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Review
It is, quite simply, one of the most transcendent close-up looks at the process of creating rock & roll I've ever seen. --Entertainment Weekly
Davis Guggenheim's making-of-the-album docu From the Sky Down takes an enjoyably novel approach to rock stars known for their fine-tuned products, focusing on the awkwardly embryonic growth of artistic and interpersonal elements that resulted in a classic disc --Variety
Davis Guggenheim's making-of-the-album docu From the Sky Down takes an enjoyably novel approach to rock stars known for their fine-tuned products, focusing on the awkwardly embryonic growth of artistic and interpersonal elements that resulted in a classic disc --Variety
Product Description
In 2011, U2 returned to Hansa Studios in Berlin to discuss the making of Achtung Baby. From The Sky Down, is a documentary film directed by Academy Award winning director Davis Guggenheim (It Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth). Screened in the UK as part of the BBC's Imagine Series, From The Sky Down was the first ever documentary film to open the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. From The Sky Down includes bonus footage of So Cruel, Love Is Blindness, and The Fly shot in May 2011 during the band's visit to Hansa Studios to mark the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby; as well as a Q&A with Bono, The Edge and Davis Guggenheim filmed at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011. Twenty years after the release of U2's Achtung Baby (1991), Davis Guggenheim charts the path toward this groundbreaking album. Guggenheim uses animation and unseen footage from Berlin and Dublin alongside conversation to reveal what is now a key chapter in U2's career.
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71 of 73 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Insightful Documentary About U2 Celebrating The Twentieth Anniversary Of "Achtung Baby"
December 9, 2011
Format:Blu-ray
As someone who is old enough to have followed the many highs and lows in the career of Irish superband U2, I didn't expect much in the way of new insight from the documentary "From the Sky Down." Assembled by esteemed filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, an Oscar winner for "An Inconvenient Truth," the film is a portrait of the group as they prepare to revisit songs from the classic "Achtung Baby." Just to be clear, while there is a lot of musical material, this is NOT a filmed concert. It is, perhaps, most successful as a peek at the artistic process. With a generous use of archival footage and candid interviews with the band members and their intimates, it is a surprisingly thoughtful look at a legendary group as they reflect on their past successes and public foibles. It is fascinating to contrast the group at various points within their career journey and to see just what drives them to endure. Oftentimes Bono, in particular, has come across to me as somewhat brash and even pretentious--here, he and the others exhibit refreshing candor and relatability. And the film itself is a contemplative meditation on the band's legacy.
"From the Sky Down" stays firmly rooted within the primary quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullin Jr. They provide the principle interviews and source material (with some of their business partners offering contextual support). The film deals with a bit of history from U2's initial skyrocket success to the inevitable backlash from the ill-conceived "Rattle and Hum" feature to their artistic reemergence with "Achtung Baby." Conceived in Germany as the Berlin Wall was coming down, it is clear that the band feels that this is their seminal work. Indeed, the modern portion of the film centers around the band as they ready for the twentieth anniversary of that album. In fact, they specifically commissioned this film from Guggenheim as a record of the occasion.
Easily, the most fascinating portion of the movie is how it really allows a bird's eye view of the artistic process. In the eighties footage, we see how the band really worked together and how the album itself evolved through time. The creation of the song "One," in particular, is fantastically rendered. Similarly, the modern day portion shows a parallel process at work. Through the course of both practice and recording sessions, the band really worked together to create the best product possible. It's refreshing to see the disparate personalities putting ego aside (and they do have big egos) to make something special. At the end of the day, I think "From The Sky Down" is quite successful in achieving its goals. If you are a U2 fan, this is an invaluable addition to their body of work. Even if you don't know or love them, though, this offers up plenty of insight and introspection about surviving and thriving in the musical landscape.
The Bonus Material includes three songs performed by U2: "So Cruel," "Love Is Blindness" and "The Fly." In addition, Guggenheim, Bono and The Edge field a few questions at the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. KGHarris, 12/11.
"From the Sky Down" stays firmly rooted within the primary quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullin Jr. They provide the principle interviews and source material (with some of their business partners offering contextual support). The film deals with a bit of history from U2's initial skyrocket success to the inevitable backlash from the ill-conceived "Rattle and Hum" feature to their artistic reemergence with "Achtung Baby." Conceived in Germany as the Berlin Wall was coming down, it is clear that the band feels that this is their seminal work. Indeed, the modern portion of the film centers around the band as they ready for the twentieth anniversary of that album. In fact, they specifically commissioned this film from Guggenheim as a record of the occasion.
