Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / U2's 'Pop' - A Lemon Or Overlooked Gem? [Episode 192]

Transcript

U2's 'Pop' - A Lemon Or Overlooked Gem? [Episode 192] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  We're totally booked rock and roll. I mean gotta leave you. You're reading.
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  Little hands says it's time to rock and roll. Roll up, we
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  are totally booked. Welcome back to book don Rock. This is the podcast
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  for those about to read and rock. Find the podcast online at booked on
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  rock dot com. You can find every episode there, along with links to
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  your favorite listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, links to all of the
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  social media sites in the latest rock book releases. Also, you can now
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  watch every episode in full on video at bookdown rock dot com and on the
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  bookd on Rock YouTube channel. You can find it at book don Rock and
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  if you like what you see, make sure you click the like and subscribe
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  buttons. That goes a long way to support the podcast. Author Jeff Harkness
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  is returning to the podcast, this time to talk about his latest book,
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  forty Foot Lemon, The Complete Story of YouTube Pop and PopMart. You two
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  had been on a decade long run of hits when they released their album Pop
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  in nineteen ninety seven that included the Joshua Tree and Octune Baby. The band
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  Zoo TV Tour in the early nineties was a multi media extravaganza that dazzled critics
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  and sold out venues all over the world. What Pop turned out to be
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  U two's worst selling album, and the accompanying PopMart tour played to half filled
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  stadiums and earned the nickname flop Mart in the press. The pop era was
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  left behind, but many Youtuboe fans never forgot what Bono once called, quote
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  the best thing We've ever done. Forty foot eleven, the complete story of
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  You two's Pop and PopMart, takes readers into the studio and onto the stage
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  during youtwo's most experimental and ambitious era. It chronicles the difficult and expensive year
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  long recording of Pop, where the band worked with five producers in multiple studios
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  on two continents, striving to create a masterpiece. Instead, with tour dates
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  already booked, you two handed in an unfinished album. Forty foot Lemon follows
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  You two around the globe on pop mark the biggest tour in rock history and
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  featuring the world's largest TV screen, a ten story golden arch, a sofa
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  sized olive on, a one hundred foot Martini stick, and a giant Lemon
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  disco ball that did all sorts of tricks when it was working. Pop Mart
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  struggled to fill seats in the US, but it shattered records in Europe and
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  South America, playing to pack stadiums and making history from Sirievo to Santiago.
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  Forty Foot Lemon is the definitive account of you two at their most interesting,
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  and the author of that book, Jeff Harkness, is here to talk about
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  it. All of You Two's pop album can be heard on the show notes
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  page. Hey Jeff, welcome back to the podcast. Good to see again.
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  Thank you, very happy to be here, excited to be here.
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  Yeah, last time was for your book on Conning Crows Adam Durtz, And
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  now you've got a book on you two's pop album and pop mart tours called
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  forty Foot Lemon The Complete Story of You Two's Pop and Pop mart. So
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  first question, why a book on this specific album. Yeah, Well,
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  to me, it's it's like, here's the greatest band in the world,
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  or one of the greatest band in the world, one of the biggest band
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  in the world, and they make an album swinging for the fences, trying
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  to create a masterpiece, and it just sort of doesn't pan out as they
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  had hoped it would. They have to turn into an album and start this
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  tour. It's the biggest tour in rock history. They're a bit under rehearsed
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  and not quite ready to go. The tour starts off rough and gets a
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  bad reputation, and eventually they are able to turn it around. But to
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  me, it's very interesting to see a great band at a time of a
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  real challenge and how they strive to overcome that, how they work to overcome
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  that. In some ways, that's where you see the real character a band
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  like You Two emerge is in those moments when you know they're against the ropes
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  and have to fight their way back. And we can argue about the merits
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  of pop and I think it's I think it's a much better album and tour
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  than probably the band does. But needless to say, they weren't real happy
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  with it, and for them it didn't it didn't quite make the mark.
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  And so we start with that premise. Is a great story of you know,
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  here's an incredible band that's really trying to do something and it doesn't quite
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  work, and what do they do in that moment? And I think in
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  some ways it's more interesting to talk about, you know, a satanic Majesty's
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  request than it is to talk about the greatness of Sticky Fingers or Exile on
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  Main Street again. As good as those albums are, and so we all
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  know how great the Joshua Tree is, we know how great oc Chunk Baby
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  is. We've read those books and they're awesome. But pop is very sort
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  of understudied, and because the band's not real fond of that era, we
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  don't know so much about it, and so I wanted to go back to
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  that era. The first time I saw You Two was on the Pop Mart
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  Tour. My first two concerts seeing You Two were on the Pop Mark Tour,
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  So I I was always very fond of the era and thought it was,
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  you know, sort of had gotten this this reputation that it didn't deserve
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  in the media, but that certainly did affect what happened, and it affected
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  the band a lot too. So that to me was the why I wanted
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  to write this book with it was. To me, it was just a
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  really interesting story about a band and its most challenged but also trying to do
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  something really interesting. And it's always great to see a really good band swing
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  for the fences, and they did on pop and on pop mart and they
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  tried to They tried to create the greatest album of all time and the greatest
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  tour of all time. And when an amazing band does something like that,
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  even when they don't quite make the market, it's always very interesting to take
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  a look at. To this day, U two is very ambitious, Like
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  even with right now with their shows in Vegas, they wanted to be the
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  biggest and best thing. But you did mention you mentioned the Actune Baby album.
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  So they're coming off of Actune Baby. Well, actually Joshua Tree and
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  Octune Baby, which back to back is just unreal how great those albums are
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  and how commercially successful, and then Zuopa which did well nineteen ninety three.
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  So what's the mindset going in when they decide to make pop in nineteen ninety
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  five, when this all starts, what's their mindset? Yeah, their mindset
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  is, we don't want to make an experimental album. We don't want to
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  make Zoeropa Part two. We want to do something that's more popular and more
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  sort of. They wanted to introduce new sounds into the what U two was
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  doing, and so the big things that were happening in music at the time
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  in the mid nineteen nineties were the EDM scene, the electronic music scene,
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  and so they were very interested in They were always interested in electronic music like
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  Craftwerk and Depeche Mode, but they got interested in Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers
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  and the Underworld and some of the groups that were around and doing interesting things
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  at that time. And then also they were influenced by the britpop scene Oasis,
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  Blur, Gene Pulp, some of those bands that were also doing great
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  things, influenced by youtubo at the time, and they were trying to introduce
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  some of those sounds into the traditional YouTube mix. So they wanted something that
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  was contemporary but also very much rooted in the YouTube sound, so that was
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  their approach. They had a number of songs ready that they had been working
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  on during Ak Chunk Baby and Zuopa that they brought into the studio. As
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  always, they worked with a number of producers. They liked to bring in,
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  not just one or two producers. They were working without Brian Eno for
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  the first time in many many years, more than a decade, and so
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  was this was new. But they always had a lot of producers on hand,
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  a lot of people in the studio, cooks in the kitchen. They
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  It was very interesting to me how they liked to bring in instigators, people
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  who would deliberately disrupt the recording process so that they didn't get comfortable. But
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  they know that they're millionaire rock stars and that yes men are surrounding them,
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  so they intentionally hire people like Howie b who would come in unplugged one of
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  edges guitars, or start messing with the knobs on his amplifier. You know,
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  the perfectionist guitar player messing with the knobs on his amplifier while in the
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  while they're jamming and just trying to disrupt the proceedings. That they hired an
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  artist to come in and do a crazy art installation to get the lyric lyrical
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  inspiration, and so he wrote these passages and poetry all over the walls and
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  that was influencing the lyrics. So they people he would write little notes like
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  writer's block or I don't hear a single, and like put it underneath Bono's
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  Mike stander or his lyric notebook. And so instigators, people who would disrupt
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  intentionally the proceedings so that YouTube didn't get comfortable. I thought that was a
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  really fascinating way to work. I don't think I've ever seen a band do
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  something like that where they would intentionally bring in people who were gonna disrupt the
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  proceedings. That was cool. Yeah, Chapter one is titled It's not exactly
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  Thriller. So that has to do with one particular that's the first guy they
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  brought in, which is Nelly Hooper. Right, talk about that comment.
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  What does it have to do with Nellie Hooper. Well, Nellie Hooper was
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  a British producer who was doing all kinds of hot stuff at the time.
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  He had worked on Madonna's albums, and he had worked with You two on
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  Hold Me, Throw Me, He Kissed Me Kill Me, which was that
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  great song that they did for the Batman soundtrack. He had worked with them
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  on GoldenEye from the James Bond soundtrack, which Edge and Bono put together for
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  Tina Turner. So he was a producer who was around and around in the
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  band's constellation and working with them. He was very into this sort of electronic
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  and beats and things like that, and said they thought, let's keep working
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  with Nelly Hooper. He's a really he's somebody we want to have on board.
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  Now, Nellie Hooper worked with the band for months and months as this
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  goes on, and they were recording for more than six months and jamming in
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  the studio and endless jam sessions, and it just sort of wasn't going anywhere.
