U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
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On October 30, 2000, "All That You Can't Leave Behind", the tenth studio album by the band "U2", was released.
In late 1998, U2 faced the most complex and challenging crossroads in their history. After a decade of daring artistic adventure, beginning with 1991's dark industrial masterpiece "Achtung Baby," continuing with the avant-garde of 1993's "Zooropa," and reaching its alienating peak with 1997's electronic album "Pop" and the grandiose "PopMart Tour," Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. felt that the masks they had worn throughout the 1990s had exhausted themselves. The cynicism, the postmodern irony, the giant screens, and the enormous mechanical lemon from which they emerged on stage had distanced them from the primal essence that had made them the greatest rock band in the world in the era of "The Joshua Tree" and "The Unforgettable Fire." When they released the compilation album "The Best of 1980-1990" in late 1998, the four realized that in order to march into the new millennium they had to reinvent themselves, this time by returning to the raw simplicity of four musicians playing together in one room.
For the task, the band members re-enlisted the legendary duo of producers who had accompanied them during their finest hours, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. In the fall of 1998, the six of them gathered at Hanover Quay Studios in Dublin, alongside trips to Windmill Lane, Westland and Totally Wired Studios in the Irish capital and the south of France. In contrast to the working method of the mid-1990s, which was based on electronic loops and samples that were disassembled and assembled in the studio, the band members and producers set themselves an iron rule: the songs must stand on their own with only guitar, bass, drums and vocals. However, the creative process was far from simple. Eno and Lanois pushed for continued textual experimentation while the band searched for direct and melodic songs. The work lasted almost two full years, with veteran producer Steve Lillywhite, as well as Mike Hedges, Richard Stannard and Julian Gallagher, being called in at the final stages to give the songs a tight and polished radio-friendly polish.
Over the album recordings, heavy personal shadows hung, giving Bono's lyrics unprecedented emotional weight. In November 1997, Bono's close friend, the charismatic INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, took his own life in a Sydney hotel, a tragedy that left Bono heartbroken and filled with guilt and anger for not being able to save his friend. At the same time, Bono's father, Bob Hewson, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and grew weaker throughout the months of recording. The album was also accompanied by unexpected dramas on the external level. In the summer of 1999, a laptop containing the draft lyrics for all the album's songs was stolen from Bono's car in Dublin, and only after a public appeal in the media was the computer returned to the band by a young man who purchased it in good faith without knowing who it belonged to.
The album opens with one of the most brilliant album openings in the history of modern rock, the first single "Beautiful Day". The song was born from a grueling studio session in which the band worked for weeks on a somber piece called "Always", until The Edge changed the chord progression and added a pulsating drum machine beat and synthesizer sounds reminiscent of a sunrise from a fog. Bono wrote lyrics that describe a man who has lost all his possessions and his world, but chooses to raise his eyes to the sky and find beauty and wonder in the very existence. The vocal climax in which The Edge's voice soars in a high falsetto in the chorus, along with the sparkling production completed by Lillywhite, turned the song into a universal anthem that immediately took first place in the British charts and won three Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year.
Immediately following comes "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", a deep soul and gospel song written as an imaginary and poignant conversation between Bono and his late friend Hutchence. Bono chose not to write a sobbing eulogy, but a loving, painful, unfiltered argument in which he implores his friend to understand that even the darkest moment in life is only a fleeting moment from which one can emerge. The melody, which relies on chords that The Edge played on the piano and a warm brass arrangement by Paul Barrett in the spirit of Sam Cooke and 1960s soul music, gave the album its beating heart and even earned the band another Grammy Award, while Mick Jagger and his daughter Elizabeth recorded background vocals for it that did not make it into the final mix but were later performed with the band on stage.
