All posts tagged U2

Middle aged & still attempting to rock.

Internet buddy and friend of the blog efgoldman expressed some surprise over my love of Saturday’s “Killing in the Name” cover, which reminded me that I’d written an entire piece for the Dallas Morning News about people being surprised by this side of me, which led me to look for it, which led me to remember that the DMN website is now so entirely changed that my old pieces are really irretrievable. So I decided: What the heck! I’ll re-key it (type it allll out again), and call that a post! And that’s what I did. BEHOLD. (Just please don’t hold me responsible for the headline).

Chris Cornell/Audioslave. God, they put on a good show. Holy jebus.

THIS 40-YEAR-OLD WOULD RATHER BE A ROCKER THAN BE IN ONE.

(c) Dallas Morning News; August 14, 2005

Here’s a list of concerts I’ve attended, or will attend, this summer: Oasis, Jet, Robert Plant, Cake, Green Day, U2. Earlier this year, I saw the Donnas, Franz Ferdinand, the Hives, the Von Bondies. I’d go to shows twice a week, if I could, but once you add baby-sitting costs to the price of tickets….

I’m 40.

To clarify: I’m 40, I have two kids (one in diapers), I carry a mortgage and a car loan, I worry about property tax increases, and more often than not, I’ve got a pacifier in my pocket.

At what point does it become pathetic to love rock n’ roll?

This is the question that’s dogged me most singularly since turning 40 last September (my husband, five years my junior, likes to remind me that I’m actually must closer to 41). When people ask me how I feel about having achieved middle age, I usually say the only thing that really bothers me is losing social relevance.

But what I mean is: At what point does it become pathetic to love rock n’ roll?

I am absolutely no less fanatical, passionate and obsessive about music than I was at 17. Indeed, as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have gotten louder, so that I never actually listen to James Taylor anymore, preferring the likes of Jet and Audioslave. And when I go to these concerts — at which most of the other 40-year-olds seem to be chaperoning preteens — I don’t just hum along! No, no, I apparently feel the need to lose all sense of propriety and dance, dance, dance my little heart away. I shudder to think what might happen the first time one of my children sees me.

All of this often comes as a surprise to people who know me professionally. Most of my writing is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it tends toward the earnest, not to say tortured. I think people see me more in the Tchaikovsky vein. Or — oh, I don’t know. Some tortured classical guy.

I have wondered if my growing political anger has fueled a need for ever more raucous music, if I use other peoples’ voices to rant and rail in a way that I can’t. To quote the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: “Despite all my rage/I am still just a rat in a cage.” It doesn’t really work on paper, but when Billy screams it in your ears — well, I won’t say catharsis, but there’s at least a little validation. Especially when I scream it with him.

To my great good fortune, I’m married to a man who agrees with both my politics and the fact that CD purchases are a budget necessity. But, as I said, he’s younger — and, it should be noted, a man. Somehow, something in our society (or my head — who can tell anymore?) says it’s ok for him to still love a good bass line. I, on the other hand, have produced and nursed two babies.

Shouldn’t I be humming lullabies? Missing references made by 15-year-olds? Telling them that, um, I still like REO Speedwagon? (Yes, I once did. I’m sorry). More than once, it’s true, the baby-sitters have popped their dewy eyes wide open and said “Cooool!” when I tell them where we’re going, but I’ve begun to suspect that at least some teenagers I know may think I’m a ridiculous old biddy.

One could counter with a sizable list of middle-aged musicians who are still making music that matters: The guys in U2 come to mind, but so do Chris Cornell of Audioslave, Liz Phair, and Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They can jump up and down like idiots — why can’t I?

Oh that’s right: They’re rock stars. And I’m — what’s that word again? Oh yeah: Not. They have entourages and record deals; I have suburbia and a whole lot of Rescue Hero Action Figures. My friends almost never know whom I’m talking about.

The day will come, I’ve realized, on which I will be the only 50-year-old at the concert — and then, please God, the 60-year-old, the 70-year-old. If I’m not pathetic now, surely it’ll happen by then. It’s inevitable. I mean, look at Mick Jagger.

