U2 - Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own (Island)
The second single to be surgically removed from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, (heralded by some as the third best U2 album ever), continues the album’s terrorism theme both lyrically and sonically. The album itself is unashamedly conceptual, charting the rise (album track Vertigo) of a young political activist called Mono as he threatens to enforce his brand of politics on the world (Love And Peace Or Else) before realising the actual terror of abject poverty (Crumbs From Your Table) and then becoming at one with mankind and finally, the universe (Original Of The Species and Yahweh)
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own (nicknamed SYCMIOYO by old school-friend and occasional band member Cliff Richard, who incidentally mixed the album) refers explicitly to the general output of enriched uranium from an electrolysis and fractional distillation process, or more specifically the difficulty of achieving this process alone. Having already researched the outputs for gas diffusion, thermal diffusion, gas centrifuge, laser isotope separation, and mass spectroscope in the sleeve notes for 1993’s Zooropa, this is a natural progression for word-wrangler and ideas man Bono.
Self confessed riff-addict The Edge complements the leadman’s work perfectly by directly reflecting the transmutation part of Uranium’s U-238 into the plutonium isotope Pu-239 through echoey 3/16 tempo, 340-350ms delays. Add into the melee a bassline that plunges and mines for melody and the fission rhythms of Larry “Mullet” Mullen and you have an explosion capable of scorching the hearts, minds and faces of stadium-goers throughout the NATO enforced world.
Although appalling some with their extrovert glamorisation of arms and warfare, U2 defend themselves by organising world-wide tours every couple of days or so, the proceeds of which sustain two eighths of the third-world's tourist economies, although there are fears that if Adam Clayton’s knee packs up and just one tour is cancelled, some of these smaller countries might slide into financial ruin. Wannabe-journalist Bono prefers to deflect attention away from these matters however by talking of musical direction, saying on the band’s official website: “Now you've got punk rock starting points that go through Phil Spector-land, turn right at Tim Buckley, end up in alleyways and open onto other vistas and cityscapes and rooftops and skies. It's songwriting by accident, by a punk band that wants to play Bach.”
So that’s Buckley, Spector, Bach a continent of small countries and the humble music journalist that’ll be out of a job soon then? Thanks a lot, Bono.
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own (nicknamed SYCMIOYO by old school-friend and occasional band member Cliff Richard, who incidentally mixed the album) refers explicitly to the general output of enriched uranium from an electrolysis and fractional distillation process, or more specifically the difficulty of achieving this process alone. Having already researched the outputs for gas diffusion, thermal diffusion, gas centrifuge, laser isotope separation, and mass spectroscope in the sleeve notes for 1993’s Zooropa, this is a natural progression for word-wrangler and ideas man Bono.
Self confessed riff-addict The Edge complements the leadman’s work perfectly by directly reflecting the transmutation part of Uranium’s U-238 into the plutonium isotope Pu-239 through echoey 3/16 tempo, 340-350ms delays. Add into the melee a bassline that plunges and mines for melody and the fission rhythms of Larry “Mullet” Mullen and you have an explosion capable of scorching the hearts, minds and faces of stadium-goers throughout the NATO enforced world.
Although appalling some with their extrovert glamorisation of arms and warfare, U2 defend themselves by organising world-wide tours every couple of days or so, the proceeds of which sustain two eighths of the third-world's tourist economies, although there are fears that if Adam Clayton’s knee packs up and just one tour is cancelled, some of these smaller countries might slide into financial ruin. Wannabe-journalist Bono prefers to deflect attention away from these matters however by talking of musical direction, saying on the band’s official website: “Now you've got punk rock starting points that go through Phil Spector-land, turn right at Tim Buckley, end up in alleyways and open onto other vistas and cityscapes and rooftops and skies. It's songwriting by accident, by a punk band that wants to play Bach.”
So that’s Buckley, Spector, Bach a continent of small countries and the humble music journalist that’ll be out of a job soon then? Thanks a lot, Bono.
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