Forty-five years ago this month, U2 released their debut album Boy, with their first single to receive US radio airplay: “I Will Follow”. The Album peaked on the UK chart at 52 and the US at 63.
The iconic album cover features a picture of a boy who actually came back for the next album, War.
Our very own Jason Staveley caught up with U2 bassist Adam Clayton for This Week In Music.
“I think we’ve always kind of found the difficult way to write. Which is a lot of times we start with band improvisations, and it’s really us. Looking for a sound. It’s not us looking for a song initially, and if it’s a sound that comes and it’s, you know, the sound of Larry and myself and The Edge deciding that his guitar is going to go this or that particular way. Once we find that sound, it produces a feeling. And then Bono has to try and fit a song and some lyrics around that idea. So it’s a long process, but it means the integrity of the musical idea and the emotion that that sound has produced. It’s preserved right through to the end.”
“The story of the boy. In fact, it was sort of an idea that Bono had a very long time ago, even before it was conceivable that we were releasing a record. And it was sort of very much that we wanted to portray the innocence of youth, because the album was an innocent. I mean, when you think of boy, it is an innocent album. It’s a growing-up period. And the boy portrayed it to an almost frightening extent, in a way.”
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