Keeping the Faith

The Ramada Inn of Düsseldorf, West Germany, stands on the outskirts of town amid a host of low-slung corporate buildings: a tall, sleek, bloodless base for junior industrialists away from home. It's hard to imagine a place farther removed from the gritty, red-brick bustle of U2's hometown, Dublin. Consider, then, the surprise of drummer Larry Mullen Jr. as he snacked on some biscuits and tea in the hotel's bar one morning. There in front of him was Ronnie Drew, the craggy-faced singer for one of Ireland's most popular groups, the Dubliners. The fiftyish Drew, rather an éminence grise of traditional Irish folk music, could hardly be mistaken for a rock & roll buff — yet as he pulled up a chair next to Mullen, he was quick to express his regard for the work of U2.

"Oh, you're a great band," Ronnie told Larry. "My kids just think you're the greatest, have all your records, listen to them all the time. Yeah, the kids love ya." They chatted briefly before Ronnie got up to leave. "You know," he said gravely, "it would be a great honor if I could tell them that you bought me a drink."

In America, their names are not Household words, and their faces are unfamiliar even to some of their fans. They have yet to notch a Top Ten album or single. Only now are they beinning to tour arena-sized venues. But for a growing number of rock & roll fans, U2 — vocalist Paul "Bono" Hewson, 24; guitarist Dave "the Edge" Evans, 22; bassist Adam Clayton, 24; and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., 22 — has become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters. It's no coincidence that U2 sells more T-shirts and merchandise than grops that sell twice as many records, or that four of U2's five albums are currently on Billboard's Top 200. The group has become one of the handful of artists in rock & roll history (the Who, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen) that people are eager to identify themselves with. And they've done it not just with their music but with a larger message as well — by singing "Pride (In the Name of Love)" while most other groups sing about pride in the act of love.

On record, U2's thunderous sound (developed with help from producer Steve Lillywhite) turned heads from the beginning. Instead of copping the straightahead squall of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, U2 cast the brash, heroic spirit of punk in a new image. Their sound was echoey and atmospheric, while their lyrics were more attuned to the grayer areas of human existence. In 1981, the band's first LP, Boy, established a U.S. beachhead thanks to "I Will Follow," a keening single that found a home on college radio. Boy's successor, October, was written and recorded in a mad dash after Bono's book of lyrics was stolen; it sold poorly.

U2's American breakthrough came with 1982's War, which marshaled the sounds of militarism — rat-a-tat-tat drums, savage guitar work, defiant vocals — in the service of pacifism, albeit a pacifism ready to wage moral battle with its enemies. Such songs as "New Year's Day" (about the Soviet domination of Poland) and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (about a massacre of civilians by the British in Northern Ireland) became album-radio staples, and the LP sold over a million copies. U2's live shows had always drawn fervent audiences, but now Bono solidified the success of War by crystallizing its messages onstage in bold physical images. His most memorable gesture was brandishing a white flag — what he termed "a flag drained of all color" — during "Sunday Bloody Sunday," as if to say that in war, surrender was the bravest course. It was no wonder that War's 1983 follow-up, a live mini-LP entitled Under a Blood Red Sky, also earned the group a gold album.