I bought this record in the long-gone Summer of 93’ as a fresher student in Brighton digs. I spent all my working nights employed as a baseball capped clown – emptying rancid trays of meat patty grease, moping down ketchup-stained floors, and handling commerce from lairy drunks demanding gherkin-free burgers – all under the illuminated, neon street illusion, of the Golden Arches.
Out of gainful employment, I spent the days holed up, smoking weed, and playing Johnny Cash’s ‘The Wanderer’ on a loop and wondering at the die he cast for himself.
Johnny Cash, who walked the line – part preacher, part outlaw, part country cotton picker – and here he was drawling on a U2 record.
This was the band’s sonic stadium album, their step-up to the heady stratosphere of super stardom, of the career pinnacle evolution of a truly global rock band.
All reflected through the lenses of the satellites twinkling in the stars above.
It was a cocky reinvention, a bold eclectic fusion of new synthesised sounds, kissed by the ambient wizardry of Brian Eno, and an anarchic side-step away from their rock god anthems of their past.
And the rolling synths and brassy cheek of ‘Lemon’ would shake the masonry foundations of my new dwellings, as a small handful of fellow students and I moved into a three-story terraced mansion in Brighton with an ‘Astral’ phone box out front.
The mansion was rented from an acid frazzled hippy who engineered light shows for Pink Floyd, and the residence soon evolved into a rollicking palace of fun, high jinks, and rolling party pleasure.
‘Zooropa’ sound-tracked my first Summer of Love, echoing the sounds and vibrations of the clubs and free parties, as the long days burned down to the roach of Autumn.