Word: bandness
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...band, which had gone through a variety of names, including the Hype, was better with chutzpah than with chords. "You see," says Mullen, "we couldn't play. We were very, very, very bad." In the first hot flush of punk, this did not greatly matter, and after seeing them in 1978, McGuinness, who had done mostly film-production work up until that moment, agreed to become their manager. "It looked to me like they would be a great rock band," he says now, adding, "I've only had to be right once...
McGuinness farmed himself out for the occasional production job and began to "live off my wife." The boys, still living at home, would occasionally be ! driven to dates by a stray mom or dad. This sort of early scuffling can break a band or bond it, and with U2 it seems to have brought the group closer. After a bit. "The first couple of years," says Clayton, "we kind of hated each other. It was very competitive, and everyone was trying to come out on top." As the band gigged around, scrambling to get heard by record companies and earn...
...Bono's mother died from the effects of a stroke she suffered at his grandfather's funeral. Mullen lost his mother in a traffic accident in 1978. "The thing that has kept us going," he says now, "is the fact that we are friends. This whole band is based on our friendship. If it had originally been based on our music, we would have failed...
After some patchy times and a couple near misses with record companies, McGuinness struck a deal with Island in 1980 that allowed an unusual amount of creative independence ("They had to accept the record without any question"), and the band released its first album, Boy. That same year, it paid its first visit to America, opening in Boston for a band of what Bono calls "some local renown. We started to play, and all the people started standing up, turning over the tables. The place was packed. Steam was dripping off the ceilings, and they wouldn't let us leave...
...That was Sunday Bloody Sunday from 1983's War, a tune about the divisive heat and blind violence of modern Ireland that curried no favor on either side. War was U2's best work until The Joshua Tree; the year after its release, Island, detecting seismic vibrations, renegotiated the band's contract with McGuinness. "Now U2's in an absolutely unique position," he reports. "They own outright every song they ever wrote, and they always will...