Easily, the most fascinating portion of the movie is how it really allows a bird's eye view of the artistic process. In the eighties footage, we see how the band really worked together and how the album itself evolved through time. The creation of the song "One," in particular, is fantastically rendered. Similarly, the modern day portion shows a parallel process at work. Through the course of both practice and recording sessions, the band really worked together to create the best product possible. It's refreshing to see the disparate personalities putting ego aside (and they do have big egos) to make something special. At the end of the day, I think "From The Sky Down" is quite successful in achieving its goals. If you are a U2 fan, this is an invaluable addition to their body of work. Even if you don't know or love them, though, this offers up plenty of insight and introspection about surviving and thriving in the musical landscape.
The Bonus Material includes three songs performed by U2: "So Cruel," "Love Is Blindness" and "The Fly." In addition, Guggenheim, Bono and The Edge field a few questions at the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. KGHarris, 12/11.
65 of 68 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
"It's an odd place to live your life, as an artist: building from the sky down." - Bono
The film opens with the band about to go onstage at Glastonbury on June 24th, 2010 (My birthday, incidentally.) They opened that show by playing a song from Achtung Baby: Even Better Than The Real Thing.
I remember being a young U2 fanatic when Rattle and Hum came out. I loved the album. I was proud of "my" band. Not having an older brother, or anyone to introduce me to pre-1980 music, it WAS my introduction to B.B. King, to the Blues, to American music. I did not understand that my experience was unusual. I heard God Part II before I'd ever heard Lennon's God. U2's versions of Helter Skelter and All Along the Watchtower were the FIRST versions I'd ever heard of those songs.
I remember watching the Siskel and Ebert review on television as they trashed that film. They said something like, "It wouldn't make them any new fans." I thought they were ridiculous. I didn't understand the reaction which people who were a little older than I was were having, and who knew more about the music of the 1960s and 1970s. And, Rattle and Hum WAS a good movie. I remember playing it for friends in college and converting a few new U2 fans to the fold.
But, as great as Rattle and Hum might have been, it did have a rough reaction from the critics and it's only now in From The Sky Down that we see how much this upset the band. U2 were never in it just for the money, or the fame, or to get laid, or any of the usual reasons. They were and are artists and they wanted to create art which would be respected by their peers and the industry. The critical reaction in 1989 kinda caused a nervous breakdown for them. They had to "go away and dream it all up again." Which meant they had to reinvent the band. They had to drastically change their sound.
Around this time I remember a Prince interview. He was upset that U2 had gotten the Grammy instead of Sign of the Times. He said something to the effect that he could do "folk music" like The Joshua Tree. He pointed to his song, "The Cross." But, U2 could never do anything like "Housequake."
U2 then set about learning how to make music that you could dance to. They got funky, and shockingly, they did it well. Achtung Baby is considered by most to be one of the two best albums they've yet written. (The Joshua Tree is the other.) This film is about the band pausing and taking a moment twenty years later to look back at how they made this drastic transformation and managed to take the same four man line-up and basically form a brand new band.
There is a cut of this movie which is included in the 2011 Super and Uber re-releases of Achtung Baby. However, that cut is shorter. There are some great scenes missing, including one where they talk about the reasons almost all of their peers DID break up, while U2 only managed to stay together because they wrote Achtung Baby.
There aren't a lot of bonus features on the disc, but they're very strong. The solo performance of Love is Blindness by The Edge will blow you away. Bono attempts solo versions of both So Cruel and The Fly which are.... both crap and great.
Which brings me to the interview. They also included an extended interview with the band, which is perhaps more touching than the film itself. At the end, Bono talks a little bit about where the band is today. Almost breaking into tears he shares that he feels the band is in a similar crisis now to the one they were in in 1990. They need to reinvent themselves again. He knows they can continue to sell out arenas and make tonnes of money, but can they get their new songs played on the radio? It reminded me of their performance on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. During the performance of Moment of Surrender, he improvises lyrics at the end about not wanting to be left alone in the song. Get on Your Boots had failed as a single - a massive slap in their face. There were plans to release a second album at the end of 2009. They announced that it would be called "Songs of Ascent" and that the lead single would be "Every Breaking Wave." But the failure of No Line on the Horizon to launch a hit single seems to have scared the band back into their shell. The band seems to be reeling now from a critical stumble in the same way they did back in 1989. Why are they opening new shows by playing 20 year old songs? It has to hurt them that the new material doesn't grab the audience now the way a 20 year-old single does.
