U2 by U2 is the story of how four schoolfriends conquered the world through their music and how they seem to have remained essentially the same people. But is their side of the story enough, asks Tony Clayton-Lea
It is undoubtedly by design, intent and content, the mother of all U2 books. U2 by U2 doesn't so much put all the other U2 books written over the past 20 years in the shade as locks them in an underground bunker and throws away the key. It also, more intriguingly, simply says the following: if you want to tell a truly great story (and don't let anyone tell you it isn't) then perhaps it's a story you should tell yourself.
This isn't to say that some books written about the band don't have their own intrinsic value. The core trio of Bill Graham's Another Time, Another Place, Bill Flanagan's U2 at the End of the World and Eamon Dunphy's The Unforgettable Fire proved that with insight, writing skills, a degree of authorisation/access on the band's part and no small amount of grounded theorising you could actually read something about them that wasn't swamped by myth, trapped in hagiographical swirls, swollen by smugness or swallowed up by pretension.
So the band celebrate the 30th anniversary of their formation with an oral, chronological exposition - all the way from north Dublin to the rest of the world. That the band should choose London-based Irish music writer Neil McCormick as their trusted Boswell should come as no surprise for a number of strategically important reasons: McCormick was at Mount Temple Comprehensive with all four band members, and so was there from the start, the very first gig in the school gymnasium; he's also a long time friend of U2, as well as being a bona fide fan (McCormick's partner, perhaps too overtly serendipitously, is called Gloria; he wrote the best-selling and immensely self-satisfied memoir, I Was Bono's Doppelganger).
It would be fair to assume, then, that the reason McCormick was chosen (on the initial suggestion of Kathy Gilfillan, wife of band manager Paul McGuinness) was because U2 felt comfortable in his presence; they shared mutual history; he has a solid track record as an experienced interviewer, and his writings in the Daily Telegraph are cogent, informed and smart. But no matter and no question - he's a good enough guy for the job
Yet choosing a journalist that they know so well and trust so implicitly has its own limitations; for one, it shows that U2 have, once again, exercised complete control over their own story - the book's copyright is even held, not by McCormick, but by U2 Limited. There is absolutely nothing in U2 by U2 that is off message or off centre, no awkward questions about anything that might chip off the Teflon placed over their corporate face (in fact, there are no leading questions at all). Also, structuring the book throughout in the first-person means that there is no critical voice which might contextualise what the band and, on occasion, their manager say. No other voices appear in the book - not even family members - which makes it quite one-sided and somewhat bowdlerised. And those who bought 2005's Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas might feel ever so slightly shortchanged by the repetition (of some of the singer's thoughts on various topics.
WHAT YOU DO get with U2 by U2, however, is a beautifully designed, hefty coffee-table work (very similar in format The Beatles Anthology) that gives off a strong sense of four very intelligent rock musicians and a helluva shrewd operator of a manager. Pictorially, it is a feast for the eyes, with images collated from each member's personal family archive and a rake of stills from some of the world's most famous photographers (including Anton Corbijn, Jurgen Teller and Kevin Westerberg). Some photos even show Edge without his trademark hats, and more than several (notably those taken in the 1980s) show some of the worst fashion mistakes known to rock music.
More significantly, however, there is a sense of the individual. For all of certain people carping on about Bono's wordiness (and worthiness), his introduction to the book is, in this writer's opinion, a textbook example of hard-earned, self-critical self-awareness: "Your nature is a very hard thing to change; it takes time. One of the extraordinary transferences that happen in your spiritual life is not that your character flaws go away but they start to work for you. A negative becomes a positive: you've a big mouth, you end up a singer. You're insecure: you end up a performer who needs applause. I have heard of people having life-changing, miraculous turn-arounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved where both parties 'let go, and let God'. But it was not like that for me. For all that 'I was lost, I am found' [ a line from the U2 song, I Will Follow], it is probably more accurate to say, 'I was really lost, I'm a little less so at the moment.' And then a little less and a little less again. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet."
What you might lose in questioning critical analysis (be it positive or negative) you make up for with read-between-the-lines, quite personal information about the respective members. And so Bono comes across as the voluble frontman and arch overachiever, an Alpha Male who loves making real the big idea, and who has enough suitably eminent people on speed dial to go about achieving it. Edge is the band's workaholic scientist figure, a caring father and husband, and a musician who easily (apparently so) shoulders the responsibility of making a ringing, plangent sound that is both identifiably U2 and a striving for something else altogether. Adam is invariably cast as the cool spirit of the band, his relaxed and maverick approach at odds with the business of being a member of one of the greatest rock acts of our time.
And Larry? Well, Larry is the earth wire that grounds the band; the guy, writes Edge in his introduction, who "is always there to steady the ship when it is heading for the rocks and I have my telescope pointing the other direction, Bono is hanging off the rigging and Adam is pottering about in the engine room."
SOME MIGHT SAY that a book such as this - a U2 Limited copyright work, compiled by a friend of the band, with no extraneous input and no disapproving voices whatsoever - is yet another finger of U2's destiny-controlled empire reaching out, tapping you in the chest and imploring you to love them, to understand them. These people have a point.
But the book is a revealing (but not too revealing) story of how a very small Irish band turned into a very large international band, and how on the journey from one side of the world to the other (and back again) they seem to have remained essentially the same people. You can't say that about many other musicians of U2's stature.
"I read a lot of rubbish about U2," writes Larry in his introduction (the shortest, needless to say). "Sometimes when I see us described in some mythic sense or called corporate masters of our own destiny, I have to laugh out loud. Being in U2 is more like riding a runaway train, hanging on to it for dear life."
With U2 by U2, that runaway train - whether it be under the grip of a vice-like corporate hand or not - has been pulled up short and is awaiting the next instruction from HQ. No trip to the breaker's yard just yet, then. To be continued? Bet your house on it.
U2 by U2 is published by Harper Collins (£35)