Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Dublin rockers were two albums into their career and, for some time, had wanted to write a song about the Troubles. Frontman Bono, in his 2022 autobiography, Surrender, says they searched for an original way in: “Was it possible, in a song, to contrast Ireland’s Easter Rising of 1916 with the slumped body of a Messiah, hanging on a cross at the first Easter, AD33? And could it sound like The Clash?”The phrase “Sunday Bloody Sunday” had gained currency a few months before the events of January 1972, with the release of John Schlesinger’s acclaimed film of that title. It was the daring (for its time) tale of a troubled love triangle, and the title, especially with the slightly risqué (for its time) “bloody”, found a place in the national lexicon.The song became a much-loved staple of U2’s live shows. Initially, there were fears that it might be misinterpreted or even co-opted by combatants in the Troubles, which led to Bono introducing it on stage with a warning. The sight of him telling the crowd, “This is not a rebel song” while waving a white flag — captured in the concert film Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky (1984) — was described by Rolling Stone as “the defining image of U2’s warrior-rock spirit”.Nevertheless, despite the band’s clearly stated, peaceful intent, the song remained “dangerous” (Bono’s word) in that some people who heard it wished them harm. Following the release of the mini-album Under a Blood Red Sky U2, according to Bono, topped the “shit list” for Republican sympathisers — “[he] stinks” was former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams’s opinion of the singer. The band believed they had become responsible for a decline in fundraising for the IRA in the US, and in 1987, after a Dublin dentist was kidnapped by terrorists, they increased their security. Special Branch told Bono that his wife, Ali, was the more likely target — a revelation, he says, that haunts him to this day.Let us know your memories of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ in the comments section belowThe paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by ChambersMusic credits: Universal-Island; EMI; MPL Communications; Apple; FADER; Music Collection International