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  And eventually he said to them, you know, this is not exactly
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  thriller we're making here, is it. So he said, I don't think
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  I could do anything for you anymore, and he with the project, left
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  the project in the middle of it. I just felt like the album wasn't
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  wasn't happening. And so at this point it becomes kind of a crisis because
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  you two owes an album to Island Records, they know they're going to probably
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  have to delay it, and also they have to figure out now how to
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  continue on without one of their key producers working with them too. So uh,
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  that created an early set of challenges for them in the middle of the
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  recording process. And and so that thus begins. Even even like all of
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  the crazy stories, and it's kind of amazing just the sheer money that went
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  into the making of this album, all of the different you know, producers
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  and everything else. The story was new to me as I was writing it.
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  So I was discovering this whole story as I'm going along too and going
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  like wow, I had no idea that they were, that they had this
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  kind of process of the studio. I thought it was really interesting, and
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  so to me, I absolutely wanted to take the readers into that inner bubble
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  of the studio. Hear from some of these other producers and voices that were
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  in there, hear from everybody in the band and some of the journalists who
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  were invited to come in and take a look at it and at the process
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  and just sort of see what this looks like. What does it look like
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  when a mega huge, very wealthy band comes together to create a new album.
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  This is Remember, this is not a band where there's rails of cocaine
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  all over the studio and groupies everywhere. So the focus is on the music.
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  And that's interesting too, because this is a band that's very committed to
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  making a great album and that's what it's all about. And that process,
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  to me, was just really interesting. One thing I didn't know until reading
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  the book is that Larry Mullen was not happy with the way things started.
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  Talk about that and also similar to what's happening now where his body was his
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  body starting to break down in the mid nineties. He's starting to experience some
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  issues where he's got to address that held things up right. Absolutely, Yeah,
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  there are interesting connections to what's happening with the band in Las Vegas,
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  the Spear Shows and Larry Mullen Jr. But yes, Larry Mullen had had
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  long standing back issues that had dated back years and years that he never had
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  repaired and finally decided, I cannot wait anymore. I have to get this
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  fixed, and so I have to get surgery, and it's going to be
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  months for me to recover. The band was interested in doing some electronic stuff.
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  They wanted to work with loops and samples and things like that. Anyway,
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  they were working with people like Nellie Hooper and Howie Bee who were very
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  much into the electronic music. So they thought, well, this is a
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  good starting place. We'll start with these producers doing the beats and the loops.
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  We'll work with that while Larry's recovering, and then he can come in
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  and work with us. But that was upsetting to Larry because he said,
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  you know, at the beginning of the album is often where the key decisions
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  are made. And he was felt kind of cut out of that process and
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  had even sort of appealed through Brian to you know, for the band to
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  just just wait until he had recovered, but they didn't want to. They
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  wanted to get started and sort of went ahead without him anyway. Eventually he
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  does come back to the studio and he was very upset that they had sort
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  of gone so far into the beats and the loops and things like that,
• 13:18
  and insisted that all of that be replaced with his own drumming. He said,
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  if you want to sample somebody, you can sample me playing a beat
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  rather than some record. And so they had to go back and sort of
• 13:30
  redo everything and try to recreate those drum loops with Larry playing live and then
• 13:35
  have the band go back and do that. So it again delayed things a
• 13:39
  lot, slowed things down and just made the process take longer. But eventually
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  he did come back, and a lot of the playing on the album is
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  him. I mean there are beats and loops and things like that that much
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  of it comes from Larry mull and Jr. In the end, and it
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  is strange seeing someone else behind the kit watching these you two shows, spear
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  shows. It is Strange. Yeah, one song that I remember being a
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  favorite among fans who were even those who were disappointed in the album overall,
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  Steering at the Sun. That was like the closest to you two that that
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  we were hearing because everything else on the album is is just it's it's different.
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  And talk about that one that that that that wasn't the lead single,
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  but it was a song that all the guys in the band said, Yeah,
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  this is going to be a really good single. They all felt strongly
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  about that. They did. Yeah, they that was the song that they
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  did bring with them from those Zuopa sessions in a very embryonic form, so
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  they just had a couple of chords and some ideas, but it was it
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  was something that they brought to the sessions and wanted to work on, and
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  as soon as it kind of clicked and came together, everyone was in agreement
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  that this was going to be the song. They thought that this was the
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  one. They thought that this was this still Haven't Found what I'm looking For
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  or the stay Far Away So Close. This was going to be the key
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  signature song of the album that defined the album and also was a worldwide smash
• 15:11
  that filled all these stadiums that they were going to play, So there was
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  a lot riding on this song. They had a lot of belief in it
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  and thought that it was going to be basically a smash. It was one
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  that came early in the process and gave them some real confidence in the album
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  and of course in a spoiler where it doesn't quite pan out that way on
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  the charts for them and doesn't become what they had envisioned in the end,
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  and so you know, again, part of the story here is how does
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  the band deal with that sort of challenge musically, artistically, psychologically. That
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  to be was again just a fascinating component of the story. Yeah, what's
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  crazy is that song? That single Staring at the Sun released almost on this
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  day, It says here according to Wikipedia, April fourteenth, nineteen ninety seven.
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  But here's I guess this might be a shaker, but this is not.
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  This is one of my least favorite songs on the album, the ones
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  that I love the You two fans are going to probably hate me, but
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  I love the I love electronic beats, I love all that stuff. So
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  that's why I was digging a lot of these songs like Mofo and Gone and
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  love it. Trying to think of the other ones that that I mean,
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  I think last Night on Earth is another. That's another one from this album.
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  Please is a song that people like a lot. Mofo is an amazing
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  song, and that was one that went through a lot of iterations. Started
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  out more as a classic kind of rock, straight ahead rock song, and
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  then eventually morphed into this kind of crazy techno thing. One of the interesting
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  little facts about that song is that Larry Mullen is playing live. That's a
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  live take from Larry Mullen on that on that cut sounds more like an electronic
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  beat than anything else, and that's actually that kind of blew everybody's minds and
• 17:04
  he was able to play that live along with the track and as perfectly as
• 17:08
  he did. It's an incredible take. They have talked about him though,
• 17:14
  just being super tight, super tight, like mind blowing how he's able to
• 17:21
  it's just, you know, it's to lay down a beat and be so
• 17:26
  near perfect every time. Yeah, Yeah, that that that's the whole thing.
• 17:32
  When you replace somebody like Larry Mullen in Las Vegas at this fear that
• 17:37
  that chemistry. They're one of those bands the few bands were. These are
• 17:41
  the same four original members since you know they were teenagers. It's incredible.
• 17:45
  Ez Top was up there until until Dusty Hill passed. Green Days up there
• 17:52
  too. Green Day's way up on that list. Yeah, it isn't that
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  neat. Yeah, isn't that neat when you have a band that's been together
• 17:59
  that long? And so, yeah, somebody liked Larry to remove him.
• 18:03
  Even if you replace him with somebody who's incredible, it's that chemistry is impossible
• 18:07
  to replace. Discotheque was the lead single that started out of a jam session
• 18:11
  with an old school hip hop or old school hip hop records, like an
• 18:17
  ed M record. Yeah, faine the word fane but and it was like
• 18:22
  an ed M kind of a hit song. That was again Howie b was
• 18:26
  like a DJ electronic guy. He was. He had turntables set up right
• 18:30
  in the studio and he would throw on albums and the band would jam and
• 18:33
  long and so they jammed along with that song and it just kind of clicked
• 18:37
  in and all worked. And that was another one that it came out of
• 18:40
  a jam session in the studio, like a lot of the songs on this
• 18:42
  album. And eventually, as soon as they were done with that one.
• 18:47
  They knew like this is gonna be the first single. This has got that
• 18:49
  you know, that pizzazz and that bounce and that bang that we really like.
• 18:53
  You see the continuity songs like the Fly that were kind of similar,
• 18:59
  even like Numb a little bit, and then subsequently, I think songs like
• 19:03
  Elevation and Vertigo are very much in the vein of disco tech. As much
• 19:07
  as that song generated some controversy, mostly because of the video. To me,
• 19:12
  the song very much fit in with the kind of things that they had
• 19:15
  been doing and have done, and it worked well. I thought. I
• 19:18
  thought it was fine as a as a song and as a single and as
• 19:22
  a way to launch the album. But it did the video especially generated some
• 19:26
  controversy because yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Yeah,
• 19:30
  because what the edge was the one who said we're they're looking to rebrand
• 19:33
  themselves like they felt that well, people felt they took themselves too seriously.
• 19:38
  So this was an This was an attempt to reverse that image and just have
• 19:44
  yeah, to be a little more fun, right, and the village people.
