Bono explains why U2 nearly quit playing ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’
With their third studio album, War, U2 moved from exploring their faith, as they had done on Boy and October, and began to express a political disdain for the turmoil occurring in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Their iconic ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ opened the album and examined The Troubles’ effect on the people of Ireland.
In an early interview, Bono explained, “The first time we performed ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ live, I couldn’t speak the whole day leading up to the performance. It was in Belfast, in the heart of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It’s one thing to write a song called ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ about The Troubles in Northern Ireland; it’s another thing to play it.”
The singer then claimed that U2 would have quit playing the song had the audience in Belfast not liked it. He added, “I walked to the microphone; I didn’t know what I was going to say. In fact, what I said to them was, ‘If you don’t like this song, if you don’t like it, we will never play it again.’ At the end of the song, the crowd virtually pulled the concert hall down in the most joyful way that a concert hall could be pulled down. It was a joyful riot if you could imagine such a thing.”
The Edge also later remembered playing the song at the show in Belfast. He said, “the place went nuts; it drew a really positive reaction. We thought a lot about the song before we played it in Belfast, and Bono told the audience that if they didn’t like it, then we’d never play it again. Out of the 3,000 people in the hall, about three walked out. I think that says a lot about the audience’s trust in us.”
U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. explained at the time that the band are interested in the “politics of people” rather than politics itself. “You talk about Northern Ireland, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday,’ [and] people sort of think, ‘Oh, that time when 13 Catholics were shot by British soldiers’; that’s not what the song is about.”
He added, “That’s an incident, the most famous incident in Northern Ireland, and it’s the strongest way of saying, ‘How long? How long do we have to put up with this?’ I don’t care who’s who – Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we’re saying, ‘why?’ ‘What’s the point?'”
During the performance of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ on the excellent live album Under a Blood Red Sky, Bono introduces the song by saying, “There’s been a lot of talk about this next song. This is not a rebel song, this is ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday'”, which further reiterates the fact that U2 were not necessarily making a political statement with the track, but rather paying close attention to the consequences that war has on society.