"These days we're a better band. We've learned our craft and therein lies a huge danger, which is there's a giant chasm between the very good and the great. And U2 right now has a danger of surrendering to the very good. In those times, 20 years ago and indeed before that we were crap AND great. There wasn't much very good. And I think that - I was just reminded of how crap we were watching the film and I just found it really awful. And yet, it was a self-imposed crapness, like we were trying to make music that we didn't understand and the band seems to do its best work when its in that environment and when it gets comfortable it's not as interesting. And so, there may be some more crap coming up." - Bono
I would have liked to give the film 5 stars, but I am going to subtract 1 star because I feel like there is material missing from the Bonus features which belonged there. First of all, their project seems to have been to get together to figure out how to play all the old songs again. Yes, about half of the album is still played every night when U2 is on tour, but songs like So Cruel, Love is Blindness, Acrobat, and Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World were left behind. I feel like they wanted to include new performances of these songs, but chickened out.
Also, I had a bootleg LP record long long ago of U2 writing some songs on the beach in the late 80s. They were working on an acoustic version of "She's Gonna Blow Your House Down" and another one called "We Almost Made it This Time." They actually include VIDEO of that session in the movie - but it's cut and very limited. This would have been the place to give us that video as a bonus feature. It was beautiful and showed the band's creative process in a wonderful way. I worry if that footage will ever be completely released now? The songs aren't on any album.
It's a film which I think even non-U2 fans will enjoy. The band are intelligent and they have a lot to say about the nature of art and being creative partners. There is a plot and a narrative, and I think it speaks as much to where the band is now as it does to where they were 20 years ago. They've come full circle and they find themselves again at a place where they have to be reborn or die. REM died recently and quietly, 12 years or so after they ran out of ideas. U2 is honest and clear enough to admit to us that they are afraid now of falling into that same trap.
As Zimmerman said, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
The film opens with the band about to go onstage at Glastonbury on June 24th, 2010 (My birthday, incidentally.) They opened that show by playing a song from Achtung Baby: Even Better Than The Real Thing.
I remember being a young U2 fanatic when Rattle and Hum came out. I loved the album. I was proud of "my" band. Not having an older brother, or anyone to introduce me to pre-1980 music, it WAS my introduction to B.B. King, to the Blues, to American music. I did not understand that my experience was unusual. I heard God Part II before I'd ever heard Lennon's God. U2's versions of Helter Skelter and All Along the Watchtower were the FIRST versions I'd ever heard of those songs.
I remember watching the Siskel and Ebert review on television as they trashed that film. They said something like, "It wouldn't make them any new fans." I thought they were ridiculous. I didn't understand the reaction which people who were a little older than I was were having, and who knew more about the music of the 1960s and 1970s. And, Rattle and Hum WAS a good movie. I remember playing it for friends in college and converting a few new U2 fans to the fold.
But, as great as Rattle and Hum might have been, it did have a rough reaction from the critics and it's only now in From The Sky Down that we see how much this upset the band. U2 were never in it just for the money, or the fame, or to get laid, or any of the usual reasons. They were and are artists and they wanted to create art which would be respected by their peers and the industry. The critical reaction in 1989 kinda caused a nervous breakdown for them. They had to "go away and dream it all up again." Which meant they had to reinvent the band. They had to drastically change their sound.
Around this time I remember a Prince interview. He was upset that U2 had gotten the Grammy instead of Sign of the Times. He said something to the effect that he could do "folk music" like The Joshua Tree. He pointed to his song, "The Cross." But, U2 could never do anything like "Housequake."
U2 then set about learning how to make music that you could dance to. They got funky, and shockingly, they did it well. Achtung Baby is considered by most to be one of the two best albums they've yet written. (The Joshua Tree is the other.) This film is about the band pausing and taking a moment twenty years later to look back at how they made this drastic transformation and managed to take the same four man line-up and basically form a brand new band.