• 19:49
  They dressed up as the village people. This was a video director Stefan
• 19:53
  Sinowi, who had done a lot of iconic videos for the Chili Peppers and
• 19:59
  for Smashing Punk and even for you two. So this is a very well
• 20:02
  known director who's got great concepts. He's real artists, and so he has
• 20:06
  this concept if we're going to film them performing inside the disco ball and then
• 20:10
  at the end, so it's only the last thirty seconds of the video by
• 20:12
  the way, they pop in as the Village People, dressed as the Village
• 20:15
  People with the synchronized dance moves. Larry hated this. It's funny, and
• 20:19
  the video you can see he really dislikes this, and they actually use that
• 20:23
  in the video, so you can see his dislike for the Yeah This,
• 20:26
  this was not his best experience of all the album. This is just not
• 20:30
  one he was happy with. Yeah, And I think particularly like probably that
• 20:34
  moment filming the Discothech video of him dressed as a cowboy from the Village People,
• 20:41
  that was probably one of the low points for him where he just felt
• 20:44
  he felt the band was going too far. I think he just he questioned
• 20:48
  the integrity of what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Overall, even
• 20:52
  just the songs, he just wondered, like, where are we going with
• 20:53
  this, guys, which is interesting because you have to all be on the
• 20:56
  same page, and maybe that had something to do with the lack of success.
• 21:02
  But talk about well, speaking to that, you say that the songs
• 21:07
  on pop lack that anthemic sing along aspect to them, and that has a
• 21:11
  lot to do with the fact that a lot of these songs stem from jam
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  sessions. You think, I do think so that it wasn't They weren't crafted
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  in the way that the traditional song, not all of them, some of
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  them very much were. I think songs like Staring at the Cuner are maybe
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  more traditional, but yeah, they were rooted in jams, and so you
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  have songs like Gone or Discotheque that are basically just rooted in a riff and
• 21:36
  then trying to build the song out of that, which is fine, but
• 21:38
  that's just different from they have a catalog full of these anthemic sing along songs,
• 21:44
  like even things like Mysterious Ways One or Stay Far Away So Close,
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  and they're so called experimental period they're full of you know, rich melodies that
• 21:53
  you can sing along with and you know, raise your lighters or now your
• 21:57
  cell phones in the air and sing along in concert. And so even though
• 22:02
  it's a I like the album, I think it's an album that it gets
• 22:06
  better with repeated listening and repeated excavation. It's also not maybe as accessible as
• 22:11
  their other albums because I don't think that it has that song, It doesn't
• 22:15
  have the one, or they still haven't found what I'm looking for, or
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  they stay far away so close where it's like that song that they were looking
• 22:22
  for, that one that is just the ten out of ten all time generation
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  defining classic. They had a string of those, and every one of their
• 22:30
  albums had at least one or sometimes multiple beautiful iterations. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:36
  so many songs. And so I think that pop does not have that kind
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  of song on it. And because of that, in some ways, the
• 22:42
  fans, you know, just didn't connect with it as much. And also
• 22:45
  I think you too didn't like it as much because because it wasn't as well
• 22:51
  received as they had hoped. I think for them, they consider it to
• 22:55
  be a big failure. And you know, even though I think a lot
• 22:57
  of us fit, those of us who are fans of the album think well,
• 23:00
  let's not rush to you know, just throw the whole thing away.
• 23:03
  There are a lot of good things to like about the album and the tour
• 23:07
  as well, for sure, and so it's in some ways it's unfortunate that
• 23:11
  they don't embrace it the way that they do some of their other works,
• 23:15
  even the works from that era. How many songs do they play from the
• 23:18
  album nowadays? Do you play any? Zero? No? No? They
• 23:22
  The last time they've played anything from this album was in twenty eighteen, but
• 23:26
  that was Staring at the Sun. But really most of the songs they never
• 23:30
  played again. Three of the songs, there's twelve songs on the album,
• 23:33
  so three of them they retired during the tour, so they started playing them
• 23:37
  and then retired of stop playing them during the tour, never played them again.
• 23:41
  A bunch of songs, songs like Mofo and Last Night on Earth and
• 23:48
  If You Wear That Velvet Dress, they never played them again after Pop Mart,
• 23:52
  although they were played on every show on pop Mart. A couple of
• 23:56
  songs like gone and Please that they like. Those songs survived a little bit
• 24:00
  longer. They played. They played those on the two thousand and one tour,
• 24:03
  did yeah Yeah Yeah. A couple in the two thousand and five tour
• 24:07
  I think they played maybe it was Wake up dead Man or Discothech or something
• 24:11
  a couple of times, but for the most part they have not played any
• 24:15
  The majority of the songs they never played again after the tour, and most
• 24:18
  of them they haven't played since the two thousand and one tour. So it's
• 24:22
  an album that for them just they were not happy with it. They re
• 24:27
  recorded or remixed and redid half the songs on the album. So even from
• 24:33
  the very beginning, from the second right after the first day of PopMart they
• 24:37
  were in the studio re recording songs for the videos and for the singles,
• 24:41
  So they were never happy with it. They've always talked to even still today,
• 24:45
  they talk about going back to redoing other they do, and they talked
• 24:49
  about reissuing it, maybe with additional tracks on release tracks. I remember there
• 24:55
  was like ten fifteen years ago that they were talking about that. But I
• 24:57
  would love it, but we'll see it's it's it'd be great if they did,
• 25:02
  because they have hundreds of hours of stuff from the you know, the
• 25:06
  studio that they recorded, so it would be really fascinating, Yeah, fascinating
• 25:10
  to let the world hear of some of that. I didn't realize how much
• 25:15
  of an impact Oasis had on this album until reading the book talk about that,
• 25:21
  how how well it's specifically influence Gone and just an Oasis show. Yeah,
• 25:29
  yeah, he was a big fan, and it's you know, Oasis
• 25:33
  was really just having their moment at this time. They had really just hit
• 25:36
  the height of their fame, the height of their cultural impact. They had
• 25:40
  released in nineteen ninety five, What's the Story Morning, Gloria so for their
• 25:42
  second album, which has Wonder Wall and Champagne super Nova and Don't Look Back
• 25:47
  in Anger these amazing songs, and You Too. I think we're very you
• 25:51
  know, admiring of a band like Oasis. But also Oasis had clearly been
• 25:55
  influenced by you two and and also were fans of theirs, and so Bono
• 26:00
  attended one of their shows during the recording of Pop and But also Gone was
• 26:06
  a song that was very much influenced by I think songs like Supersonic by Oasis.
• 26:11
  You can really hear the roots of Oasis in a song like Gone,
• 26:18
  and even I think songs like Staring at the Sun were sort of influenced by
• 26:21
  what Oasis We're doing. Oasis did play a couple of shows on the PopMart
• 26:25
  tour and there's a great story in the that I found about them all going
• 26:32
  out on a night on the town and one comes on the radio as they're
• 26:36
  all in a vand together, and the gallaer Ger brothers start singing along and
• 26:40
  saying, ah, it's the greatest song of all time. They know me
• 26:41
  word that Bono's singing with them, and it's just cool, Like you could
• 26:45
  imagine a moment like that where you know, in the back of some vand
• 26:48
  somewhere. There were so many incredible moments, just the life that you two
• 26:53
  lives, where yeah, one day we're hanging out with Oasis at their concert.
• 26:57
  The next day we're having you know, lunch with the President, the
• 27:00
  next day were meeting Nelson Mandela. Just I couldn't believe the life that they
• 27:06
  lived, you know, just their day to day it was. It's a
• 27:08
  wild story. It's an interesting life. Yeah, let's let's talk about MOFO
• 27:14
  again. This maybe the best example of the drastic changes in the sonic approaches
• 27:18
  to the album. Can you talk about some of the things they did on
• 27:19
  this track in the studio. There's a lot of production. Oh yeah,
• 27:23
  Well, like I said, it was more of a traditional song. Originally
• 27:27
  like a traditional rocker, maybe you would think of something like Desire or something
• 27:32
  like that, like beat heavy with just more of a straightforward guitar and and
• 27:37
  but then they kind of souped it up, worked on it, turned it
• 27:41
  into this was really influenced by groups like The Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers.
• 27:44
  This is where that influence. You could really hear it, and so it
• 27:48
  becomes almost this techno like EDM thing. They souped it up. They replaced
• 27:52
  Adam's bass with a keyboard bass, so that's where it gets that, you
• 27:55
  know, giant kind of crazy sound. And as they said, yeah,
• 28:00
  such a It was a perfect open, you know. They opened with Mofo
• 28:04
  on the post This album is best on Saturday nights when you're going out.
• 28:07
  It's amazing. For me, it was every time i'd go out with my
• 28:10
  buddy's on a Saturday night, I'd crank this song up. The album too,
• 28:15
  so good. Yeah, I think mofo is what's so cool about it
• 28:18
  is it's the only song like that on the album, and I think that's
• 28:22
  what makes it great. If there were two three, or if it was
• 28:25
  a whole album of that, I don't think I would like it as much
• 28:27
  at all, but because it stands out it's so unique and so interesting sound.
• 28:32
  I mean, there's really nothing like that in their whole catalog. I
• 28:34
  love it. I think it's very cool and interesting. Even if yeah,
• 28:38
  yeah, absolutely, I mean, okay, so maybe you know, not
• 28:41
  every song that you two releases is a generation defining classic, but we I
• 28:47
  can just really appreciate the artistry of an album like this, and and also
• 28:51
  that they were really trying. They're not phoning this in, They're not slapping
• 28:55
  something together, They're not satisfied with a first take or something like that.
