It is the rock 'n' roll dream in its purest form. Larry Mullen pinned a notice on the school notice board and within weeks the band that would become U2 had invented itself. This is a band born in a spirit of youthful idealism and commitment, who have successfully retained those qualities throughout a journey which has taken them from the streets of Dublin to the very pinnacle of rock 'n' roll achievement.
If the U2 story is about the unique chemistry between these four individuals and the way their lives and loves have been interwoven more than twenty years, it is even more assuredly about the music which has been the product of that chemistry. That they might have gone the way of so many other talented Irish bands before them is self-evident, but they didn't. In attempting to understand why, we must first look to the band's music, and the songs they wrote - and the unique way in which they expressed the spirit of what were stirring and exuberant, if troubled, times in the Old Town. The story of U2's songs and the world that is reflected in them is intimately tied into the experience of an emerging, new nation struggling to find its place in the contemporary world and, by and large, succeeding.
From the innocence of their 1980 debut, 'Boy', to November 2004's 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb', the story of U2 and their music is a powerful, exhilarating, chastening parable of the modern world at its most inspiring. It is a story of dreams coming true, in which the contemporary nightmare remains always close to the surface. But more than anything else it is a story of great songs and great music.