The energy shifts sharply on the third track, "Elevation," an adrenaline-fueled rock bomb that opens with the Edge's Les Paul guitar riffing through a fuzz pedal and a dirty ooh-ooh effect. The song connects the danceable groove of "Achtung Baby" with the band's live guitar power, with Clayton's dominant bass and Mullen's explosive drums. The song was also chosen to lead the soundtrack for the film "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" in the summer of 2001 in a beefed-up rock mix, and became the electrifying opening song of the world tour that bears its name.
The fourth track "Walk On" is the central masterpiece that gave the album its name from the line that appears in its chorus. The song was originally inspired by the struggle of Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under prolonged house arrest and was forced to separate from her family for the freedom of her people, which led the Burmese military regime to ban the album's distribution in the country under penalty of a heavy prison sentence. Musically, the song united two separate sections of different songs into one evolving work, gradually building towards a soaring guitar solo by the Edge and a moving coda in which Bono lists all the material things that can be left behind in the face of the love and spirit that remain forever. In February 2002, the song won the prestigious Grammy Award for Record of the Year, making "U2" the first band in history to win the Record of the Year award two years in a row for two songs from the same album.
The album's middle section reveals the band's most intimate, mature, and vulnerable side. "Kite" is a heartbreaking ballad written both from Bono's thoughts about his teenage daughters and the impending separation from his dying father Bob, with the kite serving as a metaphor for love that requires letting go of the string in order to allow the beloved to fly free. It is followed by "In a Little While", a soft, warm blues-soul piece born from a late-night studio jam and featuring one of Bono's most broken and moving vocal performances. The song took on chilling historical significance when punk legend Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones and Bono's greatest musical hero from his youth, requested to hear the song on his deathbed in a New York hospital in April 2001, just as he was closing his eyes forever, and the song has since become a permanent tribute to his memory at the band's shows.
The atmosphere brightens for a moment in "Wild Honey", a light, sunny acoustic song in which Bono smilingly acknowledges the influence of "The Beach Boys" and Van Morrison, but immediately after that, the bloody reality lands in "Peace on Earth". The song was written in response to the horrific terrorist attack in the town of Omagh, Northern Ireland, in August 1998, in which twenty-nine people were murdered, including children and pregnant women. Bono incorporates the real names of the victims of the attack, Sean, Julia, Garth, Anne and Breda, into the lyrics, and expresses poignant despair in the face of Christmas lines promising peace on earth, while The Edge's guitar wails in the background with subdued sadness.
The last third of the album sees the band continue to oscillate between spiritual introspection and urban contemplation. "When I Look at the World" features the Edge's delicate and precise guitar work alongside lyrics about faith being tested in the face of human suffering, followed by "New York", a sweeping cinematic homage to the city where Bono found refuge and inspiration, with Mullen's hypnotic drum rhythm and a nod to the spirit of Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra. The album closes with the quiet and meditative song "Grace" and, on international releases, also with the bonus track "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", composed to lyrics written by author Salman Rushdie from his book of the same name for the soundtrack to director Wim Wenders' film "The Million Dollar Hotel."
The album cover has also become an unforgettable visual icon. The band's longtime Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn shot the four band members in black and white in Terminal 2F of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, designed by Steve Averill and Shaughn McGrath. The photograph captures the band members as passengers on their way to a new destination, without costumes or makeup, while the original inscription on the airport's overhead sign has been digitally altered from F21-36 to J33-3, a hidden code that refers to the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 33, verse 3, "Call to me, and I will answer you, and tell you great things and mighty things you have not known," a verse that Bono used to call God's telephone number.
Released on October 30, 2000, by Island Records, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was a huge commercial and critical success, reaching number one in twenty-eight countries and selling over twelve million copies worldwide. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the album's songs, most notably "Walk On", "Peace on Earth" and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", took on a new and profound meaning of national comfort and healing, culminating in the band's historic and unforgettable performance at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February 2002, where the names of those who died were projected behind the band members. In the face of time, this is the album that has ensured U2's status as a living, relevant and timeless band well into the twenty-first century.
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