#AB30: U2 Know How Beautiful U2 Are—By Kelly
The Fly 2 (watercolor) by Kelly Eddington, 2021.
#AB30: U2 Know How Beautiful U2 Are
Kelly Eddington
Sometimes I like to imagine the millennial offspring that would have been the result of U2’s “The Fly” video impregnating me as I feared it could have back in 1991. My black haired, raspy-voiced, leather-clad, and sunglassed adult child would be holed up in the guest room and watching unlimited TV through a haze of cigarillo smoke. Stay as long as you like! Can I fix you another drink? I love you, Fly baby!
1991 was a year of uncomfortable transition for me. I began grad school at a massive university in an unfamiliar city that was 150 times larger than my hometown. Watercolor abstract expressionism is not exactly a marketable skill in the Midwest, so I compromised and studied to become an art teacher. I missed my subversive undergrad friends, though, and my wholesome new cohort made me realize how different I was. The size of my paintings shrank almost immediately, and I spent two years in a chrysalis-like dorm room that metamorphised me into a responsible adult.
But. At least I had a stereo and my dumb little TV.
And after an inexcusable three-year absence, U2 had returned at last. Their video for “The Fly,” which was on heavy rotation on MTV, whispered in my ear, “Try to fit in if you must. But this is who you really are.”
The new music was deliciously shocking, but the band’s reinvention of their collective image shook me to my visual-artist core. (My imaginary millennial Fly baby might describe what happened to them as a glow up.) In this essay, and it’s not really an essay but the word “piece” puts my teeth on edge, ahem, I will attempt to describe what it was like to be a young U2 fan witnessing their surprising evolution as it happened.
It’s easy to take the internet for granted, said the crotchety old woman. These days, when you want to get into a band, you have free access to every song they’ve recorded. You can watch concerts, music videos, and interviews whenever you want, and all known photos of the band are at your fingertips. They might even send communications into the ether, such as semi-improvised skits where two of them bicker like an adorable married couple, for example. There has never been a better time to be a fan of anything.
This was not the case thirty years ago, the ancient hag continued. U2 were one of the biggest bands of that era, and they went so far as to make an actual movie about themselves, but did I possess even a fraction of my current knowledge about them then? No. I gleaned what I could from the handful of interviews found in music magazines I had to purchase, and occasionally news about them would pop up on MTV, an unpredictable channel with no real schedule.
In my mind, late 80s Bono was a mysterious figure. He was nowhere near as accessible as he is today, and he came across as intelligent and even brooding when discussing the band’s rise to fame. He didn’t seem to belong to that decade. His long hair wasn’t teased and sprayed (well, not anymore). He didn’t sing about rock ‘n’ roll debauchery. He possessed an above-it-all purity and even dressed like a Depression-era preacher. Then he and his band disappeared for a while.
They surfaced briefly in 1990 with “Night And Day,” a gorgeous Cole Porter cover I loved immediately. It left me wanting more and made me curious. U2 seemed to be on a new sonic path with Bono’s sensual/tortured performance and that doom and gloom synth. The shadowy video seemed to be a message transmitted from the center of the band’s own dark chrysalis.
And one year later, a black butterfly emerged.
“I needed some armor if I was gonna expose my heart...Let’s give ‘em a rock star. Let’s have some fun with this.”
(Warning: things are about to get female gaze-y.)
The first change anyone noticed was the sunglasses. Bono’s eyes are nakedly expressive, but now wraparound plastic blacked out his most vulnerable features. Hiding one-quarter of his face only made him more enigmatic, especially during those lingering shots of his slow smile. His shorter and new, unnaturally-black hair was layered in a way that managed to seem more feminine than it had when it fell halfway down his back.
Bono had flirted with leather in the past, but with “The Fly” he was all in, and his tight patent leather jacket seemed to have been rolled around in until it resembled frayed sequins. He wasn’t wearing anything under it. Shirtless Bono? We’d certainly seen that before, but waiting for him to lift that chin and roll those shoulders back so we could catch a fleeting glimpse of his chest was sexier, and he knew this. The camera had always loved him, but this time it wanted something a lot more carnal. I mean, he was literally smoking.
