"If I could stick my hand in my heart/And spill it all over the stage/ Would that be enough for your teenage lust?/Would that help to ease the pain?"

"It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" (The Rolling Stones)

"It's Larry's fault. He did start it... The way he hits the bass drum is the thing that makes this group still a rock'n'roll group... People will talk about U2 being a 'live group' or 'the only live group’ and they'll talk about me as the singer because Bono will jump off the balcony to make a point - but it's not me at all. It's Larry's bass drum."

Bono to Liam Mackey, August '83

It really is Larry's drums. This past month, U2 must have received enough coverage to waste all the oak plantations in Coolatin Woods but watching a sea of pale, sun-starved fists pummelling the air to the blonde one's beat, it almost seemed conceivable that the whole point of their ten year career, in all its heartache, endeavour and triumphs, was to compensate for Larry Mullen's rejection by those other regular occupants of Croke Park on big match occasions, The Artane Boys Band.

I jest, of course. But all the recent soul-searching coverage of the world's best bad-weather band rarely isolated that bass drum and in failing to do so equally often forgot - they still haven't found what they're looking for - that U2 are, after all, a rock band. So let's say it now, one more time with feeling: even if they bullet the grey skies above Croke Park with anthems of a momentary Eden while denimed youths drink cider in the drizzle at Drumcondra bridge, spending their youth before their call to the Auld Triangle in Mountjoy above, running, running to stand still, this, most fundamentally, is what U2 are: a rock band.

The prelude to Dublin U2 dates always makes me a trifle uneasy and uncomfortable, that somehow, somebody will spoil the party; it's impossible to avoid becoming nervously fearful of the vast burden, the bundle of contrary Irish expectations - we still haven't found what we're looking for - thrust on U2's shoulders, almost as if we believe them single-handedly capable of redressing the National Debt, inaugurating a reign of peace and prosperity in a land of hormone-free milk and honey and abolishing "Dallas- from our television screens, when really it would take just one guy to fall off the roof of the Cusack Stand to capture the headline… and smash all our cherished, if contradictory dreams about this band, thereby letting pundits galore devastate another forest, inevitably scripting a further mordant chapter in Ireland's newly-discovered sociological soap.

Sometime on Saturday afternoon, a slightly drunken Simon Carmody, of Dublin trash psychedelic outfit The Golden Horde, was reciting the lyrics of "It's Only Rock'n'RoIl" in my car. He had a point. And yet U2 might consider it a sign of defeat to sing The Stones' song. Even now, they still prefer "Imagine"...

0n Saturday, Ronnie Drew leads the community singing on the Dublin anthem "Molly Malone"; the Jacks are back, confirmation of U2's influence, as The Dubliners, in their 25th year, make their debut on the Northside's most Holy Ground, the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association of Ireland. Yet it is also a sign of how the band have widened their musical agenda that Ronnie Drew and his hand of benevolently bearded folkies can share this bill with Lou Reed.

Those sea-removed Gaels, The Pogues, effectively span the gap between generations. At their first Celtic chords, the audience like it's Shea Stadium, and when The Dubliners return, joining The Pogues for "The Irish Rover", Drew gets drowned out in the din for probably the first time ill his life! In between, Shane McGowan and Co suffer from sound problems as the drums ind bass overwhelm the acoustic instruments, almost as if someone had left a couple of aircraft engines running on stage. In parts, people are responding to the ideal not the fact of The Pogues - though both "A Pair Of Brown Eyes" and "Dirty Old Town" would have lifted the rafters, if there'd been any at Croke Park.

Lou Reed's set also takes the low road, greasy basement rock that lets the backbeat lead the stadium Service. This means a less stark version of "Street Hassle" and a respectful reception from an audience who realise he has some symbolic importance in the day’s scheme of things, but don't really know the songs. After all, hardly any of this audience were even conceived before the Velvet Underground were founded and Neil Blaney was planning the seven towers, for in Irish version of "Walk On The Wild Side", in Ballymun. Still Uncle Lou really fights it through with "Video Violence" and then on "The Original Rapping" makes the persuasive case that rap was invented by Lenny Bruce.

He exits to muffled applause, making way for the day's main attraction.

And now the city prepares to conduct its own symphony. This must be a much younger crowd than U2 get elsewhere, here to reshape this day for their celebration. Above the Hogan Stand, the advertising hoardings unwittingly predict the agenda, with three traditional Irish themes highlighted, the Allied Irish Banks ad planted between Gaelsport, Feile na nGael Og Sport and an exhortation to ‘Travel to Britain with B & I’ - reminding us of fifties realities that long predate rock'n'roll.