• 28:57
  They're really trying to a masterpiece. And a song like Mofo. You hear
• 29:03
  the craft work and also the work of all of the producers getting in and
• 29:07
  getting involved in that, so you know when it comes together like a song
• 29:11
  like that. To me, that's where this album really took what they were
• 29:15
  doing on Zoopa and OK Chunk Baby and took it in somewhere else and took
• 29:19
  it somewhere new. We were hearing things we hadn't heard on those albums,
• 29:22
  and to me, it's a great helps to make a great Kapper for this
• 29:26
  kind of experimental period that they had in the nineteen nineties. Here's the quote
• 29:32
  that says a lot about Bono seeing where things were headed. Kind to find
• 29:37
  it here because he's talking about how he was noticing the charts at the time,
• 29:44
  and there was a lot of dance techno. I think he was just
• 29:49
  seeing where things were headed. And boy was he ever right. Yeah.
• 29:55
  You look at the top forty charts now no rock and roll, none,
• 30:00
  that's right, yeah, yeah, and he can see that. And he
• 30:03
  said he was very influenced by rap and hip hop electronic music. Yeah,
• 30:07
  the charts were full of This is the era of Tupac and Biggie were at
• 30:11
  the height of their fame and everything that was going on, and I think
• 30:15
  rap music was also interesting to him, and Bono could see that. He
• 30:19
  said, rock music has gotten very boring, it's gotten very safe, it's
• 30:22
  gotten very stale. So part of the pop was an effort to bring in
• 30:26
  some of these new sounds and new ideas into their music. In the demos
• 30:30
  that you that are available of pop, you can often hear Bono rapping,
• 30:34
  like really actually rapping. So they didn't you don't hear like a rap song
• 30:40
  on the album, but even songs like Mofo you hear some little traces of
• 30:44
  the hip hop in there too. Yeah, here's the quote from November nineteen
• 30:48
  ninety six. We are still a rock and roll band, but when we
• 30:51
  looked around last year, it was clear that hip hop and dance artists are
• 30:53
  making the music that defines these closing years of the twentieth century, and we
• 30:57
  wanted to see what parts of that music would work for us. So they
• 31:02
  were thinking ahead. They were thinking, maybe we could if we could find
• 31:07
  something here that we can latch onto, that'll be the next phase of You
• 31:10
  two. As as we know, that wasn't the case. And actually I
• 31:14
  think without this album we don't get all that you Lee behind. Yeah,
• 31:19
  you know, with Beautiful, I agree, they went back to their roots.
• 31:22
  Yeah, it enabled them to do that, and in some ways,
• 31:26
  it's Larry's critique was that they had maybe gone too far, taken it too
• 31:30
  far. I think the band even started to question whether that was the case,
• 31:33
  and so that enabled them to do what they had done at the end
• 31:38
  of the nineteen eighties, which was go back and reinvent themselves all over again.
• 31:42
  And then in this case, it was a journey back, and you
• 31:45
  know, in some ways that was disappointing to those of us who loved their
• 31:49
  nineties period and thought that it was very interesting. But at the same time,
• 31:55
  I think that that enabled the band to have another new phase of their
• 31:59
  career that they they probably wouldn't have had if they had done Zoropa two instead
• 32:04
  of you know, if they had done just stuck with this experimental thing and
• 32:08
  not sort of returned to their roots, so to speak. And didn't they
• 32:13
  Well, they did because I'm looking here Sweetest Thing was probably intentionally a way
• 32:17
  to get back on track with the fans too. That was a song I
• 32:21
  think from the Joshua Tree sessions, but it was yeah as a B side
• 32:25
  from Joshua Tree, like so many songs, they re recorded it for that
• 32:30
  single that they released in ninety eight or something like that, and that was
• 32:34
  part of They had said they would never do a best of album, but
• 32:37
  they released the best of it. It was the best of the eighties.
• 32:39
  There was nothing from the nineties experimental period, nothing from Ak Chung Baby forward
• 32:45
  on that first best of it. It was all stuff from the classic eighties
• 32:50
  period, Joshua Tree War and things like that at B sides from that era
• 32:53
  as well, And I think when that album was successful and that video was
• 32:59
  successful, I think that was a moment for them where they went Okay,
• 33:02
  you know, our fans have said that they don't want this pop album and
• 33:07
  PopMart tour perhaps, but they are embracing, you know, the traditional sound
• 33:14
  of the band, and so I think in some ways that that influenced their
• 33:16
  decision to return to their eighties kind of traditional sound. And by the way,
• 33:22
  I'm a huge fan, huge fan of you two in the eighties as
• 33:24
  well. I would never disparage that. I think in some ways what I
• 33:30
  love so much about their nineties period is because of what they did in the
• 33:34
  eighties, that makes their nineties period far more interesting than if that was the
• 33:38
  only thing they had ever done. So and it makes what they did with
• 33:42
  that tune Baby just mind blowing as far as its commercial success, because they
• 33:46
  took such a risk with that, such a risk and it paid off huge.
• 33:51
  Yeah. Yeah. All that you Can't Leave Behind came out in two
• 33:53
  thousand and then you just say, the best of nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety
• 33:58
  was nineteen ninety eight, and the song Sweetest Thing was a hit, so
• 34:01
  kind of get them back on track again. The book done. Rock podcasts
• 34:06
  will be back after this. So the book gets into, as I mentioned,
• 34:12
  not just the album but the tour. So let's get into it.
• 34:15
  Let's get into the tour now. The one image that always stood out from
• 34:19
  that tour, I think for many is Bono and that muscle shirt. Right,
• 34:23
  what's the story behind that? And talk about the different characters that he
• 34:27
  and the band took on each show. So this was another thing that I
• 34:31
  learned when I was writing the book. I had no idea. I knew
• 34:34
  about the muscle shirt like everybody, but I didn't know the story. And
• 34:37
  one of the things was how do I tell the story of PopMart Because there
• 34:42
  was so much planning that went into Popmartin that took place during the recording of
• 34:45
  the album. And so as they're recording this album, they begin planning the
• 34:49
  tour without having any idea what the album is going to be. At the
• 34:52
  beginning, they really didn't even have any songs or anything. They were is
• 34:55
  just kind of ideas. So a little bit of pressure. Yeah, so
• 35:00
  they're putting it, but it's also going to be the biggest tour of all
• 35:02
  time. They knew that they wanted to top Zoo TV it was supposed to
• 35:06
  be bigger, better, and Willie Williams, their longtime director you know,
• 35:10
  came in and said, all right, we're not going to go downscale.
• 35:14
  We're going to make this bigger and better. And so they spent a lot
• 35:17
  of time and a lot of money developing PopMart. And one of the things
• 35:21
  that they decided to do was that if we're going to have the you know,
• 35:23
  craziest tour of all time, we can't just be up there in jeans
• 35:27
  and T shirts. We have to have some cool things to wear. And
• 35:30
  so they have a fashion you know, basically a fashion the stylist like a
• 35:35
  band stylist who they've worked with for years, and a consultant. They dispatched
• 35:38
  her, Sharon Blankson, off to Paris to the men'swear shows. She found
• 35:44
  an eccentric Belgian designer named Walter von van Berendung who had created these kind of
• 35:50
  crazy costumes and characters, and she said, ah, this, this would
• 35:53
  be cool. So they flew him back to Ireland and said, let's put
• 35:58
  you to work, and so they gave them some ideas. They had some
• 36:00
  songs at this point, they had some concepts, They had the sort of
• 36:05
  pop concept, and so he went to work on these costumes and designed these
• 36:09
  iconic costumes. His idea was based on superheroes, so he said, I'm
• 36:14
  going to turn them into superheroes for this like crazy tour that they're doing.
• 36:17
  And the muscle shirt was part of that. And so we think of Bono
• 36:22
  and the muscle shirt, but every member of the band wore that muscle shirt
• 36:24
  as sort of their undergarment because they're all supposed to be like these superheroes.
