Music: U2 Explores America

From its 1987 tour, the band makes a great live album

In the midst of all the '87 madness -- sold-out arena concerts, two No. 1 singles, a No. 1 album, a deluge of magazine covers -- U2 knew they were adrift. It wasn't simply that the velocity of their incredible success had cut them loose from their moorings. Superstardom beamed a sudden, harsh light: the Irish band had no strong musical foundation at all. There was a sudden shared awareness among them that their center could not hold because it had never been firmly fixed.

Bono, the band's vocalist and lyric writer, had been fretting over this problem for some time....

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