The image that they took on was perceived by the press as cynicism that seemed to be mocking the modern world. The Pop album, whose release was originally announced in a Greenwich Village Kmart for full ironic effect, marked the extreme of their consumerist parody.
The band's performances were a theatrical satire of the fast-paced, high- priced, modern world. Screens on the stage would flash from footage of the Gulf War to Van Halen music videos and back to CNN satellite feeds. Bono would talk to the audiences through characters that he had adopted for the show--"the fly," "Mirrorball Man," and "Mister MacPhisto," which were caricatures of lust and greed.
It is generally agreed by those close to the band that a lot of what U2 did during the later 1990s was misunderstood. The band's cynicism was overblown by reviewers and audiences, they say, who may have missed the fact that U2 was tackling the same issues they had dealt with for years. They just approached the questions from a new angle.
"U2 felt that the way people were experiencing reality and fiction was becoming so intertwined that they thought it would be an interesting thing to explore," Flanagan says. "If you go to the songs, then those are very personal songs, about marriage and intimacy and temptation. [Bono] wanted to know if all this sensory overload we experience in the world gives you permission to live for your own pleasure."
The PopMart tour did reach the threshold of sensory stimulation, and in many ways, the show was too big for the band to handle. The tour did not sell enough tickets to cover its expenses, and the album, with its experimental music style, sold only a disappointing million copies. It was clear that the band could not continue expanding their act.
According to Alan, U2's guitar player the Edge says that "each album is a reaction to the one before it." This was never clearer than with the sudden scaling-back that the band underwent during the past two years. U2's current tour is smaller and more intimate, and Bono's lyrics are an honest inquiry into issues that have been on his mind for years.
"Bono is dealing with the conflict between wanting to have a stable home and the conflicting desire to go out in the world and have an adventure and never come back. To some degree, that's what he's been writing about since 'I Will Follow," the band's first hit single, released in 1980, Flanagan says.
--Staff writer Warren S. Adler can be reached at wsadler@fas.harvard.edu.