He was the focus of the video’s exterior shots and was accompanied by a visual onslaught of fast cuts and slogans. But the majority of the video was devoted to Bono performing the song with the rest of U2, whose images were in the midst of their own rebirths.
The studio set could not have been more minimal, with its plain white backdrop, and compared with their usual expansive stages, the close quarters of the video seemed claustrophobic. Band members bumped into each other and gazed at the viewer confrontationally. They were too big for this place, and so was their sound. Even the lighting was oppressive, and it created a sweaty, male atmosphere from which a mist of sleaze descended.
On sweet little U2!
For the first time, the band was truly embracing their physicality. The fact that they looked like true rock stars was no accident. This was U2, after all: of course the transformation had been carefully planned. All were entering their thirties and at the height of their attractiveness. If not now, when? It was never going to be this easy to be this beautiful.
Not that it was ever hard for Larry Mullen, U2's resident prettyboy (now resident prettyman). He must have rolled up to the set wearing a Ramones shirt and jeans, then directors Jon Klein and Ritchie Smyth said, “Perfect, no notes,” and he installed himself behind his kit as the band’s supercharged V8 engine.
Adam Clayton took a giant step away from the Ben Franklin glasses that gave him that high plains intellectual vibe. Joshua Tree-era U2 could have been guest stars on Deadwood. But with his aviator sunglasses and longer, blonder hair, Adam exuded a new level of cool as he put his bass through its paces. Pause the video whenever he’s onscreen and tell me he’s not the next James Bond.
But Edge was the true sleeper of this video.
(Sleeper: noun, informal. Something or someone that becomes unexpectedly successful or important after a period of being unnoticed or ignored.)
If Bono was a newly-hatched black butterfly, Edge was a fucking black swan. Gone at last was the hobo aesthetic that was as weird to me as Dexys Midnight Runners’ bib overalls had been in 1983. In his slim black tank, Edge proved that he was no longer a wispy figure lurking beneath layers of clothing. He had shoulders and arms and a chest. His sideburns weren’t retro sight gags anymore, and some design had gone into his facial hair. His soon-to-be-iconic black cap made its debut, and he wore those bedazzled pants because frankly he deserved them, thanks to a solo that was shots-fired at everybody who thought he was a one-trick delay pony.
The video contains a number of headless bodies and interesting juxtapositions that illustrate the song’s animalistic undercurrent. The camera circles and leers at a shape-throwing Bono and stalks Edge in a similar way, and his posture suggests an almost erotic connection between guitarist and guitar. (Blink and you’ll miss an Edge O-face.) The song ends with a thud and a fading guitar whine—the exhausted, postcoital exhalations of bodies falling back on a bed.
Clearly U2 were proud of this song, and I hoped it was a mission statement for their forthcoming album. “This is the way,” they seemed to be saying. “Change with us.”
So I did. I became an art teacher. I’ll need some armor if I’m gonna teach high school art. Let’s give ‘em a cool teacher. Let’s have some fun with this.
I had a lot of Bono’s look already in place, albeit unintentionally: black hair, pale skin, a mostly black wardrobe (teaching art means all of your clothes will get stained), and in place of sunglasses, I wore a strong red lip.
I had a knack for passing on skills and knowledge, but I was introverted and had to interact with over a hundred students each day. I channeled Bono when I felt overwhelmed. In a school populated by Boomer teachers whose sole classroom decorations were complimentary Pepsi calendars, I plastered my walls with posters the way a teenager might decorate a bedroom.
I tried to show my students that it was possible to live a nonconformist life as a single woman in a small town. Relationships I had with people I didn’t tell my students much about gave me some mystique. Enrollment in my classes quadrupled. At the height of my popularity, a cluster of band kids regularly sat in the hallway near my door and played the riff to “Seven Nation Army” when they saw me approach.
“The Fly” inspired me to make unconventional choices for thirty years (and counting, the fossilized matron droned on). If U2 were brave enough to evolve and follow their unique creative vision, so could I. I traveled and had adventures. I lived alone until I met my husband on the internet when I was nearly forty. I didn’t have children. I quit my teaching job to paint full time. And strangest of all, I created a comic/art project about U2 that has lasted nearly two decades and evolved into this website.
That song is still my favorite, that video remains stunning, and come to think of it, the imaginary Fly baby I gave birth to was actually myself.