U2: Wide Awake In America

Working on the Boston radio station WBCN, Carter Alan was the first American disk-jockey to play U2 in 1980 and, since then, he has been their preferred master of ceremonies for syndicated radio interviews in the states.
Now he has written a book, which doesn’t pretend to be another monumental tome to compete with Eamon Dunphy’s biography. Instead it’s his account of U2’s relationship with America as seen through the dual vantage points of a radio professional and also an often-favoured behind-the-scenes observer of the band.
As such, it’s a mixture between the good and the bland. Alan scores through his eyewitness accounts of how essential American radio is to any act’s success. Against that, he often pads out minor incidents with a starchy prose style and fails to dig deeper beneath the surface to examine the band’s motives and the complexity of the pressures that surround them at different phases of their career.
Furthermore, like many Americans, he doesn’t quite understand U2’s Irishness or their increasingly fraught and complicated relationship with the U.K. scene. My personal early warning system leads me to suspect U2’s opponents will wreak further mayhem with Wide Awake…
But to the positive. Loyally supporting U2 from the start, Alan is an invaluable witness to U2’s first American stirrings. He saw their debut Boston date where they blew apart a much favoured Capitol contender, Barooga, and also has the testimony of their American agent, Frank Barsalona on their first Ritz New York triumph, which convinced that veteran to put the full weight of Premier Talent behind U2.
Alan’s book also has the support of Ellen Darst, U2’s American representative of the past decade. But when U2’s American adventure began she was the Warners rep, deputed to report on the band’s potential. Totally enthused by them, she would make crucial recommendation to Warners’ Vice President in charge of artist relations, Bob Regehr that would prompt a policy decision whereby Warners gave priority to U2, a band on Island, a distributed label, over their own label contenders, Echo And The Bunnymen. A choice that apparently still irks Ian McCullough to this day.
Alan’s access also means he’s privy to the band’s internal co differences over Bono’s increasingly extravagant rig-climbing antics during the War tour and he catches Edge in an unguarded moment of panic after the singer had climbed 150 feet up the scaffolding at the US Festival in California.
He’s also good on Chicago’s Peace Museum that partly inspired The Unforgettable Fire but I can’t entirely accept his description of U2 in autumn ’83 as “not an overtly political band, throwing support to the left or right, or endorsing specific parties”. U2 may not then have shared the same colours of Billy Bragg but in December ’82, they had shared that election photocall with Garret Fitzgerald.
This is a continuing problem with Wide Awake… It glides over the nuances and so doesn’t quite capture U2’s fine balancing skills that let them cope with their openness to a myriad of apparently contradictory influences. Interview statements that bear deeper, if not necessarily more caustic analysis get taken at face value.
This is a missed opportunity, since U2 both need and can handle a more challenging account. Alan’s summaries of Island America’s radio campaigns on the band is technically fascinating to insiders like myself, but his use of American critics’ live and record reviews of U2 would have benefited from more panache.
Still he does catch that mood, part elation, part insecurity that infects every act as they move up the dizzy ladder of success. Furthermore his experience makes him a good guide to the Rattle and Hum backlash that led to U2’s decision not to take the Love Town tour to the States.
But the book has its irritating asides. Take this statement, setting the context for Achung Baby: “A generous liberal breeze, reviving the sixties American Summer Of Love spirit, had blown through European pop circles over the previous three years, no doubt fanned by the brightening political and social environment in Germany and the Soviet Union”. Somehow I don’t think I’d quite make the same connections between E and Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Ultimately the book’s flaw is its lack of context. It doesn’t really explain why only REM and Prince have matched U2 for both commercial success and creative consistency through the past decade. Or why no UK band of quality has achieved their longevity in the States; and why both Guns N’ Roses and how possibly, Nirvana, are collapsing to crisis point.
So the book has its nuggets and will be useful to younger U2 fans who don’t appreciate the scale of the American labyrinth but ultimately you wish Wide Awake… could have been more alert.