Music
14 Oct 16

#U240 Obscure Track of the Day No. 7

In our celebration of the 40th Anniversary of U2’s first rehearsal in Larry Mullen’s kitchen, here on hotpress.com we are featuring a stream of articles, recollections and opinions about U2. As part of that extravaganza, for your delight and delectation, we've been highlighting obscure U2 tracks!

A Celebration – 1982 (Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl EP)

Now, this is a plunge into the past! ‘A Celebration’ does not appear on any U2 album and was deleted six months after it came out. This is a tune that you either love or hate: I admit I had mixed feelings myself when I first heard it! However, this is a song with a great riff and a very catchy beat. An interesting forerunner to the War album, it anticipates some of the themes on it, including the mentioning of a Third World War, that was misinterpreted in the media.
Bono himself said about the song: “I was trying to say in the song, I believe in the third world war, because people talk about the third world war but it’s already happened, I mean it’s happened in the third world, that’s obvious. But I was saying these are facts of life, I believe in them, I believe in the powers that be BUT, they won’t overpower me. And that’s the point, but a lot of people didn’t reach the fourth line.
The video was filmed at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, one of the settings of the film In the Name of the Father, for which Bono and Gavin Friday wrote ‘In The Name of the Father’, ‘Billy Boola’ and ‘Thief of Your Heart’ (performed by Sinead O’Connor) in 1993.

Hot Press celebrated U2's 40th Anniversary with coverage all fortnight long on hotpress.com, and in the special commemorative issue out that came out Thursday 29th September.
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