From The Sky Down[Blu Ray]

First of all, my interest in U2 is cursory. Back in the 80s/90s, I nearly wore out my cassette tapes of Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, but outside of those two albums, it's been hit or miss for me. In fact, the "Pop" album somewhat sealed my distrust for any new U2 releases, and so I've missed out on the past 15 years. But thanks to this video, I'm re-exploring my roots, so to speak. (Incidentally, after viewing this, I've picked up all the CDs/DVDs from the last 15 years, and happy to say that I hear a return to true form). I was expecting something completely different. I'm familiar with the "Classic Albums" series, which basically shows a band or some of its members sitting in the control room with a mixing board and noodling around with the mix and discussing how it all came together. There's a video in this series for Joshua Tree, and it is interesting, despite not covering all the tracks on the album. I was expecting something similar but for Achtung Baby. I was totally wrong. What Guggenheim did here, to me, was nothing short of genius. Here's how the documentary works: the context for the film is NOT the Achtung Baby album, as most people think. Rather, it is the 360 tour from 2011, which essentially was U2 touring their classic hits, primarily centered around 1991's Achtung Baby. The documentary explores WHY these songs are significant to THE BAND, and HOW they prepared for the tour. The focal point of the documentary is the rehearsal sessions before the tour (and we get a glimpse of the tour during the end credits). All other information, footage, etc. should be viewed within this context or the documentary may not make a whole lot of sense. One other thing to note: U2 wasn't just going to tour classic songs for the 360 tour, they were going to re-think many of these songs, rearrange them, and present them anew. To do this effectively, many of the original demo tapes for the Achtung Baby sessions were brought to rehearsal so that the band could remember what the backdrop had been for each song in order to strip out the production lining and get at the core emotion of each song, and then re-package the song for the tour. The extras on the Bluray edition contain some of these "refreshed takes" which are vastly different from the studio album versions, including: The Fly (sung by Bono alone with his acoustic guitar, complete with kicking over chairs in the process), Love is Blindness (sung by The Edge with his acoustic guitar, all alone with no accompaniment), etc. etc. Guggenheim isn't too presumptuous either. If you're new to U2, keeping the things in mind I said above is all you need. You will see a short history of their rise to the top of the charts, how they did it, and how it affected them. You will NOT see a whole lot of what they went through AFTER 1991's Achtung Baby. The archive footage is well-preserved. The cadence and pacing of the film is near perfect, and I can't recall a portion that was boring or unwarranted. Guggenheim's illustration of the artistic rift between band members was well-done. It's quite clear that Larry Mullen was not entirely on board with the concept of introducing German dance club beats and drum machines into the album. He is, after all, a very vivid drummer with little regard for proper form (think Keith Moon but with a bit more restraint). Drum machines aren't as "loose" or as improvisational as a live drummer, at least in the early 1990s. One magical and unforgettable moment of the documentary was the flash of joy across Mullen's face when banging out the beat to "Zoo Station," as he finally started to connect with the album's direction and concept. Another notable portion of the film was the archive footage showing how the band extracted the second bridge section from the demo version of "Mysterious Ways" to come up with the basic chord progression for "One." (The lyrics, which are some of U2's most passionate/powerful, came AFTER the music, surprisingly). All along, Guggenheim's use of simple animation, dubbed over with the band's narrative move the documentary along fluidly. There are many moments like these that were captured on film during the recording sessions and which are displayed with real impact, and never over the top. Don't hesitate to watch this film. This is the standard for how a "rockumentary" ought to be made.

