U2start.com | Cleaned-up audio of ’89 soundcheck with early AB demos/riffs

Originally posted by melon51:[..]
I cut the first 20 secs or so off because there was too much noise on the background and no singing yet.

Didn't do much else other than changing the speed. I matched the whole soundcheck recording to SB bootlegs of Lovetown and this was a semitone up and 6% faster. So I matched it with their tuning for Lovetown, and it's now a proper jam in D#

So here is the first time U2 played "Hearbeat" live!

SoundCloud: U2 "Heartbeat" Soundcheck 08101989 Jam In E by BB

Interesting. Definitely some Desire reminiscences there to my ears! Doesn't sound like there's a hit or even a proper song in there, but it's always interesting to hear their work-in-progress

Damn, all this soundcheck/song origins talk has got me wondering about our ever-waiting Soundcheck section. We always wanted to have a dedicate section for Soundchecks but they're hard to tag and catalog properly - they're much harder to catalog than shows, that's for sure! Can we count on you if we eventually build that section, @melon51?

LikeASong

5 years

Originally posted by melon51:[..]
But they seem to always have been frantically focused on creating the "big rock song in E",

Yeah they only had to tinker around with these jams in E major for 14 more years until they actually did

melon51

5 years

Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]
Interesting. Definitely some Desire reminiscences there to my ears! Doesn't sound like there's a hit or even a proper song in there, but it's always interesting to hear their work-in-progress

Damn, all this soundcheck/song origins talk has got me wondering about our ever-waiting Soundcheck section. We always wanted to have a dedicate section for Soundchecks but they're hard to tag and catalog properly - they're much harder to catalog than shows, that's for sure! Can we count on you if we eventually build that section, @melon51?

It's interesting because this jam/song was played just after they rehearsed Desire in that soundcheck... And it really starts as a separate “song” with a different tempo, so I'm guessing this is an idea they already had and wanted to give it a go.

What the real interest/fun in this for me I guess is trying to discover some “hidden/buried” early demos/ideas. Which is quite a challenge because:

- Loads of bootlegs that have jams like these aren’t really publicly accessible.
- Some of them are on sites like u2torrents.com that I can’t download from
- Some have terrible audio (like the strong wind in the Auckland one)

I was lucky to find three soundchecks from Lovetown on Youtube that had interesting jams: Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne. And after a couple of days of fiddling with Audio-editing software I was able to correct pitch and take the worst noise out.

So if you have any pointers or sources for me to look at/register etc... that would be awesome!

PS. With the 14 years track you mean Vertigo? They (at least) sound checked a basic track of that during Elevetion somewhere..

melon51

5 years

So here’s a quick summary of the interesting Lovetown demos/jams I could find so far, collected in one post for clarity:

Melbourne Oct-7-1989:

Early “Until the end of the world” sounding Jam in E, hear it in the bass/drum part mostly. If it's not that it's a demo they recorded for Limp Bizkit's version of "mission impossible"

Quite rhythmic and bumpy demo, and has some pretty nice guitar improvs:

Melbourne Oct-8-1989:

Another jam in E (they sure love that!) that comes right after rehearsing bits of Desire. It sounds like they know what they’re doing/playing, so I guess they had this laying around. This sounds a bit like if The Fly were actually a cowboy

Has a nice “rolling” groove and Bono repeats “heartbeat” a lot:

Both these soundchecks are on Youtube in full, so that’s where I got them from. Weirdly they were both sped and a semitone too high, so corrected that back to their regular tuning (E-flat/D#).

Auckland Nov-11-1989:

1. Early “Trying to throw your arms around the world” jam/demo. Checked this against both Salome Outtakes versions (including the one that has Lanois/Bono singing on CD5) and musically it has the same structure/chords/bridges. This live jam is much more elaborate than that though, great build-up with some nice guitar/bass parts:

2. Jam in E that has similarities with “I feel free” and “Blow your house down” (’87 beach version). Has jangling guitar that remind of Ultraviolet:

For both of these I had to edit out very strong wind-rumble and tried to pull up the "middle frequency" so they sound quite “thin”.. Didn't correct the pitch for these, quickly checked with my guitar and sounded correct.

—

Haven’t checked for any “lyrical recognition” yet but maybe a native English speaker with good ears can give that a try

melon51

5 years

But...

There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:

Carla_Ramos_10

5 years

Wow, great!

EridescoFly

5 years

Originally posted by melon51:But...

There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:

https://soundcloud.com/180167443/u2-ab-outtakes-drumbass-track-matched-with-lemon-zooropa

That is some very impressive train spotting! Many thanks for finding this

melon51

5 years

Originally posted by EridescoFly:[..]
That is some very impressive train spotting! Many thanks for finding this

Haha,

It is right? You have to listen with headphones to also hear the bass-part (I'll see if I can fix that).

The first (and prob last) time I suffered the torture that is the last 4 of the 7CD outtakes.. And by coincedence I stumbled on that beat with very vague bassline. I just recognized that bit, must be the "music memory"

My guess is that it's a bit that Edge wanted to keep for reference. Maybe it's the chorus of another song-demo..

melon51

5 years

Had this other idea of trying to strip the voice-over from "Sick Puppy" on FTSD, so that we can hear more of that track. Shall I give that a go?

LikeASong

5 years

Originally posted by melon51:Had this other idea of trying to strip the voice-over from "Sick Puppy" on FTSD, so that we can hear more of that track. Shall I give that a go?

It's pretty much an early version of MW with 2 bridges that never made it into the final song (and one of which became the verse structure of One, of course), isn't it? I doubut there's much "hidden" in there

But yeah, taking the voiceover off sounds like a good idea - do you use iZotope RX for that?

LikeASong

5 years

Originally posted by melon51:But...

There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:

https://soundcloud.com/180167443/u2-ab-outtakes-drumbass-track-matched-with-lemon-zooropa

That's a very nice find!

It's definitely the genesis of Lemon's rhythm section. At the beggining I thought the drums sounded like Some Days Are Better Than Others too, don't you hear a similarity?

LikeASong

5 years

Originally posted by melon51:[..]What the real interest/fun in this for me I guess is trying to discover some “hidden/buried” early demos/ideas. Which is quite a challenge because:

- Loads of bootlegs that have jams like these aren’t really publicly accessible.
- Some of them are on sites like u2torrents.com that I can’t download from
- Some have terrible audio (like the strong wind in the Auckland one)

I was lucky to find three soundchecks from Lovetown on Youtube that had interesting jams: Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne. And after a couple of days of fiddling with Audio-editing software I was able to correct pitch and take the worst noise out.

So if you have any pointers or sources for me to look at/register etc... that would be awesome!

Yeah that's exactly what we are trying to build: a comprehensive list of all the soundchecks that exist, hopefully with a list of songs/jams and with download links that make them readily available - just in the fashion of our immense show collection. Why can't you download from U2torrents?

Originally posted by melon51:[..]PS. With the 14 years track you mean Vertigo? They (at least) sound checked a basic track of that during Elevetion somewhere..

Yeah I meant Vertigo (it was more like 15 years from the point we were talking about in late 1989, but still

). I'm rather sure I had heard about them rehearsing Sopa De Tiburón in 2001 too, but right now I can't remember where or when.

Cleaned-up audio of ’89 soundcheck with early AB demos/riffs

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