U2: A Diary
by Matt McGee

U2, from 15/8/50 to 26/12/07

Rock biographies are dead – often as much as the artists they depict. Anyone worth writing about has been “done” well enough already, or didn’t make enough of a splash when alive, leaving anything written posthumously as pure speculation. There’s nothing left to write about in rock and pop. End of.

Music publishers seem to know this only too well and have latched onto the encyclopaedic approach to biography. Omnibus are no different – luckily, though, they get this exhaustive, large format, totally factual type of coffee table book as well as they do biography. So, from the moment Bono’s parents get together in the 50s, through to an idle visit to the races in Dublin in late 2007, A Diary notes it all down for us in minute detail.

Whether this is of interest to you – even as a U2 fan – depends largely on what kind of books you like reading – and that’s not as trite a point as it sounds. Truly, lists and quotes appeal to a certain section of the music buying public more than the conjecture and received wisdom of flowing prose. We know which we prefer.

ISBN 9781847721082, 320 pages

Reviewed by Jake Kennedy
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