There is a cut of this movie which is included in the 2011 Super and Uber re-releases of Achtung Baby. However, that cut is shorter. There are some great scenes missing, including one where they talk about the reasons almost all of their peers DID break up, while U2 only managed to stay together because they wrote Achtung Baby.
There aren't a lot of bonus features on the disc, but they're very strong. The solo performance of Love is Blindness by The Edge will blow you away. Bono attempts solo versions of both So Cruel and The Fly which are.... both crap and great.
Which brings me to the interview. They also included an extended interview with the band, which is perhaps more touching than the film itself. At the end, Bono talks a little bit about where the band is today. Almost breaking into tears he shares that he feels the band is in a similar crisis now to the one they were in in 1990. They need to reinvent themselves again. He knows they can continue to sell out arenas and make tonnes of money, but can they get their new songs played on the radio? It reminded me of their performance on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. During the performance of Moment of Surrender, he improvises lyrics at the end about not wanting to be left alone in the song. Get on Your Boots had failed as a single - a massive slap in their face. There were plans to release a second album at the end of 2009. They announced that it would be called "Songs of Ascent" and that the lead single would be "Every Breaking Wave." But the failure of No Line on the Horizon to launch a hit single seems to have scared the band back into their shell. The band seems to be reeling now from a critical stumble in the same way they did back in 1989. Why are they opening new shows by playing 20 year old songs? It has to hurt them that the new material doesn't grab the audience now the way a 20 year-old single does.
"These days we're a better band. We've learned our craft and therein lies a huge danger, which is there's a giant chasm between the very good and the great. And U2 right now has a danger of surrendering to the very good. In those times, 20 years ago and indeed before that we were crap AND great. There wasn't much very good. And I think that - I was just reminded of how crap we were watching the film and I just found it really awful. And yet, it was a self-imposed crapness, like we were trying to make music that we didn't understand and the band seems to do its best work when its in that environment and when it gets comfortable it's not as interesting. And so, there may be some more crap coming up." - Bono
I would have liked to give the film 5 stars, but I am going to subtract 1 star because I feel like there is material missing from the Bonus features which belonged there. First of all, their project seems to have been to get together to figure out how to play all the old songs again. Yes, about half of the album is still played every night when U2 is on tour, but songs like So Cruel, Love is Blindness, Acrobat, and Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World were left behind. I feel like they wanted to include new performances of these songs, but chickened out.
Also, I had a bootleg LP record long long ago of U2 writing some songs on the beach in the late 80s. They were working on an acoustic version of "She's Gonna Blow Your House Down" and another one called "We Almost Made it This Time." They actually include VIDEO of that session in the movie - but it's cut and very limited. This would have been the place to give us that video as a bonus feature. It was beautiful and showed the band's creative process in a wonderful way. I worry if that footage will ever be completely released now? The songs aren't on any album.
It's a film which I think even non-U2 fans will enjoy. The band are intelligent and they have a lot to say about the nature of art and being creative partners. There is a plot and a narrative, and I think it speaks as much to where the band is now as it does to where they were 20 years ago. They've come full circle and they find themselves again at a place where they have to be reborn or die. REM died recently and quietly, 12 years or so after they ran out of ideas. U2 is honest and clear enough to admit to us that they are afraid now of falling into that same trap.
As Zimmerman said, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is it ... The story of four brothers ... over a very long period of time ...
January 30, 2012
Format:Blu-ray|Amazon Verified Purchase
My one complaint with U2 ... for a very long time ... was the lack of what they've done here in this film. Something close and personal. Something intimate and revealing - outside of a song. Something that explains, from them, what the hell we've all been engaged in, headlong, for so damn long.
There are a group of people on this planet that whenever they hear the word U2, they cringe. It's hard to get around or dismiss these people and for someone like me who is a serious fan, it's hard to understand why and difficult to grasp how all that happened. If you watch this documentary ... and pay close attention ... all becomes clear.
The film opens with a narration from Bono, interspersed with snippets from Edge, Larry and Adam as well as moments from everyone else close to the center of this universe. Brian Eno, Paul McGuinness, Anton Corbijn. It picks up - exactly - where the last real documentary footage they remastered and released left off. Most that read this likely bought the remastered releases which included The Unforgettable Fire and had their experience of making that album at Slane Castle in the eighties.
