U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.
Bono
September 1, 1979 U2 released their very first record, an EP titled ‘U2-3.’ As an Ireland-only EP, it had an initial run of 1,000 individually numbered copies with the tracks produced by the band with Chas de Whalley. Before billing as U2 the band named themselves as Feedback and later as The Hype.
U2 has released 13 studio albums and is one of the world’s best-selling music bands of all time, having sold over 170 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards.
In 1987, U2 became only the fourth rock band featured on the cover of Time magazine, (following The Beatles, The Band, and The Who). The Joshua Tree became the fastest-selling album in British chart history and topped the Billboard 200 in the United States for nine consecutive weeks. The original working title of The Joshua Tree album was ‘The Two Americas’.
During U2’s first dates outside Ireland, they played a gig at Islington’s Hope and anchor to a crowd of only 9 people.
U2 took part in the Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief at Wembley Stadium in July 1985. This performance in front of 72,000 fans in the stadium in an event that had a worldwide television audience of two billion people was a pivotal point in the band’s career.
During a 14-minute performance of the song “Bad”, Bono leaped down off the stage to embrace and dance with a fan, showing a television audience the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. In 1985, Rolling Stone magazine called U2 the “Band of the ‘80s”, saying that “for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters”.
U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. co-wrote and produced a song for the Republic of Ireland national football team in time for the 1990 FIFA World Cup, called “Put ’Em Under Pressure”, which topped the Irish charts.
Paul Hewson earned the moniker Bono as a young teen in Dublin. His buddies started calling him Bono Vox after the neighborhood hearing-aid store Bonavox (Latin for ‘good voice’). In 1999, when Bono met with Pope John Paul II to discuss Third World debt. The Pope put on Bono’s trademark wrap-around sunglasses during their meeting. Bono usually wears sunglasses in public, as he suffers from glaucoma.
Bono acquired a 1.5 percent stake in Facebook in 2010, worth nearly $1 billion today.
