U2's 'Achtung Baby' - Happy 25th anniversary

Achtung Baby is U2's best work. (IMHO)
Saw them at Yankee Stadium on this tour and they put on a great show. Love is Blindness is fantastic as a closer. (Could have done without the politics)

 

i recall hearing The Fly on the radio the day it came out, and even though I didn't know it was going to be on, i immediately knew it was U2, just from that 5ish note intro. I literally cheered aloud becsuse they sounded like U2 again.

 

"Again"?

 

agree but you don't think Silver and Gold, In God's Country or Heartland qualify as well?

 

It sounded more at the time like a return to the Unforgettable Fire sort of approach rather than the more standard rock of TJT and a lot of Rattle and Hum.

 

Pretty much stopped being a fan of the band when AB was released. Just not what I like. Very cold and unfeeling. Far away from their American blues sound.

 

You didn't consider it a return to form (or something similiar)?

 

No, for me U2 went from one of my favorite bands to almost never listening to them anymore.

 

One of the greatest albums I have ever heard. Sorry, I never got to see this tour. U2 are a great live Band.

 

The tour was pretty amazing; I saw them both times they came through Houston, first an arena tour (in the Summit, which is now Lakewood Church... ) and then at the Astrodome on the stadium tour. The arena show was pretty mind blowing. And the show at the Dome was...well, a U2 show in a huge cavern still great though!

 

Just listened to Jack White's cover of "Love Is Blindness" nearly as good as the original IMO and certainly a great re-imagination of the song

 

I'm glad you like it but I find it horrible. To each their own, of course, but I feel like he crapped all over the song. Maybe I'm just not a fan.

 

I find the performance to be more emotional, which I like, it feels more free. The original makes me feel numb (I guess that's the idea) with a sense of pain. It's a dark album, after all.

 

Any chance of this getting a vinyl reissue? Saw a copy at a record fair recently for £25 but it had an indented scratch sadly. And another copy for about £20 with some of the square photos on the front cut ou!

 

I appreciate the difference of opinion certainly and I hope you have a copy of his version and enjoy the heck out of it! That's what it's all about in the end, innit?

 

Maybe the previous owner couldn't part with that infamous photo of Adam... Or was that on the back?
All joking aside, I'd love a vinyl version too...

 

really pretty amazing that his hasn't received a album-only reissue. the most recent box sounds good, but was unfortunately pressed at GZ and isn't the best quality vinyl.

 

Great album, it's tough to choose between The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby as their best work.

Having been a pretty hardcore fan, seeing the band at least once every tour (except the Rattle and Hum tour which didn't play the US) dating back to "Boy," it had been a long time near the end of 1991 since their last album. As it had been mentioned above in previous posts, the few oddball songs like God Pt2 and Night And Day kind of indicated the direction the band may have been heading but nothing really prepared me for the first time I heard The Fly before the album was released. A guy at a local record store had the promo CD single but his store stereo only had a working right channel so it sounded even weirder when he played it for me.

The day the album was released, I picked up 2 copies of the CD (gave one to my girlfriend who I later married) and one of the UK import record, not that I was listening to records at the time, but I was still a completest collector when it came to my favorite bands. Achtung Baby was one of those albums I instantly loved from front to back and my roommate who wasn't a big U2 fan really gravitated to it as he was going through a rough patch with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend and related to a lot of the darker songs.

it was about 6 months later, in Spring of '92 when the tour hit the West Coast of the USA. This was the first arena leg of the tour and U2 way underbooked the markets the played creating huge demand making this tour on of the toughest tickets for an arena show I can recall. My plan was as usual, buy a ticket from an agency or on-sight scalper the day of one of the LA Sports Arena shows.

However, my girlfriend came though when she called me from her job early one day saying to book us a afternoon flight to Phoenix, AZ for that night's U2 show at the arena as one of her business contacts had a given her pair of decent lower loge seats waiting for us at will-call. So around 4pm, we jump on a plane, go to Phoenix, take a taxi to the show just in time to see openers The Pixies and see U2 play in one of the smaller arenas of the US tour. The opening few songs hit like a sledgehammer and the band daringly played at least half of the new album straight off. There was some raggedness, a few mistakes but overall the entire effect was really impressive. I really liked the different arrangements on songs like I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Desire and though the set was perfectly arranged.

