From the Sky Down: How and Why Achtung Baby came to be (My flim review)

[lonewolf]

Hi Forum. Just wanted to talk about the BBC documentary "From the Sky Down", that is out and available on DVD/BluRay recently. This was a really great look into the personal development as what U2 was going through during the Joshua Tree/R&H exodus, and their self critique and reinvention of themselves that became Achtung Baby. Has interviews with the band, producers and engineers like Eno and Flood and has the U2 revisit Berlin to discuss how Achtung Baby came to exist.

There isn't a ton of Edge guitar focus to learn new tricks/techniques from, but there is some great footage and revisiting of the DAT tapes including the jam session for a song (think it was EBTTRT) where Edge changes a verse into a different chord progression and resulted into a completely different song, that is "One". Really neat to listen and you can tell that everyone was like "Hold on...what did you just play?!?...." ;)

There is also some great outtake footage from the R&H documentary (That is different than the huge amount of leaked outtake footage on Youtube, from what i've seen) and one small clip shows Bono and Edge jamming out with Stevie Ray Vaughan in a bar. I had no idea they ever even met him before.

The film has 2 full performances of revisited Achtung songs in the same recording studio in Berlin. The end of the film has them perform "One", but the spotlight is stolen By Edge performing a haunting acoustic rendition of "Love is Blindness".
Beyond the song, he explains when recording the song/solo that he was at the end of his marriage to Aislynn(sp?) and he was extremely distraught and channeling that emotion into the song. His acoustic rendition today sounds as if he was back at that moment. This link is ONLY the acoustic performance, and in the film itself, there is dialogue with the Edge interspersed that explains his feelings. Take a listen and you'll see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12d-5Azr6PI

(and forum members.....PLEASE for crying out loud will someone TAB out this amazing version for us who can't play by ear and have trouble see his exact finger placement?!?) Thanks in advance! ;)

One last thing to add. There are little animated sections that are great at visually accenting a story or message that Bono is telling: One of these was how "The Fly" character :cool: came to be. One story had me cracking up which was explaining how when Edge was having a bad emotional day (relating to the above paragraph) he would be in the back of the room tuning up. The more down he felt, the LOUDER he would tune up and the mass of noise from the speakers would slam into everyone else in the room.:p Bono's description of this along with the animation was just perfect.


I really recommend checking this documentary out for anyone who has enjoyed the evolution of U2 throughout the years. It's great to hear the feedback from the band on how it made them appreciate who they were, while learning to be humble at the same time.
Oh, and to see them riding around Berlin in a Trabant again is hilarious!
Thanks forum people and Mike for all the hard work!

[Edgewannabe]

Yes, it's good. I really enjoyed the blu ray. I wish it was three times as long and had more of everything though, a full version of wild horses, full band LIB/Zoo/insert song here instead of Bono's uninspired So Cruel. But I realize it was made during touring.

It's funny to look at the rehearsal footage from the AB songs they considered playing at Glastonbury. "We can't afford to make a mistake on the second song" (about The Fly). I can't seem to watch that without thinking about the shaky start they had with Real Thing (sync problems with the backing and so on). I wonder if it had been possible for them to include the Glastonbury footage as bonus material? Maybe not. If the film was a bit longer they could have talked a bit more about the Glasto planning and setlist to make those parts fit into the film better. But maybe they felt they already had too much about Rattle and hum and wanted to spend the rest of the time on the recording of AB

I think maybe

[My street has a name]

I really liked this documentary as well. It was very insightful. Wild Horses and So Cruel were fun to listen to, as well as the fly solo without the heavy distortion toward the beginning. And I think that Edge got the "One" chord progression through a 2nd chorus in a rough version of "Mysterious Ways', but I'll have to double-check that.

[antoniovox]

yes it was MW but it was originally called "Sick Puppy" :D
I really appreciated also the human aspects, i.e. when Bono tells the story of the Edge failed marriage..

A