermath of the Atlanta child murders. Later that same month, former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young celebrated his victory in the recent mayoral election runoff; Ted Turner’s fledgling CNN network was revolutionizing international news; the CDC developed the first definitions for a disease it would soon label AIDS; and the roar of jet blasts from the newly expanded Hartsfield airport, which would evolve into the world’s busiest, hummed in the distance. Atlanta went on to host the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, emerge as a center for global health initiatives, and grow a multibillion dollar film and music industry. For its part, U2 would become one of the biggest acts in rock history. On May 28, the band returns for its 15th concert here (at the Infinite Energy Center) in support of its 14th album, Songs of Experience , a mature counterpoint to the adolescent ruminations of Boy . Today, U2 writes and plays as if America is still there to be conquered, and at age 58, Bono’s lyrics about love and mortality also contemplate the fraught politics of the Trump era.

U2’s intersections with Atlanta over the years have gone beyond the city as a requisite tour stop. For a band from Europe intent on deconstructing the myth of America, Atlanta—its imperfect icons, its musicians, its leaders—has been a specific, if rarely noticed, part of U2’s journey, not only for the city’s social justice movements of the past but for the present, too. In anticipation of U2’s first Atlanta concert in nine years, two generations of Georgians talk about the band.

1981-1985 Early days, Unforgettable fire , and the reach of Live Aid

Between 1981 and 1983, U2 performed four times in Atlanta. In 1984, the band released its fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire . The recording contained two songs—“Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “MLK”—about Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy fascinated Bono after a writer at Rolling Stone gifted him a copy of the King biography, Let the Trumpet Sound .

John Lewis was an Atlanta city councilmember at the time.

John Lewis (U.S. congressman; civil rights leader): I don’t remember the exact moment I heard “Pride (In the Name of Love),” but I’m sure it was right after the song came out. I identified with [U2’s songs] because of the similarities I recognized between [situations] in America and in Northern Ireland. They had a Bloody Sunday there, similar to the Bloody Sunday we had in Selma. The struggle for freedom and liberation is universal.

On April 29, 1985, when U2 rolled into the Omni on the Unforgettable Fire tour to play its biggest Atlanta show to date, the city had just hosted the inaugural International AIDS Conference. The band also made a visit to the King Center.

Tony Paris (Freelance writer and former editor of Creative Loafing ): By the time U2 played the Omni, the band could command the money it needed to put on a well-conceived show using the latest technology. It was chilling to watch them play “Pride” with photographs of MLK projected behind them. But I had to laugh, remembering what Bono said to me only four years earlier: “Tony, U2 is not a political band.” Maybe not in governmental terms, I thought, but they (or, at least Bono, in his lyrics) were certainly now engaging in what French philosopher Michel Foucault might have called political spirituality.

In the 2005 book, U2 by U2 , Bono recalled that he had flown his father, Bob Hewson, from Ireland for the Omni show. When Bono took a limousine to Hartsfield to fetch his father, Bob balked at the vehicle, so they switched to a taxi. Backstage after the show, Bono saw his father approach him. “This is a moment I’ve waited for all my life,” Bono wrote. “My father was going to tell me he loved me. He walked up, put his hand out, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Son, you’re very professional!’”

Eight weeks after the Omni show, on June 22, 1985, U2 played on a bill with Athens band R.E.M. at the Longest Day music festival in Milton Keynes, U.K. Bono would recall meeting Michael Stipe for the first time as “that dance when two contemporaries kind of work around each other.” The friendship grew into what Bono labeled “one of the most important of my life.” On July 6-7, 1985, U2 and R.E.M. played at the Rock Torhout/ Rock Werchter festivals in Belgium.

Mike Mills (bassist, R.E.M. cofounder): U2 was big before we were, so they were the festival headliner, and we were playing earlier in the day, but we rode in and out [of the festival site] with them on their bus. Everybody took turns singing songs and Irish folk ballads.

Less than a week later, U2 performed in London on July 13 to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief as part of Live Aid, a televised concert broadcast which reached one-third of the world’s population and launched the band into super stardom.

Michelle Nunn (CEO and president of CARE; former CEO of Points of Light/Hands On Atlanta): In the summer of 1985, I had just finished high school and was preparing for college. The performances at Live Aid [including U2] fit the zeitgeist of the moment. The concert inspired my belief that collective action—literally joining hands—could help change the world. Seeing this activism prompted me to imagine how I could be a part of creating change.

1986-1992 Conspiracy of Hope Tour, Joshua Tree , Zoo TV at the Georgia Dome

U2 returned to Atlanta in 1986 as part of Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope Tour, which supported releasing prisoners of conscience worldwide. U2 was writing its fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree . The day before the show, Amnesty held a press conference at the King Center, attended by Coretta Scott King; that night, Bono and Larry Mullen, Jr. jammed with members of Lou Reed’s and Peter Gabriel’s bands in the hotel bar at the Ramada Plaza downtown.

U2 returned to the Omni in December 1987 for two shows in support of the Joshua Tree . The following year, the band paid homage to the American South as part of the Phil Joanou–directed documentary (and album of the same name), Rattle and Hum . By the time the Berlin-recorded stylistic departure called Achtung Baby was released in 1991 and the band hit the road in North America in 1992, the first Gulf War had come and gone, John Lewis was in his third term as a congressman, Maynard Jackson was Atlanta’s mayor once again, and Bono, behind thick shades and his new alter-egos The Fly, Mirror Ball Man, and MacPhisto, had begun prank calling the White House from the stage most nights during concerts on the “Zoo TV tour.” U2 played the Omni in March 1992 and returned that September to headline the first rock show at the newly built Georgia Dome with opening act Public Enemy and Big Audio Dynamite.

Peter Conlon (president of Live Nation Atlanta): Alex [Cooley] and I wanted to make sure that we booked the first show there, and we wanted it to be special, so we asked U2. 50,000 people. Maybe the biggest show ever in Atlanta at that time, because Fulton County Stadium couldn’t hold those kind of numbers, nor Grant Field. It sold out right away.

