John Cheek investigates the shadow record of 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' by U2

U2 (photo: R.L.68 commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U2_2015.jpg)

Two decades on from the release of the original album, 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' is here given the anniversary treatment. Once again, The Edge oversees this lavish reflection and doesn't do things by halves. From the different versions available, the CD Boxset Edition is perhaps the most affordably sumptuous. As well as additional photography, and the original album re-mastered, there are a further four CDs featuring various dance remixes of tracks and also a couple of live recordings. It's the 'new' album that comes with this five-disc package that is of most interest. More than a collection of associated demo tracks and B-sides, 'Reassemble' features the completed songs that were considered and rejected from the final album track-listing. A 'good' collection in their own right, each one lacks that certain something to make it 'great', somewhat explaining their eventual withdrawal. However, they still possess a quality that many bands today would give their right arms for. This is a quality 'shadow' album and U2 fanatics and avid completists are most likely to benefit from it. Musically, these tracks are equal, if not better, on that level, to what appeared on the original long-player; lyrically, many of them begin well but don't really go anywhere. The band's quality-control was doing its job, and now this is an interesting insight into where they were at in the early-noughties.

In the U2 canon, the previous two studio releases were characterised by, among other things, overtly Christian lyrics and these recording sessions carried on this theme, including the 10 eventually-shelved tracks, with the exception of the instrumental "Theme From The Batman". "Picture Of You (X+Y)" largely has the same song structure of "Fast Cars" on the original album but has a somewhat different, longer lyric to the track that they preferred. As Bono sings, "There's somebody in a body", it suggests that his wife Ali was then pregnant with their fourth child. It shows him pondering the miracle(s) of being born and being born-again: "Save me/Save me from myself/I know that you've been good to me." Biblical allusions and references pop up across this collection, such as in "I Don't Wanna See You Smile", where the erstwhile Paul Hewson pines, "I'm praying/You are my air/But I need the ground to kneel upon... God knows me, knows me, knows me, knows me."

The influence of Peter Hook and New Order is occasionally apparent on some of these tracks, though less so than on the original album. You can see why some tracks were shelved from the original release because of their clunky lyrics. On "Luckiest Man In The World", Bono struggles to describe what a relationship with the living God can be like, as opposed to mere legalism, tradition and duty, and fails to move from sounding vaguely conceptual into something more poetic.

Writing in Record Collector magazine on 'How To Re-Assemble's release in December 2024, Bono praised The Edge's herculean efforts in putting together the album. "Edge is the archaeologist of the band, he's the Mother Teresa of Lost Songs. We had kind of forgotten the genesis of 'Atomic Bomb', and Mother Teresa himself found it with these songs... We're all so grateful, because these songs have a spontaneity that some of the best recordings on 'How To dismantle An Atomic Bomb' have, it's fresh paint without any added layers or the second or third guessing. Which can happen, and we do tend to second or third guess ourselves."