35 years on U2 still rattle and hum

I ONCE spent a month waiting for Bono. Every lunch of October 1981, I sidled into Golden Discs, on Cork’s Patrick Street, in search of the new U2 album.

My family had moved to Cork a few months previously. School was a chore, life outside it had not yet fallen into a rhythm, but there was always that forthcoming album, U2’s second, hanging around like tomorrow’s promise.

The album’s title, October, was known and it had signalled that it would be released in that month.