Thomas Wheatley (articles editor at Atlanta magazine): I was 12 years old. I was amazed at the stage: I remember cars on cranes, massive video screens, and platforms—all for a four-piece band. My mom let me buy a ridiculous amount of lighters on the off-chance everyone lit them during “One.” They did, so we did. The drunk woman standing in front of us had permed hair, and I accidentally lit a strand on fire. She didn’t notice. I don’t know why, but we left early—we must have had school the next day—while they played “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Walking through the basically empty corridors of the Georgia Dome made me feel like I was in the end credits of a movie.

Chuck D (cofounder of Public Enemy; member of Prophets of Rage): I knew what Bono had to say about King, and he knew what I had to say. We weren’t going to sit around and talk about it. Bono comes along with the crew from Dublin and visits [Dr. King’s] crypt, which was becoming part of the tapestry of Atlanta at that time and almost [an afterthought] for people who already lived there. Anything Bono decided to do, especially as an outsider traveling in the American South at that time, I appreciated his effort. That tour taught Public Enemy so much about how tours should be run, and it was our first engagement with gigantic venues. Plus, we will always get to say we were the first artists to play in the Georgia Dome.

Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

1993-2001 PopMart, friendship with R.E.M., Elevation Tour

As R.E.M. became U2’s rival for the title of “biggest band in the world,” the relationship between the bands strengthened. In 1993, not long before U2 released Zooropa , members of both bands performed at an inaugural ball for Bill Clinton, forming a one-night-only group, Automatic Baby.

Bertis Downs (attorney and advisor to R.E.M.):  There had been a late-night hotel bar session a couple of nights before—Michael Stipe really loved the U2 song, “One.” Michael and Mike [Mills] were up late singing it together, and the idea came up of perhaps playing it at the MTV Ball with the two U2 guys in town (bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.). They thought, “We could do this.” The next day, calls were made and a rehearsal was arranged. We wanted to keep it a secret, which was possible before Facebook and Twitter. They performed it at the ball as Automatic Baby [referencing U2’s 1991 album,  Achtung Baby , and R.E.M.’s 1992 album, Automatic for the People ]. Four minutes, unannounced, and that was it.

In 1997, U2 performed its PopMart tour at the Georgia Dome, with Bono also devoting his time to Jubilee 2000, the campaign for wealthy countries to wipe clean old debts owed to them by poor countries. In its January 2000 issue, Newsweek asked, sarcastically, “Can Bono Save the Third World?” U2 released All That You Can’t Leave Behind that October, eight days before the election of George W. Bush.

U2 played two Elevation Tour shows at Philips Arena in 2001, one in March and one in November , bookending the terrorist attacks of September 11. An allotment of general admission floor tickets meant fans could get up close and personal with the band in a way they hadn’t been able to do since the early 1980s.

Tai Anderson (President of the Atlanta chapter of the Recording Academy; former bassist for Grammy-winning band Third Day): When U2 came to Atlanta in 2001, I camped out all day long with the other fans so I could get a good spot on the floor “inside the heart” (the stage featured a heart-shaped catwalk). It was ironic, because Third Day had already performed our own shows in front of thousands of people. We would later headline Philips Arena ourselves, but we were fans, too. A few months after their second Philips Arena show that year, U2 played the Super Bowl and scrolled the names of the lives lost on 9/11. In that moment, U2 showed us what America means to the rest of the world.

Mike Mills : U2 had come into town on their night off before the 2001 show. We had a dinner party at my house in Athens. I gave a toast about how great it was to have friends who had walked alongside us on a similar path for all of these years, because we could always look to each other for inspiration. I go see U2 shows, and it makes me want to write a better song or be a better musician. R.E.M. always thought being in a band was like being in your own little gang. Those are the friends you turn to in difficult times, and you always have each other’s backs. U2 and R.E.M. came from the same point of origin in terms of why we were in a band. It was really supportive to have them going through the world at the same time as we did.

Photograph by Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

2002-2018 Salute To Greatness Award, ONE, Vertigo, 360 Tour

In January 2002, Bono and Bobby Shriver founded DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In March, Bono visited George W. Bush at the White House to discuss AIDS, and the following January, Bush announced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a health initiative that would also raise the profile of the Atlanta-based CDC. Bono’s charitable work increasingly intersected with Atlanta leaders.

Helene Gayle (CEO of Chicago Community Trust; former CEO of CARE) : Lots of celebrities get involved with philanthropy, but Bono stands out because he goes deep on policy. He knows about storytelling. I talk in wonkish terms, but he taps into the human spirit.

On January 17, 2004, the King Center honored Bono with the Salute to Greatness Award . Bono, in his acceptance speech, spoke of how the Irish “despaired for the lack of vision of the kind Dr. King offered people in the South in their struggle. . . . I wrote ‘Pride (In the Name of Love),’ in a way out of that feeling.” Coretta Scott King died in 2006, but Bernice King, youngest child of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center, says her mother was especially fond of Bono.

Bernice King : There are few people in life [outside of our family] whom my mother took to and saw as a son of sorts. Bono is one of those. She found him fascinating. She was a little giddy. She must have picked something up in his spirit that attracted her.

The King Center hosted Bono, John Lewis, and Chris Tucker in a roundtable with AIDS activists, doctors, and scientists to discuss how to tackle the AIDS epidemic in Africa and rethink the impact of international aid.

David Ray (vice president for policy and advocacy of CARE) : At that point, we were coming out of the post-9/11 era, which was a time when the U.S. was still looking inward and the world felt like a place in chaos. There was a group of about nine of us international humanitarian organizations who got together to discuss how the U.S. engages in the world and how to help with the AIDS crisis, poverty, and hunger. [Along with DATA and the Christian advocacy organization Bread for the World], we became part of the framework for Bono’s organization, ONE .

