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Summary: Flannagan let's you vicariously live the tour. A great read!
Review: This book helped make me a U2 fan by showing the human and entertaining side of a band that I previously thought was pious and took itself too seriously. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud anecdotes as well as interesting facts about this piece of U2's history. The only down side is that Flannagan is sometimes condescending to his target readers, the U2 fans. Otherwise, this book is almost a pure pleasure to read
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Summary: If You Love Rock n Roll, You'll Love this Book
Review: Flanagan pulls the reader into the book immediately with an anecdote that involves Bono in his underwear, German reunification, & angry homeowners. It only gets better from there. Rock n roll biographies are a dime a dozen, but this book belongs in a category all by itself, primarily because it's actually well-written--EXTREMELY well written! Whether you're a U2 fan or not, you'll have to appreciate Flanagan's ability to turn a phrase, vividly describe a scene, or just seemingly be in the right place at the right time to see something really incredible. You'll experience firsthand U2 in the studio, on the road, & after hours. Flanagan had seemingly unlimited access to the band, resulting in a book so revealing, it's amazing U2 let it get out! If you're a U2 fan, this read will be a revelatory experience. If you're not, you'll probably find yourself down at the local record store buying U2 CDs before you've even finished reading
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Summary: Great book!, about the most facinating band U2, the greatest
Review: It is hard to go wrong when you are on the subject of Rocks biggest best and most facinating band. This book is great foe anyone who wonders what a rock and roll supergroup like U2 is all about.
U2 is not your average band, with Bono's talented lyrics and the music of The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr, and Adam Clayton you can not go wrong.
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Summary: Just a really, really, F****** brillant read
Review: I had always prided myself as being a u2 fan - I could sing their entire back catalog by heart, but I was aways a bit wary of reading any actual "books" on my fav band as they are often out of date by the time they (the books) hit the self and often show my beloved boys in an unkind light.
I ordered this book on word of mouth and the fact that I am starved for any band info as it has almost been four years since their last masterpiece - I was not disapointed. Flanagan writes this journal of life during the Zoo TV tour as a journalist but also as a fan - the personalities of the members of u2 and their organization are brought to focus in a way that helps the reader identify with Bono, Edge, Larry, Adam, and Paul (if by chance you are wondering who Paul is - please read the book and become a true U2 fan of God's Sake!)
True the events that are described in this book are over ten years old but it is an essential period of u2 and it sets the stage for the cohesive unit that the band has become - last seen during the band's most recent elevation tour.
I read the entire book over two days and Flanagan has done something that I didn't think was possible for a die-hard u2 fan - I fell a bit more in love the members of the band for the separate men they are and for the band they form. Remember - "We're one, but we're not the same, we got to carry each other"
Flanagan shows that u2 stand behind the sentiment in One. A true gift of a book - a must read
Rating:
Summary: If You Love Rock n Roll, You'll Love this Book
Review: Flanagan pulls the reader into the book immediately with an anecdote that involves Bono in his underwear, German reunification, & angry homeowners. It only gets better from there. Rock n roll biographies are a dime a dozen, but this book belongs in a category all by itself, primarily because it's actually well-written--EXTREMELY well written! Whether you're a U2 fan or not, you'll have to appreciate Flanagan's ability to turn a phrase, vividly describe a scene, or just seemingly be in the right place at the right time to see something really incredible. You'll experience firsthand U2 in the studio, on the road, & after hours. Flanagan had seemingly unlimited access to the band, resulting in a book so revealing, it's amazing U2 let it get out! If you're a U2 fan, this read will be a revelatory experience. If you're not, you'll probably find yourself down at the local record store buying U2 CDs before you've even finished reading
Rating:
Summary: A great rock-n-roll travelogue
Review: Although this is a book about U2, it's such a strange and fascinating tale that it should stand as a classic of rock-n-roll writing as well as the single essential volume for any U2 fan.The first thing that sets this book apart from the usual rock bio is that it doesn't focus on serving up facts about the band members. There's no "born here, went to school here" at the beginning; instead, we open with Bono, startled into crouching with a hand over his nakedness when a German family comes to reclaim the East Berlin house he's staying in just after the Wall falls. The rest of this tome continues in the same vein, conveying what the band members are like and how they live their rockstar lives by vividly recounting moment-to-moment experiences that the author lived through along with them. Bill Flanagan was granted unprecedented access to the band member's lives, and throughout the two years he spends touring with him, they treat him as a friend. He makes no pretense of impartiality but rather tells everything from his own point of view, which is much more genuine than any false distance would be and allows you to feel you're there with the band. The length of time and volume of material that result are made more manageable by the fact that Flanagan gives each chapter its own brief coherency, so they can easily be read separately as well as together (and indeed a couple of them were originally published as magazine articles in Musician). The real reward comes from following the band through to the end of their Zoo TV/Zooropa tour. There's a detachment from reality that Flanagan, the band members, and all the tour crew come to experience as they dedicate themselves to a roaming life, and it's gradually revealed as the band's experiences become more and more strange. Eventually, when you reach the near-insanity of Bono walking and talking and refusing to go to sleep in Japan, it makes a kind of strange sense. Along the way, Adam bottoms out, Edge does 'shrooms and falls in love, and Larry injects himself with bull's blood. It's all good stuff. If you're really into U2, it would be a crying shame for you to miss out on this book because you'll never understand the band so well any other way. If you've somehow stumbled upon this out of a general interest in rock-n-roll life, it's worth your time to use this book for an insider's view. And if you're looking for some fun nonfiction, it doesn't get any crazier than this.