My one complaint with U2 ... for a very long time ... was the lack of what they've done here in this film. Something close and personal. Something intimate and revealing - outside of a song. Something that explains, from them, what the hell we've all been engaged in, headlong, for so damn long. There are a group of people on this planet that whenever they hear the word U2, they cringe. It's hard to get around or dismiss these people and for someone like me who is a serious fan, it's hard to understand why and difficult to grasp how all that happened. If you watch this documentary ... and pay close attention ... all becomes clear. The film opens with a narration from Bono, interspersed with snippets from Edge, Larry and Adam as well as moments from everyone else close to the center of this universe. Brian Eno, Paul McGuinness, Anton Corbijn. It picks up - exactly - where the last real documentary footage they remastered and released left off. Most that read this likely bought the remastered releases which included The Unforgettable Fire and had their experience of making that album at Slane Castle in the eighties. The first revelation: They struggled with putting on big shows, being consistent and worrying that they didn't have enough material to keep it going. Wow. I have a lot of the concert recordings of them through the eighties and I never once thought that at all. Your fears are truly your own, no matter who you are. That's probably revelation number two, but that was mine, for me, maybe not a universal one. The conversation steers towards Rattle & Hum and it's sad to hear all the reflections on it. Honestly. These four lads from Dublin invested everything they had financially to make a small film about them being on the road and their journey through America. The concerts after the Joshua Tree release, for them, "were like a roller coaster," Edge says. This is the point where the world met up with them and instead of listening to the music and just hearing the album, which still stands up and is timeless, people became distracted by the commentary in the press, which somehow and unfortunately became louder. They were scoriated in the press for Rattle & Hum and after putting so much into it, it killed them or rather, almost killed them. The world, Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, everyone - saw the effort and them as Megalomaniacs and it would be something that was heavy, painful and difficult to shake. What's more painful is finding this out after watching that musical road movie so many times, so many nights, so many Sunday afternoons and loving it every time - even if it just played quietly in the background. I had heard that, but I never shared the opinion. I just saw it as a modern day version of Kerouac's On The Road. That public souring was a shadow that they couldn't shake due to the nature of how the commentary was shaped on 24 hour Live MTV for the next few years which caused them a lot of distress. MTV was still favouring their tiring 'Hair Bands' (Bon Jovi, Ratt, Poison) on the Weekends with Headbanger's Ball and then groveled at the feet of the North-Western Grunge Sound Monday through Friday (Nirvana, Pearl Jam). U2 didn't fit that -- at all -- and so they systematically slammed them endlessly, bolstering that particular public opinion - which honestly was never really true to begin with. There is an odd parallel here with what happened at this point with U2 and what happened with Weezer during their Pinkerton release [close to same time frame]. They both went over the edge with something too personal, something too raw, something too good for mass consumption and the critics just walked all over it and threw it back in their faces as if none of it mattered. For the record, it mattered a lot and it mattered to a lot of people over time, but mostly it very much mattered to them. For the haters, nothing happened here in this period that had changed. Let's be honest. One might say that during the first 5 albums U2 slowly embraced more and more of the American spirit and made it theirs. They just kept evolving. When you ask some people they always say the same thing and it's a variation of this: "I like old U2 before they sold out and changed. When they were a Rock band they kicked ass, something happened after Joshua Tree. Their early albums were all that mattered." These sentences are like the jigsaw pieces that fall out of people's mouths and unfortunately from a set of people old enough who still control radio station playlists which is why we're always subjected to the same 5 U2 songs on FM every time they get play. It's an ongoing shame. I was in New York in April of 2011 and I was stunned at the amount of U2 I heard on the radio and the variety of the songs that played over the airwaves. I heard `Love is Blindness' on some station driving out to Jersey and `Please' the next day. For me, it was incredible. I mentioned this dilemma to my friend but he just ignored me because, one, he wasn't aware of the West-Coast bias, and two, I often go off on tangents about history, U2, or the history of U2 -- in no discernible order. This film is magic from the beginning to the end and will give you a viewpoint of U2 no matter what you feel about these guys. There's absolutely no politics in this, no soapboxing, nothing of that magnitude. It's an internal struggle and "each man for himself" as Bono says, which is underlined as a betrayal to the concept of a band. They were on the verge of breaking up and getting over the loud ringing critical tone of hate that came at them from the failure of Rattle & Hum continuously. All of that began the birth of The Fly, MacPhisto, the pushing back to save themselves. MacPhisto really was Bono's psychological reaction to what he likely perceived as a massive failure and ultimate rejection. It's hard not to watch that footage in Sydney of 'Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car' and NOT see that something was up. Stopping here. It's odd to write the words: "The failure of Rattle & Hum," Jesus that's absurd. "The failure of Pinkerton." An album that Rolling Stone later wrote was one of the great top ten concept albums ever. I'm curious now what they say about Rattle & Hum. The irony and the next revelation, which isn't the first time one might here it, is: "You can't listen to the critics." But possibly, there's some serious untruth in that. In dealing with the pain of what had happened, they came up with `One' which then changed everything. The album came from that moment and everything after followed. Haters love to mention the album Pop, but that's only because they haven't listened to it from beginning to end. They should called the damn thing 'Hymnal' because that's honestly what that thing is. It's like Bach's collections of Chorales. Everything points back to God in one manner or another and that's not a crime or a bad thing. Some people could use a little more faith, even if it's just in themselves. In modern mass-consumed music, everyone gets eaten alive, people implode, check out, blow it, say no more. Rarely do people survive it in this manner shown here. Often bands ditch members and continue, note Foreigner's problems and Lou Gramm. Note Creedence Clearwater Revival who are still fighting with lawyers to this day. Something has to be said about the intense desire to show up to work and keep going, keep making music and pushing forward. Nothing is ever perfect, but nothing would've been a bitterer pill to swallow for sure. If you can't find something good, you're probably just not looking. "You have to reject one expression of the band, first, before you get to the next expression - and in between, you have nothing. You have to risk it all." -- Bono ...

