By Paula Dinna Bellosillo-Sacris
Photos of U2 from their December 11, 2019 Philippine Arena concert by Stephen Lavoie for iRocktography
The biggest band of my generation has finally performed in Manila.
I have dreamed of this happening in my lifetime for as long as I can remember. I was not sure though if this day will come considering the politics U2 brings with them might touch a chord with the government. The Philippines is not famous for guarding against human rights violations.
Two close buddies had dreamed of this with me. One imagined playing as a front act at their concert, and the other pledged to move mountains to interview and write about them, while I just wanted a photo with them to brag about to my grandchildren someday.
In case none of these would ever happen, the front act gig, the interview and the shameless fangirling them upclose, we would just settle to brave traffic and the throngs of fans trooping to the venue.
We’ll break the bank if we need to, and sing-along to all of the songs with all our heart, without shame, until we lose our voice and satisfy our souls.
The Rumor Mill
At the height of the palpable political turmoil sometime in 1985, months away from the EDSA People Power Revolution, news of U2 coming to Manila buzzed like wildfire.
The news was unverified though, but the people – U2 die-hards and not, were hoping it was going to happen. Even if you’re not into them, still, that’s U2. Who wouldn’t want to get a whiff of that international concert vibe and watch real rock icons bring the house down?
U2 supposedly demanded that the concert be held at an open venue at no cost to the attendees. Free concert in a public space. Rumor has it, the unnamed rich Chinoy promoter was negotiating to charge a minimal entrance fee to underwrite some of the production costs. U2 walked away from the negotiation table.
No one ever came forward to dispel or support this speculation.
In Appreciation
So, Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton decided to finally come to the Philippines on a world tour that started in 2017.
At first realization that it is finally happening, I was in utter disbelief. In the age of fake news where social media can sometimes be unreliable, it is best to hold off jumping for joy unless influencers start gushing over it and a legit ticket seller has posted the prohibitive ticket prices online.
Encompassing 11 cities in seven countries, this second series of the tour is slated to be a celebration of the success and the lasting legacy of U2’s career-defining studio album, “The Joshua Tree.” Everyone can expect that it’s going to be a grand tour down memory lane, a massive sing-along jam.
It’s a fitting appreciation of the band and the beauty and the sense of their songs. It is a validation of U2’s significance in the life of their fans, three decades on. A reconnection to the past. The concert in Manila will happen before the band ends the tour in Mumbai, India.
Sounds like a grand celebration.
Legendary
Already producing albums and singles for some of the progenitors of new wave, synth-pop and Brit rock sound of the 80s, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, XTC, Ultravox, Big Country, Psychedelic Furs and The Smiths, Simple Minds, among others, Steve Lillywhite was to become more well known for producing the first three albums of U2, who was slated to be the biggest stadium act in their batch.
Yet, he wasn’t raving about the band that’s been virtually synonymous to his success.
“There’s no particularly remarkable about U2. It’s mostly a rhythm section and a powerful vocalist (paraphrased),” Lillywhite said in an interview with this writer when he was in town as one of the mentors for the Elements Music Camp in 2018.
However, he did acknowledge that the overall sound that the four individual members produce, which makes for their distinct style, of that brand of rock and funk that they were cut out of, wasn’t anything but unoriginal.
And there’s the unmistakable chemistry among them that make it all work out. The guys have been pals for more than half their lives.
All of the above, along with their willingness to try out new ideas and adapt to the changing times are all responsible for why it’s still rock and roll for U2 all these years.
Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop were more than a departure from the U2 their fans loved them for through the decades. Rather, it’s a statement from the band that they can risk it all, all in the name artistic exploration and creative reinvention.
A quality that even the most discriminating and critical record producers like Lillywhite, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Jimmy Iovine would approve. This is growth and always a new beginning for the band. This is why producers who work with U2 also evolve and become better producers.
It’s a Beautiful Day
Ten years ago, I got a gig to head the programming department of a music channel on cable in Vietnam, known as YAN (“Yêu Âm Nhạc”, for “I love music”). I led a team of young, trendy and hopeful local millennials who were, at one point, helping shape the current music and entertainment media landscape of the country.
