From The Sky Down

I just finished watching “From The Sky Down”, the new U2 documentary that revisits the making of “Achtung Baby” on (I cannot believe it) the 20^th anniversary of the record's release. As the film recounts, U2 were in a rather precarious place at the end of the Joshua Tree era having ridden the rocket-ride of success into becoming the biggest band in the world. It was a difficult transition for four guys from Dublin whose foundation was their rejection of big-time rock music and the overblown trappings that come with it. By the time they released their film “Rattle And Hum” which recounted their experiences in America and their self-education in American music, there was a groundswell of anti-U2 sentiment among critics and the public. Let's face it: U2 became the thing they rallied against and were a very easy and wide target. It was time to turn the wheel and shift direction from the serious, self-important parody they were in danger of becoming. At the conclusion of their last show of the 80s, Bono tells his hometown that the band will be taking a break to “re-dream the dream”.

The re-evaluation of the band takes them to Berlin, fittingly, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were in a foreign city in the midst of immense change in an attempt to unshackle themselves from the albatross of being “the band of the 80s”. U2 began to amass a new set of influences ranging from Kraftwerk to the dance scene in Manchester and brought them into the creative process. At one point in the film, Bono says that they had to be willing to tear everything apart in order to build it back up again. The early stages of the recording process bear a great deal of frustration and little in the way of songs. However, the exact moment that everything turns around is during a jam for a song “Sick Puppy” (later to become “Mysterious Ways”). A bridge that sounds completely out of place in the song yields an “a-ha” moment when the chord progressions are slowed down into what became “One”. The triumph of that breakthrough turns the whole process around to give birth to “Achtung Baby”, a daring shift in direction for the band.

Along with the shift in musical direction, the process finds the band perfectly willing to drop the serious act that permeated every single photo taken of them during the late 80s. This was manifested in two ways. First, there was the adoption by Bono of The Fly, a persona that was a amalgamation of Elvis and Jim Morrison by way of steroids. Second was the concept for the Zoo TV Tour that supported the record. The concept for Zoo TV was an over-the-top pop culture broadcast with sights and slogans broadcast over multiple TV screens, ostensibly from the same America that formed the basis for “Rattle And Hum”.

As the film demonstrates so well, U2 were willing to take a huge gamble with “Achtung Baby”. While looking back at the Berlin recording sessions for the album, Bono explains that the best way to get through writer's block is to write songs that are honest about where you are at that particular point in your life. U2 were at a difficult crossroads in 1989 and managed to march forward even as they questioned the process.