With or Without You
"With or Without You" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the third track on their fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree, and was released as the album's lead single on 16 March 1987. The song was the group's most successful single at the time, becoming their first number-one hit in both the United States and Canada by topping the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and the RPM national singles chart for one week, with a further three weeks at number two.
"With or Without You" features sustained guitar parts played by guitarist the Edge with a prototype of the Infinite Guitar, along with vocals by lead singer Bono and a bassline by bassist Adam Clayton. The rock ballad originated from a demo recorded in late 1985 that the group continued to work on throughout The Joshua Tree sessions. Ostensibly a song about troubled love, the track's lyrics were inspired by Bono's conflicting feelings about the lives he led as a musician and domestic man.
Critics praised the song upon its release. It is frequently performed on the band's tours, and it has appeared on many of their compilation albums and concert films. "With or Without You" is U2's second most frequently covered song. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song 131st on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Writing and recording
In late 1985, U2 convened at a house that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. bought to review material the group had written during The Unforgettable Fire Tour. During this time, a rough demo of "With or Without You" was written, with lead vocalist Bono composing the song's chord sequence. The band continued to work on the song at STS Studios, creating many permutations of the track, but not making any progress. Guitarist the Edge considered the song at that point to be "awful". The track consisted of a Yamaha drum machine beat and a bass part played by bassist Adam Clayton using an Ibanez bass guitar with a short scale. According to Clayton, these early versions of the song sounded too sentimental and "very traditional because the chords just went round and round and round".The sessions for The Joshua Tree started in earnest in 1986, and U2 were recording at the Georgian mansion Danesmoate House in Dublin. The group attempted to take the song in a different direction, although Bono was reluctant. Under the direction of co-producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the Edge pursued more ambient guitar playing, Clayton turned up the volume on his bass, and Mullen experimented with an electronically enhanced drum kit. Despite the work they continued to put into the track, the group considered abandoning the song, as they could not find an arrangement they liked.
Bono and his friend Gavin Friday continued to work on the song after Lanois and Eno declined to do so. Bono credits Friday with rescuing the song and rearranging it, believing it could be a hit. Eno added a keyboard arpeggio, similar to the one from "Bad". The song's fate was still in doubt when the Edge was sent a prototype of the Infinite Guitar by Canadian musician Michael Brook, with whom he had collaborated for the 1986 Captive soundtrack. The instrument allowed sustained notes to be played, producing "a similar effect to the E-Bow", but with the ability to provide all the "mid-points between no sustain and infinite sustain" that the E-Bow cannot provide. The prototype included elaborate assembly instructions and as the Edge recollects, "one wrongly placed wire and you could get a nasty belt of electricity. This piece of gear would have failed even the most basic of safety regulations." On subsequent tours, his guitar technician occasionally received electric shocks from the instrument when preparing it for performances.
Listening to the backing track to "With or Without You" in the control room, Bono and Friday heard the sustained effect that the Edge was creating with the Infinite Guitar in the other room. The combination of the two playing simultaneously caught their attention. According to Lanois, "I said, 'That sounded pretty cool,' so we listened back and I said, 'Jesus, it's better than I thought.'" The Edge immediately recorded an Infinite Guitar part in two takes. The band considers the song's recording to be one of the album sessions' breakthrough moments, as it was recorded amid concerns that they had run out of ideas.
Eno sequenced the song's electronic drum beat on the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser. Rather than connect it to the recording equipment via a DI unit and maintain the instrument's pristine sound, the producers plugged it into a Mesa Boogie guitar amplifier and then miked it to give the sound more personality. As a result, Lanois said it sounded "more like people playing in a room". The sequenced beat was chosen to give the song a feeling of discipline, so that when Mullen's acoustic drums enter the song, "they mean something", in Lanois' words.
