The Annotated Mixtape by Joshua Harmon

Author:Joshua Harmon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Annotated Mixtape
ISBN: 9781936873241
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2014-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

We thought that we had the answers

It was the questions we had wrong

—“11 O’Clock Tick Tock”

U2’s popularity grew to the point where they no longer needed fans to date them; they could, and did, date supermodels. For a while, they were the most popular act in rock and roll—“rock’s hottest ticket,” as one of their live bootleg titles had it—something which always surprised me given the way I remembered them: endearingly scruffy, dewy, still in the process of figuring themselves out. If nothing else, they’ve long since figured out what the rock-listening public wanted, and in so doing cemented their place in rock and roll history. Of course, it occurred to me years ago that I was the one who never understood U2; those people whistling and shrieking and lifting lighter flames in their fists had grasped U2 completely.

For a brief while I felt like someone who watches an ex achieve everything that had been impossible during the relationship. I can vaguely recall U2 collaborating with B.B. King and Johnny Cash—forever seeking that elusive, mythic America, it seemed to me—but at that time my ex and I moved in such different circles that this information reached me only indirectly, the sort of thing a friend of a friend might report offhand, having forgotten our earlier connection.

I take some solace in discovering that I am not the only one who feels that U2 squandered something special. In the 1985 second edition of The New Trouser Press Record Guide, editor Ira A. Robbins judges U2 in rhetoric typical of the contemporary critical opinion:

With a unique, passionate sound, individualist lyrical outlook and youthful guilelessness, Ireland’s U2 made a big splash quickly, both in the UK and US… The four Dublin lads have become well-deserved stars, both popularly and critically…. An unquestionable masterpiece, Boy has a strength, beauty and character that is hard to believe on a debut album made by teenagers.

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