1987 Was a great year for me, I was slowly starting to dabble and discover the new joys that alcohol could bring to my life, I had a proper crew of around 20 good mates, I had a lot of fun and got up to a lot of mischief that year. This album was the soundtrack to that entire 12 months and for me has never dated one bit.
I really don’t care what opinion people have of Bono, neither does Bono. My opinions of him and his band are based on facts rather than judgement of a persons character. Fact 1, U2 are in the top 5 rock bands in all time history. Fact 2, they are Irish which always makes fact 1 so much sweeter. Fact 3, what they do, they do bloody well. Fact 4, Bono and his band know how to write seriously big songs, compose massive hooks and make them sound really big on a stage. Win.
All his good deeds around the world which are sometimes taken with a lot of cynicism, are still good deeds, regardless of how they may be perceived. Yes he’s stupidly rich, a tad eccentric and a bit outspoken, those three qualities will always create divided opinions of a person, it still doesn’t detach from the fact of the music within their albums being of the utmost highest quality.
Bono’s songwriting and the musicianship of his band just combine so perfectly as a tight unit to create what I believe to be this all-time heavenly masterpiece of rock albums.
‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ Is one of the finest, most euphoric and iconic openers to an album ever. To then follow that up with ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and ‘With Or Without You’ is just an insane level of bigness for its time. It’s when you get past these three anthems and go deep into the rest of the record that you build a true relationship with the beauty of this album. The Edge’s guitar hooks throughout are equally as important to the songs, ‘In Gods Country’ proves this point perfectly and is such a brilliant reflection of this.
This is up there with the finest ever rock albums for me, for the music and for the memories created.