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"The
Fly" on the Stage:
Readings and Misreadings of the "New" U2
A
Paper Presented to the Music Area of
The Popular Culture Association
April 13, 1995
Samuel
R. Smith
Center for Mass Media Research
University of Colorado
Up through The Unforgettable Fire (1984) U2 were generally
regarded as relentless critics of political repression and
religious/ethnic violence, especially as practiced by warring
Protestant and Catholic factions in Northern Ireland. They
had established themselves by this point as arguably the most
socially-conscious band in rock history. Their human rights
sympathies found expression in affiliation with groups like
Band-Aid and Amnesty International; their enthusiastic participation
(along with like-minded "message" rockers Sting and Peter
Gabriel) was key to the success of Amnesty International's
mid-1980s promotional tours. They were also enthusiastic participants
in other politically- oriented projects - Live Aid and Little
Steven's Artists Against Apartheid are two which spring immediately
to mind.
These activities earned the band a great deal of respect among
socially-conscious music fans, but Bono (Paul Hewson, the
band's lead singer) was also rumored to have earned a death
threat from the Irish Republican Army, of whom the band had
been extremely critical. I do not know if this rumor is accurate
or is instead just another part of the band's burgeoning mythology.
Even if the threat ultimately proves fictional, the important
point for our purposes is that U2's unprecedented activism
makes such a rumor believable. And while these days it seems
that every band is a message band, we have to remember that
U2 was spreading the gospel before it became "hip."
Commencing with The Joshua Tree (1987), however, the
critical listener could discern a lessening of the overt politicality
of the band's music. Despite the powerful anti-war sentiments
of "Bullet the Blue Sky," which was more reminiscent of
War, the songs which dominated and defined the album were
more introspective and personal ("With or Without You," "Where
the Streets Have No Name"). "I Still Haven't Found What I'm
Looking For" is an open admission that the band's spiritual
journey had yet to find firm footing upon which to make a
stand.
I believe in the Kingdom Come
When all the colors will bleed into one
But yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds
You loosed the chains
You carried the cross
And my shame
And my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
The
prayer, plaintively delivered, reads quite simply as an acknowledgement
that what has gone before isn't quite sufficient. In the wake
of the band's next three projects, though, we are encouraged
to explore more closely the relationship that exists between
religion, politics, and artistic expression.
Rattle and Hum (1988) is a combination live album/rockumentary
centered on the Joshua Tree US tour, and it found the
band for the first time locked into a highly experimental mode,
toying with musical styles like American blues and gospel, and
collaborating with artists like B.B. King, Bob Dylan, and the
New Voices of Freedom Choir. The political convictions remained
intact, however, with live readings of the band's older material
remaining quite faithful to earlier performative interpretations.
Especially noteworthy was the band's unusually emotional "Sunday
Bloody Sunday," their most famous anti-war anthem. The movie
release featured the performance captured the night of the IRA's
infamous Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing, and the band's
rage over the attack led Bono to launch into an extended rant
during one of the song's interludes. It would be next to impossible
to watch this footage and conclude that the band's dedication
to its longstanding values was slipping.
Nonetheless, scores of U2 fans were put off by the project's
stylistic explorations, and less political material (the CD
contains thirteen new tracks, several of which foreshadow the
more personal mode the band would pursue on Achtung, Baby)
led some longstanding faithful to mumble about a "sell-out"
- and among "alternative" rock fans, most of whom are obsessive
about authenticity, there is no more damning accusation. That
definitions of "authenticity" vary widely is beside the point.
If my numerous conversations with countless U2 fans can be taken
as fair evidence, Rattle and Hum was the least popular
album the band had released to that point. For many of these
longtime fans, committed as they were to the style the band
had cultivated on its first few releases, it was only going
to get worse.
After a three-year hiatus U2 returned with Achtung, Baby
(1991), a project which diverged wildly from the overt politics
and straightforward presentation which characterized their work
up through 1987. Instead, the lyrical content of the songs was
decidedly more personal - of the twelve tracks on the disc,
none is easily read as "political." Most are love songs, although
we can see, in cuts like "Even Better Than the Real Thing" and
"The Fly" how the band applies its larger societal concerns
to personal relationships - in a sense, the revolution is now
played out at home.
Even more confusing is the fact that the band's visual style
has changed. In the minds of many fans U2 is defined visually
by their famous Red Rocks show - the weather had turned nasty,
but the band played on. And there was Bono onstage, jeans and
a sleeveless t-shirt, belting out "Sunday Bloody Sunday," his
breath steaming into the twilight. Now, though, Bono wears makeup.
In concert he dresses in an absolutely plastic-looking black
suit. He gestures grandly, turning 25,000-seat arenas and 100,000-seat
stadiums into highly stylized theaters dominated by dozens of
television screens. In every imaginable sense Bono appears,
on the surface anyway, to be a pop star grown very full of himself.
