Andrew Mueller - Rock and Hard Places: Travels to Backstages, Frontlines and Assorted Sideshows

DANIEL 12:4

AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devils Dictionary

THE GREAT LEAP FOREWORD

Introduction

ZAGREB, CROATIA, AUGUST 2009

I T IS A fitting happenstance of deadline that Im writing this here and nowin Zagreb, Croatia, in between U2s two shows at Maksimir Stadium. As the thrillingly witty pun that serves as this books title suggests, the reportage gathered in this volume straddles, with varying degrees of chafing, the realms of rocknroll and conflict, and its a version of that same ungainly feat that U2 are attempting here. The two nights U2 are playing in Zagreb are their first shows ever in Croatia, and their first anywhere in the former Yugoslavia since they took their gaudy, glitzy PopMart circus to the shattered Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1997.

That these shows are essentially a long-delayed sequel to the Bosnian outing was acknowledged last night in Bonos introduction to One, U2s supremely versatile lament for the loss of love, faith or whatever youre (not) having yourself. The next song, hed said, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Tonight, we want to play it for everyone in this region who has had their warm hearts broken by cold ideas. As the crowd recognised it, there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere: a warm summer night suddenly felt a few degrees chillier. Ive heard this song played dozens of times in dozens of cities, Sarajevo in 1997 among them, but it has never sounded better than it did last night, which is to say it has never sounded more wounded and reproachful, Edges scuffed-up guitar itching like an unresolved tension. U2 faded One into an excerpt from The Righteous Brothers Unchained Melody; in the Balkans of all places, the phrase time can do so much hit a note somewhere between a threat and a promise.

If this book is about any one thingwhich, just so were clear on this, it very definitely isntits about moments like that, when music steps beyond its boundaries of verse and chorus and becomes a soundtrack or accompaniment to something somewhat larger than itself.

THIS IS THE second introduction Ive written for this book. I wrote the first a little over a decade ago, when a slightly different version of Rock and Hard Places was published in the United Kingdom to widespread indifference (it was, however, a minor if weirdly enduring cult hit in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from where I still receive emails about it with baffling regularity; I can only conclude that the entire print run was mistakenly loaded onto a barge bound down the Danube, where it ran aground and was subsequently looted by delirious locals in some sort of Whiskey Galore scenario). Having just re-read said introduction for the first time in nearly that long, Ive decided to lose almost all of it except the headline.

Its not that I believe the original introduction is bad, exactly. Indeed, for something composed in a hungover fog in a hotel room in Bostonwhere I was, at the time, on tour with The Cardigansits reasonably coherent, and contains what I still think is quite a good joke about orangutans. Its just that ten years is a long time, in which much has happened, both to the world in general and to the journalist meandering about in it. The difference between the world this book was first published in, and the world this book is being re-published in, is neatly illustrated by the blurb which appeared on the cover of the first editionand which, for reasons which will become clear presently, does not appear on the cover of this one. It was contributed by the very great P.J. ORourke, who very kindly appended his name to an observation that the writing about rock music and various screwed-up locations contained herein was as spectacular as a Taliban attack on Lollapaloozawhich come to think of it, isnt a bad idea. Which is to say that, back in 1999, the idea of a gaggle of religious cranks based in Afghanistan threatening the destruction of an American institution seemed so preposterous as to be the stuff of throwaway whimsy.