The first revelation: They struggled with putting on big shows, being consistent and worrying that they didn't have enough material to keep it going.
Wow. I have a lot of the concert recordings of them through the eighties and I never once thought that at all. Your fears are truly your own, no matter who you are. That's probably revelation number two, but that was mine, for me, maybe not a universal one.
The conversation steers towards Rattle & Hum and it's sad to hear all the reflections on it. Honestly. These four lads from Dublin invested everything they had financially to make a small film about them being on the road and their journey through America. The concerts after the Joshua Tree release, for them, "were like a roller coaster," Edge says. This is the point where the world met up with them and instead of listening to the music and just hearing the album, which still stands up and is timeless, people became distracted by the commentary in the press, which somehow and unfortunately became louder. They were scoriated in the press for Rattle & Hum and after putting so much into it, it killed them or rather, almost killed them.
The world, Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, everyone - saw the effort and them as Megalomaniacs and it would be something that was heavy, painful and difficult to shake. What's more painful is finding this out after watching that musical road movie so many times, so many nights, so many Sunday afternoons and loving it every time - even if it just played quietly in the background. I had heard that, but I never shared the opinion. I just saw it as a modern day version of Kerouac's On The Road.
That public souring was a shadow that they couldn't shake due to the nature of how the commentary was shaped on 24 hour Live MTV for the next few years which caused them a lot of distress. MTV was still favouring their tiring 'Hair Bands' (Bon Jovi, Ratt, Poison) on the Weekends with Headbanger's Ball and then groveled at the feet of the North-Western Grunge Sound Monday through Friday (Nirvana, Pearl Jam). U2 didn't fit that -- at all -- and so they systematically slammed them endlessly, bolstering that particular public opinion - which honestly was never really true to begin with.
There is an odd parallel here with what happened at this point with U2 and what happened with Weezer during their Pinkerton release [close to same time frame]. They both went over the edge with something too personal, something too raw, something too good for mass consumption and the critics just walked all over it and threw it back in their faces as if none of it mattered. For the record, it mattered a lot and it mattered to a lot of people over time, but mostly it very much mattered to them.
For the haters, nothing happened here in this period that had changed. Let's be honest. One might say that during the first 5 albums U2 slowly embraced more and more of the American spirit and made it theirs. They just kept evolving. When you ask some people they always say the same thing and it's a variation of this:
"I like old U2 before they sold out and changed. When they were a Rock band they kicked ass, something happened after Joshua Tree. Their early albums were all that mattered."
These sentences are like the jigsaw pieces that fall out of people's mouths and unfortunately from a set of people old enough who still control radio station playlists which is why we're always subjected to the same 5 U2 songs on FM every time they get play. It's an ongoing shame.
I was in New York in April of 2011 and I was stunned at the amount of U2 I heard on the radio and the variety of the songs that played over the airwaves. I heard `Love is Blindness' on some station driving out to Jersey and `Please' the next day. For me, it was incredible. I mentioned this dilemma to my friend but he just ignored me because, one, he wasn't aware of the West-Coast bias, and two, I often go off on tangents about history, U2, or the history of U2 -- in no discernible order.
This film is magic from the beginning to the end and will give you a viewpoint of U2 no matter what you feel about these guys. There's absolutely no politics in this, no soapboxing, nothing of that magnitude. It's an internal struggle and "each man for himself" as Bono says, which is underlined as a betrayal to the concept of a band. They were on the verge of breaking up and getting over the loud ringing critical tone of hate that came at them from the failure of Rattle & Hum continuously. All of that began the birth of The Fly, MacPhisto, the pushing back to save themselves.
MacPhisto really was Bono's psychological reaction to what he likely perceived as a massive failure and ultimate rejection. It's hard not to watch that footage in Sydney of 'Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car' and NOT see that something was up.
Stopping here. It's odd to write the words: "The failure of Rattle & Hum," Jesus that's absurd. "The failure of Pinkerton." An album that Rolling Stone later wrote was one of the great top ten concept albums ever. I'm curious now what they say about Rattle & Hum. The irony and the next revelation, which isn't the first time one might here it, is:
"You can't listen to the critics."
But possibly, there's some serious untruth in that. In dealing with the pain of what had happened, they came up with `One' which then changed everything. The album came from that moment and everything after followed.