• 36:29
  And then they put on costumes over that, and so the edge was the
• 36:31
  like the rhinestone cowboy, and Adam is the pop tart in his crazy costume
• 36:37
  with the mask and the goggles of the hard hat, Larry basically looks like
• 36:42
  Larry no matter what. And then Bono, Yeah, Larry, it's like
• 36:47
  you did even military haircut. It's the same guy he's ben since he was
• 36:52
  a teenager. It's great, you can't you can't change Larry. I love
• 36:57
  that, but amazing. Yeah, So Bono though, decided he wanted to
• 37:02
  play like almost a different character in each song. And I don't know again
• 37:07
  if they've done anything like this on any other tour, but them working with
• 37:10
  this Belgian designer. He put together a series of costumes, and so he
• 37:14
  comes out as the boxer at the beginning with Mofo. He takes that off
• 37:19
  and becomes action man for a while, becomes Bono man. He's got lopsided
• 37:22
  bands, walking target, a whole bunch of different costumes, and so in
• 37:27
  each song he gets a new costume, takes on a new persona. It's
• 37:30
  almost like what he did with the Fly, but in each song he's doing
• 37:32
  something different. So I thought that was very cool and interesting. I had
• 37:37
  no idea about anything, and I just told you when I was writing the
• 37:40
  book, all I knew was, oh, yeah, they had the crazy
• 37:44
  costumes, but I didn't know the backstory there, and so that to me
• 37:47
  made the concerts much more interesting. When I realized what it was they were
• 37:52
  trying to do with these costumes and all of the changes and stuff. It
• 37:55
  was an almost like, I mean, I don't want to say like the
• 37:59
  Las Vegas style show, but it was a show. It wasn't just a
• 38:02
  consert, you know, some guys in jeans and T shirts. This was
• 38:06
  this was a spectacle. And part of that was the costuming was a big
• 38:09
  part of that too, and I thought that was very cool. And the
• 38:13
  stage props the gigantic Lemon. So why would they get forty lemon? So
• 38:17
  why were they skeptical that they wouldn't be able to pull this off? Well,
• 38:22
  they had a lot riding on the lemon. The Lemon was supposed to
• 38:25
  be like the Funkadelic Spaceship if you know that, like the Parliament Funkadelic tours
• 38:31
  from the nineteen seventies, those guys influenced by Kiss literally came on stage on
• 38:35
  the spaceship and came out on a spaceship like the Funk Aliens. And so
• 38:39
  YouTube was kind of inspired by that. They had the song Lemon, and
• 38:43
  they had the discothech thing too, and so they were like, let's put
• 38:46
  all this together. It becomes this giant like spinning lemon disco ball thing that
• 38:52
  is going to deliver us onto the stage. So the idea was instead of
• 38:55
  having an encore where they walk off stage and they sit backstage for four five
• 39:00
  minutes while everyone collapsed, they said, instead of doing that, we're not
• 39:01
  gonna have it encore. We're gonna walk off stage and go get in the
• 39:05
  Lemon. We're gonna play Lemon, the song lemon. While this lemon comes
• 39:08
  out on stage with the smoke of the lights and everything, it's gonna open
• 39:13
  up, and then we're gonna come down off the lemon and play disco tech.
• 39:15
  And so instead of an encore, that's what you're gonna see. You're
• 39:19
  not gonna sit there and clap and go, you know, okay, knowing
• 39:22
  they're coming back out, You're gonna get this kind of lemon sequence. And
• 39:27
  they were concerned from the beginning that this wasn't gonna work, that the lemon
• 39:30
  wouldn't open, or that something was gonna They saw a spinal tap. They
• 39:35
  saw spinal tap, that's right, yeah, stuck in the pot. Yeah
• 39:40
  yeah. And this did happen during the rehearsals in Las Vegas, and and
• 39:45
  so they were very concerned that this wasn't gonna work. And and so the
• 39:51
  lemon in some ways became a metaphor for some said for the whole tour of
• 39:54
  this, you know, giant spectacle lemon, that's kind of you know,
• 39:59
  malfunction or we're hoping it's not so. Yeah, the forty foot lemon,
• 40:02
  they had the big golden arch like McDonald's. Yea, the swizzle stick,
• 40:08
  their idea was influenced by Andy Warhol, and I touch on this in the
• 40:13
  book too, but one of the things, again I think is so cool
• 40:15
  about this tour is they were bringing in works of pop art. And so
• 40:20
  they started with Andy Warhol, and they're bringing in Roy Lichtenstein, and they're
• 40:23
  bringing in Keith Haring, these famous pop artists and bringing all of their stuff
• 40:29
  onto the visuals and onto the screen. It was influenced by Warhol's idea of,
• 40:32
  like the soup cans, we can take a commercial product like soup Campbell
• 40:36
  soup and turn it into a work of art, because that's not a soupcan.
• 40:38
  It's a painting of a soup can, and it becomes a work of
• 40:42
  art. And so their idea for the tour was, we're going to have
• 40:44
  this commercial enterprise, almost like a McDonald's enterprise, but it's going to be
• 40:47
  a work of art. There's going to be this soul underneath it. You
• 40:51
  know. That was the concept for PopMart And to me, again that was
• 40:54
  I loved the artistry of it. How they brought in these amazing artists in
• 40:59
  addition to the famous pop artists, brought in all of this art and made
• 41:02
  it sync with the video and work on stage. It was just so ambitious
• 41:07
  and so interesting and I don't think that again they've ever done anything quite so
• 41:12
  interesting. In some ways, I loved the tour. I thought it was
• 41:15
  great. It put a lot of money into it. And I don't recall
• 41:16
  in the book if you mentioned did they lose money on this tour? No,
• 41:22
  they didn't. There was some things that were interesting. The tour made
• 41:24
  money. It was a successful tour for a couple of reasons. One they
• 41:29
  sold the rights outright for one hundred million dollars for the tour to Concert Promotions
• 41:34
  International, so a company, and they basically said, you write us a
• 41:37
  check for one hundred million dollars and then you could go put on all the
• 41:39
  shows and we'll show up and play them. And with ninety three shows planned,
• 41:44
  you can sort of do the math on it. They were thinking,
• 41:45
  Okay, if we play a couple of shows a week, then this is
• 41:49
  going to work out financially. So that for them, they never really had
• 41:52
  to worry about the finances other than making sure that they could logistically get this
• 41:59
  show on budget and on time to all of these locations. But they already
• 42:01
  basically had a check the tour itself grows to one hundred and seventy million,
• 42:06
  So Concert Promotions International did just find with their seventy million dollar profit on the
• 42:10
  tour. One of the reasons it was successful was that it sold out stadiums
• 42:15
  all over the world, even though it didn't do quite so well in North
• 42:19
  America. It also sold out Giant Stadium, it sold out Soldier Field,
• 42:22
  it sold out some huge venues here in the United States as well, and
• 42:27
  did very well in some places even in the US. But also the ticket
• 42:31
  prices were high, and at the time quite high, and that's one of
• 42:35
  the reasons that did well. Even if you have a you know, let's
• 42:37
  say forty thousand people in a stadium that holds eighty thousand, if they're paying
• 42:42
  a high ticket price, then you're making some money in the end. So
• 42:46
  the tour actually financially was a success. It got tagged with this narrative of
• 42:52
  being a failure, and that really kind of stuck. Despite the financial success,
• 42:57
  and I would argue the artistic success, it was tagged as a failure.
• 43:01
  It became kind of remembered as a failure, and the band certainly viewed
• 43:06
  it as such. I would say so there were venues in North America that
• 43:10
  didn't sell out. Oh in the book, yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
• 43:15
  they had how bad I mean what we were talking, I mean you
• 43:20
  said, because it was strange for the band to see that that pad to
• 43:22
  have bummed them out, like you're not selling out everywhere you go? Which
• 43:27
  cities for the week? From the beginning, yeah, from the beginning.
• 43:30
  I think the second show was at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego and it
• 43:34
  was I think it was half full. Wow, that's a big place.
• 43:37
  I've seen I've seen a concert there. That's a huge place. And again
• 43:42
  they brought in a lot of people. But you know, when you have
• 43:44
  a massive venue and it's half full, it doesn't look good. And so
• 43:47
  from the beginning, they had shows like San Diego that didn't do well.
• 43:51
  Clemson, South Carolina I think it was eighteen thousand in a football stadium that
• 43:55
  held eighty thousand or something was the worst one. They had a bunch of
• 43:59
  shows in Florida that were like that said, there were and I kind of
• 44:02
  I don't know if I didn't want it to be like a Wikipedia article or
• 44:07
  an encyclopedia, but certainly some of the shows that you know, really were
• 44:10
  probably you know, had really low turnouts. I did mention those, and
• 44:14
  then also, as I said, they had plenty of places where they either
• 44:16
  played multiple nights or sold out, you know, or close to sold out
• 44:20
  the venue. The first night in Vegas was sold out, So it wasn't
• 44:24
  it wasn't the disaster that the media painted it to be. But at the
• 44:29
  same time, I would argue that Bono never forgot some of those performances where
• 44:34
  he's playing to empty stadiums, and they they even start kind of joking about
• 44:37
  it on stage and talking about it on stage, and I think it affected
• 44:42
  the psyche of the band a lot. Oh sure, sure. Now the
• 44:45
  set list is interesting too because they went heavy on the songs from pop so
• 44:50
  this is early Internet era. But I'm sure word got out too that yeah,
• 44:53
  they're going to be playing the hits, but get ready, they're going
• 44:55
  to be playing a lot. I'm looking at the set list in front of
• 44:58
  me right here. That's where yeah, and we get Mofo, I Will
• 45:02
  This is an average setlist for PopMart tour. Mofo it led with I Will
• 45:07
  follow gone even better than the real thing Last Night on Earth until the end
• 45:13
  of the World, New Year's Day Pride in the Name of Love. Still
• 45:15
  haven't found what I'm looking for. All I want is you Sunday, Bloody
• 45:19
  Sunday. That's pretty decent, though, they're going to old classics on that.
