U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera — a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day. A tenor out front who won’t accept he’s a baritone. A small man singing giant songs. Wailing, keening, trying to explain the unexplainable. Trying to release himself and anyone who will listen from the prison of a human experience that cannot explain grief.

The stuff of the great operas. U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera — a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day.

Patricide. The stuff of the great operas. U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera — a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day. A tenor out front who won’t accept he’s a baritone. A small man singing giant songs.

Nice job…what the hell is U2 supposed to play?

Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.

I have a faculty of memorizing any song or poem as I hear it, many, especially the old Scotch and Irish ballads I heard my grandmother sing when I was but a child.

It is not an exaggeration to say U2 began to write our own songs because we couldn’t play other people’s. Baby steps for a baby band.

[Describing the drinking habits of different ethnic groups, in an Irish accent] You know if you're Irish, you've got a running start that you can do it better than we are. You know that because if you're Irish, you know, you'll kick my ass but then you'll fuckin' sing about it afterwards. [sings, dances a jig] "Oh, that night you said my wife was fat, I knocked you down and shit in your hat!" And then you keep drinking 'til you're in your eighties and you're on a dialysis machine, doing Liverdance and Michael Flatline! Beeeeeep! And they say the Irish saved civilization, drank a couple of Guinness and forgot where they fuckin' put it, but that's all right. [shifting to Japanese accent] Here's the drill, and the Japanese? They drink differently than us. It is a different thing where you can be very polite during the day, and all of a sudden you're "arigatou gozaimasu." And after five Jack Daniels..."TIE A YELLOW RIBBON! Hey, fucker! Karaoke for asshole with a microphone! Sing, you round-eyed fuck, come on!" [shifting to Scottish accent] And if you want a linguistic adventure, go drinking with a Scotsman - 'cause you can't fuckin' understand them before!

Ireland's music is of a singular beauty. Based on pentatonic scale its melodies reach back to a period anterior to the dawn of musical history. It stands pre-eminent amongst the music of the Celtic nations. It is characterised by perfection of form and variety of melodic content. It is particularly rich in tunes that imply exquisite sensitiveness. The strange fitfulness of the lamentations and love songs, the transition from gladness to pathos, have thrilled the experts, and made them proclaim our music the most varied and the most poetical in the world. Equal in rhythmic variety are our dance tunes—spirited and energetic in keeping with the temperament of our people.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.

I'll try to sing as fast as I can, I know you all can't wait to see U2.

I'm just an Irish biddy.

Alas! that Scottish maid should sing The combat where her lover fell!
That Scottish Bard should wake the string, The triumph of our foes to tell!

They, with their wild music as of winds blowing in the reeds,[1] seemed to me the very inmost voice of Celtic sadness, and of Celtic longing for infinite things the world has never seen.