"Think
George Clinton!
Think Parliament-Funkadelic! This is the
thing about white music. It dresses
itself up in the seriousness of the
songs. These hip-hop guys, that's some
serious shit they're dishing out. But
they have fun with it." Bono
"It's funny,
cause I really have grown to like the
word pop. I just didn't realise how cool
it was. It was the skinny boys who
insisted it was all rock and roll. It's
the grown-ups who called it pop music.
And now we've all grown-up." Bono
From their shining
1981 debut album 'Boy', an evocative
potrait of spritually troubled
adolescence, through the rousing and
anthemic 'War" (1983); the
rough-house American roots stylings of
'The Joshua Tree' (1987) to the
dark-sprited, post-modern European
ironies of 'Achtung Baby' (1991), U2's
music has continually embraced change,
never resting on a proven commercial
formula.
But one aspect of the group has remained
reassuringly constant. Their personnel.
In an ego-driven profession where splits
and line-up changes are a routine hazard,
U2 are a rare example of a group that
have stuck together all their lives.
