The Memories of Me and My Old Best Friends

- by Tina Cochrane| spindle40@hotmail.com

I would like to take a deep breath, try to still my shaking hands, calm down my fluttering heart:), and save this wonderful and exquisite moment.

Where were you when you first heard U2? When did you become a fan? Or more specifically, where were you and what were you doing when a new album made its debut, in the form of a new single? Was it a bootleg,off the Net or otherwise? Was it from a radio station that jumped the release date and played it a week early? Even 2 days early can make a difference! What did you think? How did you feel? Do any of you have little rituals that you practice, when you tear the plastic off the Cd for the first time? I do!

Herewith, a history of my reactions to certain U2 songs, and I hope this will be read by the naysayers. I was one of the most difficult to convince. If there is one thing the band will always have me doing, it is guessing. I have learned the hard way not to be surprised at being surprised. Moreover, I love these times. I've been a fan since the winter of 1981-82, and as you will see, I remember every song debut in detail. They were major milestones in my life. I became a fan casually, being knocked out by the latin at the end of "Gloria", and for the next 2 yrs, payed respectful attention to great music, from a bunch of guys I  respected. But then events in my life took a turn for the worse, and the worst of the worst took place just after the debut of UF. I related the experience on Wire in the spring. Since then, I've become a Christian, and the music has always meant something deeper to me, in my teen years, after that incident, it became a lifeline for me, so much so that I didn't have time or the inclantion to salivate over JT-era pictures and footage of the band that I would learn to salivate over years later, and wonder how I hadn't learned to tune into them in the normal hormonal way that teenagers will their idols,...but that's what happens when the guys in the picture have become your colleagues and 4 of your best friends in some inexplicable way, NOT your idols, in some way you feel you've become too close to them for that, seeing all their faults and foliables as well as what is beautiful and luminous about them and their message of hope. That message is bought at a huge price, a price of personal suffering, and you've been there...At any rate, it seems strange and somehow demaning to worship them, like putting a poster of your brother up on the wall.

Their music has become the soundtrack for my life. Over the years, as we've grown older together (they're 10 yrs older than me), I've marked marriages, deaths of family members, and friends, the births of ten children. As we move forward in life together, it doesn't seem strange to me at all that I find myself laughing over little incidents, little occurrences, as well as great ones--the Pope's rosary, the sunglasses!--as if one of them was sitting at a table across from em with pint in hand, and not as if I was reading about them in a newspaper or website from someone I'll most likely never personally meet. They aren't strangers. And even though I've not been blessed with the gift of melody, and I can't share my writing with them to let them know the milestones in my life, I treasure these times, when I get a little reply from them, a little glimpse into their hearts. That's the way I great a new album, a new single: a hello from a long-lost friend, a long-due one way phone chat. When I'm having troubles, it as recently, it always comeforts me immenslet to know that I'll  have their views and thoughts on the world, coming new and fresh to me for yrs to come. If you've got headaches. they've got them to, and out there somewhere are sharing life's little headaches with you. But that's the way I greet these things...nothing earthshattering in itself, just a hello from old friends. But it excites me to hear from these old friends.

But I'm getting into semantics. Here are my reactions, and the circumstances behind, the debut singles of every u2 album, as I'd heard them.

--"Gloria": The first single I heard. This one wasn't a single, I mean, it had already been on the radio for a few months. But It was the first u2 song I heard. I was about 13, and can still remember that moment, frozen in time: I was sitting sleepily by the kitchen counter,  the late afternnon sunlight coming through the white lace-curtained window,  snow frosting the panes outside. I was mixing a cup of hot chocolate and dreamily staring out the wondow, and idly flipping the radio dials with the other hand. It was a weekend, Saturday, I think. I flipped the dial and there was the break before the end, the part where i thought it was really cool that someone had used an ashtray in the song, I thought tapping an ashtray so that it spun was a really cool thing to put in a song. I hadn't heard much rock until then, being raised on easy listening, and smatterings of disco. No Punk or New Wave had touched my ears, so you could almost say U2 was my intro to rock music too. Then the Latin came on and I was frozen still! It sounded like a hymn, but what a great beat! I'd never heard anything like it before...suddenly, a new world was opened to me...