Haters love to mention the album Pop, but that's only because they haven't listened to it from beginning to end. They should called the damn thing 'Hymnal' because that's honestly what that thing is. It's like Bach's collections of Chorales. Everything points back to God in one manner or another and that's not a crime or a bad thing. Some people could use a little more faith, even if it's just in themselves.
In modern mass-consumed music, everyone gets eaten alive, people implode, check out, blow it, say no more. Rarely do people survive it in this manner shown here. Often bands ditch members and continue, note Foreigner's problems and Lou Gramm. Note Creedence Clearwater Revival who are still fighting with lawyers to this day. Something has to be said about the intense desire to show up to work and keep going, keep making music and pushing forward. Nothing is ever perfect, but nothing would've been a bitterer pill to swallow for sure. If you can't find something good, you're probably just not looking.
"You have to reject one expression of the band, first, before you get to the next expression - and in between, you have nothing. You have to risk it all." -- Bono
...
There are a group of people on this planet that whenever they hear the word U2, they cringe. It's hard to get around or dismiss these people and for someone like me who is a serious fan, it's hard to understand why and difficult to grasp how all that happened. If you watch this documentary ... and pay close attention ... all becomes clear.
The film opens with a narration from Bono, interspersed with snippets from Edge, Larry and Adam as well as moments from everyone else close to the center of this universe. Brian Eno, Paul McGuinness, Anton Corbijn. It picks up - exactly - where the last real documentary footage they remastered and released left off. Most that read this likely bought the remastered releases which included The Unforgettable Fire and had their experience of making that album at Slane Castle in the eighties.
The first revelation: They struggled with putting on big shows, being consistent and worrying that they didn't have enough material to keep it going.
Wow. I have a lot of the concert recordings of them through the eighties and I never once thought that at all. Your fears are truly your own, no matter who you are. That's probably revelation number two, but that was mine, for me, maybe not a universal one.
The conversation steers towards Rattle & Hum and it's sad to hear all the reflections on it. Honestly. These four lads from Dublin invested everything they had financially to make a small film about them being on the road and their journey through America. The concerts after the Joshua Tree release, for them, "were like a roller coaster," Edge says. This is the point where the world met up with them and instead of listening to the music and just hearing the album, which still stands up and is timeless, people became distracted by the commentary in the press, which somehow and unfortunately became louder. They were scoriated in the press for Rattle & Hum and after putting so much into it, it killed them or rather, almost killed them.
The world, Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, everyone - saw the effort and them as Megalomaniacs and it would be something that was heavy, painful and difficult to shake. What's more painful is finding this out after watching that musical road movie so many times, so many nights, so many Sunday afternoons and loving it every time - even if it just played quietly in the background. I had heard that, but I never shared the opinion. I just saw it as a modern day version of Kerouac's On The Road.
That public souring was a shadow that they couldn't shake due to the nature of how the commentary was shaped on 24 hour Live MTV for the next few years which caused them a lot of distress. MTV was still favouring their tiring 'Hair Bands' (Bon Jovi, Ratt, Poison) on the Weekends with Headbanger's Ball and then groveled at the feet of the North-Western Grunge Sound Monday through Friday (Nirvana, Pearl Jam). U2 didn't fit that -- at all -- and so they systematically slammed them endlessly, bolstering that particular public opinion - which honestly was never really true to begin with.
There is an odd parallel here with what happened at this point with U2 and what happened with Weezer during their Pinkerton release [close to same time frame]. They both went over the edge with something too personal, something too raw, something too good for mass consumption and the critics just walked all over it and threw it back in their faces as if none of it mattered. For the record, it mattered a lot and it mattered to a lot of people over time, but mostly it very much mattered to them.
For the haters, nothing happened here in this period that had changed. Let's be honest. One might say that during the first 5 albums U2 slowly embraced more and more of the American spirit and made it theirs. They just kept evolving. When you ask some people they always say the same thing and it's a variation of this:
"I like old U2 before they sold out and changed. When they were a Rock band they kicked ass, something happened after Joshua Tree. Their early albums were all that mattered."
These sentences are like the jigsaw pieces that fall out of people's mouths and unfortunately from a set of people old enough who still control radio station playlists which is why we're always subjected to the same 5 U2 songs on FM every time they get play. It's an ongoing shame.