ONE is a nonpartisan organization cofounded by Bono in 2004 which lobbies governments to fund disease eradication and poverty reduction in poor countries. ONE and CARE advocates engaged both John Lewis and Georgia’s U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson in cosponsoring bipartisan legislation around food security and public-private partnerships in Africa. Third Day also became involved with ONE. Since 2004, U2 has released four albums, played two nights at Philips Arena on its 2005 “Vertigo tour” and returned to the Georgia Dome in 2009 with the “360 tour.”   On December 1, 2011–thirty years after U2 played its second Atlanta show at the Agora–Coca-Cola  announced   a partnership with (RED), Bono’s product initiative to fight AIDS. That same day, Bono attended a World AIDS Day  event   in Washington, D.C. with President Obama alongside CARE’s Helene Gayle, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, and Coca-Cola’s Muhtar Kent.  In 2016, Bono met Jimmy Carter when both men were honored for their humanitarian work.

Tai Anderson : Bono and Jimmy Carter were two of my heroes growing up. Their faith drove them. As Christians, we believe that Jesus taught us to love God and to love our neighbor, and for both Carter and Bono, loving your neighbor has never been determined by lines on a map. Especially in the world we live in today, your neighbor is every human being. Jesus didn’t teach “God and Country,” he taught “God and Neighbor.”

This article appears in our  May 2018 issue .

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The first gig, the first album releases, the second album drops, the real follow up album drops, war, the unforgettable fire, the joshua tree takes u2 to new heights, the money train rolls in, u2 finally flops.

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Songs of experience, present day, musical style, sources cited.

If you’ve been a fan of the rock or pop music scene in the past four decades, there is a good chance you’ve heard about U2. They are one of the longest-running bands out there. Not only have they managed to become a sensation in the music world for over 40 years, but they have managed to become some of the most famous people in the world period. Whether you like their music or not, you know the name U2, and that’s because they’ve managed to transcend music into becoming pop culture icons.

I’ve always been a moderate fan of U2, appreciating what they’ve done for music as a whole while also failing to fall completely in love with the style of music they create. One thing is completely clear, though: their sound is unique, and despite being less complex musically than most famous rock bands out there, they have adapted their sound to each decade they’ve existed in and have managed to score hits that span over 40 decades.

The journey of U2 is a wild one, and that’s always the case when talking about a band that has managed to stay relevant for this long. There is a lot to know about U2 and its members, so let’s go on a journey to see where it all began and just how they managed to take over the world.

U2 is the biggest band to ever come out of Ireland, and that is where the entire history of the band began. It all started in one school, Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin. Sometimes band origin stories seem like they’re completely ripped out of a movie, and with U2, the way they formed is just absurd circumstance-wise.

It started with a simple note on the school’s notice board that was a post for musicians looking to start a band at the school. It was posted by 14-year-old Larry Mullen Jr. The post was responded to quickly by Paul Hewson on vocals (who would go on to be known as Bono,) David Evans on guitar (who would become The Edge,) Dik Evans on guitar, Adam Clayton on Bass, Peter Martin on guitar and Ivan Mccormick.

The band was called The Larry Mullen Band, which, as you can tell by just reading it, is the worst name for a band to ever exist. Larry wanted to be the leader of the band, but that wasn’t going to be the case with Bono in the picture.

Bono took control of the band completely right off the bat, which would paint the picture of the band’s direction. Part of that direction involved getting rid of Martin almost immediately because of his poor guitar-playing abilities.

This would be one of the first big moves Bono would make for the band and would mark his authority in the group, even though he was still only in high school. McCormick was then kicked out of the band as well, leaving the 5 of them remaining in serious need of a name change.

That new name was Feedback, which was original but not the one that would take them to the stratosphere. The band was largely a cover band at first, playing covers of The Clash and The Sex Pistols, the latter of which they would name as one of the biggest influences on the band.

Feedback had their first gig at St. Fintan’s Highschool. The show went well, and they actually got paid for the gig, which spurred yet another name change. It changed to The Hype, but by that time, problems with the band would start standing out, including those with Dik Evans, who was already in college.

His being separate for school led to him being phased out of the band. This quickly led to a four-man band that would become U2. They went with the name because it didn’t really mean anything and would lead people to wonder. Dik Evans would play his last show at a church.

The four-man lineup would go on to define the group for the rest of their career, with Dik Evans likely feeling a sizeable amount of regret for not being able to stay in the band right before they made their big debut.

Three years after the band formed, U2 would release their first official single in the form of “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”. It would not be the debut that you’d expect from such a talented band, and the single didn’t hit the charts anywhere. Despite that, the band would start to pick out songs to make their first record.

The band had accumulated a sizable amount of material at this point, and it was during this time that The Edge would get a Delay Effect Unit for his guitar, which lends a delayed echo to guitar sounds, and this would be something that would go to define much of U2’s music.

After the recording went relatively well, the album would release in 1980 and got some pretty great reviews. The album itself would chart in The top 100 in the UK and US. Singles would start pouring out from the band as well, such as “A Day Without Me.”

The album would require a supplemental tour, so they set out to do just that. The tour would span both the USA and Europe. Over time, the first album was a big success, but it still lacked the massive hits that define big-time albums.

The next album was called October, and it would mark a huge moment for the band. The songs “I Will Follow” and “Fire” were both released, and Fire, in particular, became a massive hit. It wasn’t all smooth sailing with the second effort, though, as Bono lost an entire briefcase full of lyrics and musical ideas in a famous and absurd circumstance.

This was back in an era where things had to be written down if they wanted them to be preserved, and whether it was stolen or just misplaced, it was gone for good. This forced the band to quickly write new material while on tour, and when it came time for the recording sessions in the studio, Bono had to improvise the lyrics on the spot.

Despite the craziness that happened with the album, they were able to gain some more recognition, including opening for a big band at the time, Thin Lizzy. The rock and roll lifestyle is never one for the faint of heart, though, and in U2’s case, both Bono and The Edge were part of an intense Christian group called the Shalom Fellowship, which of course, did not support the ways of a rock star’s life.

