U2’s ‘One’: A testament to teamwork

U2
‘One’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number 7 on March 8, 1992

The deeper you get into middle age, the more you realise that there are certain things you’ll never experience.

A lot of it is trivial. Like, maybe you’ll never base jump off the Burj Khalifa, or dance with a gorgeous stranger at a full moon rave on a Goa beach.

Then you get to the more profound things. Things that offer clues about who you really are.

Recently, I’ve been having some middle-aged thoughts about how I’ve never really been part of a team. I’ve been in teams, often against my will. I’ve been lucky enough to be in some amazing partnerships.

But I’ve never been part of a team. Like a sports team, where the players on work together to create something more than the sum of their individual efforts.

I’ve also never been part of a band.

To be clear, the main reason I’ve never been in a band is that I can’t sing or play an instrument. I also lack the charisma of a Richey Edwards or Bez.

But, even if life had gifted me with raw musical talent, I still don’t think I’d last long in a band. A successful band needs people who work well in groups. I’m just not that kind of person.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to be in a band. Everyone wants to be in a band. Every 40-something dadcore normie wanted desperately to be in a band recently, when we all sat down at Christmas and watch Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, Get Back.

Get Back showed the kind of creative alchemy that’s only possible when you work in a group. Four people collaborating, playing, riffing, experimenting, providing instant feedback. As a team, The Beatles make the impossible look easy.

Creativity is often portrayed as something inherently solitary. But the fact is that geniuses often work in teams.

U2’s ‘One’ is the result of that kind of collaborative genius. The origin story behind ‘One’ is a lot like the birth of ‘Get Back’ or last week’s ‘It’s a Fine Day’. First, there was nothing. Then inspiration struck. And then suddenly, a classic song existed.

To be precise, U2 were working on a song called ‘Sick Puppy’, which would eventually evolve into ‘Mysterious Ways’. The Edge had written a complex bridge for the song, which two separate concepts that weren’t really gelling. So, the producer asked him to record each element of this bridge separately.

One of those elements was the chord progression at the start of ‘One’.

Everyone instantly recognised that this was something really special. Bono had one of his moments of inspiration, and he scratched out some lyrics to fit on top of the new melody.

A few minutes later, ‘One’ existed in something close to its final form. But it would never exist if the band and producers hadn’t worked together on it.

They tell the whole story themselves here. It’s pretty cool:

Of course, creation myths are never that simple.

Exciting moments like this can cover up the occasional misery of being in a band.

In 1991, U2 were on the brink of breaking up, victims of their own success. The extraordinary Stateside success of Rattle & Hum had turned them into monster-sized rock legends, which in turn had made them look kind of bloated and pompous.

It left them facing a big choice: accept their fate as semi-retired rock grandees, or try something new? The debate was tearing them apart.

The band headed to Berlin to work in the legendary Hansa Studios, the place Bowie once went to reboot his career (resulting in Heroes). It was the eve of German unification, which was all set to be the end of the Cold War and the dawn of a new era.

U2 had expected to find an excited, vibrant city, buzzing with the energy of the night the Wall fell (y’know, the night The Scorpions had sung about.) Instead, they found that people were trepidatious. The past weighed heavy; the future was too uncertain. This was not a moment for excitement

And so, the Hansa session became a grim war of attrition. The four members of U2 had grown sick of the sight of each other. But they weren’t quite ready to give up.

The lyrics of ‘One’ are about that exact moment in U2’s history. They’re also generally about how fucking hard it is to get on with other people — and how we have a duty to try anyway.

The greatest mystery of U2 is this: how do the other three put up with Bono?

Bono was once invited to appear at a Oneness festival in the 90s with the Dalai Lama. He declined and sent a note that said, “We’re One — but we’re not the same.”

Imagine quoting yourself to the Dalai Lama.

Imagine working with a guy like that.

‘One’ didn’t heal any of U2’s wounds. They kept debating about the direction of the track, with producer/godhead Brian Eno saying that he hated it. There were hundreds of takes and infinite fiddling and meddling. It took weeks to get to the final mix, and yet that final mix includes a part that The Edge had recorded only 40 minutes previously.

This must be the really hard part of being in a band. Slogging through endless sessions, growing increasingly frustrated with your colleagues.

The video for the single was just as challenging. First, they produced the very good Anton Corbijn video above, which looked like Wings of Desire and featured the band in drag. But they then decided to donate all proceeds from ‘One’ to AIDS research, and they were worried that dressing in drag might make it seem like they were linking AIDS to sexuality.

So, they produced a second video, with slow-motion buffalo and the word “One” in multiple languages. This is the one I remember. It was the only one shown on TV here.

It’s not a patch on the Corbijn video.

There is actually a third video that seems to have been mostly shown in the States. That video shows Bono in a nightclub, smoking a tab and singing alone.

Apparently, the whole band showed up for the shoot. The non-Bono members were told to wait their turn, and that wait turned into an epic party. At around 4a.m., drunk and surrounded by cabaret artists, the non-Bonos realised that the video was just going to be Bono by himself. Neither Bono nor the director consulted them on this.

In that behind-the-scenes video above, someone describes U2 as a “benevolent dictatorship”. The same is true of the Beatles in Get Back, which showed that Paul ruled with an iron fist and the other three had to learn to live with it.

Being part of a group isn’t easy (I imagine — as I said, this isn’t an experience I’m really familiar with.) It must be hard to feel like an employee. Not always either to feel like an employer either.

But there are also times when you do something special, something you couldn’t achieve without your colleagues. Even Bono must lose himself a little when the band touches greatness. ‘One’ is not the work of a lone genius. It’s something that was crafted by a group of people working together.

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