Walk To The Water...A Musical Epiphany About U2

It’s been a long winter. Just when it starts to feel interminable Mother Nature gives a glimpse of the promise of spring. Those days are to be savored like the sweet gift they are in Chicago. 

Recently on one such gift of a day I couldn’t wait to get outside for a walk. I was called to be near water so I headed for the river and one of my favorite green spaces, Ward (A. Montgomery) Park. I love the smaller scale and the view the park affords. It wasn’t until I started writing this that I realized there’s another albeit subconscious draw to Ward Park, it makes me feel connected to my yiayia Diane. 

During WWII she worked as a secretary at Montgomery Ward, taking the bus from Belmont and Cicero downtown to Ward Park every day (the Park sits near the old headquarters). Similarly my yiayia Helen was also a secretary for another big name department store, for Mr. Carson and Mr. Scott of Carson Pirie Scott or later just Carson’s, while my papous were at war. 

I stopped to take a few pictures along the river. As I looked out on the water I thought about what song would best pair with the picture and the feeling of the day's walk. I get such satisfaction from marrying a song to a photo for my Instagram story. I’m sure it’s a detail that most miss but for me it’s a 15 second movie and for those few seconds I am Scorsese. 

View of the Chicago River from Ward Park

I played around with a few options until I remembered a U2 B-side from their 1980-1990 best of collection, “Walk to the Water.” Another U2 song you ask, yes! It’s true I can find a U2 song for any occasion. One of my party tricks, but this is no trick, it truly was the glass slipper to the picture at hand. And not because the song title reflected what I was doing but because of the feeling the song evokes. 

The interplay of Edge’s riff with Larry’s hand drum sounds like water lapping on the shore, or a wave turning over. The music is soft, subtle, and hypnotic: catching you in its rhythm before you even notice you’ve left the shore. Then you add in the vocal with spoken word verse and a chorus like an incantation and it all adds up to something dreamy, something out of this world. Literally out of this world, meaning outside. 

And that’s when I had the mother of all “Jethro Tull moments” or how I describe a moment when I realize something I likely should have known long before. Named after the time in my teens when I realized that Jethro Tull was the name of the band and not the lead singer of the 70s classic rock band who made rock and roll flute a thing (it IS a thing).  If you’ve never heard of them, check out “Locomotive Breath” and decide for yourself if rock and roll flute is your kind of thing.

There I was looking out at the river, hearing the right song at the precisely right moment to have this musical epiphany: the music of U2 captures the feeling of being outside. There are many other reasons why I love their music so fervently, but this right here may be the holy grail.

I love being outside. I feel most myself when I am outside. So it tracks that my favorite band taps into my favorite feeling. U2 create soundscapes. Beginning with The Unforgettable Fire, an album that partnered them with the production team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois for the first time and resulted in something expansive, ethereal, and unique. My favorite song of theirs “A Sort of Homecoming” is the lead track and laid the seeds that would later create their most memorable soundscape.

The Joshua Tree. Their next album and next Eno/Lanois collaboration. An album you’ve heard of even if you’ve never heard it. And if you’ve heard it, it is the sound of freedom, of being alive. In the first minute of the record, before Bono declares his desire to run, on “Where the Streets Have No Name” the intro is the closest you can get to liftoff without leaving the ground. What Adam, Edge, and Larry created is a feeling, a feeling that both catches your heart in your throat, and makes you want to run as fast you can. A feeling as big and beautiful as the majesty of Mother Nature. 

I was seven years old when The Joshua Tree came out. Needless to say I missed that tour. So when the 30th anniversary tour came to town, it was a can’t miss situation. I went with my sisters and that 2017 show still holds as the greatest concert experience of my life. Not just because I got to hear one of my favorite records - live - in its entirety - but because I got to experience it in such a maximum way. 

Getting to hear the sound of being alive and outside while being in the great wide open of Soldier Field. On a beautiful summer night no less. This was top tier living. The sound matched the experience. When you added the thought that went into the production of the show, it took things to a level of transcendence. It was live art. The show was broken into three chronological acts. Act 1: songs pre The Joshua Tree or selects from their first four albums. The show began with an acoustic single snare drum rendition of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that brought me to tears because the song only gains relevancy over time and sadly proves that we don’t learn from history. Unforgettable. 

Act 2: The Joshua Tree played from beginning to end with no interruption. For this music nerd, getting to hear it in sequence the way you do when listening on your own was extraordinary. Each of the 11 songs became their own movie. The band enlisted their longtime photographer Anton Corbijn to create moving images specific to each song. He nailed the assignment from the word go, tracking “Where The Streets Have No Name” to the black and white backdrop of a two-lane road. The moving image evokes the same feeling as the music: the vastness of the open road, the unknown. And the image is clean of any cars or other traffic so that you can insert yourself into the frame and experience the freedom and the movement found on the open road. Unforgettable.

Anton Corbijn's open road backdrop for "Where The Streets Have No Name"

Act 3: songs post The Joshua Tree or selects from the following eight albums. After experiencing The Joshua Tree in sequence, anything else was the cherry on top. An experience so thoughtfully and beautifully articulated it was this fan's dream come true. A highlight of the third act that warm summer night was hearing “City of Blinding Lights” against the backdrop of the inimitable Chicago skyline lit up at night. Unforgettable.

The Joshua Tree amidst the Chicago skyline

Because that tour was so special I knew I couldn't miss the next anniversary tour that yet again my youth prevented me from seeing the first time around, 1992’s Achtung Baby. The band were set to revisit this seminal album as the first act to play the Sphere in 2023. It pains me to say that this was the most disappointing concert experience of my life. 

There are many reasons why it didn’t work but I won’t belabor them all and instead highlight two marked misses. One the absence of Larry Mullen Jr. on drums. While he was recovering from surgery Bram van Den Berg was given the Herculean task of replacing the man who started the band at 16. U2 is a four piece. Their sum is greater than their parts and without him it was like a three legged dog learning how to walk. 

The other major miss was the venue itself. My sisters and I were there opening weekend and the Sphere didn’t live up to the $2.3 billion dollar hype. It looks cooler from the outside than it does on the inside. The Sphere boasts the world’s largest high-resolution LED screen, begging for a visual spectacle, but their music doesn’t need that. Their music stands on its own. Their sound can’t be contained. It needs to breathe. It needs room to run free. 

They are a band meant to be experienced outside even if it’s between two headphones. I fell in love with their music riding the trails of Eldridge park as an awkward pre-teen with my walkman cassette player clipped to my hip (see A Sort of Homecoming). I would get lost in the soundscapes of The Unforgettable Fire while riding that endless loop. For this suburban girl it was as pastoral as I could find. Riding to that record was the perfect marriage of music and experience. A time to be outside. A time to be in my body. A time to fall for the great loves I still hold today: biking, being outside, and the music of U2.  

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