So I’ve recently begun to accept that I’m doomed: Either I can age gracefully or enjoy myself; suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous teenage opinion or be bored.

And, I remind myself: My father died at 35. I can only imagine what he would have given for the chance to be pathetic. Or 40.

But then, he was into baseball. That’s something you can carry into your golden years.

Emily L. Hauser is a freelance writer living outside of Chicago.

*****

(Of course, Audioslave no longer exists, and at 47, the prospect of being a pathetic 50-year-old is bearing down on me with increasing speed. So it goes).

by emilylhauser on January 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Entertainment, Music
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on January 9, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/middle-aged-still-attempting-to-rock/

On Israel and the wish for a cosmic un-do button.

A few days ago, I attended a U2 show with my beloved husband, a man whom I have described more times than I can count as “the best man I have ever met.”

In advance of that concert, I informed my sister that I would spend money on U2 for as long as they want to tour — “if they’re in Chicago,” I believe I said, “I’ll be buying tickets.”

My sister allowed as how she had felt the same way for a few years — and I stopped her right there, because I have felt that way always. Indeed, I informed her, back when I was planning on returning to Israel with a St. Olaf study program in 1984, I briefly considered bailing simply because of the rumor that U2 (then a much smaller deal) would be playing at the other college in town while I was away. It’s a good thing I didn’t bail, I told her, because of course the rumor had been unfounded.

Then, at about the same instant, my sister and I flashed on the same understanding: But what if I had? My entire life — every.single.thing. — would be different.

I first went to Israel for three months, on a whim, in the fall of 1982, during a year I had taken off between high school and college in order to accommodate that whim. I fell in love with the country, and even before I fell in love with the boy with whom I soon fell in love, I had made plans to return with St. Olaf.

But if I hadn’t — if I had found U2 that compelling, or, I don’t know, realized what I was walking into and backed away like a woodland creature from wildfire — I can’t imagine I would have found some other excuse to go. Life tends to carry us along, and most people have very narrow windows of opportunity in which the idea of up-ending their lives is appealing.

I would likely have stayed at St. Olaf, remained at least nominally Christian, married an American, and – who knows? I almost certainly would never have met the husband, or had these children with whom I am so madly in love.

Now, I’m a big fan of the theory that “Hey, you know what? If life were different – life would be different.” There were probably a dozen points in my early adulthood where a slightly different choice would have taken me in hugely different directions.

But even having said that, there’s something bracing to being able to stare down one, single, solitary moment and see the turn happening, right in front of your 20/20 hindsight.

And here, finally, is my point: Even with the understanding that the man I met and married in Tel Aviv is the best man I’ve ever met, even with the overwhelming love I feel for the two marvelous, wondrous children he and I had together, even with the powerful sense of identification I have as an Israeli Jew — I have days (moments, really, flashes of moments) in which I wish that I had believed a rumor, and stayed behind for a concert.

Because then I wouldn’t have to be heartbroken by a crazy country, led by crazier people — complicit by virtue of my citizenship in the merciless occupation of millions of people — on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis. I wouldn’t have to watch everything I love and value about a place and a people overcome and subsumed by a network of lies and brutalities, wouldn’t have to order my life, my aspirations, my hopes and dreams for my children, on the folly and hubris of a country that lies across an ocean and speaks a foreign tongue.

And when I think about that — I think: Wow. Does Israel, writ large, have any idea that people who loved it so much that they chose the place with a full heart would now, at times, even if only for the briefest of moments, rather undo their entire lives than have anything to do with the place anymore?

Because aside from anything else, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Not about U2, and not about Israel.

by emilylhauser on July 8, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Israel/Palestine
Tagged , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on July 8, 2011

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/on-israel-and-the-wish-for-a-cosmic-un-do-button/

Once more, with feeling: The limits of awkward conversation (or: Bono, Obama, and me).

