A look back at the 1980s: A decade belonging to U2

JAKARTA (JP): Unlike, say, the Rolling Stones, U2 has never been accused of living off the past.

Here is a band whom the fans and the media have built into the 1980s paragon of virtue. A band that has continuously reinvented itself in search of something new.

Just as the 1960s worship saw graffiti etchings of "Clapton is God" on London walls, or sanctimonious shouts of "Judas!" as Bob Dylan picked up the electric guitar, U2 in the 1980s became not just a band, but a religion.

There was global disenchantment when it was announced the group had consented to a greatest hits album, compiling their best from the 1980s.

It was even more disheartening when news leaked out that it was all part of a US$50 million deal for a series of three "best of" albums from record company Polygram.

What is unique about the deal is that while major artists like Madonna and REM have been offered contracts worth more, probably no band has been offered such amounts for rereleasing old hits.

Maybe the group needs the money.

U2's last studio album Pop (1996) fizzled by its standards. Though musically Pop did have its moments, commercially it was a pale comparison to 1987's majestic Joshua Tree which sold 15 million albums and 1991's Achtung Baby with 11.5 million.

The 14-track compilation traces the band's career from the 1980 debut Boy to the 1989 semi-live soundtrack Rattle And Hum.

As a bonus, the initial early November release of Best of 1980-1990 was coupled with a second disk of B-sides as a limited edition special price compact disc.

For those too young to remember what B-sides are, there was a time not so long ago that people bought vinyl, not CDs. Every single would have the hit song on side A, and usually a throwaway on side B.

U2 connoisseurs will relish the 15-track B-sides collection.

Many of these are songs you probably heard once before, and several have become rarities. Some are downright good and deserve to be more than a curiosity.

Many who bought the single With or Without You way back in 1987 may remember the two B-side songs Luminous Times and Walk to the Water.

Like its famous A-side, the two accompanying numbers are another example of the dark solemn period U2 was going through.

Both are somber tunes, a shivering crawl through a sexual terrain tinged with obsession.

I love you 'cos I need to/ Not because I need you bleeds Bono in Luminous Time.

Another notable number on the B-side collection is Silver and Gold. A live version appeared in Rattle and Hum. Here it appears in its original form with Rolling Stones' guitarists Kieth Richards and Ron Wood playing backup.

The trouble with compiling a best of album for such a well known band is not what is in it, but rather what has been left out.

Unfortunately the selection seems to be based on commercially successful singles rather than charting the band's development.

Absent is little-known U23, the band's first ever single which was only released in Ireland in 1979. Strangely enough, so is 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, its first British single.

Another odd omission is 1981's Fire, U2's first U.K. chart hit.

Also left out are great songs which did not become singles, such as Exit (from Joshua Tree) about a broken man slowly pushed into an abyss of madness.

There is also the omission of alternative versions of Sunday Bloody Sunday and Bad.

The originals may have got the song across, but it is the live version of Sunday Bloody Sunday in the Under a Blood Red Sky live album which people remember.

Recorded at Red Rocks in Denver, Bono begins with the now famous line: "This is not a rebel song!"

With Bad, people are reminded how good the original version was, but missing is the textural beauty and wide-screen sound of the live version in Wide Awake in America.

These two performances in particular demonstrated U2's early ability to go all-out live, invoking a silent primal scream more deafening than the cosmetic teenage audience yells typically found in live albums.

It was the kind of insanity and nerve Pink Floyd could pinch in their 1970s heyday, the raw emotion which only Bruce Springsteen could top in the 1980s.

These inclusions would have been crucial if the Best Of album was designed as a journal of U2's development.

Selections also do not follow a timeline.

U2, whether consciously or not, has always brought a certain musical nuance with every new album produced, something totally void here.

Best Of comes out like having your childhood memories as a six-year-old, hormone-raging days of a 17-year-old and adult reflection of a 32-year-old disturbingly meshed into one.

It is an extremely distorted portrait of the band.

Not really a surprise since Best Of is probably directed at the younger audience who only got to know the band after 1991's Achtung Baby.

However, it would have been more apt to call the album a "singles collection" rather than the best of U2.

U2's manager Paul McGuinness said the group always preferred to allow the individual albums to be seen as separate pieces of work. But, he added, "it was inevitable that we would do it sooner or later and this was a good gap. After this many years it's fair to let people obtain the tracks on one album".

To add a bit more salability, U2 reworked Sweetest Thing which was a B-side to 1987's Where The Streets Have No Name as their new single.

It's a nifty, ear-catching single with a sing-along verse.

The song was written by Bono when he could not be with his wife Alison on her birthday. A simple viewing of the video would make us think that Bono's merely apologizing to his wife. But the number of times the word's "I'm sorry ... I'm really, really sorry" comes out leads us to believe that U2 is aiming for a wider audience.

As if the band members are saying sorry for selling out. And, to make up for it, U2 gives us cameos of Boyzone, the Chippendale dancers, a parade and an elephant.

But it's difficult to stay angry for too long once you hit the play button.

For all the political posturing, caricature image they've adopted, rights causes they've campaigned and eloquent verses, it really is just about great music.

These tracks are testimony to Rolling Stones magazine's declaration of U2 as the band of the 1980s, or why Time put them on its cover as rock's hottest ticket.

Enough said, the point is to just listen. With Or Without You is still as powerful as it was a decade ago as it transcends all emotions, peaking not in an orgasmic climax of ecstasy but a tingling relief of sincerity.

Or listen again to All I Want is You, the closing track of the Best Of album and the last single to be released in the 1980s. An eloquent musical summation of the band's journey in that decade.

After over three minutes of beguiling purgatorial brooding, All I Want is You erupts in a wordless wall of sound as the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton conjure a musical coda of sheer unparalleled torment.

As Boy George once said: "Music is like sex. You spend more time talking about it than you do doing it." So just listen. (mds)