When I got on board, the playlist was current: Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Shakira, Justin Bieber, Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, Jason Derulo, Black Eyed Peas, Bigbang, Super Junior, TVXQ, 2NE1, Girls Generation and a bunch of Asian pop stars whose airplay was constantly justified by the writers and resident music experts.
There were also catalog titles, or videos by major artists listed alongside the currents, with medium rotation or less frequency in airplay: Jennifer Lopez, Rob Thomas, Coldplay, a selected, less provocative Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, a lot of Air Supply, but not a single video by U2.
Vietnam had no musical memory of the 80’s. The country closed its doors to the world, following the Fall of Saigon or the liberation of the south in 1975 by the communist army from up north.
The young and the hippest Vietnamese in general did not know Morrissey, Robert Smith, Sting and Bono.
U2 was belatedly launched in 2009 in Vietnam via YAN TV just about the same time I was finding my way around town where the streets have names unfamiliar to me.
“Beautiful Day” was a fitting first video and the best caption for that point in time in Vietnam.
Can you imagine not ever knowing U2 and hearing none of their songs?
The Shop
“I Will Follow” was the first song I knew by heart. When I heard it the first time, and had no idea who U2 was, I thought right away that I was going to like all of their songs. It was raw, intense, upbeat and memorable. It was at The Shop where I had first known them.
In 1984, I had to delay college and decided to work fulltime as a shop assistant at a music store. The store known as A2Z Records, short for Abba to Zappa, or simply “The Shop” for the habitués, was located in Kamias, Quezon City before it later moved to Anonas, Proj. 2.
The Shop was a repository of music and memories for the late record collector Leslie David and his life partner, Jingle Mag’s Ces Rodriguez. It was the perfect rendezvous for music junkies, records collectors, music critics, budding writers, audiophiles, working stiffs, young and old.
My job entailed getting familiarized with the record titles on the shelves and tracking the delivery of new records for cataloging, plus, of course, customer assistance. With very limited know-how on music, I went over and beyond the job. I listened to EVERYTHING we had in store, from Abba to Zappa.
From Sinatra to The Residents to Savoy Brown. From the Sex Pistols to Gene Loves Jezebel to John McLaughlin. From the Echo and the Bunnymen, to Brian Eno, The Clash to the Velvet Underground. From The Jam, R.E.M., to Dylan, Van Morrison and to Barbra Streisand. From Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello. From Talking Heads and The Smiths to Wynton Marsalis to U2.
You get the picture.
Tribe
My musical awakening, therefore, happened at The Shop.
The Shop introduced me to a whole new universe of music. I would not have, early on, known U2 and loved and owned their songs that would complete the soundtrack of my life.
Then, life happens.
I’ve almost forgotten that U2 was, and still is, a major source of my life’s playlist.
I know that there are others like me who would credit U2 for the mush and the strong feelings, the warm fuzzies, the love and the lust in the musical score for some of the known existential dilemmas they have dealt with throughout life.
The songs would take us somewhere. Through the stories in those songs, we’ve acquainted ourselves with the familiar and what is longed for and the essential how’s of life.
How it is to love, to endure, to surrender? How it is to dream and be disappointed? How to speak out and keep the faith? How to embrace grace?
We entered young adulthood grooving to “Without or Without You” on MTV, stayed updated on the American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, made sure we track the movements in the Billboard 100 and read tidbits and updates on our favorite music heroes on NME, watched Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink and the Breakfast Club and knew their OSTs by heart.
Most of us have developed our own conviction when we got wind of world politics because Bono took them personally and used his celebrity status to talk and sing about it.
“Celebrity is currency,” he asserted in an interview with Oprah.
Counter-Culture
To promote the records we had at The Shop, Les and Ces decided to buy a blocktime show at the most unlikely radio station.
The show was called Capital Radio, after The Clash’s 1980 song with the same title, about the rebel radio that supposedly had pissed off Joe Strummer. The song was a swipe at mainstream radio that wouldn’t venture into something beyond the commercial.
Hence, it’s an apt title for The Shop’s promotional show airing weeknights on the only FM radio that can accommodate the music we played, WXB 102FM, or simply XB.