Years down the road when U2 have since retired from rock and roll this is the part of their story that will be told most often. Achtung Baby is U2's seminal work and it is covered in this documentary by Davis Guggenheim. The documentary includes interviews with the band members, their manager Paul McGuinness, and producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, as well as engineers like Mark Flood Ellis. Most of the people who had a hand in making Achtung Baby are interviewed for this documentary. Also included are acoustic versions of So Cruel, Love is Blindness, and The Fly. The documentary revisits the time the band spent in Berlin and frustrations that nearly overcame them in Hansa Studios. But as if in the eye of the storm, they stumbled onto One which gave them confidence in their new direction as a group. This was the climax for U2, it redefined who they were and showed them they could reinvent their sound and image. The documentary also covers the years leading up to Achtung Baby, which includes the Joshua Tree tour and the making of Rattle and Hum. In the interviews the band reveal why they felt they needed to make such a drastic change which nearly lead to the band breaking up. This documentary shows the band as simultaneously vulnerable and brilliant and shows why they always seem to be pushing into new territory and anticipates the further push into Zooropa and Pop. This documentary is particularly useful for younger U2 fans who may not have been around to see these years firsthand. But I believe all U2 fans would like this documentary, even the ones who don't like the U2 of the 90's because I think this would help them understand why U2 changed so drastically. Even so I think the extra acoustic version of the songs are worth the price of the dvd.

Super film pour tous les fans de U2 et de l’album Achtung Baby!

Sehr schöner Dokumentarfilm über U2's "Making of the 'Achtung Baby album'". Tiefgründig, sehr gut geschnitten, tolle Bilder über "Berlin in den Late 80s nach dem Mauerfall" natürlich tolle Musik. Vor allem der Teil über 'One' ist super (nicht nur, da mein Lieblingslied). Nachdem ich den Film schon auf dem TIFF 2011 in Toronto gesehen habe (leider in einer Vorstellung, in der Bono+Edge nicht mehr anwesend waren ;-), habe ich mir nun die Blueray gekauft und habe das nicht bereut. Für U2-Fans ein Muss.

Siempre interesante cualquier obra de los míticos U2 y especialmente esta época creativa

Je précise tout d’abord que je suis un fan intemporel (depuis 1987) du groupe et donc ce commentaire est clairement partial =) En revanche, je tiens à dire que ce blu ray est à prendre comne une petite gourmandise. Oubliez pour quelques instants les concerts démesurés du plus grand groupe de rock du monde et plongez vous dans les coulisses du sublime album Achtung Baby. Truffé d’anecdotes, de performances intimistes et de témoignages uniques. A consommer sans modération.

Un DVD sicuramente da avere per i collezionisti, che apprezzeranno il documentario sulla storia degli U2 dal dopo The Joshua Tree fino alla realizzazione di Achtung Baby e al mitico concerto del 2011 a Glastonbury! Ben fatto e con un ottimo rapporto qualità/prezzo.