I was in New York in April of 2011 and I was stunned at the amount of U2 I heard on the radio and the variety of the songs that played over the airwaves. I heard `Love is Blindness' on some station driving out to Jersey and `Please' the next day. For me, it was incredible. I mentioned this dilemma to my friend but he just ignored me because, one, he wasn't aware of the West-Coast bias, and two, I often go off on tangents about history, U2, or the history of U2 -- in no discernible order.
This film is magic from the beginning to the end and will give you a viewpoint of U2 no matter what you feel about these guys. There's absolutely no politics in this, no soapboxing, nothing of that magnitude. It's an internal struggle and "each man for himself" as Bono says, which is underlined as a betrayal to the concept of a band. They were on the verge of breaking up and getting over the loud ringing critical tone of hate that came at them from the failure of Rattle & Hum continuously. All of that began the birth of The Fly, MacPhisto, the pushing back to save themselves.
MacPhisto really was Bono's psychological reaction to what he likely perceived as a massive failure and ultimate rejection. It's hard not to watch that footage in Sydney of 'Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car' and NOT see that something was up.
Stopping here. It's odd to write the words: "The failure of Rattle & Hum," Jesus that's absurd. "The failure of Pinkerton." An album that Rolling Stone later wrote was one of the great top ten concept albums ever. I'm curious now what they say about Rattle & Hum. The irony and the next revelation, which isn't the first time one might here it, is:
"You can't listen to the critics."
But possibly, there's some serious untruth in that. In dealing with the pain of what had happened, they came up with `One' which then changed everything. The album came from that moment and everything after followed.
Haters love to mention the album Pop, but that's only because they haven't listened to it from beginning to end. They should called the damn thing 'Hymnal' because that's honestly what that thing is. It's like Bach's collections of Chorales. Everything points back to God in one manner or another and that's not a crime or a bad thing. Some people could use a little more faith, even if it's just in themselves.
In modern mass-consumed music, everyone gets eaten alive, people implode, check out, blow it, say no more. Rarely do people survive it in this manner shown here. Often bands ditch members and continue, note Foreigner's problems and Lou Gramm. Note Creedence Clearwater Revival who are still fighting with lawyers to this day. Something has to be said about the intense desire to show up to work and keep going, keep making music and pushing forward. Nothing is ever perfect, but nothing would've been a bitterer pill to swallow for sure. If you can't find something good, you're probably just not looking.
"You have to reject one expression of the band, first, before you get to the next expression - and in between, you have nothing. You have to risk it all." -- Bono
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
I expected more...
Achtung baby is my all time favorite U2 album. I consider it to be of great influence in what would later became my musical taste. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Isildur
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great video
Great documentary of one of the greatest albums of all time by the greatest band of all time. A must have for any fan.
Published 12 days ago by Abigail Quinones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soundtrack of my life
This documentary sent me into memory lane. It's done in a very casual format describing the journey and struggling times of the band until they went to Hansa Studios in East Berlin... Read more
Published 1 month ago by MD
3.0 out of 5 stars
Eh
Not too bad a DVD. The sound and picture are terrific, but the content of the DVD was boring to me. Read more
Published 1 month ago by AvidReader
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
As a hardcore U2 fan I found this disappointing because I did not find this documentary up to par for a U2 documentary.
Published 2 months ago by snitchard
5.0 out of 5 stars
NIce peak inside
The creation of Achtung Baby and how the band felt then and again, several years later. Achtung Baby is one of my favorite albums from U2 and it was fun to see how its stood the... Read more
Published 3 months ago by emm
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you love U2, you'll love this.
Anyone who is a U2 fan should get this DVD. Interesting stuff I didn't know before.
Arrived on time & well packaged.
Arrived on time & well packaged.
Published 3 months ago by MeMyselfandEye
5.0 out of 5 stars
For the die hard fan
or for the causal fan. The starting point is to revisit the watershed Cd of Autung Baby. But really it's the story of U2 beginnings, and how those decisions have influenced... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Burn For You
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much more than just a Documentary of Achtung Baby....
This is a wonderful glimpse into the soul of U2, its origins, how they compose songs, and the very human challenges four people must overcome to hold a band together while... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Lawrence Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars
Huge Fan
Still able to learn new things about the band thru this documentary. If you are a fan, you will find it entertaining.
Published 4 months ago by T. Eastwood
