The act of looking back and surrendering to U2

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story is the title of Bono’s memoirs. The book published at the end of 2022 is part autobiographical memory, an exercise in literary creation, poetry, and a turning point to reflect on a history of more than four decades. From 40 songs, Paul David Hewsonor Bono Vox of O’Connell Street as his friends nicknamed him, reconstructs his personal history and that of the only band he has ever belonged to, U2.

The band originally from Dublin, Ireland, made up of Bono on vocals, David Evans (later known only as the Edge for a Yes song) on ​​the guitar, Adam Clayton in the bass and Larry Mullen Jr. on drums, it has had the same lineup since a young Mullen Jr. posted an ad in 1976 on the wall of Mount Temple Comprehensive School that read, “Drummer Seeks Musicians to Form Band.”

Songs of Surrender is the musical accompaniment to this work of memory, where through music the band allows Bono and the Edge to return to their vast catalog that spans 14 studio albums, 9 live albums and millions of sellers around the world.

On this occasion, the absence of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. forced Bono and The Edge to reinterpret U2’s work based on only acoustic and orchestral arrangements without bass and drums, one of the most recognizable elements of their sound. At times they manage to find other places that the original versions did not capture. In “If God Will Send His Angels”, a song from the album Pop from 1997, it becomes a gospel hymn without that cumbersome 90s production that it sought to sound at the time. But not all of their reviews are successful. The arrangements of these performances also accompany the audiobook version which is surprisingly a great read and invites us to take this journey into the past.

To complement this memory experiment, the band has also just released the documentary Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with David Letterman (Disney+). The nearly 90-minute special is a quarter travel show, a quarter rock documentary, mixed with an interview with David Letterman and a live concert, where Bono and the Edge perform some of these new versions for an intimate audience at The Ambassador Cinema in Dublin.

The documentary was directed by Morgan Neville with special guests as the photographer Anthony Corbin and musicians like Glen Hansard y Marketa Irglova. Neville who has directed documentaries such as 20 Feet From Stardom, Keith Richards: Under the Influence, The Music of Strangers, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain makes a hagiography about a rock band that arouses the same degree of fanaticism and repels its detractors.

U2 had always been characterized as a band that looked to the future. Either from his experimental work with figures such as Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, his appropriation of contemporary sounds and a constant ambition to take live performance to another level.

The project of Songs of Surrender It is an invitation to look back, rediscover the U2 catalog and along the way rediscover the memories that their music evokes. Brian Eno says that the act of surrender implies a leap of faith into the unknown, of letting ourselves be carried away by a supernatural force and at times U2’s music achieves it. That has also been a mega rock band with its messianic complexes, its clichés, that imposed a record on our cell phones and that continues to fight against all those contradictions with great bravery.

In spite of everything, every time a U2 song starts you know perfectly well that that guitar belongs to Edge, that bass to Adam Clayton and that drums is the distinctive rhythm of Larry Mullen Jr. and led by pastor Bono who always invites us in a delivery ritual with its music to search for what we have not found.

antonio.becerril@eleconomista.mx