The times they were a-changin’. When U2 wrapped up the decade with a series of homecoming gigs at the Point Depot in Dublin in December 1989, they had already smelt the coffee.
Seven weeks previously, the Berlin Wall had come down. Revolution had spread to Czechoslovakia and then Romania. And the new decade was already acquiring a new soundtrack – dance and hip-hop were the rising forces and the rock bands who assimilated these best looked likely to be the ones to prosper in the 1990s. So where did that leave U2, with their hoary old blues rock, their waistcoats and mullets? Needing to, in Bono’s words at the final Point show: “dream it all up again”.