This new image seems constructed to offend every sensibility
of the die-hard U2 fan. And the follow-up, Zooropa (1993),
finds the band compounding a hundred times over every perceived
sin of Achtung, Baby and the ensuing Zoo TV tour.
During this period I have had countless conversations with U2
fans (and former fans) - in a sense I can probably be said to
have conducted a hundred informal interviews on the subject.
Over and over in these conversations I keep hearing that U2
has sold out, has been sucked into their own fame, has become
a part of the capitalist abomination that is the recording industry
- that they have become "mainstream." It is apparent from the
tone and tenor of these critiques that Dr. Jameson, in spite
of the faults I have elsewhere found with his analysis, is not
alone in his unwillingness to move beyond form and into a close
perusal of content.
U2 might well have altered the style and thrust of their message,
but I do not believe the substance of their last two or three
projects supports the conclusion that they have sold anything
out. First, we should note that as their audience has grown
(especially in the wake of The Joshua Tree) its character
has changed. Kids who became fans after hearing "With or Without
You" and "One" are likely to be different from fans attracted
to the political rage of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or "New Year's
Day." Bono and the rest of the band seem like bright enough
men - it is entirely likely they have noticed this evolution.
For this reason, we are probably safe in assuming that the band
is aware of their commercial success and its qualitative implications.
A studied examination of the last two albums, along with the
videotaped live Zoo TV (1994) performance in Sydney,
Australia, indicates that the band is acutely aware of the commercialism
of the culture in which it makes its living. "Even Better Than
the Real Thing," for example, points up the consumerist ideology
underpinning Baudrillard's notion of simulacra - commercial
culture promises us products which are better than reality (Storey
1993). Bono is clearly aware of the false promise of consumerism
and technology, begging his lover to "give me one last chance/We'll
slide down the surface of things." Such indulgence in the shallowness
of the consumer media playground is not without devastating
implications, and Bono lifts directly from Greek mythology in
promising, a few lines later, that "the sun won't melt our wings
tonight" (U2 1991). In many respects U2 suggests the same things
about late capitalist culture that Jameson does. The critical
difference is Jameson's out-of-hand dismissal of popular art
- say, for example, rock - on the basis of its surface shallowness.
Here, though, we very clearly see the artifice of postmodern
rock being deliberately used for purposes of irony. Where Jameson
(1984) discards such work as pastiche, by taking a closer look
we realize that there's nothing blank about the band's appropriation
of the parodic style.
Central to U2's recent work is an understanding of persona.
Some see the changes in Bono and conclude that he has become
their worst pop star nightmare. In doing so, they accurately
interpret the differences between the compelling character onstage
in during the Unforgettable Fire tour and the posturing,
strutting Zoo TV presence. What they have failed to perceive
is that while Bono may have, at one point, been portraying himself
(or perhaps "Bono" is best read as a character portrayed by
Paul Hewson), the character onstage now is most decidedly not
Bono. In fact, Zoo TV has featured at least two distinctly
different characters - the televangelist of the black plastic
suit and the mirror ball, and Macphisto, the self-indulgent
devil who panders the glories of shallowness and celebrity.
(I do not believe Bono used Macphisto at all in the US legs
of the tour. According to interviews and radio features he was
afraid the American public wouldn't understand the subtle irony
of the character. He should perhaps have worried the same thing
about the televangelist, for it is this persona which has evoked
the hostility of the people with whom I have spoken.) Macphisto
(the reference to Mephistopheles, the Lord of Lies, is certainly
no coincidence) is the sarcastic voice behind such biting Zooropa
numbers as "Lemon" and "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car."
In the latter, especially, it is hard to fathom a "sell-out"
reading - Macphisto reassures that "Daddy won't let you weep/Daddy
won't let you ache/Daddy gives you as much as you can take"
(U2 1993). Again, the culture of materialism and excess seems
under attack, and one is fully justified in wondering if Bono
isn't taking a fairly contentious swipe at his newer, younger
fans, many of whom have no real sense of the band's history.
If this is the case, as it seems to be, then the older fans'
failure to perceive this subtlety piles another layer of irony
onto an already hefty pile.
The magnificence of these personae are on full display in the
band's Sydney show last year, however. And it is in this live
performance that I believe we get the best evidence for the
substance hiding beneath the bombastic surface. The concert
intro as spectacle matches as anything I have ever seen. The
stadium is packed to the brim. The stage is dominated by three
huge video screens and several smaller ones, and a narrow runway
thrusts the proscenium deep into the heart of the crowd. The
concert is introduced by a mad explosion of montage on the video
screens: public and political figures, sports, historical footage,
product advertisements, political symbology, all intercut with
videotext asking "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" in numerous different languages.
