U2
Boy

THE REVIEW

It's been 4 years since Larry Mullen posted a small note on the school bulletin board that said: “Looking for people to start a band”. A few unassuming words from which one of the most important and influential bands of the 80s was born. Between 1976 and 1980, the four young Irishmen had worked like crazy, between concerts and recording studios, to produce something worthwhile, writing dozens of letters to record companies. Among the initial singles, they brought out several interesting things like “Trevor” and “Street Mission” which, if properly developed, could have become beautiful songs.

With the experience gained in 4 years and thrilled by the enthusiasm for the contract with Island Records, U2 composed a surprising debut album in just a few months.
Learning chords with Ramones songs (“the reason for our existence” as Bono said), the four absorbed the lesson of punk, but sweetened it with a touch of Italian melody, creating a sort of soft-punk that neutralizes the excesses of the late 70s.
The result is excellent, and what's sad is that many people underestimate this album and celebrate an album like “War”, which is globally inferior to “Boy” in terms of musical quality – even though here you won't find “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “New Year's Day”.

On the other hand, U2 didn't do much to make “Boy” known – as seen in Best 1980-1990, where only “I Will Follow” (unjustly) appears from “Boy”, which isn't even the best track on the album. “I Will Follow” is striking for its riff (with a punk flavor) placed at the beginning and in the chorus, which Edge fills with his delicate touches during the verses and clearly shows the ideological gap between U2 and the punk movement, for which raw instrumentality was its strong point.

Right after “I Will Follow” comes “Twilight”. The beautiful 33-second crescendo begins with Edge's two guitars (one on one side and one on the other), joined first by the bass (after 6 seconds), then the kick drum (after 20 seconds), then hi-hat and snare, before Bono's voice enchants us with its melody perfectly supported by the two guitars, culminating in a memorable chorus repeating the title introduced by Mullen's martial drumming. Edge's solo deserves special praise, even if the technique isn't perfect yet. Listening to it, you realize that if the Irish guitarist, instead of dedicating his life to studying guitar delay effects, had concentrated on technique, he would have become a great guitarist.

Then we move to the dark part of the album with the somber and depressed arpeggios of the long suite “An Cat Dubh” - “Into the Heart”, followed by the sonic whip of “Out of Control” (the first single from the album) with Bono in top form. Verse-chorus, verse-chorus followed by Edge's solo that first repeats the melody and then becomes almost wild; then, at 2:30, there is a slow, almost psychedelic interlude with Bono's voice repeating the title four times in a slight crescendo before the final furious verse. A perfect arena rock song, along with “The Electric Co.” (a song much loved by early fans, which has exactly the same structure as “Out of Control”) with two verses followed by the solo and slow-psychedelic interlude.

There is room for the energetic and very fast “Stories for Boys”, where Mullen with his work steals the scene from the guitar, before the beautiful “Another Time, Another Place” arrives with its fading intro. Edge, with his 7 three-note arpeggios, takes us to the sad-yet-manly melody invented by Bono (truly magnificent), which after a melodic change brings us back to Edge's 7 arpeggios and the second verse leading to the chorus that repeats the title and almost shows us a despondent Bono. A great solo by Edge readies us for a classic finale with an angry Bono supported by Mullen's drumming.

After another dark interlude of just over a minute (“The Ocean”) where the gleaming guitar blends with the sound of water, we come to the first of Edge's delay masterpieces, “A Day Without Me”. The guitarist remembers it as one of his highest effectistic achievements, as he tells us in the documentary “It Might Get Loud” (2009) (which you can find on YouTube with Italian subtitles).

It closes with the acoustic “Shadows and Tall Trees”, a melodic gem, which compared to the rest appears little more than filler.

It's a real pity not to find the splendid “11 O’Clock Tick-Tock” here, released as a single in May 1980 and which would become their most beloved song by their audience before the release of “War”. The song boasts – in my opinion – Edge's most beautiful riff, perfectly supported by Mullen's hefty drumming. The work on the verses is perfect, and then the harsh solo completes it all. To be fair, the single version (which I strongly recommend you listen to) is somewhat slow and with a slightly muddy sound. The live version of “Under a Blood Red Sky” is faster, and extended by an additional verse after the solo, with more prominent drums. If they had believed more in the song and rearranged it in the studio, today we would find it in “Boy”, and perhaps “Boy” would be a more well-known album.

A word on the lyrics is a must. Except for a few episodes (“Stories for Boys”), the lyrics of this album show undeniable lyricism and surprising maturity – considering Bono had just turned 20. It talks about everything: a mother's eternal love for a child, love similar to that of God for His creatures (“I Will Follow”); the desire to remain a child at heart despite growing older (“Into the Heart”); the twilight of adolescence and the onset of adulthood (“Twilight”, which means precisely twilight, and includes a splendid line: “In the shadow of the twilight (of adolescence) the boy becomes a man”); thoughts of death and fate beyond our control (“Out of Control”); suicide seen from the perspective of the suicidal (“A Day Without Me”, dedicated to Ian Curtis, leader of Joy Division, who had just taken his life); the manipulative woman (“An Cat Dubh”, an Irish expression meaning black cat, which Bono describes as one who wants to impose her will on her partner, like a cat preventing the bird from flying free); the feeling after making love (for the first time) with a woman who is no longer in bed with you the next morning (“Another Time, Another Place”); the beauty of the ocean as a place to share your thoughts, forgetting the rest of the world (“The Ocean”); and even electroshock therapy, very in vogue in the 70s (“The Electric Co.”).

A surprising start – to witness the miraculous strength of a collaboration that has given us truly splendid results over more than thirty years.

The cover you can see is not the European one, which depicts a child, but the American one. In America, the photo of the child was seen as an encouragement of pedophilia.