• 45:23
  But then you get Miami, which is I don't like Miami. I
• 45:27
  never liked that. It's it's a device. I don't like that song.
• 45:30
  Yeah, it's one of the devices. I love it. It's one of
• 45:32
  my favorites. Okay this guy, Yeah, no, it's it's it's just
• 45:37
  yeah, it's one of I just you too, and behave it. Just
• 45:40
  don't. I don't. I can't play. In the book, I talk
• 45:44
  about how they you know, they packed up and moved the whole production to
• 45:47
  Miami in the middle of the album, thinking that it was going to give
• 45:51
  them that sense of place like Berlin or Red Rox or something on their classic
• 45:54
  albums. They did write the song Miami and Miami, but it never kind
• 45:59
  of hand out the way that they had hoped. Yeah, YouTube, and
• 46:01
  I think of you two. I think like the Bitter Cold you know,
• 46:06
  yeah, yeah, right, well, you you even mentioned do you Feel
• 46:09
  Love? Did your email? Is a song that you liked? And I
• 46:12
  think that that's like a sultry kind of Miami, and that's what they were
• 46:15
  going for, like a hot you know, sultry night. So yeah,
• 46:20
  humid heat and stuff like that. That's seas that sell us you mentioned.
• 46:24
  I mean they had already started to tweak it when they started out. First
• 46:28
  of all, they intended to play eleven of the twelve pop songs. They
• 46:31
  ended up playing ten at the beginning of the tour. As I said,
• 46:36
  they dumped some of the songs in the middle of it as they went along
• 46:39
  the tour, Miami being one of them. Yeah, but they started very
• 46:43
  heavy, as they had with Ok Chung Baby. Let's not forget that.
• 46:45
  You two opened the Zoo TV tour with eight songs from their new album.
• 46:51
  Now it's a classic album and we all love it. It was a great
• 46:53
  album. Then, those songs were great. They were right to do that,
• 46:57
  smart to do that, brave to do that. Sure, but it's
• 47:00
  not surprising that they wanted to play a lot of the new album because their
• 47:04
  band that did that also on Zoo TV, and so I think they did
• 47:07
  want to play a lot of it, and she really showcased the new album.
• 47:13
  But they also some of the songs from the beginning. Do You Feel
• 47:16
  Loved was one of them, just weren't getting the reception that they hoped for.
• 47:21
  And every time they went and played one of their classics, like All
• 47:23
  I Want Is You is a song that they brought on in the middle of
• 47:28
  the tour, the audience goes crazy over those kind of songs, and so
• 47:30
  they realized, like, we, you know, we have to play some
• 47:35
  more of our classic material, and they did start to eventually. I think
• 47:38
  at the end of the tour they were down to seven songs from pop as
• 47:44
  opposed to ten, and they had gotten rid of three of them and brought
• 47:46
  on Wake Up Dead Man, which they hadn't started with. In the end,
• 47:51
  they played eleven of the songs, and I think the only song that
• 47:54
  didn't get played on the tour in full was Playboy Mansion. Okay, yeah,
• 48:00
  I've notice here do You Feel Love is not on the average setlist.
• 48:04
  This is coming from SETLSS dot FM. Yeah. I left off with Miami
• 48:07
  and then they went into Bullet the Blue Sky Please where the Streets have no
• 48:12
  Name? For the encore, Staring at the Sun, Lemon Perfecto mix,
• 48:16
  then Discothech If You Wear That Velvet Dress, Encore two with It Without You,
• 48:22
  hold Me, through Me, kiss Me, Kill Me, Mysterious Ways
• 48:23
  in one. So the second Encore was heavy on the hits, sure,
• 48:30
  yeah, I mean when they started out, I think they only had maybe
• 48:32
  eight songs that they were playing that were from the pre pop era. I
• 48:37
  mean, imagine YouTube's catalog, their whole catalog and only playing that those,
• 48:42
  you know, only having eight songs to represent all of those albums, and
• 48:45
  I do think that that was the problem. I also think that they didn't
• 48:49
  play any songs from Zuropa. That Lemon is a remix that they played like
• 48:53
  a track of it during the Lemon sequence, but they didn't play any songs
• 48:58
  from Zuropa, their previous album. I thought that was a great album,
• 49:00
  and I also thought that some of those songs would have worked really well in
• 49:05
  the context of pop and what they were doing with pop. So the song
• 49:08
  could played that yeah, yeah, yeah, they didn't play the song Lemon
• 49:12
  to me. Yeah, what's the perfect It's like a like a kind of
• 49:17
  a dance remix of the Lemon song the lo It wasn't played by the band,
• 49:23
  yeah, right, correct, They just played the track of it like
• 49:25
  a CD of it as this Lemon sequence is taking place with the smoke and
• 49:30
  stuff. So to me, that doesn't count. And it's not like for
• 49:32
  those of us who love that song Lemon, which I love that song and
• 49:36
  thing it's a great song. This is not that song. It's just not
• 49:39
  a very different sounding remix. And so to me it was disappointing as a
• 49:44
  fan to not hear anything from the Zeropa album because I just thought that was
• 49:49
  a great album and also there was some nice linkages to what they were doing
• 49:52
  with pop. Many of the songs came from those same sessions, so right,
• 49:57
  just was kind of a lost opportunity. It seemed like a natural aggression
• 50:00
  from that album to pop. The book done. Rock podcasts will be back
• 50:04
  after this. The highlight moment probably is the Mothers of the disappeared moment in
• 50:10
  Argentina. Right, that's like the highlight talk about that. That was powerful,
• 50:15
  Yeah, and many powerful moments. You know. Bono had back in
• 50:22
  the eighties had traveled to South America and had met in Al Salvador the mothers
• 50:27
  of the disappeared, and these were mothers whose sons and sometimes daughters had simply
• 50:32
  disappeared. The government had disappeared them, and so they didn't know what happened
• 50:37
  to them. They weren't never heard from them again, and of course they
• 50:42
  assumed that they were lost. And so to commemorate this and also to protest
• 50:46
  this, the mothers would march silently in the city square every week and had
• 50:52
  been doing this for years, and so Bono wrote the song Mothers of the
• 50:55
  Disappeared, which is the last song on the Joshua Tree, about this,
• 51:00
  and had really sort of connected with this idea when they went to South America.
• 51:05
  This was the first time that you two had played some of these places,
• 51:07
  and so going to Argentina, he met with the mothers of the disappeared
• 51:13
  who were there who had been influenced by the mothers in El Salvador and who
• 51:16
  were doing the same thing. And he recorded some things with them and did
• 51:22
  some video things with them, but also brought them on stage and had them
• 51:24
  say their son's names and hold up signs of their son's names and just sort
• 51:30
  of commemorate it. So it was a very serious moment. And then he
• 51:32
  recreated the band recreated this moment again when they went to Chile, and there
• 51:39
  were also a group of mothers there and so this became kind of one of
• 51:43
  the themes of some of the South American shows. And also they played the
• 51:46
  song Mothers that had disappeared for the first time and I think it was ten
• 51:50
  years at one of those shows. So some really, in some ways this
• 51:57
  created a bit of an issue too, because this is a very serious moment
• 52:00
  and it's sort of juxtaposed with the spinning lemon disco ball and the pop mark
• 52:06
  costumes and stuff like that. There was some, you know, some incongruity
• 52:10
  there, and I think that that juxtaposition was also something that didn't necessarily sit
• 52:16
  right with audiences or the band. It's sort of like, it's kind of
• 52:20
  hard to have a serious moment here where when you have all of these crazy
• 52:23
  costumes and the golden arch and stuff around us. So I think that was
• 52:28
  an odd dynamic as well. The tour got more serious in some ways,
• 52:34
  but the staging was still the same. So yeah, I always looked back
• 52:37
  on pop as Optune Baby on steroids, like you see that dude on steroids,
• 52:42
  Like whoa dude, Okay, he took it a little too fun.
• 52:45
  A few years ago, you were looking like you were in great shape.
• 52:49
  Now you're just looking like, Okay, I think you gotta back. So
• 52:52
  I think that's what it is. And so before I ask you, because
• 52:57
  you do mention in the introduction about how this album and era of You two
• 53:00
  deserve a second look, so I want to ask you why you feel that
• 53:02
  way. But let's talk about so your favorite tracks from this album. What
• 53:07
  would they be? Because I got mine? Oh yeah, yeah, well
• 53:09
  I mentioned Mofo is one of my favorites. Gone is definitely one of my
• 53:14
  favorites. I do like Miami. I think again that's a song that there's
• 53:17
  no other U two song that sounds like it, and for that alone,
• 53:21
  it's interesting to me. But also I just think it's I think it works
• 53:24
  whatever they were trying to do. I like that. I really those are
• 53:28
  some of my favorites. I think Disco Tech's good. If I didn't say
• 53:31
  last Night on Earth, I want to mention that again because that's a really
• 53:34
  good one. Gone is one of my very favorites. Mofo I think is
• 53:37
  amazing. It's a great album. It's one of those albums that to me,
• 53:42
  I spent a lot of the last year listening to this album more than
• 53:45
  I probably ever have, and it really grew on me. I came to
• 53:49
  appreciate it a lot more than I probably did when I first heard it.
