- Biography
Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton met at Dublin’s Mount Temple School and formed U2 in 1976 “before they could play.” The band released their first three albums at a rapid clip—Boy (1980), October (1981) and War (1983)—while earning a reputation as one of the world’s most formidable live bands —proof positive came in the form of the 1983 live EP Under A Blood Red Sky. The Unforgettable Fire (1984) broke U2 into the mainstream with the group’s first Top 40 hit “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” and a world tour including a set at Live Aid in July 1985. The Joshua Tree arrived in 1987 with a Time cover declaring U2 “Rock’s Hottest Ticket”. Arena dates rolled into stadium dates as The Joshua Tree won the 1987 Grammy for Album of the Year, while 1988 saw the release of sixth album Rattle and Hum. U2 radically reinvented itself with 1991’s Achtung Baby and the groundbreaking and futuristic Zoo TV Tour, whose two-year run spanned the globe and spawned Zooropa, recorded on tour and released as U2’s eighth album in 1993. The band closed out the 20th century with Pop in 1997 and the massive PopMart Tour, which saw U2 headline the first major concert in Sarajevo following the cessation of the Bosnian War. U2 opened the new millennium with All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000), with Bono announcing that U2 were reapplying for their old job: “the world’s biggest rock band.” From the band’s first club shows in 17 years through the Elevation Tour in 2001, the unanimous verdict was that they had succeeded. In 2003, U2 won a first Golden Globe, for Best Original Song: The Hands That Built America, from Gangs of New York. Following the release of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb in 2004, U2 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Supported by the Vertigo Tour, HTDAAB won a total of nine Grammys, including an unprecedented second Album of the Year, bringing U2’s career Grammy tally to 22—the most of any band. No Line On The Horizon was released in 2009 and the U2 360° tour ran 2009-2011 and remains the highest grossing tour of all time. 2014 saw U2 win a second Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, for Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. U2’s thirteenth studio album Songs Of Innocence was released in October 2014 and supported in 2015 by the critically acclaimed iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour, on which U2 would “reinvent the arena show” (Rolling Stone). U2 returned to stadiums with The Joshua Tree Tour 2017. A celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s 25-million-selling fifth album, The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 played to some of the most positive reviews of the band’s career, and was the #1 grossing tour of 2017. U2’s most recent album, Songs Of Experience, was released in 2017 and was the band’s eighth #1 album in the U.S., making U2 the first group to attain #1 albums in the U.S. in four consecutive decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s). The eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour followed in 2018, eschewing nostalgia, and drawing heavily on the band’s two newest albums (and omitting anything from the recently revisited Joshua Tree) as U2 completed the narrative of the tour’s 2015 predecessor.