They eventually realized that their calling was not to be in a Christian group that would cast judgment on their way of life but to be rather world-renowned rock stars who would influence generations of musicians to come.

The band actually had their music ready to go for a new album the third time around. This time, none of the notes were lost or stolen, and the band gave up many of the religious and spiritual themes that seemed to permeate through October and released War in 1982.

For this Album, The Edge had truly defined his sound and songwriting while the rest of the band was on vacation, including Bono. During this time, The Edge toyed around even more with delay effects and added chorus effects to his sound as well, which came out in a big way on the album War.

The big hit off the album was “New Year’s Day,” which soared up the charts in the UK and became the band’s biggest hit to date. U2 finally made its mark in the US as well, charting at number 53. The album dropped shortly after and reached number one in the UK and number 12 in the US. The Edge, in particular, made he made his mark with this album, and Bono’s strong songwriting made its way into War’s more decidedly political themes with songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

This progression into politically charged music struck a chord with fans worldwide, and suddenly, U2 went from opening for bands like Thin Lizzy to headlining arenas. Bono, in particular, grew into his own during this time as well, becoming a frontman worth paying attention to not only for his unique and soaring vocals but the on-stage presence that included hurling himself into the audience off of massive structures.

He slowly became a figure larger than the band itself, which is why the first thing you think of when it comes to U2 is Bono.

U2 had hit it big by 1984, and with their massive popularity came a new record deal to really put their popularity into income for the band. The band had embraced a pop-rock angle for their last album, becoming arena darlings while tearing up the charts with multiple singles, but the direction of the band wasn’t going to keep going that way.

U2 has always been a very unique sound, and that’s because of their willingness to experiment with various styles, and with their next album, The Unforgettable Fire, that experimentation took flight.

When it was released, the band had finally found the sound that would go on to define the rest of their career — powerful and subtle at the same time, with lyrics that range from autobiographical to completely abstract.

The huge hit off the album was “Pride(In the Name of Love),” which gave the band their biggest hit to date. It’s still a massively played song that reverberates throughout the years, with lyrics that reference Martin Luther King.

With their experimental album proving to be one that would give them their biggest hits, U2 decided to double down on their artistic side and give it another go with The Joshua Tree, which was released at number one in twenty different countries. Massive hits came off the album that still get airtime today in “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

This album established U2 as the biggest rock band in the world in 1987, which was tough to do with the crowded rock landscape that included so many different genres. Still, the album is known as one of the best in rock history, and the accompanying tour they went on was enormous, allowing the band to sell out tons of arenas.

The album would get followed up by Rattle and Hum, which was an enormous album that included live performances and guest appearances. Overall, it wasn’t the follow-up to The Joshua Tree that most were expecting.

Still, despite that, the album reached number one worldwide again, proving the band was pretty much invincible regardless of the types of albums they put out. Rattle and Hum was less a U2 album and more of a mix of all kinds of American music. It featured artists such as B.B. King.

The New Era Begins

The band had been the biggest act in rock for a few years when 1990 hit, but they were clearly in search of a new direction following Rattle and Rum. Their next album would be called Achtung Baby, and the recording wasn’t the smoothest. They had multiple arguments over where the band would go from that point and what style of music the album should have.

It almost led to a complete breakup of the band. The band did not break up. Instead, from the turmoil and arguing came the song “One,” which would become a massive hit and fuel the Fire for the album’s release.

That release came in 1991, and Achtung Baby immediately sounded different than their previous endeavors. It became one of their biggest selling albums of all time and supported five singles, including “One.”

The most interesting song on the album was “Mysterious Ways,” which featured some interesting rhythm guitar and an infectious chorus that at times sounds like a completely different band. The alteration of styles here was something the world was clearly into, and the darker lyrics that filled the album were right in line with the oncoming teen angst of the 1990s.

Once again, U2 managed to release an album that would be called one of the best rock albums of all time. That’s not just hyperbole, as it managed to win the Grammy for Best Rock Performance. That gave U2 two insanely successful albums that would become known as some of the best ever made, a rare feat indeed.

After Achtung Baby took over the world, U2 embarked on a bizarre tour that would see Bono and the band dressing up in different satirizations of the rockstar lifestyle and world events going on in the media.

The tour was defined by several characters that Bono dressed as, including “The Fly,” which saw Bono clad in leather and acting as over the top as possible, almost parodying himself while poking fun at the nature of the rockstar lifestyle. Despite this completely bizarre tour, the audiences across the US ate it up and made it their most lucrative grossing tour ever, coming in at $67 million.

After showing that they were the most popular band in the world, U2 signed the biggest contract in rock and roll history, signing a six-album deal for a whopping $60 million. As soon as the ink was dry, another album came in the form of Zooropa, which got U2 back to experimenting with more sounds, this time in the dance music and industrial style.

Some have noted the similarities to Nine Inch Nails at times with this album, which makes sense as that band was beginning to make a big name for itself at that time as well. The album would become another massive success again, winning the Grammy that year for Best Alternative Music Album this time.

The Lifestyle Catches Up

Adam Clayton had been battling alcohol troubles for a long time, as many in the music industry tend to do. The issues were hidden for a while, but during a concert in 1993, he blacked out before a show and couldn’t perform in the show that night.

Luckily, they were able to temporarily find a replacement, and following the show, Clayton pledged to get clean. The tour they were on would eventually conclude in Japan; with Clayton back in the fold and the band operating at full strength, the tour made $151 Million, marking a landmark achievement for any artist.

It had been a long time since the uneven criticisms of their second album, October, had hit, so U2 was bound for a letdown at some point. It came in the form of Pop in 1997. The album was not at all like their previous material, and it was instead the band’s exploration of dance music in a heavier way than Zooropa ever meant to.

Despite the controversial change to their music, it was still released to a great reception. It also debuted at number 1 in more than 30 countries, so the world definitely was up for whatever the band was cooking, although it quickly fell off the charts because of the lack of hits.