XB was legendary for being THE alternative to mainstream radio. It played songs that did not usually get airplay from the rest of the FM band, pre-MP3 and i-Pod days.
Boasting a decent collection of tracks from EPs and limited edition singles, which were not locally released yet, but dance mobiles were already highlighting them at dance parties, XB was the oasis for the lost youth of the ‘80s.
Music that was evident in their outlandish hairstyle and fab fashion and in their choice of music. Tears for Fears, The Smiths, Seona Dancing, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees Fra Lippo Lippi, Echo and the Bunnymen, Spandau Ballet, Simple Minds and U2, among other beautiful anthems of the ‘80s.
XB could not have found a better partner in A2Z’s Capital Radio, a three-hour special which aired from Mondays to Fridays, from 9pm to midnight, that mostly played songs that XB either did not have a copy or the heart to air them.
Who could pull off opening the show with Morrissey crooning dark thoughts with “hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ,” and closing it with Dead Kennedys “Too Drunk To F*uck”? Only Jim and Igor, Capital Radio’s female jocks – can.
We aired around 1985 until going off the air months after the EDSA People Power Revolution and just before another alternative FM radio had their maiden broadcast in the airwaves of smoggy Manila in 1987.
The FM radio, NU107, dubbed the “Home of New Rock,” was the ultimate college radio. The music and the personality of their jocks forever changed the course of local FM radio and the music scene at large. They made radio sexy that way again.
I asked for U2’s “I Will Follow” when I and a fellow music writer at The Score Magazine came over to the station to meet and greet people. I remember being accommodated by Cris Hermosisima, Gerry Dris and a lady jock named Rima. But they did not have my song yet at the time.
Being U2
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve heard of U2 being U2 again.
In recent years, they have been regarded as major artists with a penchant for keeping the people guessing what they will get into next. This kind of creative commitment to experiment and innovate has produced masterpieces such as The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and Zooropa.
2014’s Songs of Innocence, would all find them taking on new ideas and fusing them with signature U2 sound, as well as reuniting with Steve Lillywhite, who incidentally still worked with them from time to time, again for a track.
Quite expectedly, they have also been criticized for selling out, going through creative drought, lacking focus and being pretentious. U2 has had their share of the negative and unfair press just like any other successful band.
As with the soon-to-be senior rock stars, who’d be joining the invincible Keith “Fucking” Richards’ Club soon, it’s rather easy for them to act their age now and remain compelling and engaging. After all, old age and rocking it out are not mutually exclusive to U2.
Artistic License
So what can we expect from U2 today?
Rock? Hiphop? EDM? Blues? ubstazz? Heroine Pop? Spoken word, perhaps? Or back to their roots: that U2 soul?
With what they have been putting together of late, no one can ever know what we’re going to get soon from these native sons of Dublin.
After the consecutive album releases of the “The Unforgettable Fire” in 1984 and “The Joshua Tree” in 1987 with their newfound mentors and producers, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, U2 has since dabbled into different musical styles, and taken on something new and unexplored.
Staying relevant this way is what makes them current and even to this day, an important band to spend our hard-earned money on.
As for the younger music fans, U2 has unsurprisingly managed to be an interesting musical force to discover. Their latest album, “Song of Experience,” is a testament to that.
How would one know if a band has already reached their peak and have earned their place in the pantheon of music history? How does one become a legacy band?
It is when a band earned that artistic license to venture into any genre, in any format, with or without the approval of their most loyal fans and harshest music critics. And be always forgiven when things don’t fall into place.
It is also when their fans would insist to hear what’s instantly familiar to them, along with their new materials.
Yet, even if U2 prefers that their legacy be not considered as a nostalgia band, they can never avoid looking back.
The nostalgic draw of their songs is as organic as the love and respect for them through the years, particularly, the bond their fans formed with “The Joshua Tree.” Their newer songs will always get played but their lifelong fans would always want to hear their classic and greatest hits.
And that’s exactly what happened at the Philippine Arena last December 11.
Image credits: Stephen Lavoie of iRocktography
1 comment
I was there too!