Achtung Baby is the greatest record I’ve ever heard or experienced.
FACT
A new friend of mine named Shon Peterson told me to about it while we were talking in Anthropology class as freshmen in High School. To this day I have never heard an album that changed the game like this one did. It sounded like the future. Not a future depleted of natural resources or travelling through the cosmos but one of passion, poetry and style with a bitchin paint job.
The ensuing Zoo TV tour blew my mind. It was the Internet age before the Internet. TV’s everywhere, sonic sounds blasting at every turn and 4 guys who could make a stadium seem small. Then you had Bono in as he says, “Lou Reed’s glasses, Jim Morrison’s pants and Elvis’s jacket” out in front. To this day, I think he looked like one of the coolest guys I’d ever seen. Hell, I bought a serious of leather jackets after that.
Now comes the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby. 20 years since I first heard the opening guitar riff of ‘The Fly’. 20 years since I heard Edge’s guitar make that future acid sound of ‘Mysterious Ways.’ 20 years since ‘One.’ 20 years since my World got unlocked to the sites and sounds of sci-fi rock’n'roll.
The one thing I came to be jealous of after all these years is that, at the end of the day, U2 is just 4 Irish kids who started a band. No band member change. No break up and reunion tour. Just 4 guys who love to create music together and somewhere along the line made a dent in the Universe.