After a period, Bono (in televangelist mode) is elevated to
stage level in front of a flickering blue screen - this image,
meanwhile, is projected onto other screens, and the slightly
disorienting result is that, for a moment, it is unclear which
of the backlit Bonos is the real one. From here, a raw, fuzzy
guitar intro propels the band into a powerful, if relatively
conservative, reading of "Zoo Station." Notable, though, is
that Bono's persona at this point is determinedly flashy, playing
the crowd with grand gestures and a general body language very
unlike the more tightly-wound presence familiar to the group's
older fans.
As the song ends the video monitors light up with "EVERYTHING
YOU KNOW IS WRONG." As the band then launches into "The Fly"
we reach, quite early in the show, what proves to be the band's
critical master stroke. As the band performs the song, the screens
are appropriated by a rapid-fire barrage of videotext - as many
as perhaps twenty words or phrases are flashed onto the screens
in a single second, while others are drawn out over several
seconds, one presumes for effect. The words and phrases themselves
are curious in places. A string like "WIFE / VICTIM / RAPE /
FOOD / SEXY / WAR / BLOODY / KIDS / TRASH / MOM / FRENZY / FISH
/ COLOUR / NIGGER" makes no apparent sense - you merely have
random words generated and presented in, as Jameson might predict,
a blank pastiche.
Other sequences, though, appear more substantive. In one procession
we get this string repeated two or three times: "CHARGE IT /
WEAR IT / DEBT / DOUBT / HYPE / HOPE." This is closely juxtaposed
with another repeated string: "GUN / PUSSY / SCHOOL." This last
part is obscure, perhaps, but the debt string appears purposive
in light of both the consumerist theme I assert above and the
context in which the word "charge" will recur later.
In addition to word bursts, the audience is presented at intervals
with phrases which range from the hopeful to the platitudinous
to the sarcastic and cynical. "THE FUTURE IS FANTASY; SUPERFICIALITY
IS GOD; AVOID CONFLICT; IGNORANCE IS BLISS; IT'S THE REAL THING;
CONSUME LATER; DO NOT ACCEPT WHAT YOU CANNOT CHANGE; CHANGE
WHAT YOU CANNOT ACCEPT; BELIEVE EVERYTHING; DO YOU BELIEVE ME;
YOU ARE A VICTIM OF YOUR TV/HATRED/APATHY/SELF; IS THIS ALL
WE GET?; YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE; WHAT DID THE FIRST PUNK ROCK
GIRL WEAR TO YOUR SCHOOL?; WORK IS THE BLACKMAIL OF SURVIVAL;
I WANT IT NOW; BE GENTLE WITH ME; THIS IS NOT A REHEARSAL; ENJOY
THE SURFACE; FREE MANDELA; THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT; AMBITION BITES
THE NAILS OF SUCCESS; IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN HERE; TASTE IS THE
ENEMY OF ART; BELIEVE" (with the "BE" and "VE" fading, leaving
only "LIE"); "MANIPULATION IS ART; YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE; EVERY
ARTIST IS A CANNIBAL; CELEBRITY IS A JOB; DEATH IS A CAREER
MOVE; MOCK THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE FROM THEE; REBELLION IS
PACKAGED; RELIGION IS A CLUB; CONTRADICTION IS BALANCE; I'D
LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING; GUILT IS NOT OF GOD; TOMORROW
BELONGS TO ME; EVOLUTION IS OVER; SILENCE = DEATH; DEATH IS
INEVITABLE; EVERYONE IS A RACIST EXCEPT YOU; ROCK AND ROLL IS
ENTERTAINMENT; WEAR A CONDOM" (U2 1994).
The cumulative effect is numbing. The pace of the bursts makes
catching and processing everything impossible, and in this sense
U2 has quite successfully presented a microcosm of our mass
mediated consumerist everyday lives. We are literally assaulted
by sales pitches - I have heard estimates of anywhere from 1600-3200
per day - and seemingly no institution is innocent of contributing
to the noise. In the videotext above, we see that most elements
of our culture are represented - corporations, religions, advertising,
schools, art, criticism, all are in some fashion called on the
carpet.
The problem is that the form allows for no consideration of
depth. All messages have been democratized, and the sublime
is diluted at every turn by the ridiculous ("wear a condom"
is potentially life-saving advice; "I want it now" is the impulse
which arguably necessitates the condom message). On the surface,
then, meaning has been rendered unknowable, and in the final
moments of the song we find the band cynically undercutting
sloganeering and the shallow ideology of social change. "IT'S
YOUR WORLD YOU CAN CHANGE IT" is projected on the screens, then
recycled over and over in a rapidly accelerating loop (in total
this phrase is looped at least thirty times in twenty seconds,
with one burst probably looping it fifteen-twenty times in five
seconds). Upon seeing this the crowd explodes in a frenzy of
cheering - on the heels of such a confusing mush of mixed signals,
we shouldn't be surprised to see idealistic young U2 fans seizing
fervently upon a moment of hope.
