Word: bandness
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...high stakes too. The band's commitment, to its audience and its music, sanctions and encourages the kind of social concern that in the Reagan '80s became unfashionable, even antique. The album that The Joshua Tree displaced from the top of the chart is a revisionist rap record by the Beastie Boys, three well-born white teens copping street attitude but assuming social postures that teeter between preening smugness and snide irresponsibility. After arriving in Arizona, U2 discovered that Governor Evan Mecham had canceled the state's observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. U2 considered canceling the concerts...
...Larry Mullen who set the dream in motion. He posted a note on the bulletin board of Mount Temple, a public high school in Dublin, asking if there was anyone interested in forming a rock band. That was in 1976, and he was 14. "Stories simplify how big a step that was at the time," says Clayton. "That one action of Larry's has affected the rest of his life and, indeed, everyone's." David Evans (yet to be called the Edge) was a top student in his Mount Temple class, but he had been spending spare time "strumming away...
...thought, this guy must know how to play. Then Bono arrived, and he meant to play the guitar, but he couldn't play very well, so he started to sing. He couldn't do that either. But he was such a charismatic character that he was in the band anyway, as soon as he arrived. I was in charge for the first five minutes, but as soon as Bono got there...
...prop was his bass, a gift from his parents ("I'll play till I'm bigger than the Beatles!" he promised them), which he handled with similar elan. It became clear after a little time, however, that there were certain limitations to style. The Claytons were dubious when the band started to talk about turning pro. "Quite sensibly," the Edge remembers, "they realized this business is very hard and that Adam is not the world's most gifted musician and what possible chance has he got of making it. My folks probably made the same calculation." "Adam's amazing," says...
...Bono was dubious at first about joining up ("I thought rock was ugly"), and the Edge at these early stages "didn't ever consider the band as anything other than a worthwhile thing to do on Wednesday afternoons." Mullen, the youngest of the group, could only dream of a career, while Bono and the Edge were getting on with their education and taking their final exams. Clayton, however, had been booted out of Mount Temple, and worried about "commitment" from the others. He hustled hard, trying to force their hand, and made contact with McGuinness...