I've never been a massive fan of U2, but neither do I really have a problem with them. They fit nicely into a group of bands, such as Coldplay and Radiohead, that I feel comfortably neutral about: I respect them as musicians, perhaps like a few of their tunes, and could otherwise hardly be bothered with them. Nowadays, with U2 as the Irish Beatles, agelessly throwing out pop hooks that will result in fulsome praise from critics and gushing fans alike, I can happily delete them from my ruminations without wishing to see them destroyed. There's nothing offensive about them, and no need for me to by their records.
I liked them better when they were the Irish Clash. The cover of War is startling, with layers of complexity sitting just beyond. We see a young boy, his eyes furious, a scab on his lower lip. We see here the reduction of all conflict to an immature response to pain: battling for blocks in kindergarten. But look again. Note how androgynous the boy's appearance is, even angelic. He's got no shirt on, his hair is tousled and flowing. And what is that background behind him? Council Flats, like as not, but whose to say they aren't the layers of Hell? Really, what's the difference?
Maybe I'm reaching, but Bono's devout Catholocism should be pretty well known to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the band. Maybe bono intended nothing Miltonic by the cover, but the connection is still striking.
It's said that until an hour before he fell, Satan was beautiful in Heaven, and according to U2, it only "takes a second to say good-bye". The second song on this album is a much better early-80's lament on the possibility of nuclear war than was usual, better by a mile than Sting's mewling blather about how the Russians loved their children, too. The lyrics aren't about telling anyone to get along, merely describing the Apocalyptic horror, the reign of Death. This is depicted not by what it says as what's left out: not burning cities, bodies turned to ash, radiation vomit, but merely "good-bye"; Finalilty.
Lighting flashes across the sky
From East to West you do or die
Like a theif in the night
You see the world by candlelight
The song structure is likewise a pleasing back-and-forth; the bass line lurches while the Edge's trademark guitar scratch punctuates the phrases. It's a bizarre sound for an Armageddon jam, but there is a payoff: in the middle of the song the documentary "Soldier Girls" is sampled, a call-and-response of an instructor leading female recruits in "I Wanna Be an Airborne Ranger" and ending with martial shrieks. Basic exists to transform citizens into killers, and this microcosm of that transformation is scary even to those of us who favor a big military with spiffy uniforms and lots of dangerous toys. As this freakiness fades out, that bass line pumps back in, and the song's rythmn fits the recruits howls, and the whole tune is a lot darker for it.
Look, I figured out when I was about eleven that the bombs weren't coming, because if everyone else could see that Nuclear Smackdown was M.A.D., then surely Reagan and Gorby could. But the central message of the song remains intact, if we flit back to Milton: it only takes a second to kill something or someone in your heart, and it is there that death can still reign o'er us. Walls built across cities can be brought down with some hammers and drills. The other walls can come down, too...as soon as we admit that they're there.
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