Boy (album)

Recording and composition

Originally, Joy Division producer Martin Hannett (who also produced U2's "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" single) was penciled in to produce the album, but was too distraught after the suicide of Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis. Boy was recorded at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin from July to September 1980, with Steve Lillywhite producing. Lillywhite had first come to prominence for his work on the 1978's debut single of Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Hong Kong Garden" which featured a peculiar hook played by a glockenspiel. U2, who listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees, used Lillywhite's skills to add the distinctive glockenspiel part on "I Will Follow". The drums were recorded in the stairwell of the studio's reception area due to Lillywhite's desire to achieve "this wonderful clattery sound". They had to wait until the receptionist went home in the evenings as the phone rang through the day and even occasionally in the evening.

Some of the songs, including "An Cat Dubh" and "The Ocean", were written and recorded at the studio. Many of the songs were taken from the band's 40-song repertoire at the time, including "Stories for Boys", "Out of Control" and "Twilight".

Guitarist the Edge recorded all the songs using his natural stained Gibson Explorer. He drew inspiration from music he was listening to at the time, including Television and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Theme

The album's theme is the psychological nature of the transition of adolescence from childhood to manhood, with lyrics and atmospheric music examining a dawn of sexuality ('An Cat Dubh'), the entry into adolescence ("Twilight"), mortality ('"Out of Control"), the exile from one's past enforced by the passage of time ("Into the Heart"), mental disturbance ("The Electric Co.") and youthful ambition ("The Ocean"). "I Will Follow" focused on the trauma of the early death of Bono's mother when he was a young teenager.

The album's lyrics possess several literary references, "Shadows and Tall Trees" taking its name from a chapter title in the dystopian William Golding novel Lord of the Flies, and "The Ocean" mentioning Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Grey.

Release

Boy was originally released on 20 October 1980. The model boy on the cover is Peter Rowen (brother of Bono's friend, Guggi (Virgin Prunes). He also appeared on the covers of Three, War, The Best of 1980–1990, the unreleased Even Better than the Early Stuff, Early Demos and many singles.

The photographer, Hugo McGuiness, and the sleeve designer, Steve Averill (a friend of bassist Adam Clayton), went on to work on several more U2 album covers. The image was changed to a distorted picture of the band for the American and Canadian release, due to the record company's fears that the band would be accused of encouraging paedophilia. Sandy Porter is credited as the photographer for the American cover. However, the photo of Rowen appeared on the inner sleeve of the album in the US and Canada. In 2008, the artwork of the remastered editions was standardised worldwide to that of the 1980 UK release.

In 2008, a remastered edition of the album was released, featuring remastered tracks, along with B-sides and rarities. Three different formats of the remaster were made available.

Singles

"A Day Without Me" and "I Will Follow" were released as singles. "I Will Follow" peaked at No. 20 on the Mainstream Rock charts, becoming a hit on college radio and established a buzz surrounding the group's debut. The album was preceded by Three, a three-song EP with different recordings of "Out of Control" and "Stories for Boys", as well as a song called "Boy/Girl".

Reception

The original releases of Boy sold nearly 200,000 copies. The album peaked at number 63 on the Billboard 200, but after the success of U2's later material, it re-entered the American charts for a lengthier spell. It reached No. 52 in the UK. Despite criticisms of their live shows as predictable and Bono using "too much echo", these early live shows nevertheless helped demonstrate U2's potential, as critics noted that Bono was a very "charismatic" and "passionate" showman, reminiscent of a young Rod Stewart. Boy is the only U2 album from which every song (as well as every B-side) has been performed live at least once.

In the UK, the reviews were favorable. Paul Morley of NME praised the album as "honest, direct and distinctive", while Betty Page of Sounds dubbed the band the "young poets of the year". Melody Maker hailed it as a "rich" record, with reviewer Lyndyn Barber writing that "Boy is more than just a collection of good tracks assembled in an arbitrary order", and that it had "youthful innocence and confusion". The Guardian wrote that it was a "strong debut album", but that "it only needs slightly stronger melodies to be very impressive". Time Out's critic Ian Birch hailed Boy as a "timely" album and said, "Firing off a tradition laid down by the like of Magazine, [Siouxsie and] the Banshees and Joy Division, U2 have injected their own brand of grace and sinewy spaciousness to create a romanticism exactly right for those who sport chunky riffs and mackintoshes". Declan Lynch of Irish magazine Hot Press remarked that he found Boy "almost impossible to react negatively to".

The album's sexual overtones led to its enthusiastic acceptance by gays in American gay clubs shortly after its release. Bono commented on this phenomenon, saying, "First of all we started out and made Boy, which is a sexual LP, and we changed the cover in America to stop any concern there might be about paedophilia and the like, because it was our first album. But import copies got in and, as you know, in America a lot of music is broken in gay clubs and so we had a gay audience, a lot of people who were convinced the music was specifically for them. So there was a misconception if you like."

The album finished in 18th place on the "Best Albums" list from The Village Voice's 1981 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In 2003, the album was included at No. 417 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The magazine wrote, "Too ingenuous for punk, too unironic for new wave, U2 arrived on Boy as big-time dreamers with the ambition to back it up." In 2006, Uncut ranked the album at No. 59 on its list of the "100 Greatest Debut Albums".

Track listing

All tracks written by U2.

Notes
Early vinyl and some cassette copies of the album have an unlisted and untitled thirty-second instrumental sample of "Saturday Night", a song that would become "Fire" (on 1981's October album) at the very end of the album, after "Shadows and Tall Trees". This was dropped from most vinyl copies and all early CD versions. It was re-instated on the 2008 remastered editions of Boy and appeared in full for the first time as "Saturday Night" on the Deluxe Edition B-sides CD included with the 2008 remastered version of Boy. Until the remastered release of Boy, this thirty-second sample was thought to be "Fire."

Some pressings of the album, mostly in North America, indexed the track length of "An Cat Dubh" and "Into the Heart" at "6:21" and "1:53", respectively. The 2008 remastered edition of the album reinstated the original European lengths of 4:47 and 3:28. Early compact disc releases (identified by being West German-pressed and in a digipak) combined the two songs into a single track at 8:15, as did some US jewel-case versions (on the disc but not on the packaging).

2008 remastered edition

On 9 April 2008 U2.com confirmed that Boy, along with the band's other first three albums, October and War would be re-released as newly remastered versions. The remastered album was released on 21 July 2008 in the UK, with the US version following it the next day. As with The Joshua Tree, the cover artwork has been standardised to the original UK release. The remaster of Boy was released in three different formats:

1. Standard format: A single CD with re-mastered audio and restored packaging. Includes a 16-page booklet featuring previously unseen photos, full lyrics and new liner notes by Paul Morley. The 11-tracks match the previous release of the album.
2. Deluxe format: A standard CD (as above) and a bonus CD including b-sides, live tracks and rarities. Also includes a 32-page booklet with previously unseen photos, full lyrics, new liner notes by Paul Morley, and explanatory notes on the bonus material by the Edge.
3. Vinyl format: A single album re-mastered version on 180 gram vinyl with restored packaging.

Bonus CD

All tracks written by U2.

Personnel