Race of Angels: The Genesis of U2 - Softcover

Waters, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857022106 ISBN 13: 9781857022100

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 1994

Synopsis

U2's place in rock culture is already secure, but still the world celebrates them as an "Irish band." In this book, Irish journalist and friend of U2, John Waters, attempts to pinpoint the Irish cultural genius from which U2 emerged. Piecing together fragments of a hidden ancestry, he articulates the band's unique magic which has captivated a generation. Is the band's "Irishness" the secret of its appeal? This book is a search of the essence of one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands of the past decade.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

This is not a celebrity bio like Bill Flanagan's recent warts-and-all U2: At the End of the World. Instead, Irish music journalist Waters (Jiving at the Crossroads) takes an often more interesting approach to the U2 "phenomenon" by trying to fit the band into a larger cultural context. Relying on such disparate resources as Flann O'Brien and Greil Marcus, Waters looks at U2 first as four young products of society, then as one of the most successful rock bands of the decade. Doing so slows the book to a snail's pace: Waters's depiction of the artistically impoverished Dublin that haunted the youth of U2's generation is extremely specific and will exclude American readers unfamiliar with Irish entertainment and political personalities. His analysis of U2's music, meanwhile, sounds too subjective and sweeping, as if Waters hopes his grand statements will impress this band he so obviously admires (press material describes the author as a "personal friend and intellectual sparring partner of Bono and the other members of U2"). Instead of a chronological narration of U2's hard-earned rise to superstardom, which might have sharpened his critical perspective, Waters's chapters spin in dizzying circles of hypothesis and history (both of nation and of band). For the sedulous reader, there are insights throughout?even if they're not always worth the time and effort required to decode the confounding polemics.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1857022106
• ISBN 13: 9781857022100
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306