And so we enter an Eden where "The Streets Have No Name", a promised land beneath a slate sky where for two hours, all petty restrictions to paradise are abolished, where reason can he trampled beneath the beat of a big bass drum and where all everyday Irish identities are dissolved, as U2 are swallowed whole by their audience. Is it any wonder that some guy will climb his highest mountain, invoke James Cagney, replaying the climactic scene from "White Heat" on the roof of the Cusack Stand? But even as you refuse to look and Bono appeals to him to quit his eyrie, you also know that this is the point where rock reveals its secret desires, an almost inevitable outcome as electric co’s play "Break On Through To The Other Side".

It is an Event, Ireland's bi-annual opportunity to be awestruck and I'm not entirely certain set details count. Still the gig reveals sonic stress between the old and new U2's, between the hypnotic, ecstatic drone band and the one now digging for roots ‘n’ roll, between the one still sweeping over "God's Country" and the one that binds together "People Get Ready", "Help" and "Springhill Mining Disaster". The nagging feeling is that U2 may not yet have achieved complete integration of these diverse strands.

"Pride" however is stunning, so powerful that it probably causes another small earthquake in Brussels while, at the first encore, amid the strengthening darkness, "Bullet The Blue Sky" finally lets the lighting crew loose as The Edge brutalises his guitar and Bono angrily reworks its lyrics for those who run into brick walls, Irish-style. Then for "Party Girl", Ali enters stage left with a bottle of champagne, and the day's work is done. You depart feeling some sense of relief that they've successfully survived the first date of their residency. This has been the audience's show.

SUNDAY SEEMS more relaxed, intimtate and musical, as if everybody's more conditioned to the environment. The support acts set the tone effectively. Featuring just vocals and guitar, and therefore being immune to any sound gremlins, Christy Moore is an ideal choice for the occasion. With his back to the banks of the Royal Canal, "The Auld Triangle" is perfect, though beneath the glowering skies, he tempts the meterological fates with his hilarious tale of festival muck-savagery, "Lisdoonvarna". This year's Kildare team definitely shows promise for the All-Ireland!

Then The Pretenders deliver the best support set of the two days. I can't understand the continuing charges of heavyhandedness laid against them, unless their critics would prefer them to play, like The Weather Prophets, before twenty sainted souls in Wigan. Chrissie Hynde has a luscious voice and pens the most delicate songs, but more than that, she also knows both where to implant the guitar solos for stadium dynamics, and that r'n'b aggression can't be excluded from rock.

While they storm through "Mystery Achievement" and "In The Middle Of The Road", The Pretenders retain the interlaced guitar symmetry of "Message Of Love", "Back On The Chain Gang" and "Kid", the last dedicated to the late Peter Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott. But they're met with partial indifference from an audience who seem to recognise only the latest singles, "Don't Get Me Wrong" and "Hymn To Her" and so don't get the encore they deserve.

U2's set gets a thorough revision from its previous day's shape. Out go "Springhill Mining Disaster" and "People Get Ready". At the start "C'mon Everybody" follows "Stand By Me", both played like it's encore time. With "October" and "Running To Stand Still" also included, they balance their lyricism with their rock'n'roll assault-course more effectively and, as a special treat, Lou Reed comes aboard for "Bad" as he and Bono rap the riff back to its origins in "Walk On The Wild Side". It all seems less hectic, with U2 more in control.

It may also be the U2 I prefer, a U2 of greater levity and healing. Maybe, for their own self-protection that's the band they must be here, if' they're not to be impaled by impossibly conflicting demands, if they're to effectively manage those politics of ecstasy that can sometimes border on rock'n'roll chaos. Both sets had magnificent moments and certainly the flawed perspective of the 200 yards distance from the stand to the stage doesn't help but on the first day, it didn't quite cohere. On the second it did, without ever ultimately setting hearts on fire.

Perhaps that is inevitable in a group undergoing its most fundamental musical change, at the exact point it hits the celebrity stratosphere. And how can U2 hope to replay the spontaneous combustion of that white hot inner-city Scan MacDermott Street free gig of aeons past in front of 60,000 people with a guest list that includes a coalition of Garret Fitzgerald, Eamonn McCann, Frank Feely and the Waterford Hell's Angels?

Maybe this makes me another pundit as proprietor but I think Bono should be laughing. And beware. As yet, in Ireland, we're still blind to the blast in the bass drum.

At last their return to Cork provided the U2 Irish date I've been looking for. Till Pairc Ui Chaoimh, I've always preferred them abroad. Maybe that's insider bias: certainly on the road, you get wrapped up in the band's own crusade, sharing experiences with an intimacy that can't be available in Ireland.

