My fellow traveller’s prior post about the innovative, high-quality products that result from planned economies inspired me to focus on one such product—indeed, the one he mentioned by name, the Trabant. For those who didn’t have the privilege of living in the Eastern Bloc, or are too lazy to click on the link, here’s a brief primer on the Trabant:
It was a car and it was mass-produced in East Germany through five decades (c. 1957- c. 1991) without significant redesign. Several million of them were made. It looked like this:
Owing primarily to the unfair standards imposed by greedy capitalists, it was poorly engineered and suffered from production problems. That might be an understatement, but you’d have to flip over to the Colossal Gearhead sub-blog for specifics.
I’ve spent virtually none of my life reading or thinking about the Trabant. I don’t know much about cars in general, much less about cars I have no occasion or desire to drive. The few times I’ve heard about or seen the Trabant, however, it’s been because of U2.
That’s right, these guys:
Before we get back to Trabants, some things need to be said about U2 so that you’ll hang with me, no matter how you feel about them. In this cynical, post-sincerity world, U2 is not widely loved amongst the best minds of my generation. A few possible reasons: 1) they haven’t cut a good record in 20 years; 2) we don’t remember a time when U2 was considered contra-mainstream; 3) Bono’s ego is suffocating; 4) most people view their humanitarian bent with skepticism; justifiably so, because 5) they spend half their time wining and dining with the powerful people they should be writing protest songs about; and 6) they spend the other half of their time teaming up with Apple to foist their cross-branded products and weak-ass tracks on us in exchange for unimaginable piles of cash.
Ok, so if you don’t like U2, you should still be reading. If you do like U2, take heart, because I have a few good things to write about them. I’m not going to lay out my full U2 apologia today, but no one can dispute that they have been influential and innovative, at least in the design of their live performances, which is what I’m going to get to eventually. During the 1980’s they built their reputation primarily on their music alone, and their live performances were generally stripped-down visually but high-energy sonically.
All of that changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or, rather, all of that changed around the same time as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR. After flying high on the release of 1987’s The Joshua Tree and their massively successful tour in support of that album, U2 threw some of it all away in 1988 when they released Rattle and Hum and a rockumentary by the same name. The album supposedly reflected their growing interest in the United States and its roots music, but many people thought it was a shit sandwich. The film was all about them during their Joshua Tree victory lap in America, and it was widely criticized as too self-important. The film’s only redeeming quality is the capture of several performances showing U2 at their pinnacle, like this version of show-opener “Where the Streets Have No Name” at Sun Devil Stadium, and probably the best rendition of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” the band ever played (loaded with legitimate emotion, as the band, in Denver, had just learned of a bombing in Ireland earlier that day).
Forced to come to grips with the fact that their success was causing them to lose their grip, U2 opted to go dark for a while. As the Cold War came to a close, U2 took a sabbatical which would be their longest break since their first album. After falling in love with America in the 80’s, and winning hearts and minds there until Rattle and Hum curdled the milk, U2 decided they needed to run in the opposite direction (both literally and musically). When they were ready to write and record again in late 1990, they went to Berlin. The reunifying Germany and new access to the once foreign-seeming Eastern Bloc states must have given Bono and “The Edge” a lot of easy inspiration, and they desperately needed it. The resulting album Achtung Baby probably saved their careers. It was a critical success, sold very well, is now considered one of U2’s strongest albums, and gave the band a solid launchpad for their reinvention.
What could the band use as a symbol of their new identity? What is the complete opposite of the American Desert, Graceland, and B.B. King?
Why, the Trabant, of course. Yes, our hero finally reemerges, and now this blog post gets back on topic. For reasons I don’t know and haven’t researched, the band developed an affinity for the portly little smoke-blowers and decided to incorporate them into their visual themes. They took some press shots with them and even put one in the mosaic cover of the album:
But since it’s U2, they couldn’t stop with a few subtle allusions. No, they had to take these things where they belong: ON THE ROAD, BABY!
To support Achtung Baby, U2 launched the Zoo TV Tour, perhaps the most ambitious and important rock tour in history. Those platitudes might sound over-the-top. Yes.
Spanning indoor and outdoor venues from 1992 to 1993 (long enough for them to write, record, and release their follow-up, Zooropa), the Zoo TV Tour was a landmark production that would redefine what could go into, and come out of, a rock concert. No longer content with the earnest simplicity and adrenaline of their 1980’s live offerings, and buttressed by the technological advancements only accessible from our Eastern comrades after the Iron Curtain fell, U2 decided to bring the entire concept of early 90’s television to the stage, with useless drivel, static, and all.
To bring their grand concept to fruition, U2 worked with long-time collaborator and absurdly-named Willie Williams. Sometime during their Guinness-tasting sessions, Williams decided to incorporate U2’s favorite lemon (no, not that one) in the stage design. You can see the results for yourself:
Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images
As you can see, the stage design was intentionally garish and Blade Runner-esque, a mix of industrial-sized, antenna-shaped scaffolding, massive TV screens, and backlighting courtesy of communism’s finest automobile. They supposedly were trying to be ironic in making fun of their oversized status and the modern media, but as the subsequent PopMart Tour and everything that followed have shown, most members of the jury are inclined to believe that the 1980’s really did go to their heads. I don’t blame them that much. If I could convince millions of people to fill stadiums and watch me play music and flip through channels on a big TV, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Nevertheless, a lot of interesting things happened on the Zoo TV Tour and it is worth revisiting and remembering. The band spent a segment of many of their shows talking to a correspondent in war-torn Sarajevo via satellite uplink in order to raise awareness of the conflict there and the conditions that civilians were experiencing. (Of course, this only complicated the tightrope they were trying to balance on. Millionaire musicians transporting fans at a rock show to a sieged city in the Balkans where people were starving and being shot by snipers every day raises questions of whether U2 were helping people through exposure and making a genuine difference, or misguidedly and awkwardly exploiting the victims to further their humanitarian image). Bono would also make phone calls over the PA system, trying to connect with President George H.W. Bush at the White House, talking to other notable people, or placing pizza orders for the entire stadium.
The setlists were some of their best, drawing primarily from their strongest albums (War, The Joshua Tree, and Achtung Baby) and uncluttered by the garbage they’ve been pumping out for the last 20 years. I wasn’t able to see the show in person, as I was too young to see above the waist of an average adult, but numerous iterations of the show are available on YouTube (see: 1, 2, 3, 4). Plus, the band released a professional video of one of their shows in Sydney that you can pay too much for on Amazon. Incidentally, the immediately preceding show in Sydney is the only official U2 concert to feature a replacement musician. Bassist Adam Clayton apparently drank too much the night before and couldn’t recover in time, but the band couldn’t cancel because they needed to use that show as a rehearsal for the film crew. So their bass technician Stuart Morgan got to play pretend rock-star for two hours in front of tens of thousands of bogans.
So what was the point of this article? I just wanted to tell you that U2 did some interesting things, and Trabants were used as decorations on one of the more significant rock tours of all time. Here they are being given their proper respect at Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Country Club:
Embed from Getty ImagesEventually I’ll write more about U2, probably about why PopMart was also kinda interesting even though it was even more ridiculous than Zoo TV. Or I’ll write something that does not reflect as poorly on my personal taste. Until then, “Walk On.”