--"Sunday Bloody Sunday": I was there for this, a local station leaked it 2 weeks early. What can I say? I suppose the amazing thing for me was that I intricsically identified with this so easily, and felt that I understood it. I had grown up in a politically conscietious family, a family of 3 generations of Democrats, straight back to our patriarch who walked off the boat (who is the one who recently passed away) and shouted arguments around the kitchen table about politics were common, that often ended up with one or more members leaving the table. Which is all the more amazing in that it wasn't even the Irish half of my family:) Maybe it was this, and the family tradition of making the evening news a group ritual--Peter Jennings being a sort of surrogate uncle--that made SBS gel so instantly with me. But the darkness of my family experience had begun even then, and I understood the personal ramification of families being "torn apart" even then. I can't say how I knew this--I didn't allow myself to see a picture of the band until Live Aid, or read articles about them; but by the time I did, I felt like I knew them already and the articles were nothing new) but I heard a DJ one day describing their shows, (U2 played a summer festival at the university right down the street from my house! I look at the pictures from SUNY in '83 and it is strange to walk over the spot where they played, and think of how I was a fan at the time but didn't know about this show) and I got a white sheet and hung it from my wall, instead of a u2 poster. Don't ask me how, but that song was like a drug in my veins. It was in my blood. I understood it completely, without reservation.

--"Pride": Ever since I'd gone out and made my Mom buy "War" for me--I was too embarrassed to buy it on my own, don;t ask me why but it STILL embarrasses me to buy an album, I have to buy something els ewith it! -I was looking forward to their next. It was still just music for me. Though by this time, after hearing "40", and one of the rare times in my life being moved to a flood of tears (God was beginning to speak to me at this time in my life, I just had an urge to buy a Bible and read it, and seek out things spiritual, U2 and Taylor Caldwell's novels were a big part of my spiruitual growth at this time) the band had begun to open my horizons, and speak in some inexplicable way to the depths of my soul. Though it was with the implacable growth of youth,its incurable optimism, I still did not despair. That happened a year later... In a musical sense, I didn't know what to expect, but there wasn't THAT much difference musically in the first 3 albums, and I guess I expected the 4th to be like it. I had become literate enough about rock now to be familiar with several of the major critics, Dave Marsh etc, and read reviewsd and many books. So I knew my rock history, as well as having had acess to my uncle's garage. At any rate, I expected the band to continue their call to arms, and mix the righteouos politics of anger with compassion and make ringing declarations. When "Pride" came out, I was completely confused. I worked at the high school newspaper at the time and the reviewer;s comment fit in with what I thought: "Bono does a good job of screming out the words, but it really doesn't make much sense." I remember sitting deep in the living rrom couch and hearing ""Pride" on the radio and thinking, "God, Bono Vox, your nickname doesn't fit here. What the heck is this all about? If it's about MLK, that's fine, but the rest of the lyrics? "One man washed on an empty beach"? I cringed...Larry sounded great, but at that stage for me, great music wasn't enough. U2 hadn't concerted me with great music; being a writer at that early age, it was great lyrics that did the trick. After the anthems of "War" I felt this was the supreme betrayal. I didn't know who Brian Eno was, but I hunted up a copy of "Music For Airports" at someone';s suggestion, and then all hell broke loose. I remember distinctly standing over the doewnstairs living room fireplace, holding the album in my hands (I still didn't know what they looked like, I got a glipmse of Slane but no more)and at the point of dropping it in...but then I remembered "Bad"....

--"WOWY": 13 years ago, I kept breathless vigil by my radio in the first week of March, 1987. I was writing a term paper that week, I believe, and had developed the habit of taking my meals down to my bedroom, on the excuse of wanting peace and quiet. But the truth is, I couldn't concentrate! I had nil in the way of recording equipment at that stage, and had to resort to a tape recorder set up next to my radio. I was breathless with excitement, I couldn't sleep, and I didn't have much of an appetite. By this time, (in addition to being healing music) I still felt, of course, like every teen does about their favorite band:that I was in a secret club, that only me and a select few knew about, and yet, far from being happy with this, or feeling exclusive or overly protective, I wanted to share this with everybody but didn't know how. It was like, "Here's a message of joy and hope, and I want everyone to know about it!" I knew the sayings: "More fun than a religious experience!" "The biggest underground band in the world!" etc. U2 at that time was a band unlike any other and never again: a band who could sell out football stadiums coast to coast in the course of an afternoon, and they'd never had a top 40 single (save Pride, #36 for 1 week)or a top 10 album. And yet everyone was rooting  for them... So I sprawled on my bed, munching junk food I'd hid under my bed, one hand writing and the other on the radio dial, and then on MArch 2nd, 2 days early, the DJ announcing WOWY! Oh my GOD! Jasmming the record button down, and beinf transfixed...the "infinate guitar"...Bono's anguished voice...everybody fill in the blank! I didn't feel this was a betrayal, at all...I didn't know what it was but by them I'd learned not to get so hung up on the lyrics. I knew a lot more about the band now. I must have stayed up the res tof the night,paying it over and over again.