Yet since their first major headlining outdoor appearance at Phoenix Park in 1983, I've always gone to a U2 Dublin performance with a vague sense of foreboding, aware of something stessed and forced in the atmosphere about them. Those concerts have always been over-obliged to be an Event with an Irish capital E, almost a reproduction of the Second Coming.

Where do they stop being a rock'n'roll band and start being a hologram of the cover of Time, an icon to be revered and profaned? Under those strains, the music can take second billing. In Dublin, U2's ideals of an Irish rock community are under constant challenge. Politically, socially and creatively, this is excellent - it prevents complacency. But despite so many riveting, quixotic, dramatic, compassionate, dangerous and triumphant moments, U2 - and especially Bono - don't always seem at case.

But at Pairc Ui Chaoimh, U2 lost any tension as this Irish audience - a lighter shade of Gael - finally awarded them their right to party. At last, after over five years, U2 played a genuinely informal and happy major concert in their homeland. For once U2 were let breathe fresh Irish air and thrived on it.

Cork was a homelier sort of homecoming, in complete contrast to Croke Park. Instead of apathetic, slate skies, a salmon sunset. Instead of mean, inner city streets with ciderheads legless in the drizzle, launches ferried the crowd up the Lee beneath the tree-lined Montenotte hills. Instead of a hospitality marquee with full buffet and a cast of Dublin socialites, here there were sandwiches, and friends of the Cork crew.

I may exaggerate some but Act and Audience achieved an easy-going harmony and balance here that was absent in Dublin. And playing long past dusk, U2 could use their lighting, with complete control of their effects.

They also had a special if unbilled support. The warm-up Beatles tapes were an event in themselves. Everyone sang along to "All You Need Is Love" while empty, plastic bottles wheeled and skimmed through the air. All quite marvellously daft for this was as a day of high, exultant spirits, a hooley not a hazard. All this prologue lacked was a Mexican wave.

From the start with "Stand By Me" and "C'mon Everybody", there was a natural exchange of affection. By the fifth song, "I Still Haven't Found I'm looking For", Bono was quipping "it's great to be back in Los Angeles" and recalling their earliest Cork dates at the Arcadia "when I saw the queues around the block and for the first time, it felt good to be in a rock'n'roll band." It was only the first in a flow of frequent compliments.

At the first Croke Park date, "Exit", "People Get Ready" and "Help" all seemed weak links in the mid-set chain but here, each gained from U2's relaxed command. Where "Exit" had slammed furiously and senselessly against a brick-wall, now it kicked the set into a higher gear, Bono and The Edge's violent guitar cohering in this parable of' "a religious man who became a dangerous man" that's also taken as a form of personal confession and exorcism.

And it at Croke Park, you could doubt U2's rock'nroll aspirations and worry that they might he making a false move away from their mastery of hypnotic dramas, here again, "Help" and especially, "People Get Ready" had the authority to calm those fears.

"Sunday Bloody Sunday" was special and offered another contrast. In Dublin, Bono can get existential, prowling the stage to arouse and redirect the passions of the hour. But in Cork, there was no need for incitement or Bono's stick of gelignite. He needed only to turn the microphone to the audience to let the sing the chorus, as the band floated on the swell of the massed voices.

This was symptomatic. U2 had only to request - not plead for - "Help". And when by "New Year's Day", Bono was mischievously playing Tarzan and hoisting the girl from the audience over his shoulders, you could sense in the ritual a lightness of spirit absent from previous Irish concerts. For once, they weren't watching their backs, guarding against the party-crashers and being their own best security-men on stage. For once, they could concentrate on the music and let it flow. And it flowed...

This continuity of tone, this sense of a community enjoying itself for all the reasons rock'n'roll was originally invented, let "Pride In The Name Of Love" be a real joyous fusion, let "Running To Stand Still" attain a truly intimate poignancy and finally let the line, "you give yourself away" in "With Or Without You", be generous, thankful, gracious and perfectly felt. Perhaps "Bullet The Blue Sky" was less raging but this was one Irish concert when U2 were buoyed not buffeted by the waves, where the band found a haven they've long deserved.

Of course, it was an end-of-tour party. Of course, it was The Edge's birthday, and his wife Aisling emerged from a white cardboard birthday cake in the middle of "Party Girl". Of course, this was the band's repayment of past favours to the Cork mafia. But these weren't the only contributing factors. Away from the Dublin battleground, U2 were finally let play a self-renewing, self-redeeming set.

For once band and audience were on the same level. For once, U2 weren't refracting impossibly contradictory expectations. And when at the closing anthem of "40", Bono crooned "I will sing you a Lee song", he was doing no more and no less than returning a favour.

ALL IRELAND WAS THERE

July 1987