The Bounceback Comes with All That You Can’t Leave Behind

U2 understood their audience better than most bands and knew that following the disappointment of Pop, they needed to recapture the sound that turned them into musical gods. With the new millennium in full swing, they needed to get back to their roots, and that’s just what they did with All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

The album was released in 2000, and with the strength of their soaring, positive vibe-laden mega-hit “Beautiful Day,” the band once again took home ht Grammy for Best Rock Performance along with Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

The album itself didn’t have any groundbreaking sound, but the catchiness of the choruses and melodic riffs were not to be ignored. Bono famously said at the Grammys that year that “U2 was reapplying for the job of the best band in the world.” Despite the lack of modesty, Bono was very right in that assessment, and their performance at the Grammys that year pretty much confirmed they got the job.

It was getting a bit ridiculous for U2 here; I mean, how could they sustain success in yet another decade? The follow-up to All That You Can’t Leave Behind was called How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. It was the band’s 11th studio album.

The album would come four years after their previous effort. Yet again, it absolutely obliterated the charts, selling nine million copies globally and shattering first-week sales records for the band with an insane 840,000 copies sold.

The big hit from the album was “Vertigo,” which famously was featured in Apple’s iPod commercial, giving it even more widespread appeal than it normally would’ve had. The song would be playing everywhere you were in 2004, and I can recall hearing the chorus blasting during everything from football games to walking around in a Starbucks. It was infectious, and the band fed off it to gain another wave of massive popularity.

It was an obvious eventuality at this point, and in 2005, U2 was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while their album was still ripping up the charts. In fact, the following year, U2 would again win Best Rock Album for How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb despite it being two years old at that point.

In 2006, Hurricane Katrina rocked New Orleans to its core, causing tons of damage and killing and displacing many people. U2, in turn, performed a cover of “The Saints Are Coming” by The Skids at the New Orleans Saints’ first home game that NFL Football season. The song would become a huge hit in Australia and Europe. The song would be used as the team’s rallying cry throughout the year as well as in the years since.

U2’s Popularity Dies Down

No band can dominate the charts forever, and U2 found this out with their next album, No Line on the Horizon. It released to enough sales to the tune of five million as well as a number one chart spot in many countries in the world, but it wasn’t looked at as a success by U2, who had become accustomed to setting the world on Fire with each release they’d had to that point.

The big failure of No Line on the Horizon was that there was not a single hit off the album. U2 had always managed multiple hits per album, and there just wasn’t that “It” song on this one.

The tours would not stop for U2, though, as they continued to have massive tour after massive tour following 2009’s No Line on the Horizon. Despite losing popularity with their previous release, U2 was as popular as ever on the concert circuit, again establishing themselves as the biggest rock band in the world.

It had been five years since their last release, so U2 had to do something big this time around, which is exactly what they did. If you were an owner of Itunes in 2014, you suddenly found yourself with the album Songs of Innocence in your library.

I remember seeing it myself and being completely shocked and confused. U2 decided their new album would be automatically installed in 500 million people’s libraries simultaneously.

They were, of course, paid very well by Apple to do this, and while some appreciated the gesture, many completely rejected it and actually got rid of Itunes due to it downloading music to their computers and phones without their permission.

The album was nonetheless a success, marking the first time a band’s music had ever been forcefully given to music listeners worldwide. The tour that would follow was put on hold a bit when Bono suffered a serious accident in Central Park while riding his bike. The accident was bad enough that it caused some to doubt his future performing live with the band, but he would recover and head out on tour again.

U2 has been recording and touring in that order in a cyclical nature for the better part of the past 40 years, making it understandable that their releases have become more sporadic in their later days. In 2017, U2 released Songs of Experience, which would be their last album released at this point in time.

The album was received well, and the resulting tour U2 went on was again a massive success, showing the support for the band was still strong despite their somewhat controversial Itunes album, Songs of Innocense.

U2 is still not done in the music industry by a long shot, and recently, The Edge confirmed that U2 is hard at work on their next album. Recently, Bono lent his voice to play a character in the movie Sing 2, introducing U2 to yet another generation that may once again be inspired by their music, which is truly timeless.

U2 has a very unique brand of rock that doesn’t sound like anything else. They’ve had tons of hits throughout the years, and it’s hard to categorize any of them. They’ve had hard rock songs such as Vertigo to slow-moving hymns like I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, as well as electronica tracks like Discotheque.

Their style is defined by Bono’s soaring vocals that sound nothing like any other rock band. His voice can hit soaring high notes and go low for the quieter songs.

The Edge has also garnered a ton of praise throughout the years of his skillful songwriting and signature delayed guitar sound that permeates throughout every song the band has ever made. It’s all backed up beautifully with Adam Clayton’s bass work and Larry Mullen’s strong drumming throughout the years.

Unlike most rock bands, U2 has been a chameleon throughout their legendary career, managing to score massive hits in three straight decades while maintaining a huge touring presence as well.

Today, U2 is considered music royalty. They’re one of the highest-selling bands in music history. Bono has also become something of a pop culture icon as well, putting his name behind tons of humanitarian efforts throughout the world. They aren’t often spoken of in the light of The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but they are very much in that conversation when it comes to the biggest rock bands of all time.

They are on multiple lists of the best rock albums of all time and are known to put on some of the best concerts in music history, constantly creating a full-on spectacle rather than just a normal concert.

Answer: U2 has managed to survive the trials and tribulations of touring better than just about any other band in rock history and are still together to this day with all the original members alive and well. They are also on the verge of releasing a new album, as The Edge has recently confirmed.

Answer: U2 was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, their first year of eligibility.

Answer: U2 formed in a small school in Dublin, Ireland, and are the biggest band to come from Ireland.

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Elton John’s Tour Became The Highest-Grossing Ever. Here’s Where Others—U2, Taylor Swift, Rolling Stones—Rank

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Five years, 278 shows and 5 million fans in attendance later, Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour became the highest grossing tour of all time and the first to gross more than $800 million, according to Billboard — surpassing the likes of touring forces Ed Sheeran, U2 and the Rolling Stones.