However, it only appears that this phrase has been presented
over and over in a reaffirming cycle of hope. In fact, the third
and fourth loops replace "change" with "charge" - "IT'S YOUR
WORLD YOU CAN CHARGE IT." Again, consumerism is challenged,
and this time it is challenged within the context of U2's traditionally
positive social-consciousness. They have always been a band
spreading the rhetoric of change, but here they undercut the
message, implying that the potential for change is undercut
by rampant consumerism. We are, it seems, mortgaging much more
than our financial futures. As noted, the song began with "EVERYTHING
YOU KNOW IS WRONG"; fittingly enough, as the final chord fades
into the crowd's frenzied cheering, the monitors resolve into
"WATCH MORE TV."
We might read this performance as a subtle, yet pointed indictment
of a culture hijacked by television and its attendant consumerism.
The shallowness of the culture is certainly evident in every
facet of the presentation, and Bono's televangelist and Macphisto
indulge in a decadent wallow which, at the very minimum, paints
an unseemly picture. Macphisto's appearance, ninety minutes
in to the show, signals the coming-out of the self-indulgent
parody. Gold-suited, gold glittered platform shoes, washed out
pale makeup and bright red horns - "Look what you've done to
me," he tells the crowd. "You've made me very famous, and I
thank you." He then announces that his time among the audience
is almost over (we're into the encore at this point) but he
is leaving a legacy in his wake. "I leave behind video cameras
for each of you."
But there's more. For the people of America: "I gave you Bill
Clinton - I put him on CNN, NBC, C-Span." He thanks the people
of Asia, "without whose tiny transistors none of this would
be possible." The people of Europe he has united - when he came
among them they were bickering and fighting, but now they are
"all hooked up to one cable, as close together as stations on
a dial." He has given the people of the former Soviet Union
capitalism, "so now you can all dream of being as wealthy and
glamorous as me." And in the bitterest irony: "people of Sarajevo,
count your blessings. There are people all over the world who
have food, heat and security, but they're not on TV like you
are." Macphisto's is the unapologetic, sweet speech of the marketplace,
but we the audience are clearly encouraged to recognize him
as the Prince of the Power of the Airwaves. The message is bitter
and unmistakable, and is wholly inconsistent with the question
that launched this inquiry - has U2 sold out?
The counter-question, then, is this: has U2 recognized the hopelessness
of the situation and given up? The answer here is more complicated.
On the one level we can see that the band has, for now anyway,
abandoned the Big Social Issue approach which defined their
early work. Broad calls for peace and sharing have been replaced
by the intimacy of the interpersonal. And it is in these smaller
love songs that we can still sense the band's power and intensity.
Achtung, Baby's haunting "Love is Blindness," the next-to-last
number of the show, finds Bono summoning a young woman out of
the audience. As The Edge offers up a brooding, impassioned
interlude, Bono clutches the woman tightly, moving around and
around in a desperate slow dance. He holds her as her sings
the final verse, and only after the last strains of the song
fade does he release her. It is hard to maintain cynicism at
this point - the moment is both compelling and beautiful. And
if we track the thematic and emotional trajectory of the performance
we see that what began as spectacle, brilliant surface and bombast,
has concluded in the deeply meaningful and personal relationship
of two people. Fittingly, the final number is a wrenchingly
pretty cover of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love With You."
Thematically, at least, this suggests that the journey from
the social to the personal is an inevitable one. And if we can
believe the power of the intimate moment, meaning is not beyond
our reach. What has been lost in the grand political arena has
been found, safe and secure, at home.
Sources
Cited
Jameson,
F. (1984). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism.
New Left Review, 146 (Jul/Aug), 53-92.
Storey, J. (1993). An introductory guide to cultural theory
and popular culture. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
U2 (1983). War. Lillywhite, S. (Prod.) (Medium: Audio Disc.)
New York: Island Records.
U2 (1984). The unforgettable fire. Eno, B., & Lanois, D. (Prods.)
(Medium: Audio Disc.) New York: Island Records.
U2 (1987). The joshua tree. Eno, B., & Lanois, D. (Prods.) (Medium:
Audio Disc.) New York: Island Records.
U2 (1988). Rattle and hum. Iovine, J. (Prod.) (Medium: Audio
Disc.) New York: Island Records.
U2 (1991). Achtung, baby. Eno, B., & Lanois, D. (Prods.) (Medium:
Audio Disc.) New York: Island Records.
U2 (1993). Zooropa. Flood, Eno, B., & The Edge. (Prods.) (Medium:
Audio Disc.) New York: Island Records.
U2 (1994). Zoo TV live from Sydney. Mallet, D. (Dir.) O'Hanlon,
M., & Oldham, R. (Prods.) (Medium: Videotape.) New York: PolyGram
Video.
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