Throughout the 1980s, what will be referred to here as the “early period,” U2’s worldwide success became a source of Irish national pride. During this period, the task of evaluating the band’s Irish rock authenticity would become fairly straightforward. The simplest argument in support of U2’s Irish identity was the birthright argument, being that U2 was an Irish group because all four members were born in Ireland and the band itself began in the capital city of Dublin. As essentialists would argue, the mere fact that band members were born in Ireland implies that they should have natural and eternal Irish qualities in both their musical and ethnic identities. Though postmodern critiques prove that this argument is quite flawed through its ignorance of self-determined identity, the exoticism of Irish culture temporarily justified the birth place argument for the band’s Irish national identity (see Boyle 2001 for a discussion of nationalism, geography, and disaporas). For those who would argue that there were no tangible aesthetics that characterized U2’s music, even their most Irish “Bloody Sunday,” as Irish, Dahlhaus would respond with his notion of the collective spirit of the people. According to Dahlhaus’s idea of national music, “if a composer intended a piece of music to be national in character and the hearers believe it to be so, that is something that [one] must accept as an aesthetic fact, even if stylistic analysis (…) fails to produce any evidence” (Dahlhaus 1980, 86-7). The truth of the matter was that both foreigners and the Irish people—aside from the staunch traditionalists—thought of U2 as the most popular Irish rock band, and at that time, the members of U2 genuinely intended to entertain the Irish people while also offering their artistic perspective on a real Irish socio-political issue. These historical facts, at least in Dahlhaus’s terms, were enough to make U2 an authentic Irish band.
In U2’s early period, Bono’s lyrics and intentions definitely represented the culture from which he and his bandmates came and provided the band with more Irish authenticity. With its machinegun-like drum beat, high-pitched vocals, and politically charged lyrics, U2’s post-nationalist song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” on their 1983 album War was by far their most sophisticated artistic attempt at working modern Irish nationalism into their pop/rock genre (see song clip at bottom of page). The song expressed the frustrations of the Irish youth with the continuous violence in Northern Ireland, and in this way, it exemplified the emerging form of hybrid Irish nationalism that emphasized peace and coexistence over violent reunification. The most telling aspect of the song were its lyrics, including the original lines which Bono replaced wisely replaced. Before finalizing “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Bono shrewdly changed the first line of the song, “Don’t talk to me about the rights of the IRA,” to the more socially acceptable, “I can’t believe the news today.” Bono’s implied purpose or strategy in writing these lyrics is to connect with the anti-war Irish people via condemnation of who he perceived were the protagonists, the IRA and other violently pro-republican forces. By changing the line about the IRA, Bono made his criticism so subtle that many people heard “Bloody Sunday” as a pro-republican song. After all, the actual Bloody Sunday in 1972 was the day when British paratroopers shot and killed thirteen unarmed Catholic demonstrators in Derry, Ireland. Therefore, before each live performance of the song, Bono would inform the audience that “this is not a rebel song” in order to completely do away with any anti-British or anti-Protestant interpretations of his song. By 1987, after an IRA bombing in Enniskillen, Ireland, Bono reintroduced “Bloody Sunday” in a manner that angrily accused the pro-republican Irish-Americans who “haven’t been back to their country in twenty or thirty years” of being completely out of touch with the true Irish situation. He insinuated that he, as a champion of modern Irish nationalism or post-nationalism, had a far better understanding of the homeland condition. While performing the song, he often ripped the Irish flag in to three pieces, discarded the green (Catholic) and orange (Protestant) pieces, and waved the white peace over the crowd as a flag of peace, independent of religion (see Rolston 2001 for a discussion of how U2 distanced themselves from anything pro-republican). In doing so, Bono made clear that U2 had no nationalist or exclusionary political agenda other than their campaign to vocalize the peaceful demands of the hybrid, cosmopolitan Irish population. This demand for peace through secularization also reflects the changing social climate of the actual “homeland” as the Irish nation became more dependent upon and consumed by the ways of capitalism.
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" -U2