One interesting thing about the encore - Bono clowns around and drop kicks a bottle of water into the crowd, but he gets good air and it sails all the way to the back of the floor and burst on the mixing desk apparently screwing some stuff up causing the band to play an abbreviated encore omitting Desire and Ultraviolet, two songs I really wanted to hear. After the show, we taxi immediately to the airport, catch out plane back to LAX and are back home by 3am. The whole day was really exhilarating.

But that show wasn't enough. A couple days later, U2 was playing the LA Sports Arena and I had to go and I knew it was going to cost me to even get in the door. So my friend and I go and manage to get really good seats just off the floor on Edge's side for $300 apiece from some guy in the parking lot and this turned out to be a far better show. Not only did we get Desire and Ultraviolet, but the band was tighter yet more playfull.

Summer 1992 comes and goes and U2 continues their tour through Europe before coming back to the US with a slightly tweaked setlist and now playing stadiums. By the time they came back to LA, they played a pair of shows at the awful Dodger Stadium. I and a group of 5 friends went to the Halloween night show that was introduced by Elvira. Although we had a fun group, we had absolutely crappy seats waaaaayyyyy back and up in the stratosphere so the sound was boomy and sucked and the view was horrible with a PA tower blocking the center of the stage from our angle. We had a nearby couple loudly arguing most of the show and sadly, this turned out to be one of the most unpleasant shows I've ever seen by anyone.

From a personal perspective, that was kind of it for the tour for me. But as the played through Europe again and released Zoorpa in '93, I was really hoping they'd play the US again with this radically changed set they were now doing. But it got down to the somewhat anticlimactic PPV viewing on cable/satellite tv of the live broadcast of the Australian show where it was clear the grind had worn them down (it was a long time later that word got out about Adam's crash n' burn the night before).

Flash forward to Summer 2011. U2 is resuming it's 3 year tour behind No Line On The Horizon and they're playing nearby Anaheim Stadium. Having seen and not been to impressed with the Rose Bowl show 2 years earlier, I half-heartedly check TM and score a GA field ticket the day of the show. Turns out to be a fabulous show more as a Achtung Baby-centric show then anything else, premiering The Fly for the first time on the tour and playing 5 AB songs in a row and then proceeding to play a completely and brilliantly mixed up setlist before end the show with a heartfelt tribute to Clarence Clemons, Bruce Springsteen's sax player who had just succumbed to a stroke. This show made up for the Halloween '92 show in spades.

 

I wore the cassette out on my Walkman for a good 3 years.

The very first time I heard anything off this album was in a record store. He was playing Zoo Station. I had no idea who it was.
I asked the clerk who it was, when he said it was U2 I was very shocked,
and bought the cassette.

 

AB > TJT in my opinion but I love both. I saw them this past weekend and it was awesome seeing them perform TJT in its entirety. Man, I was blown away by the screen graphics during "Bullet the Blue Sky".

With 2011, they seemed to be doing somewhat of a 20 year anniversary thing for AB, which was kind of cool.

I would love if they did AB front to back, but I don't envision them repeating the entire album idea on another tour. Plus, they will probably have some new concept for SOE.

 

With how popular complete edition vinyl sets are now, I would love if they came out with a box. You can't get anything from Achtung to No Line, and they reissued Atomic Bomb so randomly.

 

I'm still waiting for this. I can't imagine they sold that many $120 vinyl boxes of this.

 

My favourite U2 album. I remember when they released the first single from the album, The Fly, how fresh and new it sounded. Back in those days one was used to the "Joshua Tree style- U2"- this was something completely different. I got 'Achtung Baby' on the day of release and as time went I bought all of the 7" and 12" singles with songs from the album.

 

I'm an extremely casual U2 fan (I was much more into them as a young lad 25 years ago)... and I'm really only into the War through Achtung Baby era... with this particular album being my favorite by far. It really transports me back to my childhood in the early 90s. What a bold move by U2 to go in this direction... though I think they took the direction too far on the following album.

So many slinky, sexy tunes... probably the last album where Bono sounds great. "Mysterious Ways", "The Fly"... and especially "Ultraviolet" are top notch dance-rock tunes.

 

It's always a flip between The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby for many U2 fans. I prefer Achtung Baby, it's not as serious and bloated as The Joshua Tree, and more experimental. Plus, just... better tunes.