16. With or Without You, U2

Like the sea rolling over the sand, With or Without You seeps from every pore of the speakers and takes hold of every nerve of my body. It becomes an environment all to itself. The 4/4 tomtom beat of the bass grabs me and holds on, then halfway through, the drum starts pounding the backbeat. Bono finishes his lyrics (about which, more later) and the rhythm instruments, still insistent, quiet down while a soft high wail pierces the upper register. Then – and this is the killer moment – Edge’s guitar comes in with a syncopated beat, on top of the tomtom and backbeat, full rolling orchestration resumes, and I feel, this is what I’ve waited for. What Bono is waiting for is totally unclear, with more of those cryptic British lyrics: “Sleight of hand and twist of fate/ On a bed of nails she makes me wait/ And I wait without you.” If the song is addressed to “you,” who is “she”? The words don’t matter, but Bono’s voice does. It starts in a matter-of-fact tone and becomes increasingly urgent as the song proceeds, imbuing it, like all U2 songs, with an aura of serious import. There’s an anthemic quality, also indigenous to U2: “and you give yourself away” is repeated over and over, and the mantra “with or without you” is intoned 12 times. The wall of sound would make Phil Spector proud.

Sidebar: Heartbreak Songs

If I get any sense from the words, With or Without You describes the familiar male condition of being in love with someone who is not adequately reciprocating. I’m not happy when I’m with you, but I can’t live without you. Oh, despair! And while there are a couple of songs about being happy – I’m Into Something Good and 57^th Street Bridge Song come to mind – the deep stuff, the songs that bite into your soul and won’t let go, tend to be about lost love and unhappy moments. If someone never loved and lost, how much of the rock repertoire would be so less meaningful, if not a mystery! My own heartbreaks? – I’ve had a few, and I was helped through them by the likes of the Fleetwoods singing Mr. Blue, Little Anthony’s Tears on My Pillow, the Skyliners’ Since I Don’t Have You, the Beau Brummels’ Just A Little and my all-time consolation, Love Hurts by the Everly Brothers.