Elton John performs at Orangetheory Stadium on January 24, 2023 in Christchurch, New Zealand. (Photo ... [+] by Rob Ball/WireImage)

Elton John embarked on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour in 2018, intended to be his final concert tour.

The tour has grossed more than $817 million, becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time (surpassing Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour) and the first to gross more than $800 million, Billboard announced Monday.

John has played 278 shows so far and sold 5.3 million tickets on his final tour, with 51 more European dates scheduled through July.

Sheeran still retains his record of the most tickets sold on a single tour — his Divide Tour sat 8.9 million fans.

Other acts with the highest grossing concert tours of all time include U2, The Rolling Stones, and Guns N’ Roses.

The 10 Highest Grossing Tours

• Elton John, Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour : $817.9 million (2018-ongoing)
• Ed Sheeran, Divide Tour : $776.4 million (2017-2019)
• U2, U2 360º Tour : $736.4 million (2009-2011)
• Guns N’ Roses, Not In This Lifetime… Tour : $584.2 million (2016-2019)
• The Rolling Stones, A Bigger Bang Tour : $558.3 million (2005-2007)
• The Rolling Stones, No Filter Tour : $546.5 million (2017-2021)
• Coldplay, A Head Full Of Dreams Tour : $523 million (2016-2017)
• Roger Waters, The Wall Live : $459 million (2010-2013)
• AC/DC, Black Ice World Tour : $441 million (2008-2010)
• Metallica, WorldWired Tour : $416.9 million (2016-2019)

$1.863 billion. That’s John’s total tour gross dating back to 1986, making him the highest-grossing solo artist, ahead of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, Billboard reported . He’s sold more than 19 million tickets in total across 1,573 shows.

Surprising Fact

No solo women have headlined any of the top 10 highest grossing tours — though that is set to change this year. Madonna’s 2008-2009 Sticky and Sweet tour is the highest grossing tour to date by a solo female artist, grossing $407 million. But Taylor Swift is set to dethrone Madonna’s record with her upcoming Eras Tour, which Billboard reported has sold $591 million in ticket sales and will place her fourth on the list of highest grossing concert tours. Swift’s tour — which inspired wide backlash and scrutiny against Ticketmaster, the ticket sale company which struggled to accommodate the overwhelming demand for tickets — kicks off in March.

Bad Bunny was 2022’s top touring artist, grossing $373.5 million and selling 1.8 million tickets in just one year, Billboard reported . He’s the first Latin act and the first act who does not perform in English to top Billboard ’s year-end touring chart. Bad Bunny embarked on two separate tours — El Último Tour Del Mundo and World’s Hottest Tour — becoming the only artist to complete two separate $100-million grossing tours in one year, Billboard reported . Behind Bad Bunny in the 2022 year-end tour rankings are Elton John in second place and Sheeran, who embarked on his Mathematics Tour last year, in third.

Further Reading

Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour Is the Highest-Grossing Concert Tour of All Time ( Billboard )

Bad Bunny Makes History as Top Touring Act for 2022: The Year in Charts ( Billboard )

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It all began in 1976 when Larry Mullen pinned a 'musicians wanted' ad to the notice board at Dublin's Temple Mount School: Drummer seeks musicians to form band. 'So on Saturday 25th September 1976, ' recalls Larry. 'This odd group of people convened in my kitchen in Artane. And that's where it started.' Adam Clayton had discovered rock'n'roll as a thirteen year old, buying his first acoustic guitar and then talking his parents into buying him a bass guitar. 'It just sounded good to me. Deep and fat and satisfying.'

From the beginning, U2 were marked out by their passion. "A band before we could play" was how Bono put it in early interviews. Edge remembers reading UK music papers NME and Sounds every week and then hearing about this 'wild kid called Paul Hewson.'

The four teenagers, who initially called themselves 'Feedback', rehearsed in Larry's Dublin kitchen, Bono on vocals, The Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton and Larry making up the rhythm section of bass and drums. Inspired by punk, but insulated from the standoffish cool by the Irish Sea, Feedback had become 'The Hype' and then 'U2' and were soon building a local reputation based on the passion of their performances. 'I suppose a watershed moment would have been seeing The Jam on Top of the Pops, 'remembers `Edge. 'And realizing that actually not knowing how to play was not a problem... music was more about energy and trying to say something and not necessarily about great musicianship.' After a brief period being managed by Adam, they had met up with Paul McGuinness but an early Irish release in 1979, the 'U23' EP on CBS, proved a one-off. They would wait until the following year to sign a long-term deal with Chris Blackwell's Island Records. 'I was amazed at the quality and talent and ambition of these four musicians and yet we couldn't get a record deal.'recalls McGuinness. 'Everyone in the world passed on U2 before we finally found a home at Island Records . '

"This odd group of people convened in my kitchen in artane. And that's where it started." Larry

U2's first single, 11 O'Clock Tick-Tock , was released in May 1980. Boy , their debut album, was released five months later - promoted by another single, I Will Follow , October, a year later and by May 1983, they had their first UK number 1 album with War , culmination of a trio of albums produced by Steve Lillywhite.

War featured hit singles New Year's Day (the video shot in the snow in sub-zero Sweden) and Two Hearts Beat As One while the live album Under A Blood Red Sky released that November, cracked the US Billboard Top 30. It was also the end of a chapter for the band and the beginning of a quarter century of studio collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The Unforgettable Fire , recorded in a the ballroom of Ireland's Slane Castle, spawned one of U2's most iconic tracks in Pride (In The Name of Love) ... as well as a whole lot more experimentation. 'In America there was such a backlash when we put out The Unforgettable Fire,' remembers Bono. 'People thought we were the future of rock'n'roll and they went, 'What are you doin' with this doggone hippie Eno album?' 'We owe Eno and Lanois so much for seeing through to the heart of U2.' Three years before the band had played support to Thin Lizzy at the annual Slane outdoor show. Seventeen years later, now established as the pre-eminent live act in rock'n'roll, they would return to play two sell-out shows themselves, later released on a live DVD, U2 Go Home '.