• 53:52
  I really liked it when I first heard it, but I came to really
• 53:55
  appreciate this album, and I think in some ways when you go back and
• 53:59
  you're like, Okay, this is you too. They were in their mid
• 54:00
  thirties, they were still young, they were still full of fire and energy,
• 54:05
  and they were still you know, ambitious and ready to take on the
• 54:07
  world, and they had the energy and the ambition to do it. And
• 54:10
  so looking back, this was just after their commercial peak, just after the
• 54:15
  height of their creative and commercial peak and their cultural influence. This is just
• 54:21
  passed it. And it turns out that to me, it is an era
• 54:24
  worth revisiting because it is the band at their most ambitious. It is them
• 54:29
  at their most interesting. In some ways, you get all of these sounds
• 54:32
  that we haven't heard on any other album. You get a tour that we
• 54:36
  haven't It was a spectacle and video and multimedia, but I really felt like
• 54:40
  bringing in the art art part of it and the sort of pop art part
• 54:45
  of it, and especially the costume changes made it a more interesting tour in
• 54:51
  some ways. Are certainly unique in their in their history of touring. So
• 54:55
  to me, it's it's an era that really stands out in some ways,
• 54:59
  especially we go back and revisit it. I think it holds up incredibly well.
• 55:02
  One of the things I did was watched every single one of the basically
• 55:06
  almost every single one of these shows the Pop Mart Tour tour, and it
• 55:10
  really did improve a lot. It was incredible how good that tour got towards
• 55:15
  the end. I watched the first show in Vegas and thought, well,
• 55:19
  that wasn't that bad. It was pretty good. I didn't, you know,
• 55:21
  I've seen them lots of bands flubbed songs and restart the many great bands
• 55:24
  have done that, and they did laugh and restart the song. So I
• 55:27
  didn't see it as a huge disaster that it was painted out to be.
• 55:30
  But I noticed by even the middle of the first leg of the tour,
• 55:35
  and boy, certainly by the end of the tour, that thing had cut,
• 55:38
  you know, really come together into a powerful, powerful, live spectacle.
• 55:44
  With the visuals, I think they got the set list really to work
• 55:47
  right, and I thought it was amazing. I thought it was as Bono
• 55:52
  called it, he said, it was the greatest show on Earth. And
• 55:53
  so this is why I called that fourth leg the greatest show on Earth,
• 55:58
  because I think it had really become that at that point, and I think
• 56:00
  the band agreed too. It's it's too bad to hear them now disparage pop
• 56:06
  and disparage the pop era because to me, it's a it's an era that
• 56:09
  really has aged quite well. Now did they release a video professional video of
• 56:17
  the concert? They did. They released a home video in nineteen ninety eight,
• 56:22
  Live from Mexico City. They released that was on VHS and in nineteen
• 56:28
  ninety eight, but then they re released it on DVD later. It's still
• 56:30
  available and it's great. It's a it doesn't have Miami, so you like
• 56:36
  it for that they had come by that point. But the it's a it's
• 56:39
  a killer performance, and I think maybe they it was mostly the second night
• 56:44
  in Mexico that that is the show, but it's a It really shows how
• 56:47
  much the tour had come together. They were right, I think, for
• 56:51
  choosing that particular show, and they released that on home video, and they
• 56:54
  have released audio from that as well subsequently from that same Mexico City show at
• 57:00
  a few different iterations, so there has been a little bit of I think
• 57:04
  they like PopMart more than they like Pop the album, and so they have,
• 57:08
  you know, kept the video and the audio stuff available out there.
• 57:13
  Of course, I curated a YouTube playlist as well, with almost all the
• 57:16
  shows and a lot of the cool things that I found all from the pop
• 57:20
  era that I put on a YouTube playlist and put it together. So if
• 57:23
  you find like the book trailer for this on YouTube, you can find the
• 57:27
  whole playlist and it has a lot of these things that I found when I
• 57:30
  was researching the book, and it's very cool. I think if you go
• 57:35
  back and like, you can watch the whole Mexico City show online and it's
• 57:38
  mind blowing. I think. I think if you're a YouTube fan, I
• 57:42
  think you really like it for sure. Yeah, here's I'm looking through.
• 57:45
  There's a quote online from The Edge said the Edge still viewed Pop as a
• 57:51
  quote unquote great record and said, quote, I was very proud of it
• 57:54
  by the end of the tour. We finally figured out by the time we
• 57:58
  made the DVD, it was an amazing show that I'm really proud of.
• 58:01
  And then in the same interview he says, quote we started out trying to
• 58:05
  make a dance culture record and then realize at the end there are things we
• 58:08
  can do that no EDM producer or artists can do, So let's try and
• 58:13
  have it both ways. In that case, we probably went too far.
• 58:15
  In the other direction, we probably needed to allow a bit more of the
• 58:20
  electronica to survive. All right, So here are my songs, my picks
• 58:25
  from the album that I Yeah, I like her Love just Goo Tech,
• 58:30
  I like do you Feel Loved Love Mofo love God Will send His Angels,
• 58:36
  really like Staring at the Sun. Yeah, I mean I like it more
• 58:39
  now than I did at the time. For some reason, I wasn't feeling
• 58:42
  it. But it's a good tune. Last time on Earth Love Gone Love
• 58:47
  Miami, you know how I feel the Playboy Mansion. Don't like if you
• 58:52
  wear that velvet Oh wait a minute, you know I'm thinking, no,
• 58:57
  it's so cool. It's very like stones Got. Yeah, maybe maybe I
• 59:01
  got. I can listen back. Maybe I'm confusing with it because as he
• 59:04
  gets to the end of the album, I get I'm trying to yeah my
• 59:08
  mind with the titles. If you wear that velvet dress, I don't think
• 59:10
  I like, but I think please is another gurglin right people love Please.
• 59:15
  It's that to me is not one of my top top songs, but the
• 59:19
  band sounds incredible on it. And yeah, they thought that song was going
• 59:22
  to be like the Sunday Bloody Sunday. It's got the lyrically they're very similar
• 59:28
  that talks and talking about the troubles in Ireland, and they did. They
• 59:31
  didn't see that as kind of a sequel in some ways, I would say
• 59:36
  to Sunday Buddy Sunday or a sister song to Sunday Buddy Sunday. Yeah,
• 59:40
  well, half the tracks I like or love, so that's not bad.
• 59:45
  And I gotta listen, go back and listen to it again. I think
• 59:49
  you might be surprised. Yeah, I agree with you that staring on this
• 59:52
  Staring at the sum is never one of my favorite songs on the album and
• 59:54
  still is not one of the ones that stands out to me, but one
• 1:00:00
  of the things. The whole album grew on me a lot as I listened
• 1:00:01
  to it over this last year, and I certainly think if you're a YouTube
• 1:00:05
  fan, it's is absolutely worth a second look. If you haven't pulled it
• 1:00:08
  out in a while, you might be surprised at how well it holds out.
• 1:00:14
  Yeah. Well, what I thought was interesting is my older brother,
• 1:00:15
  who was an old school YouTube fan, still remember him saying that Staring at
• 1:00:21
  the Sun, that's the one that's the song I like, is you know
• 1:00:22
  the rest I only, but that was the one that stood out, And
• 1:00:25
  so that kind of spoke to me as like, yeah, okay, that's
• 1:00:29
  you know, the older generation, the ones who grew up on YouTube.
• 1:00:30
  That was one that connected more so than the others. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:00:36
  so what do you after this? We have all that you can't leave behind?
• 1:00:40
  How do this man little atomic bomb? So on and so on.
• 1:00:44
  So how do you think pop affected what they would do in the in the
• 1:00:49
  future following, Well, I think it affected everything. I think it it
• 1:00:53
  made them do that one eighty, back to their old sound and back to
• 1:00:58
  their traditional even the image and the tour and everything in the Elevation tour,
• 1:01:04
  all of that was just a complete kind of one to eighty from where they
• 1:01:07
  were. So I think in some ways what they did in the two thousands
• 1:01:12
  was a reaction to pop and to pop mart So I think it had a
• 1:01:15
  huge influence, and you know, some say pop as a result was their
• 1:01:21
  last great album. I liked the album that I would say it grew on
• 1:01:25
  me. I was disappointed to see the pop era and that experimental period end.