Producer Steve Lillywhite was hired by U2 in December 1986 to help mix some songs for The Joshua Tree; "With or Without You" was one of them. While Lillywhite and engineer Mark Wallis were mixing it, Eno entered the room and told them that he wanted to change the introduction. Wallis said: "And it was kind of awe-inspiring because he said, 'Right, send this guitar through those ten effects over there and send that guitar through those ten effects over there and then feed them back to each other.' So what started as a traditional bit of rhythm guitar, bass, and drums suddenly became something quite otherworldly and spiritual, and the sound of the music you were hearing started to give you a feeling of where the song was going to go prior to the lyric. I thought that was really visionary." Ultimately, "With or Without You" was the most debated song of those on which Lillywhite worked, as Eno and Lanois each had ideas different from his. Lillywhite, who wanted a more mainstream approach to his mix, favoured "a little more crash, bang" sound to Mullen's drums that enter later in the song, while Eno preferred that the drums remain "more mysterious and more supportive".
Bono wrote the lyrics during his first night visiting the Côte d'Azur in 1986, while struggling to reconcile his responsibilities as both a married man and a musician.
His wanderlust in belonging to a musical act was often at odds with his domestic life. While writing the lyrics, he realised that neither facet of his life defined him, but rather the tension between the two did. He explained that the final lyric is about torment and how repressing desires only makes them stronger.
Composition
"With or Without You" is written in a time signature and is played at a tempo of 110 beats per minute. Although certain stanzas of lyrics are repeated, the song does not follow a traditional verse-chorus form. Lanois says of it, "It has tension and builds like one of those great Roy Orbison songs, where every section is unique and never repeats. I like that kind of sophistication ."The song begins with a minimal drum beat of eighth notes played by Mullen, while a backing track—Eno's synthesiser—plays a "rippling" triplet arpeggio of the chord D major. A high sustained guitar part enters, played "dry" in the left channel before reverberating on the right. At 0:09, Clayton's bass guitar begins to play eighth notes in time with the kick drum, and the song's four-bar sequence of the chord progression D–A–Bm–G, begins. This chord progression is never explicitly played but is "implied" by the root notes played by Clayton and the guitar parts of The Edge.
Bono's vocals enter at 0:28 in a low register, a stark contrast from Bono's typical singing style to that point in the group's career. He stays below the middle C for the first two and a half stanzas, centering his melody on the mediant F. At the end of each of the first two stanzas, his vocals drop an octave, from A to A. Author Susan Fast called Bono's vocals on "With or Without You" the first occasion on which he "extended his vocal range downward in an appreciable way". At 0:58, an additional sustained guitar part joins the mix. The drums increase in intensity at 1:45, before The Edge begins playing the song's signature guitar riff at 1:53. The riff, a perfect fifth opening to a sixth, features a prominent use of delay. When the riff is played, it is answered by Bono singing "And you give yourself away", a line on which backing vocals appear at 2:06 and 2:32.
A stanza begins in which Bono sings the song's title in a high, passionate voice as the drums get heavier. At 3:03, the song bursts out in emotion as Bono begins open-throated "Oh-oh-oh-ohh" vocals, which are double-tracked, and the rhythm increases to play sixteenth notes on the guitar, cymbals, and tambourine. After another stanza of Bono repeating the song's title, the music dies down at 3:38 to a similar state as it was at the beginning of the song. Ten seconds later, Bono sings in a falsetto while a bass synthesiser doubles the bass guitar. After the vocals complete, The Edge begins a simple guitar figure. He explained that its understated nature was meant to resist the temptation to play an intricate guitar solo as an ending. The second time the figure is played, the signature guitar riff from earlier re-appears and the song regains some of its intensity. The song concludes with a fade-out.
The lyrics ostensibly describe a troubled relationship between two lovers, although the lyrics have been interpreted in religious contexts. The Washington Post interpreted the song as both an acerbic love song and a tune lamenting the moral contradictions one faces with their religious faith. Toby Creswell echoed these sentiments, saying it "can be read as a song about either marital romance or spiritual need". Bono explained that the lyrics had romantic intentions, saying, "there's nothing more revolutionary than two people loving each other. One, 'cause it's so uncommon these days, and two, 'cause it's so difficult to do." In 1987, Bono explained that "And you give yourself away" lyric refers to how he sometimes feels exposed being in U2, and that his openness, both to the public and music press, can do damage to the group. Author Niall Stokes interpreted the line as encompassing the theme of "surrendering the ego" to one's love and spiritual faith. According to Bono, the song was heavily influenced by Scott Walker's 1984 album ''Climate of Hunter.''