IT WAS blood on the tracks for U2 as they spoke about breaking up, their personal relationships and how they are perceived back home, during the premiere of their new documentary feature, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday night.
Both Bono and Edge hit the red carpet before the screening of their new film.
Bono revealed that U2 were very close to breaking up during the making of their 1991 Achtung Babyalbum in Berlin, saying that "on a scale of one to 10 we were at a nine for breaking up". Sitting beside him as they discussed the new film, The Edge added "at that time in Berlin there was an end of the trust that had bound the four of us together in the first place".
From The Sky Downchronicles how the recording sessions for Achtung Babyalmost finished off the band and how the traumatic break-up of The Edge's first marriage informed the album's subject matter.
The director of the feature Davis Guggenheim said he was “very surprised” to be given “complete access to the group’s archives”.
“We are very protective of our private lives and our creative process,” said Bono about the film. “If you knew how a sausage was made, you wouldn’t eat it.”
Bookended by footage of the band hugging as they are about to take to the stage at this year's Glastonbury festival, the film goes way back to the band's early Baggot Inn days and shows them becoming huge global stars after the release of The Joshua Treein 1987. But at a personal cost.
“I was shell-shocked by success. I became a f****n’ megalomaniac,” says Bono during the film. “I don’t know how the rest of the band put up with me. I ran amok – suffered from my own intensity – and would shout all over others members of the band.” Footage shows him backstage after a show in the US referring to stage technicians as “assholes” and “f****n’ idiots”.
“To people back in Ireland we were this band who began in the post-punk era and were influenced by Joy Division but when we came back from America the reaction back home to us was that we had become an American showband – and a bad American showband at that.”
Desperate to reinvent themselves the band relocated to Berlin to engineer a completely now sound with Achtung Baby. "But then we had the first ever crack in the very tight U2 community (The Edge's marriage break-up) and it was very difficult for everyone" he says. With the Berlin sessions producing nothing and dividing the band into two camps (Bono and The Edge vs Adam and Larry) they considered splitting up. "We were going to break up, there were artistic differences" says Bono. "But then we hit on the song Oneand we held it together".
There was a huge media presence for Bono and The Edge's appearance. Oddly, From The Sky Downwill not get a general cinema release and will only be available on deluxe editions of the 20th anniversary reissue of Achtung Babyout on October 28th.