The U2 show that almost dissolved into a fistfight: “I had to grab him”
Not every band should get along 100% of the time. As much as they like to present themselves as a united front, some of the best acts in the world thrive on that signature tension between members, making everything feel magical when they play. Although U2 have long cultivated the image of old schoolmates who just happened to become one of the biggest bands on the planet, some of their early gigs didn’t exactly end on the most peaceful note once the final chords rang out.
Then again, there seemed to be no one more of an advocate for peace than Bono during his prime. Despite the raw anger and passion in his voice, a lot of his words revolved around stopping the harm done to innocent people, whether that was talking about the harmful effects he saw in Ireland on ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ or looking at the heinous deeds going on behind closed doors in America like ‘Bullet the Blue Sky.’
Although many people claim that the appeal of U2 begins and ends with the dude in the expensive sunglasses and the man in the hat with the shimmering guitars, the rhythm section of the group is criminally underrated. As much as Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr seem to drive the band forward half the time, their songs tend to be very unconventional, usually throwing in modern rhythms that don’t have anything to do with the traditional four-on-the-floor format everyone remembers from rock’s glory days.
Take a tune like ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, for example. The whole point behind the record is to make this grandiose entrance to The Joshua Tree, but when pulling off the intro of the tune, many people forget that the band is playing in 6/4 time throughout those few bars before Bono eventually sets everything straight with his lead vocal.
Not everyone can pull that off, but to get things right with any drummer means being very delicate with the drumkit. It might be a nightmare to lug around from gig to gig compared to a guitar or bass, but Mullen was determined to have everything right when he was playing, so when Bono got a bit too critical of the kit during one of their first gigs, things almost descended into chaos on the stage.
As The Edge remembers, the band were playing through the song when Mullen and Bono almost got in a fistfight, saying, “This one night, Larry stopped playing in the middle of a song because something had gone wrong with his drum kit. Bono lost his temper and started smashing the drum kit with the microphone. Larry just freaked and left the stage for the dressing room. And Bono was after him. Myself and Adam are going, ‘Oh, my God.’ I remember Talking Heads were in the audience. So I put down my guitar. I didn’t hit Bono. But I had to grab him quite strongly because I thought he was going to throttle Larry.”
Then again, it’s easy to blame raw nerves in that situation. When a band as high-profile as Talking Heads are in the crowd watching, everyone will be on their best behaviour onstage, and when they think that one of their bandmates is deliberately trying to sabotage their tune or can’t be asked to do their job, it’s no wonder why it descended into chaos when they were playing.
If there’s one thing to be learned from this kind of fight, though, it’s the importance of patience when it comes to rock and roll. It might be frustrating in those salad days trying to get noticed, but it’s better to take in all of the criticism from the rest of the band than settle differences with violence.