--ISHFWILF": I had a job waitressing my first sememster in college, at the cafeteria, and I was walking from one table to another when ISHFWILF came on for the first time. I nstantly knew it was them. I started getting goosebumps, and froze in the middle of my walk, and had to put the tray down and listen, and when I picked it up again and "walked on":), I felt buoyant, as light as a feather... The first song I heard from RAH was the gospel "ISHFWILF": The DJ said when it was over, "AMEN, play it again guys!" SHe was a huge fan. Funny, the controversy over RAH didn't depress me then. I know it would now. Again, I remember the Christmas decoratioins being set up for this one...why is it my most vivid meories of U2 debuts are in the winter??

--"The Fly": This will always be a "Winter song" for me. SO much of AB is wintry, funny, they say that (maybe becasue of the videos) much of the band's early work has a cold, crips, early winter morning feel, but the albums of the 90's evoke frozen winter nights to me. The mid 80's work evokes high bright summer afternoons. UF evokes a summer evening. I was looking forward to the next album. By this time I'd begun a habit of getting the release dates and keeping vigil by the radio. When I heard it I said to myself, "They've lost their virginity" and wondered what the new album would possibly be like. ??? I thought the radio was broken! (How many of you thought the radio was broken hearing "Zoo Station" too?)As a song, "The Fly" STILL doesn't impress me. I think it was chosen more for the concept than being a great piece of music. The video shocked me to the core though. I felt they were dirtying themsleves, they had rolled in the mud, and at first I didn't like this mud in the crystal clearness of their vision, but when I went to the first ZooTV show and Bono took off his glasses during one but more importantly the whole arena feel abnormaly silent, I knew it would be all right. This wasn't empty spectacle. (Unlike later.)As long as there was a sublime song in the mix, and Bono wasn'tr belietltingit in his perforemance, it was all right.

For "Numb" it gets a bit hazy. I have a distinct memory of walking down a city street while I listened to "The First Time" for the first time and getting that unique shaky feeling again. Intellectually, I thought they were declining but...I felt that a song as this was an expirimentation stage it was OK. How long it was to go on for, I don't know...but again, even then I was thinking the band did their thing in threes.

-- "Discotheque": This one I heard on my Walkman for the first time, as I sat on my lunch break at work. I'd been taking my Walkman everywhere for the purpose. I sat there in a daze, thinking, "What the hell is THIS?" and wondering hwere was the center in this widening gyre, the center definetely wasn't holding. Which was ironic to me, seeing that the band seem to be more focused and know where they were going back when they faced the critica opposition of the 80's...

So there you have it. And now, a new song and album are upon us. I know when I get the CD, I'll do what I did before, and do always: I'll wait until midnight, and shut off all the lights but one, and take an hour to read over and laugh at the credits (WHO is the Flaming Colossus?) intellectualize over the most minute details of the cover art (DON'T tell me they've gone back to the "one band member staring into space while the other three wear a single diferent color and stare in ANOTHER direction" phase! We all know Bono is the maverick, ya don't have to explain it but the team will get off on this! And then I'll slap myself and remind myself about that aura of mystery every gesture and utterance had when I was a kid:))

And then I'll play the darned thing over and over again, laughing, frowning, getting the monumental chills, exclaiming in surprise or anger, "HOW could you---!" etc. and taking the Lord's name in vain more times then I can count...And loving every minute. How about you all? What are your memories? What do you think?

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The essay was first posted on Wire, August 30, 2000, and reprint for the page purpose by kind permission of the writer.