Back in the 1980's, the nine-month tour following the release of 'The Unforgettable Fire' took in 54 US dates and led to the band's unforgettable appearance at Live Aid in July 1985. 'In the middle of Bad he went on a wander trying to pick out some girls to dance with,' remembers Larry. 'It felt like he was gone for ever. We were quite jittery as it was and when Bono went missing, a certain panic ensued.'

They didn't realize it at the time but it was a set that would alert a whole new audience to their music but it was another two years before the band released, The Joshua Tree in 1987, the original working title of which was 'The Two Americas'. If the constant touring had seen the US hypnotise U2, America was about to return the compliment - the singles With Or Without You and the gospel-flavoured I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For , went to the very top of the US singles chart.

The Joshua Tree went on to sell more than 20 million copies and at the 1987 Grammy Awards, won the band 'Album Of The Year' and 'Best Rock Performance', the first of what has become a record-breaking run of Grammy wins. In 2007 a remastered version of the album was released to mark the 20th anniversary of its original release and in their book, 'U2byU2' the band talked in detail about how many of the songs came together . At the 1987 Grammy Awards, U2 won Album Of The Year and Best Rock Performance for The Joshua Tree, their first Grammy Award wins.

When Time Magazine put the band on its cover with the headline "Rock's Hottest Ticket", it was only the fourth time a band had made it to the cover - following The Beatles, The Band and The Who.

A year later, in 1988, U2 topped the British single charts and released in theatres the live concert movie 'Rattle & Hum' which chronicled the US leg of the 1987 Joshua Tree tour. The double album Rattle and Hum ' featured the number 1 single, Desire and a collaboration with BB King, ' When Love Comes To Town '. The band finished their 1989 Lovetown Tour with a series of late December shows at The Point Depot in Dublin when Bono announced that '...this is the end of something for U2...we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again.'

They did too, going away to Hansa Studios in Berlin with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois and dreaming up an album called Achtung Baby which took their music in a whole new direction. Band and production team had clashed over the direction they should be taking but out of this turmoil came one of their most acclaimed albums ever. As Daniel Lanois put it, 'If you manage to get the four of them in one room with instruments in their hands you're going to get results. That has a lot to do with my job - just getting them in the room and playing.' With The Fly , Mysterious Ways , and One U2 began the nineties with a new sound, a new reputation on the dancefloor and a series of their biggest hits.

"If you manage to get the four of them in one room with instruments in their hands you're going to get results. That has a lot to do with my job - just getting them in the room and playing." Daniel Lanois

Production designer Willie Williams set about reinventing the rock tour with help from a 130-foot video wall juxtaposing 24-hour hard news, shopping channel ephemera and postmodern slogans

The subsequent Zoo TV tour opened in Florida on February 29 1992 and circumnavigated the globe twice in almost two years before ending in Japan on December 10 1993. Achtung Baby had proved a groundbreaking album and production designer Willie Williams set about reinventing the rock tour with help from a 130-foot video wall juxtaposing 24-hour hard news, shopping channel ephemera and postmodern slogans to ramp up the irony levels. (" EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG "). Guest appearances featured Lou Reed, Salman Rushdie (while in hiding in the aftermath of publication of The Satanic Verses) and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, who performed 'Dancing Queen' with the band. Still can't imagine what it looked like ? This is what it looked like. It being the run up to the 1992 American Presidential Election, Bono interrupted the set list to make satellite calls to the Bush White House. He never did get through to then President George Bush - little did anyone know that within a few years Presidents and politicians would be taking those calls - but via the ZOO TV satellite link he also called into war-torn Sarajevo, hearing the voices of a city under siege thanks to the maverick journalist Bill Carter.

In the middle of Zoo's European leg the band recorded a whole album, the haunting and experimental Zooropa (1993) featuring lead vocals from Johnny Cash on the final track The Wanderer. The Zoo stop in Sydney was later digitally remastered and released on DVD, ' Zoo TV Live From Sydney '.

The Sarajevo connection inspired one of the tracks on Passengers: Original Soundtracks Volume I, the most experimental album the band had collaborated on - unsurprisingly with Brian Eno at the heart of the mix. 'Miss Sarajevo' featured a star turn by Luciano Pavarotti. Crowning this heady period, Pop (1997) cloaked its heavy lyrical payload in state-of-the-art dance rhythms, a creative collusion with DJ Howie B. 'The themes are love, desire and faith in crisis,' explained Edge. 'The usual stuff.' The resulting tour, POPMART - which saw the band become the first major act to perform in Sarajevo after the Bosnian War - was another visual spectacle imagined by Willie Williams introduced the rave-rock of Mofo and Discotheque to a new generation of fans.

It was four years before another album, but it was worth the wait: All That You Can't Leave Behind features songs which went on to win 'Record of the Year' Grammy Awards in two consecutive years - ' Beautiful Day ' in 2001 and ' Walk On ' in 2002 - the only time this has ever happened. Released in 2000, ATYCLB went on to win seven Grammys and sell more than ten million copies worldwide. 'I think it was a very good idea to make a record that actually sounded like U2 again...' explained Paul McGuinness. 'It went to No.1 in 32 countries.' It was followed by the 113-date Elevation Tour, a similarly stripped-back approach, with the focus firmly on the songs. 'It wasn't really minimalist,' says Edge. 'But compared to POP anything would seem back to basics.' It was the design that grabbed Larry: 'The use of the heart as a runway to get out into the audience and the way the heart itself filled with people, was great. It was almost like a club gig within an arena.'

