These days, U2 fans are divided into two distinct camps: those who love the tortured, self-righteous Bono and those who love the rich, mega-rock-star Bono. There may well be some fans who love both the “old" and the “new" U2, but I think there are a larger number of people who don’t even realize that U2 made any album before The Joshua Tree.

I am used encountering rolling eyes and disgusted sneers when I loudly and proudly proclaim that I am a staunch fan of the tortured, self-righteous Bono. I just can’t help myself. I started listening to U2 when I was 14, and in all the formative years following that, it was the self-righteous Bono who “spoke" to me. He sang about things that mattered in a way that made me care about those things, too. I never found him irritating or self-important. He always just sounded like he meant it, man, and I liked that.

It was, of course, The Joshua Tree that got me interested in U2. I distinctly remember buying the album (and I mean album - I bought the vinyl), taking it home, putting it on my parents’ stereo, popping on some headphones and being overwhelmed.

There was a dreamy, distant organ sound, pierced through by a jangly guitar which was far-off at first, but which moved closer and closer to the front of the mix until the bass slid in saucily, the drums thundered onto the scene and the cymbals crashed and shimmered euphorically. Bombastically, some might say - but I didn’t think it was bombastic. And really, I still don’t. I felt I was in the presence of something magical and holy. A U2 fanatic was born.

I didn’t own any U2 album besides The Joshua Tree for a very long time. I didn’t feel I needed any other album. Eventually, though, I did work my way back through their older albums, starting with War. My acquisition of War coincided with a lot of upheaval in my life (moving - new home, new school, new friends), and I think I felt that the anger and indignation of the album reflected what was going on inside me at the time. I had War on cassette and, because it’s such a short album, both sides of the cassette were the same. That was perfect for me: I would listen to the album once through, then flip the tape over and listen to it all again.

I bought The Unforgettable Fire on vinyl as well. I found it rather inaccessible when I first got it. I loved “A Sort of Homecoming”, and I did like the rest of the album, too. But in a way it disturbed me, and in a way it just wasn’t what I wanted to hear at the time. It was too psychedelic, not angry enough. I just didn’t “get" it. It’s only now, years later, that I realize what a great album it is, balanced as it is on the cusp between the really old U2 and the newer U2 of The Joshua Tree.

Moving back even farther in time: I checked Boy out of the library in my town, and was quite taken aback when I first heard it. It grew on me, though. It’s one of those albums that has the ability to immediately transport me to a specific time and place - namely, to my bedroom on the top floor of our house in a little German town called Ballersbach, with me lying on my bed and staring at the posters on my walls and wondering why life as a 15-year-old seemed so much more difficult than life as a 14-year-old.

Boy is a funny album. It’s so young sounding, so naive and poppy and 1980’s. Today I find myself wondering if Bono and Co. cringe when they hear it. Part of me cringes when I hear it, but then, the album is almost 20 years old and I still listen to it and sing along, so it can’t be all bad.

The other albums didn’t move me so much. At some point I did have Under a Blood Red Sky, and I bought October and never listened to it. Then Rattle and Hum came out. I bought it the day that it was released, I rushed home and - I tried to like it. I really did. Some things on it I did like, but generally it was just so American somehow, so optimistic in a way, so pieced together from various bits that didn’t really seem to fit. Perhaps I should have realized it then: it was the beginning of the end.

Jumping ahead several years - it was 1991, my first year at college, and my fanaticism for U2 was already gradually being replaced by a fanaticism for industrial music. But still, the day Achtung Baby was released, I rushed out and snatched it up - and I tried to like it. I did like it in a way, I suppose, but I certainly didn’t love it. I’m afraid I would have been happy (for a while, anyway) if U2 had continued to make Joshua Tree copies instead of trying something new. I appreciate innovation and the need to push your artistic boundaries and all that, but the self-importance and self-righteousness was gone, and I missed it.

I did get to see them live after Achtung Baby came out. Despite everything, it was unspeakably amazing to be in the physical presence of the band that I had worshipped for so long. I was at the side of the stage closest to the Edge, and when they first came out onto the stage, it literally took my breath away. I was in the presence of greatness.

But that was it for me. Zooropa, Pop… forget it. I never bought a U2 album after Achtung Baby (I did, however, go out and buy The Joshua Tree, War, The Unforgettable Fire and Boy on CD). For a while after Achtung Baby came out, I remember there was a debate raging amongst U2 fans as to whether or not they had “sold out.” Selling out is irrelevant. I just thought - and think - that they were “better before.” And it makes me feel very, very old when I realize that most of the people who listen to U2 today don’t even realize that there was a “before."

I am no longer a U2 fanatic, as such, but I still like the band, and the music still moves me. When I picked up the guitar several months ago and started to make a concerted effort to learn how to play it, it was U2 songs that I tried to learn first (before I realized that the range of Bono’s voice is a tiny bit bigger than the range of mine).

And not so long ago I was in the car with my mother, riding through the Arizona desert in the evening to a little town called Sonoita. The Joshua Tree was playing in the car stereo, the sky blazed orange and red at the horizon and the stars were just coming out over the scrub-covered mountains. Dusk crept up the road and neither of us said a word. We simply listened to the music that seemed to have been created with just such a landscape in mind. The music came alive for me again that evening, and I wouldn’t trade that moment in time or that place in the world for anything at all.

Further reading…