Under a Blood Red Sky

It was in the spring of 1984 that I first laid eyes on Bono.  MTV was on in my house in Lancaster, California. From the kitchen I heard this drum beat and wild guitar that I hadn't heard before.  I ran into the living room to see who this band was playing this wicked rock. There was Edge and Bono under a blood red sky in the cool mist of an outdoor pavilion with flames all around. My heart was beating fast as I got down on my knees right up under the TV. What was he lamenting about? How long? This is amazing and I must know what he is singing about. The marching and skipping around.  He was so foxy, pushing that mullet hair away from his face had me hooked.  Then out comes the flag of surrender. Whatever he was dying for I wanted in.  I wanted in the sound. The VJ (can't rermember which one) said that was 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' by an Irish band called U2!

MTV was on in my house 24/7. My uncle Wally was a manager for the local cable company.  He had us over to his house to check out the cable channels in 1980 just after I graduated from high school. Then in July of '81 he called me to come over to see the new music channel premier on August 1, 1981. Wally knew I was a music fanatic, since I ran away from home to see my first concert in LA at the Forum when I was 16 years old. Bad Company-Desolation Angels. This show blew my mind with the lights and sound! Video Killed the Radio Star was the first video they played.  Music now had a new dimension. It used to be that you would imagine the song direction and what the artist was sharing with you. Now you could see the artist's vision or the band playing.  You could see their faces and instruments. I remember we were hypnotized by the videos.
My mom was a rocker so music was always on in our house growing up. I have an old picture of my sister and brother that I took when I first started taking an interest in photography. They are sitting by the stereo and between Rachelle and John is the eye of David Essex looking out from the hole in the album jacket sleeve. David Essex sang 'Rock On' which must have been spinning at the time.  Up on the wall are album covers pinned up as pictures. There is Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin and a few others. I need to find the picture to post here.

Once I heard that U2 was Irish I had to buy the record. War was my first U2 record. I had a big interest in everything Irish. After all it was only a few years earlier that I learned  my dad was really my step-dad. My mom told me that my real dad was Thomas Murphy. I was Irish, not Italian.  So all my studies turned from Italy to Ireland. I wanted to move to Ireland and marry an Irish farmer so we could have lots of dogs and horses.

What a funny name U2 was to me.  Growing up in the mojave desert I was around the aircraft industry all the time.  Most of my friends worked for Lockheed or Rockwell.  Nasa was just 30 miles away. So I new about and saw planes test flying overhead all the time. There would be sonic booms. This is where the sound barrier would be broken and you would hear a big bang. I couldn't figure out why these Irish guys would name there band after the U2 spy plane?

MTV played Sunday Bloody Sunday in heavy rotation so I got to see the video a few times a day. I was 21 and dating my crush from high school, Tim Murphy. Bono made me want to go to Ireland and join the cause. I wanted to be involved in any way that I could. I went to the library and read any book that I could find on the 'Troubles' and the IRA. That song changed my life. I became aware of a world outside of the mojave desert and the joshua trees and tumble weeds.



Here is a fabulous article on the history of the song. http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/11/rock-history-101-u2s-sunday-bloody-sunday/