As I write this, the current week marks the 33rd anniversary of the Live Aid concert which happened on 13 July 1985. I’ve always wanted to take a closer at one of the songs that became one of the iconic performances on that day.
Bad is featured on the The Unforgettable Fire album, released on 1 Oct 1984. It quickly became a staple of their live set, particularly after said iconic 12-minute performance of it at Live Aid. In what became one of the enduring images of the entire Live Aid event, Bono leapt off the stage mid-song to dance with a girl in the audience with whom he shared an heartfelt embrace.
The band had planned to end the Live Aid performance with Pride (In the Name of Love) but had to omit it as Bad went so much over time. At the time, the band was unable to see the magnitude of their own performance. Their focus was on the song that they had to omit.
As soon as they were off the stage, U2 had a huge argument backstage. Mullen, Clayton, and Edge were very unhappy with Bono’s venture into the crowd, which they felt hung them out to dry and lost them the chance to play their biggest hit. Over the following week, however, the band discovered that their performance was considered by most observers to be the day’s high point (alongside Queen’s triumphant set). It was time to re-evaluate a thing or two.
The performance turned out to be a breakthrough moment for the band. It showed a television audience of millions the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. His embrace with the fan become an iconic image for the entire Live Aid event. Bad was the song that gave that moment its soundtrack.
The song is a solid fan favourite. It is one of their most frequently performed songs in concert. And it is a song about heroin addiction.
The early 1980s recession had led to a high number of heroin addicts in inner city Dublin. This is why Bono would frequently introduce the song as a song about Dublin when they played it live.
During a show in Pittsburgh on 26 July 2011, Bono added more detail. He said the song was written for “a very special man, who is here in your city, who grew up on Cedarwood Road. We wrote this song about him and we play it for him tonight.”
He was referring to Andy Rowen, whom the song was written about in 1984 and who was present at the show. Rowen is the brother of Bono’s Lypton Village friend Guggi and Peter Rowen, who is featured on the sleeve artwork for the band’s albums Boy and War.
There are other versions of the story from Bono himself. His account from a 1987 concert in Chicago indicates that Bad is about a friend of his who died of a heroin overdose and also about the conditions that make such events likely to be repeated. At another show in the UK, Bono ripped into a tirade about people lying in gutters with “needles hangin’ outta their fuckin’ arms while the rich live indifferently to the suffering of the less fortunate.” At Eriksberg, Gothenburg in Sweden 1987, he said: “I wrote the words about a friend of mine; his name was Gareth Spaulding. On his 21st birthday he and his friends decided to give themselves a present of enough heroin into his veins to kill him. This song is called ‘Bad.'”
Bad began life as an improvised guitar riff during a jam session at Slane Castle. This is where U2 were living, writing, and recording The Unforgettable Fire from May to August 1984. They had hoped that the location would provide inspiration for new songs, and several good ones did appear. Bad was one of them.
The basic track was completed in three takes. Of its immediate and live nature, The Edge said “There’s one moment where Larry puts down brushes and takes up the sticks and it creates this pause which has an incredibly dramatic effect.” Producer Brian Eno added the sequencer arpeggios that accompany the song.
The Edge and the album’s producers, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, were focused on the music and less interested in the lyrics. Bono was left on his own to try to describe the rush and then come down of heroin use in the song.
If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would let it go
Surrender, dislocate
While we know that the song is about heroin, it is important to look at how the narrative is built up. In this first verse, someone is saying these words to a person that they can no longer help. The person is too far gone, too determined to fall, not able or willing to get better. This is the point where you just have to let go, after having been through everything possible to avoid just that.
U2 superfan Arlin Bartels says it best: “This life-or-death drama plays out as the keyboard and guitar figure drone on in a hypnotic way, building slowly as in response the protagonist goes beyond the rational contemplating “to let it go, and so, fade away” until the built-up tension is constricting before the crash and release as the person lies to themselves “I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping”. The dark night of the soul travels through “If I could, you know I would, let it go” but then lapses below the conscious to the following section:
This desperation, dislocation
Separation, condemnation
Revelation, in temptation
Isolation, desolation
Let it go and so to fade away
“The person loses the ability to express anything more than the depression knowing that they are about to succumb to the devil that enslaves them. They fall into the reverie that giving in to the addictions produces as the song crescendos and the singer proclaims ecstatically “I’m Wide Awake, I’m Not Sleeping” again as the guitar peaks and the singer’s soul dances jubilantly, temporarily, unself-consciously.”
Bad is one of the band’s most performed songs. Translating the elaborate and complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks to live performance proved to be a serious challenge when the Unforgettable Fire Tour commenced. One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use. Sequencers were prominently used on Bad.
Bono is known for singing a wide variety of snippets during performances of the song. Lyrics from over 50 different songs have been included in Bad, ranging from brief quotes of a single line through to multiple verses. These snippets are typically sung after the line “I’m not sleeping” and Bono has included up to six different excerpts in a single performance of Bad. Performances without at least one snippet are very rare.
The album version of the song is well liked. There still seems to be a consensus that it does not tap into the song’s full potential, and it is hard to ignore the ‘tour de force’ aspect of the song when it is played live. This may be why a live version of the song was featured as the opening track on the Wide Awake In America EP, released on 10 June 1985.
U2 superfan Arlin Bartels can’t praise the song enough. “Bad live remains one of the best songs any band has ever performed,” he says. “In concert, it eases in slowly and announces itself via a sequencer with a repeated lullaby of a refrain topped with a stinging accent by The Edge that together set a tone of quiet despair and longing. The song slowly constructs a trancelike state that will build and fall throughout the rest of the song along with the highs and lows of the protagonist as they experience temporary victory but then always ultimate defeat against the tie that binds them.
“But in the end, as it must, the peak crashes and the song slowly falls apart as the high comes crashing back to Earth leaving the singer the next morning in the gutter, with the guitar figure ending as the sun rises and the singer is left with the numbing sequencer again pounding in their head until it all starts over again in the exactly the same way today as it did the last day, and the next day, and the next days that will follow, beginning as it always does at the place the song ended the night before. And so it repeats.”
Produced by the band, this version was recorded live during sound check at the NEC Arena in Birmingham, England on 12 November 1984. It includes pre-recorded rhythm tracks. Notably, there are no other snippets of other songs sung on this version for copyright reasons.
The song would predictably also get its day in the sun in the Rattle and Hum movie and album. They deliver a great version, quite comparable with the one from Wide Awake In America. Look out for The Edge’s hypnotic-like guitar solo in this version.
Rolling Stone magazine had called the album version of the song “unfocused” in their critical review. They were much more positive in their review of Wide Awake In America. They said the album’s songs benefited from the transition to live performance. Bad in particular was called a show stopper. On that count we can certainly agree.
Going back to the defining moment for U2 and that song… how does the singer sum up his Live Aid moment all these years later?
“Crap sound, crap haircuts, and we didn’t end up playing the hit because the singer fecked off into the crowd – band wanted to fire me as a result – and it turned out to be one of the best days of our life. Explain that. Ask God, he probably knows.”
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