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) was "very much a guitar record," explained Adam. "Vertigo, Love and Peace, City of Blinding Lights, All Because of You, all pretty up , rocky tunes. A lot of them are a kick-back to our very early days, so it's like with each year we have gathered a little bit more and this is what we are now.' Recorded with both new and old producers - Steve Lillywhite, Chris Thomas, Flood, Jacknife Lee, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Nellee Hooper and Carl Glanville worked on the album - U2's eleventh studio record from was released in November 2004, debuted at at Number 1 in 25 countries and the lead single Vertigo won three Grammy awards, including Best Rock Song. The Vertigo tour which followed was the highest grossing tour of the year and with the album confirmed U2 as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world." During 2005 U2 played to more than 3.2 million people. In March Bruce Springsteen inducted the band into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, describing them as 'the keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in the rock-and-roll world," said rocker Bruce Springsteen while inducting U2.'

And then there was Live 8 , beamed live to half the planet, and opening up with U2 performing Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with Paul McCartney. At the 2006 Grammy ceremony, U2 took home 5 Awards, including the coveted Album of the Year for HTDAAB. These new wins brought their total number of Grammy Awards to 22, more than any other band.

While spending a month recording at Abbey Road Studios London in 2006, U2 collaborated with Green Day to record a cover of the song The Saints Are Coming by The Skids. The recording was a benefit for Music Rising , a charity founded by The Edge which aims to help rebuild the musical heart and culture of New Orleans by replacing instruments that were lost during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. The band have released three 'Best of' collections: ' The Best of 1980-1990 ', ' The Best of 1990-2000 ', and ' U218 Singles ' in 2006 which also featured the new song 'Windows In the Skies' .

Five years after the release of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, in March 2009 the band released No Line on the Horizon. Their 12th studio album was written and recorded in in Fez, Morocco, Dublin, Ireland, New York and Olympic Studios in London. The album calls on the production talents of long-time collaborators Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, with additional production by Steve Lillywhite.

In July 2011, two years after opening up in Barcelona , the band played the final show of U2360° . Over 26 months it became the most succesful concert tour of all time, with 110 shows to 7.1million fans in 30 countries on 5 continents .

A revolutionary production, U2360° caught the imagination of its audience, who nicknamed U2's circular stage the Claw, the Spaceship and - in Houston - the Space Station . USA Today described it as 'a four-pronged UFO anchored by a glowing 164-foot pylon and cylindrical LED screens.' But whatever it was called, for the Chicago Tribune, 'The lights, the songs, the audience all synced up. Sometimes size matters.'

Just a few weeks from the end of the tour, the band flew out of the US, back across the Atlantic and landed on a farm in the heart of rural Somerset . After all these years it was time to headline the Glastonbury Festival . OK, it rained, but that didn't stop the band setting the Festival alight - 19 songs from eight albums in an electrifying set over an hour and three quarters. Here's what they played - and what people said about a night to remember .

Just a few weeks later the tour came to a close and ahead of the closing night in Moncton, Canada, Ray Waddell of Billboard summed it all up, 'With tonight's final show, U2's 360° tour will go down as the biggest tour ever reported both in terms of box office gross and attendance. This tour is a remarkable feat on a global scale, from its staging and production, to its video elements, all the way to the scaling of the house, routing and execution. Most importantly, U2 rocked mightily all over the world.'

Some other U2360° facts: 10 million watched a live stream of U2360° at the RoseBowl on YouTube; 320,000 Fans saw 360° in Mexico City ; 7,100 miles - approximate distance travelled by space station while talking with U2; 5,200 Years - collective touring experience of U2 tour personnel ; 400 tons - weight of the fully loaded claw; 134 Crew Members ; 126 Truck Drivers; 53 gigs attended by a single fan; 33 Flemish Speaking Crew members; 11 Babies Born To Crew ; 7 Astronauts Attended; 4 Appreciative Irishmen; 1 Singer in Surgery; 1 World Leader Released From House Arrest During Tour.

In October 2013, the band revealed they'd written a new song, 'Ordinary Love', for the biopic Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, starring Idris Elba and Naomie Harris. Produced by Danger Mouse, the song was released in a 10-inch vinyl pressing to mark Record Store Day on November 29th and the single sleeve featured a painting of Nelson Mandela by Irish artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers. Oliver, along with Mac Premo, directed a lyric video for Ordinary Love.

'We thought it should be a love song, a very human song. ' Edge explained, when asked about how the band approached the request by movie producer Harvey Weinstein to write a song for the movie. 'Not epic, not earnest in dealing with world-changing political shifts but personal in two people trying to hold on to one another in the face of dreadful mistreatment and heartbreak.' The song went on to win the golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in January 2014 and was nominated for an Oscar at the ceremony in February, where the band performed it live.

In February 2014, the band released another single, 'Invisible'. Produced by Danger Mouse and mixed by Tom Elmhirst, Invisible marked the launch of a partnership with (RED) and Bank Of America in the campaign to create an AIDS free generation. For 36 hours, every time the track was downloaded from iTunes, the Bank made a donation of $1 to (RED) for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. More than $3m was raised and when the track went on sale, all proceeds from 'Invisible' on iTunes continued to go to (RED) for the Global Fund. 'The early lyrics were set on a train coming into London for the first time.' said Bono. ' I remember sleeping in Euston station, being broke... coming out of the subway into the spring of 1979, being 18 years old, it was punk rock in London.'

The video for 'Invisible', directed by Mark Romanek, was shot in black and white, in a Santa Monica airport hangar, over three days in January. With a cast of 1200. And flashlights. A sixty second clip premiered on February 2nd during the Super Bowl, to launch the partnership with (RED).

In December 2019 the band played Mumbai in India, the final show of The Joshua Tree Tour 2019. And the final show of four years of touring between 2015 and 2020. And just ahead of their first trip to India, they released a new song, ' Ahimsa ', a collaboration with legendary composer A.R. Rahman.

'This is an invitation to a high location For someone who wants to BELONG This is a meditation on your radio station If you like it you can sing along...'

'We come as students to the source of inspiration.' explained Bono. 'That is Ahimsa… non-violence. India gave this to us… the greatest gift to the world. It is more powerful than nuclear energy, the armies, the navy's, the British Empire. It is power itself. And it's never been more important.'

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