Achtung Baby – Bono recalls fall of Wall
Bono penned a short essay on being in Berlin that recalled being in the historic city when the Wall came down.
His band, U2, have just given a concert to mark the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Wall that divided the West from a communist East.
“Berlin has always been cool. Berlin has always been evocative – in film, in books, in art. Berlin has always meant something to anyone who listens to music. Iggy Pop did it for me, David Bowie and Lou Reed carried it on – we could all be heroes, or anti-heroes like Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds,” he writes.
In lyrical prose, Bono continues: “Through the 80s, Berlin was a city of dark horses, like a 24-hour radical and select club, full of anarchists, the military and war widows with tiny dogs. When we wanted to make our best record [which is what we try every time], we booked into Hansa studios, known then as Hansa by The Wall. The day after we arrived, East and West came together. We felt privileged to be there – if a little awkward at this most dysfunctional reunion. The surge and speed of reunification was breathtaking.”
He recalls:”One of the great things about the wall coming down was that nobody could see it coming. In recent times, we may have become used to seeing the right thing happen. But in 1989, the right thing didn’t always happen and the popular momentum that brought it all down – not only the wall, but also so many other boundaries – was the first of its kind in current memory. To have been there at the time was wild. We fractured with the excitement of it all, and One was essentially the four of us getting back together. This is where we conceived our Achtung Baby – our reunification. Berlin is still radical, still cool – and now it’s got no boundaries.”
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