Yada, yada, you know the drill: I’m not sure what I’m doing vis-a-vis the blog, but I’m re-upping some posts because I really liked writing them the first time around. And tonight we are finally going to last year’s postponed U2 show, to which I refer below, so I bring you this!

President Barack Obama meets with Paul David "Bono" Hewson, of the rock band U2, in the Oval Office, April, 30, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

At some point in the past decade, I realized that, contrary to what I think is expected of the average American, I’m not actually all that interested in meeting people I admire from a distance.

What would I say to Rachel Maddow, or Carl Kasell, or Eric Clapton? I’m fairly certain I would do nothing but giggle if I ever met Jake Gyllenhaal — and Jon Stewart? Well, I might have to run and hide.

I did meet B. B. King once, when I worked for an Israeli record company, and he was so gracious that it was really a very lovely hour in my life. And I suppose that every Israeli musician and actor I ever interviewed for the Jerusalem Post was famous in that wee little pond, and I kind of loved talking with them about what they did.

But that was all in the context of work. All parties were obligated to be in the same room, and we actually had something to talk about. Similarly, when one happens, through life’s twists and turns, to get to know someone famous — that’s organic and, very quickly, becomes two people who happen to know each other.

But meet someone just to meet them? Whatever for? I’ve already established that not coming off as stupid ranks pretty high on my list of priorities, and if I were to be taken backstage at MSNBC or Comedy Central to shake hands with my media crushes, I’m pretty certain I would come off as a chatty imbecile.

No, strike that. I would actually be a chatty imbecile.

And honestly, who wants Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart to think they’re a chatty imbecile? Not I.

All of this, sad to say, by way of introduction to the fact there are two exceptions to my “no thanks, I’d rather not” rule, and they are:

  1. Barack Obama
  2. Bono

Not Michelle Obama (who I also admire) and not The Edge, Adam, or Larry (ditto) — just Barack and Bono. I flatter myself that what charm I have would survive the first few minutes of painful awkwardness, and I am moderately confident that I would, in fact, find something to talk about with both men. Or, at least, I’d be willing to take the risk.

So when I saw the above picture, I felt the oddest kind of jealousy: “Look! POTUS is hanging with Bono – again! Not fair! And look! Bono is hanging with POTUS – again! Dude!” As if the fact that I want to know these men means that I actually do know them, and have a claim on their time and who they spend it with.

Isn’t this the way a stalker’s mind works?

(Honestly, my first thought when I saw that picture was: “Wow. And I’ll never get to meet either of them.”)

Well, in the meantime, since the day that Bono (I’m sorry: Paul David “Bono” Hewson) and the President of the United States of America had a party and didn’t invite me – Bono has done something awful to his back, which led to emergency surgery, which has subsequently led to the cancellation of the North American leg of U2′s upcoming tour (to which I of course have tickets. My personal austerity program was never meant to cut into essentials).

I’ve written here and elsewhere about my genuine concerns for the safety of President Obama, and while I do think that I occasionally go just slightly off the deep-end on that front, it actually makes a kind of sense for an American to be worried that someone may someday try to kill this country’s first African-American President. This is not just because I imagine us as pals — this is because he’s the motherfucking President, and dude, people are nuts.

But the truth is, I’m also genuinely concerned for Bono’s well-being. I genuinely wish that I could be there to – what? I don’t know. How does one help a fabulously wealthy and well-loved rock star recover from (no doubt excruciating) injury? Tell jokes?

So. All of this to say:

Dear Bono,

I hope you feel better soon. You and your little four-piece mean more to me than I can fully understand, and in the course of loving your music, I have come to love you (and The Edge, and Adam, and Larry) a little bit, too. Thank you for all that you’ve given me and so many other people, through your music and your advocacy, over the years, and please heal well.

If you need me, I have a few jokes up my sleeve.

Love (and not at all in a stalker-ish way),

Emily

by emilylhauser on July 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Mental Rambling, Music
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on July 5, 2011

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/once-more-with-feeling-the-limits-of-awkward-conversation-or-bono-obama-and-me/