• 1:01:30
  But that album that they did, all that you Can't Leave Behind has
• 1:01:35
  it does, I think, have some great songs on it, and is
• 1:01:38
  a successful sort of return to the roots and gave them a new life,
• 1:01:43
  almost like a third act that they wouldn't have had if they hadn't done that
• 1:01:46
  pivot again. So it didn't disappoint me really too much that they did that,
• 1:01:52
  But in some ways Pop was was certainly the end of an era and
• 1:01:55
  we never saw them try anything like that again, and that, to me
• 1:02:00
  is too bad, because that, in some ways was the end of the
• 1:02:07
  band as a sort of you know, really trying to push the boundaries right
• 1:02:13
  in all sorts of ways. You see them do that with their live shows
• 1:02:15
  now, I think even the Spear Show, the three sixty tour and things
• 1:02:19
  like that, trying to sort of push technologically and things like that, but
• 1:02:22
  musically and artistically, I don't think that we have seen that side of them
• 1:02:30
  again as much, and to me that's that's sad. But Wow, what
• 1:02:32
  an incredible catalog, What a great run and there's so much to love about
• 1:02:38
  you two, and so many great albums and tours and periods. To me,
• 1:02:43
  it's like, you just don't discount this one the way that the band
• 1:02:46
  does. It's too bad they're not more fond of it. Have you ever
• 1:02:49
  seen them live? I'm curious? Oh yeah, yeah, saw it.
• 1:02:52
  Saw him on the All that You Can't Leave Behind tour and was just blown
• 1:02:58
  away and asmarized by that show and the performance of Gone in that on that
• 1:03:02
  tour. I loved. Yeah. And then I'm trying to think you did
• 1:03:07
  I see it? No? I haven't said that was the one show,
• 1:03:09
  only one show that I've seen them, just because the ticket prices were going
• 1:03:13
  higher and higher, so and I think, yeah, I kept trying to
• 1:03:16
  remember when last time they came here to Connecticut. That's the other thing.
• 1:03:20
  I think they really hit now in New York and Boston. And but what
• 1:03:23
  what a show? When they do bad? It's just you know, what
• 1:03:30
  can you say? Man? I'm a huge YouTube fan. I mean I
• 1:03:34
  I just went through that phase too where they could do no wrong. So
• 1:03:37
  whatever they did, I'm in. And I was bummed when when you start
• 1:03:42
  to see like no line on the Horizon. I was like, great songs
• 1:03:45
  on here, but the radio radio wasn't picking up on it like they used
• 1:03:49
  to. It is that's when you start to see like, oh, okay,
• 1:03:51
  things are starting to change now they're not They're not They're not is mainstream
• 1:04:00
  as they once were. But that happens with every band. It just it
• 1:04:02
  is what it is. Yeah, I mean, they had such a run
• 1:04:06
  being culturally relevant. It's hard to sustain that level of cultural relevance over decades
• 1:04:15
  and decades as a band or a musical artist. I think, well,
• 1:04:18
  and I mean I think I remember what's see now, Let's see Invisible and
• 1:04:26
  Ordinary Love twenty thirteen. I remember Invisible. I think the debut that during
• 1:04:30
  the super Bowl. It's like, damn man, these guys still got it.
• 1:04:32
  I love that song Invisible and the video is so cool. White as
• 1:04:38
  Snow is to me the real sleeper from their later White as Snow is like
• 1:04:42
  a I think it's on No Line on the Horizon. What a beautiful song,
• 1:04:45
  and it's very it's very like haunting, slow song. But to me,
• 1:04:50
  it's like, wow, that's the kind of thing the band can do
• 1:04:54
  very well at this period. You know, creatively and artistically. But you
• 1:05:00
  know that, I have to say I love Atomic City. I was gonna
• 1:05:03
  ask, I was gonna, yeah, I'm finishing up on that. Let's
• 1:05:06
  finish it. Atomic City. I love it. I think that's the best
• 1:05:11
  song you two has done in years. I love it. I think it's
• 1:05:14
  great. And I would not say that because I haven't said this about a
• 1:05:17
  youtwo song in a very long time. But I just I thought it was
• 1:05:21
  a great song and the perfect song for their Vegas show. To me,
• 1:05:26
  the one thing, the one thing is that I would I think they used
• 1:05:29
  it as the opening song of their encore. To me, that's the opening
• 1:05:33
  song of the show. You have to have the confidence to come out with
• 1:05:36
  that song and open with it because everybody's gonna like you because it's you two
• 1:05:41
  and it's the opening song, so they're gonna they're gonna like it anyway.
• 1:05:44
  But to me, that whole thing about there's a big one tonight in Vegas
• 1:05:47
  and all that, it's like you have to open with that, like we
• 1:05:50
  we're here to throw down in Vegas, ladies and gentlemen. We brought it
• 1:05:54
  to the Atomic City. And so I love that track, and I to
• 1:05:58
  me, it's like there's an example of Wow, they can still put out
• 1:06:01
  a song that I can't tell you that's one of my most fun songs of
• 1:06:05
  the last six months, and not just because I've been into the to the
• 1:06:10
  band, but just because I think it's I think it's the best song they've
• 1:06:13
  put out probably in twenty years or something like that. You think of it,
• 1:06:16
  yeah, yeah, Well, here's here's my thing. When I first
• 1:06:18
  heard it, it fell flat. I wasn't feeling it, and then I
• 1:06:21
  listened to it again and now I'm liking it, and I really like that.
• 1:06:26
  There's like a Beach Boys little Beach Boys tribute there. You hear the
• 1:06:29
  harmonies and sounds like kind of pet sounds Beach Boys mobent there, but obviously
• 1:06:34
  you got the blondie you know, call me right, and so it's a
• 1:06:40
  little sit back to those and I think it's really cool and Bono's voice sounds
• 1:06:44
  great and yeah, I'm I'm I'm now a fan of the song. I
• 1:06:47
  kept listening to it and now now I'm a fan, And you're right about
• 1:06:53
  that. I think it's smart to for the first song to be a newer
• 1:06:59
  song that maybe you think you're really confident about because the adrenaline when you're when
• 1:07:03
  you're listening, when the band opens, Yes, right, I think you're
• 1:07:08
  gonna connect with a song more so than any other time. So that might
• 1:07:12
  help to to to sell a single better than than to maybe play it halfway
• 1:07:16
  through, because you know, then people are gonna be like, okay,
• 1:07:19
  time to take a leak. Yeah, first song. Yeah to me,
• 1:07:24
  that's that's the opener in Vegas, even though I know they're doing an octunk
• 1:07:28
  baby and all that. But yeah, is Larry Mullen back or no,
• 1:07:31
  what's his not yet? Yeah? I mean he's he. He made an
• 1:07:34
  appearance at the at the last I think it was the last Vegas show.
• 1:07:38
  He was on hand to watch the show, waved every you know, the
• 1:07:42
  bono gave him a shout out and you know said that we love you,
• 1:07:45
  we can't wait to have you back. So I think he's coming back,
• 1:07:47
  right, he's like head to toe, like recuperating a bunch of you.
• 1:07:55
  Yeah, if you're a drummer, I mean imagine the physical toll of drumming
• 1:07:59
  over deades or even just a tour, and just imagine for those of us
• 1:08:02
  who are you know, not twenty anymore, like the physical toll of doing
• 1:08:06
  that over and over again. You can see why he has to have back
• 1:08:10
  surgery, his shoulder problems and all these things. And you know, even
• 1:08:14
  recovery, you come back and put in your body through that night after night.
• 1:08:17
  That's really tough. And I think even Pearl Jim recently said, you
• 1:08:23
  know, because of Matt Cameron and Eddie Vedder, we can't do the kind
• 1:08:27
  of three hour shows we used to do anymore. We just physically those two
• 1:08:30
  guys it takes too much out of them to do that, and so we
• 1:08:34
  have to think about ways to do things differently as we're getting older. And
• 1:08:39
  I think you know that that's just true for everybody. Yeah, but certainly
• 1:08:43
  certainly you too. It's it's amazing that they can still go out and do
• 1:08:47
  something like they did at the Sphere and make it. I didn't see those
• 1:08:53
  shows, but it sounded like it was a very special show. Once again.
• 1:08:57
  Forty FT eleven, the complete story of YouTube's pop and PopMart that is
• 1:09:00
  out now. You can find it wherever books are sold, and people can
• 1:09:03
  find you online where Jeff Well, there's a page for forty foot Lemon and
• 1:09:10
  also for the ranking book, The Counting Crow's Book on Facebook, so that's
• 1:09:15
  a good place to get me. I do actually post stuff there, and
• 1:09:17
  I do get some giveaways and things like that. So pop on there,
• 1:09:23
  throw me a comment. I'll usually respond, and I hope people do love
• 1:09:28
  the book. I had so much fun writing it and researching it. I
• 1:09:32
  would say that ninety percent of what is in here is Jeff that I didn't
• 1:09:36
  know either, and it was a real delight putting it together. And I
• 1:09:42
  hope that the YouTube fans have a sense of sort of delight and reading it
• 1:09:45
  and then also going back and watching all of the old videos and things like
• 1:09:50
  that. I think that there's just a lot to love about the pop era.
• 1:09:54
  Cool. I think I am friends already on your Facebook page for the
• 1:09:59
  book, but maybe not. You can send me the Lincoln. I'll put
• 1:10:00
  it on the show notes so people can go there. Yeah cool, all
• 1:10:04
  right, Jeff, thanks man, this is awesome. Look forward to having
• 1:10:06
  you back on Absolutely. Thank you so much. Eric. This is awesome.
• 1:10:17
  That's it. It's in the books.