War (original) (raw)

In 2008, it's nearly impossible to imagine U2 as teenagers rehearsing in a Dublin kitchen. Today, they're a powerful brand, a group with closets full of Grammys, more than 170 million records sold worldwide, stadium tours, membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a lead singer whose charitable initiatives have allowed him to hold court with some of the world's most powerful people.

It's funny, then, to think that the band is still the same four guys who first got together in 1976 to form the Larry Mullen Band. When David "the Edge" Evans, Paul "Bono" Hewson, Larry Mullen, Jr., and Adam Clayton released their first EP, Three, in 1979, they were still teenagers with an attitude and naïveté that didn't quite dovetail with the rest of the post-punk world. Even on their earliest recordings, they didn't sound like a band that could be contained by small venues. U2 had to be big.

Those earliest recordings are among the huge clutch of rare tracks-- studio B-sides, previously unreleased tracks, live shows, radio sessions, and remixes-- that populate the bonus discs accompanying these new reissues of the band's first three albums, 1980's Boy, 1981's October, and 1983's War. The first EP, included with Boy, isn't great, in part because the dry percussion is ill-suited to the band's (and particularly the Edge's) textural style; their debut album is another story. Produced by Steve Lillywhite, it opens with "I Will Follow", a surging colossus of a song that still ranks among the best tracks in the band's catalog. Bono's powerful vocals-- he got his nickname from a shorter form of Bono Vox (Good Voice)-- bring immediacy and energy to the album. And he was matched by the Edge's guitar playing, which he approached like a painter does a brush, using it as a tool to coat the canvas of the song with sound rather than resorting to basic riffs or simple strumming.

The version of "Out of Control" on Three had been dry and punky; the version on Boy is a near-anthem, with Bono's yelp transformed into an arcing croon and the Edge's slashing guitar grown into a huge, curling wave. "A Day Without Me" sounds like a rehearsal for an arena gig that was still years away-- the line "started a landslide in my ego" must have had different connotations back then for Bono than it does now. Lillywhite does a great job of capturing what made U2 unique (the Edge's remastering work is also vastly superior to the original CD transfer), and it makes sense that the band re-hired him for its rushed second album, convincing the producer to break his self-imposed rule of never working with an artist more than once.