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Summary: Honestly couldn't put it down!
Review: "U2 at the End of the World" is, I suspect, a book you would enjoy even if you were not a U2 fan, or just a casual fan. It's funny and entertaining but still manages to keep intact the integrity of all the people involved. You don't ever feel duped here, that this is some publicity stunt or you're not getting the whole story. I found it interesting to read the author's note at the end, where he seems genuinely grateful for this 3-year journey with a band that had every right and opportunity to make him feel an outsider, but instead embraced him. I came off reading it with a new appreciation for not only U2 but the music industry as well, a new appreciation for the trials and celebrations that make up their world. It's a tough life, but U2 have found their understanding of it. The book is especially helpful to Bono, as someone with only a vague idea of his public image can get a very skewed impression of him. He's a lot more human and funny than you expect- and also a lot more brave. He's still got the ego, but is redeemed by his strong beliefs, and finally he comes off as just as confused, vibrant, and driven as the rest of us. What a relief!
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Summary: Excellent for U2 fans, and music fans in general.
Review: Bill Flanagan's "U2 at the End of the World," is far more appropriately titled, "U2 at the End of the Music Industry As We Know It." The book, which exhaustively charts the world-crossing tours Zoo TV and Zooropa, also functions as a historical document of the music industry on the cutting edge of a major technology surge. It forecasts the eventual rise of MP3s and deals with the copyright issues involved, and the pursuit of art, commerce, and technology, and explores where the worlds converge, and where they are still discordant. It is also a documentary of the craziness involved in tour life -- as Flanagan points out, most rock writers travel for a band with a week, then leave. It is a far far greater thing to spend two years jumping around the world with a band, to the point where tour life feel normal, and everything else is child's play. A book that deals not with the mundane day to day existence of U2's members ("and then Larry came in and said wackily, 'It was the pizzaman after all!' Bono, Edge and Adam laughed at the silly drummer," etc.), but with the deeper issues of what the band is about, what music is, what the business is like, and what it means to attempt to be relevant and reinvent ones'self in the ever-changing face of music. A must-read.
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Summary: The best up-close look at a private band
Review: If you are a true U2 fan this is the book for you! It is impossible to put it down, so much detail into their daily lives and ideas is so amazing. I have always respected U2's privacy and control over their lives, but like all fans, I have yearned to know them better, this book takes you in up close better than all the rest. Read this book first and see if you want to bother buying any others, I wish I had bought it first!
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Summary: The KEY book for a KEY time in the life of this band
Review: Rarely put-downable, Flanagan writes with a careful balance of of humor and seriousness that puts U2 in unparallelled company as rock's most thoughtful and interesting band. Flanagan benefits from covering them from the depths of the at times extremely tenuous Achtung Baby sessions in Berlin to standing once again at the top of Rock superstardom, reinvented, embracing of irony and cultivating a wholly new following. If you're like me and became a U2 die hard during this period but were a little too young to go out to concerts or see band members while in town on tour, this book will show you just what a remarkable period it was for them. Paul McGuiness's insights and vision for what was to come with respect to digital, downloadable music is almost prophetic, reading the book now in 2004. But U2 are at the center of a changing world in the early 90s with the fall of the Wall and the newness of the "New World Order" which they try to recognize and understand and the election of the first Democratic president in a dozen years in America. All the while, U2 remain 4 secondary school mates who take themselves MUCH less seriously than is commonly believed. ZOO TV still remains as one of the most dazzling, ambitious and provocative tours ever put on, all at at time where a band was desperately trying to find a new direction. But the cultural, political, musical discussions, events and meanderings are what make this work so rich, beyone typical band biographies. If you love U2 or merely just love Achtung Baby and Zoo TV, you will love this book.
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