U2 ACHTUNG BABY (1991)
For me, 1991 was the year of Achtung Baby, Use Your Illusion I and II and Nevermind, and almost in that order of significance too. This was also the year of Metallica but whereas I bought those first four albums on release, I wasn’t into Metallica at the time an bought the eponymous album only three of four years later.
I bought Nevermind, and Bleach just before, because of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the enormous hype around the band and how they brought punk to the mainstream. I bought the Use Your Illusion albums because I as a big fan of Appetite for Destruction (my top hard rock album of the ‘80s), but I bought Achtung Baby because I was a long term afficionado of U2 and, though not necessarily contemporaneously all the time, owned all of the preceding records, starting with October, then Boy, before moving forwards with War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum.
The last two albums were the absolute pinnacle of the first phase of the patented U2 sound of ringing guitar and impassioned, inspiring vocals, emanating from the post punk sound of the late ‘70s and very early ‘80s.
With Achtung Baby, amongst other things, inspired by die fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and time spent in the pre-reconstructed city, if no longer physically divided, still very much psychologically divided, the band abandoned it’s by then almost cliched melodic approach and embraced tough, industrial-style, danceable riffing and beats. It’s as if The Edge decided to unlearn all musical expertise he’d acquired up to then, and to start afresh as if he were a guitar novice learning to play the only songs he knew, the songs he wrote in the first place.
From opening track “Zoo Station” to “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “The Fly” and “Mysterious Ways,” this album is almost intolerably exciting and builds and builds, even taking account the quieter moody songs, all of them with a suppler, groovier rhythm section, to a crescendo of frenzy and exuberance. This record was meant for being played loudly and I guess it’s no accident that so many club mixes were made of the various tracks, those mixes serving as bonus materials on the 30th anniversary edition of the album, because almost the entire record is just made for blasting out at high volume in a relatively small space for the delight of a drunken, wasted crowd.
Like Searching for the Young Soul Rebels 10 years before, I played Achtung Baby at least once a day for a very long time. Truth be told, this was the first U2 record I experienced viscerally, in my heart and mind, and not just as mostly an appreciation of the musical values and lyrical stance, as was the case with most of the songs on the earlier records. Achtung Baby was big fun. The other records were closer to intellectual discussions.
Perhaps because Achtung Baby was so hugely wonderful that I was mildly obsessed by it, it also meant the end of the road for me as U2 fan. Apart from a greatest hits set, covering the band’s ‘80s output, I never bought another U2 album again. I just suddenly had enough and what I’ve heard of their subsequent releases reinforces my lack of interest. Like Prince, U2 is an act I remember fondly for their ‘80s music, and still have a high regard for what they achieved in that decade, and yet have never been able to persuade myself to investigate what they did next. Achtung Baby is not an ‘80s album but it so completely puts the capstone on that era that there’s no need to investigate further.
No comments:
Post a Comment