The U2 album that Bono wanted to rewrite: “I want to finish off those lyrics”
Looking back on old albums is usually the last thing that any group wants to do. It’s fun to revisit and see how well something holds up, but there’s also a good chance that you’re going to run into a lot of cheesy lines and tracks that should have never been included the first time around. Although U2 have more than a few of those blatant missteps in their career, Bono thought that the entirety of Boy deserved to be poured over at least once more.
At the same time, it’s hard to really fault the group for their debut. Any act is usually still finding themselves in the studio, and compared to all of the amateurish releases that other post-punk acts had released around the same time, it’s not like songs like ‘Twilight’ were the most insipid tracks imaginable or anything.
However, there are a few toothless pieces in the album, like ‘The Electric Co’, that seem to go on for a bit too long or don’t have as strong a hook to keep the audience engaged for more than one minute at a time. And considering what we know about U2 now, hearing The Edge using primitive versions of his effects pedals just makes the entire group sound just a little bit hollow.
So when going back to that kind of album, it’s like a light year had been covered in just one decade. Compared to what the group would be doing on Achtung Baby, it’s hard not to see this as the garage version of what they were trying to do on their later releases.
By the 2000s, Bono realised that they could have pushed themselves further on Boy if they had the right equipment, saying, “[It’s] spoiled, or let’s say soiled, by unfinished lyrics and an Irish singer with an American accent. It’s very unusual subject matter for a debut rock and roll album because it’s not about losing your virginity; it’s about your virginity. One day, I want to finish off those lyrics.”
Then again, that kind of innocence is half the reason why the project worked in the beginning. A track like ‘I Will Follow’ is a bit naive compared to what Bono would be saying on tracks like ‘One’ or ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, but it’s being sung by someone who admits that he doesn’t have all the answers.
If anything, that version of Bono probably needs to come back a little bit. There’s a lot of merit to what U2 has been doing since the 2000s, but there are also more than a few times where he seems to have all the answers and gets knocked on his ass, like when he tried to pass off the album Songs of Innocence but absent-mindedly throwing it onto everybody’s iPhone.
Given that U2 eventually released those updated versions of a handful of their early hits on Songs of Surrender, they practically proved why their first albums sounded so good. When all you’re doing is regurgitating what people have already heard, they lose some of that innocence that made the first record so special.
