‘Bad’: The U2 song about heroin that Bono has never been satisfied with
At the point of 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, Irish rock monster U2 had reached a pivotal point of career-altering change. Gone were the last shreds of rough, new wave origins that spiked ’83’s War, and in was atmospheric textures and ambient sonics courtesy of already by then legendary artist and svengali Brian Eno, plus extra production magic from Daniel Lanois, forging a recording team that would be present in some form or another for the rest of U2’s output.
In Neil McCormick’s hefty autobiography U2 on U2, Bono remarked: “We knew the world was ready to receive the heirs to The Who. All we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin, without a doubt. But something just didn’t feel right. We felt we had more dimension than just the next big anything, we had something unique to offer”.
He added: “The innovation was what would suffer if we went down the standard rock route. We were looking for another feeling.”
In U2’s ambitious reach for creative integrity, the band looked at the world around them to fuel their impassioned arena performances. While Bono’s philanthropy and supposed humanitarianism now triggers an eye roll at best, the cynicism of shallow, liberal politics had yet to coarsen people’s faith in the social power of music, the crowd at their defining Under a Blood Red Sky or Live Aid sets positively awestruck with his moral posturing and undeniably charismatic showmanship. Setting their sights on their home town Dublin’s growing heroin epidemic wrought from economic decline and recession, Bono penned a song that was never quite finished and possessed by a form that’s forever shifting to this day when played live.
While not the only song to explore heroin addiction on The Unforgettable Fire (the other being ‘Wire’), it’s fan favourite ‘Bad’, which explores the throes of drug addiction with deeper emotional effects. Bono elaborated on his relationship with the subject, stating: “They gave up everything they held sacred to this drug… I tried to describe that with the song, ‘Bad,’ what it was like to feel that rush, to feel that elation, and then to go on to the nod, the awful sleep that comes with that drug, and then scream: ‘I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping!’ I can see what’s going on.”
The song’s haunting, austere envelop, pierced with The Edge’s signature guitar chimes and born from an improvisation at Slane Castle, mirrors the nebulous lyrical formlessness that Bono’s taken advantage of to revise and amend whenever the moment takes him: “That is potentially truly a great song… if I had finished it,” he said. “And in a way I do finish it every night, live. I change the lyric. Poets have no problem with revising their work. Songs shouldn’t be set in stone. If they are any good, they are living, breathing organisms.”
The nagging dissatisfaction with its unfinished poetry has never hampered its power as an essential number in their live sets, taking on a gargantuan new life as part of their acclaimed Live Aid performance and a staple throughout their subversive Zoo TV tour. Even in U2’s ‘ironic’ 90s or their later 360° extravaganza, ‘Bad’s sincere solemnity forever finds its way into the band’s repertoire, seeking new contexts and lyrical restyling whatever incarnation they’re in.
