Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / How A Stolen Briefcase Shaped U2's 'October' [Highlight From Episode 325]

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How A Stolen Briefcase Shaped U2's 'October' [Highlight From Episode 325] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Bradley Morgan, the author of You Two Until the End
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the World be right Quote Boy, had been recorded
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in a little over a month, with sessions finishing in
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: September nineteen eighty and would be the quickest Youtubo would
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: ever record An album reached number fifty two in the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: UK sixty three in the US, a solid opening. They
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: followed that with nineteen eighty one's October, which has fire
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and Gloria. The Edge assumed the band would work quickly
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to develop new ideas for songs after touring and building
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  Speaker 1: up confidence off of that, but that wasn't so. Making
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: matters worse was an incident in March of nineteen eighty
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  Speaker 1: one involving a briefcase. What was in that briefcase and
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  Speaker 1: what happened to it?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you two were working on a really tight
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: deadline with touring. They weren't really making headway in the UK,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: so their key to success early on was trying to
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  Speaker 2: play these American markets, and it was really tight scheduled
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  Speaker 2: doing all these shows and trying to make what would
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  Speaker 2: become that second album, October. So it was a time
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  Speaker 2: where a lot of things were just happening really fast,
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  Speaker 2: and during a gig in Portland, Bono had a briefcase
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  Speaker 2: that was stolen from the band's green room, presumably by
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  Speaker 2: a couple of women who came and visited during the show.
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  Speaker 2: And this briefcase, among other things like his work, visa
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  Speaker 2: and letters from Ali, who was his then girlfriend and
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  Speaker 2: would become his future wife, this briefcase contained the lyrics
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  Speaker 2: and song ideas for what would become October. And naturally,
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  Speaker 2: this was an incredibly disruptive thing and Bono had to
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  Speaker 2: rewrite a lot of that material from memory. And you
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  Speaker 2: can hear this on October because some of the songs
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  Speaker 2: sound a little unfinished and more rougher than when you
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  Speaker 2: listen to Boy Go and listen to Boy and October
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  Speaker 2: back to back. There is a lot of thematic overlap
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  Speaker 2: and even a lot of sonic overlap because they had
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: to make it very quickly and with less time to
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  Speaker 2: get these song ideas together. And even then, Bono wasn't
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  Speaker 2: much of a songwriter. He talks about songwriting as sketching,
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  Speaker 2: just him putting, you know, words to music, because they
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: didn't think that lyrics were necessarily so important, and it
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  Speaker 2: was an experience that really left an impact on Bono.
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  Speaker 2: Whenever the band would play Portland, he would bring up
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  Speaker 2: the briefcase, hoping someone would return it, which is what
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  Speaker 2: happened twenty three years later, in two thousand and four,
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  Speaker 2: a woman in Tacoma, Washington named Cindy Harris. She had
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  Speaker 2: that briefcase in her attic, but didn't know that it
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  Speaker 2: was stolen, and so she had made arrangements to give
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  Speaker 2: it back to Bono. And there's a story of this.
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  Speaker 2: You can read about this in a book of edited
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: essay collections called Exploring You two, edited by Scott Calhoun,
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  Speaker 2: and there actually is a story from the person who
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  Speaker 2: returned it telling that it's a really interesting story.