U2: At the End of the World

Rarely put-downable, Flanagan writes with a careful balance of of humor and seriousness that puts U2 in unparallelled company as rock's most thoughtful and interesting band. Flanagan benefits from covering them from the depths of the at times extremely tenuous Achtung Baby sessions in Berlin to standing once again at the top of Rock superstardom, reinvented, embracing of irony and cultivating a wholly new following. If you're like me and became a U2 die hard during this period but were a little too young to go out to concerts or see band members while in town on tour, this book will show you just what a remarkable period it was for them. Paul McGuiness's insights and vision for what was to come with respect to digital, downloadable music is almost prophetic, reading the book now in 2004. But U2 are at the center of a changing world in the early 90s with the fall of the Wall and the newness of the "New World Order" which they try to recognize and understand and the election of the first Democratic president in a dozen years in America. All the while, U2 remain 4 secondary school mates who take themselves MUCH less seriously than is commonly believed. ZOO TV still remains as one of the most dazzling, ambitious and provocative tours ever put on, all at at time where a band was desperately trying to find a new direction. But the cultural, political, musical discussions, events and meanderings are what make this work so rich, beyone typical band biographies. If you love U2 or merely just love Achtung Baby and Zoo TV, you will love this book.

I had always prided myself as being a u2 fan - I could sing their entire back catalog by heart, but I was aways a bit wary of reading any actual "books" on my fav band as they are often out of date by the time they (the books) hit the self and often show my beloved boys in an unkind light.I ordered this book on word of mouth and the fact that I am starved for any band info as it has almost been four years since their last masterpiece - I was not disapointed. Flanagan writes this journal of life during the Zoo TV tour as a journalist but also as a fan - the personalities of the members of u2 and their organization are brought to focus in a way that helps the reader identify with Bono, Edge, Larry, Adam, and Paul (if by chance you are wondering who Paul is - please read the book and become a true U2 fan of God's Sake!)True the events that are described in this book are over ten years old but it is an essential period of u2 and it sets the stage for the cohesive unit that the band has become - last seen during the band's most recent elevation tour.I read the entire book over two days and Flanagan has done something that I didn't think was possible for a die-hard u2 fan - I fell a bit more in love the members of the band for the separate men they are and for the band they form. Remember - "We're one, but we're not the same, we got to carry each other"Flanagan shows that u2 stand behind the sentiment in One. A true gift of a book - a must read

Although this is a book about U2, it's such a strange and fascinating tale that it should stand as a classic of rock-n-roll writing as well as the single essential volume for any U2 fan.The first thing that sets this book apart from the usual rock bio is that it doesn't focus on serving up facts about the band members. There's no "born here, went to school here" at the beginning; instead, we open with Bono, startled into crouching with a hand over his nakedness when a German family comes to reclaim the East Berlin house he's staying in just after the Wall falls. The rest of this tome continues in the same vein, conveying what the band members are like and how they live their rockstar lives by vividly recounting moment-to-moment experiences that the author lived through along with them.Bill Flanagan was granted unprecedented access to the band member's lives, and throughout the two years he spends touring with him, they treat him as a friend. He makes no pretense of impartiality but rather tells everything from his own point of view, which is much more genuine than any false distance would be and allows you to feel you're there with the band. The length of time and volume of material that result are made more manageable by the fact that Flanagan gives each chapter its own brief coherency, so they can easily be read separately as well as together (and indeed a couple of them were originally published as magazine articles in Musician).The real reward comes from following the band through to the end of their Zoo TV/Zooropa tour. There's a detachment from reality that Flanagan, the band members, and all the tour crew come to experience as they dedicate themselves to a roaming life, and it's gradually revealed as the band's experiences become more and more strange. Eventually, when you reach the near-insanity of Bono walking and talking and refusing to go to sleep in Japan, it makes a kind of strange sense. Along the way, Adam bottoms out, Edge does 'shrooms and falls in love, and Larry injects himself with bull's blood. It's all good stuff.If you're really into U2, it would be a crying shame for you to miss out on this book because you'll never understand the band so well any other way. If you've somehow stumbled upon this out of a general interest in rock-n-roll life, it's worth your time to use this book for an insider's view. And if you're looking for some fun nonfiction, it doesn't get any crazier than this.

Bill Flanagan's "U2 at the End of the World," is far more appropriately titled, "U2 at the End of the Music Industry As We Know It." The book, which exhaustively charts the world-crossing tours Zoo TV and Zooropa, also functions as a historical document of the music industry on the cutting edge of a major technology surge. It forecasts the eventual rise of MP3s and deals with the copyright issues involved, and the pursuit of art, commerce, and technology, and explores where the worlds converge, and where they are still discordant. It is also a documentary of the craziness involved in tour life -- as Flanagan points out, most rock writers travel for a band with a week, then leave. It is a far far greater thing to spend two years jumping around the world with a band, to the point where tour life feel normal, and everything else is child's play. A book that deals not with the mundane day to day existence of U2's members ("and then Larry came in and said wackily, 'It was the pizzaman after all!' Bono, Edge and Adam laughed at the silly drummer," etc.), but with the deeper issues of what the band is about, what music is, what the business is like, and what it means to attempt to be relevant and reinvent ones'self in the ever-changing face of music. A must-read.

I'll keep it simple. I have over 25 U2 books in my collection. This is the best, and by far. This is not a book where you will find pictures. It's the inside story of the zoo tv tour. The difference with other books is that this one is not written by someone who only thinks he knows what he's talking about. When you read it, you can feel that you do get the real story, with many spicy details that an outsider would not know about... Very well written, with no pretentions or judgments. Just the real story, like a real fan loves it. Trust me on this one.