The Private Canon: "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"

This post is part of a series.

It's got to count for something that the first song I heard by U2 is still my favorite of theirs, not least because it seems to encapsulate their entire sound and ethos in four-and-a-half minutes. The live version of "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" blared through my bedroom clock radio in 1983 courtesy of the legendary Arizona indie station KSTM, a.k.a. the Storm, and hooked me from the jump with a big-beat boogie driven by churning bass, popping drum kit, and chiming/searing electric guitar. And then that heaving/soaring voice swooped in with a yearny minor-key melody about a concert where children were weeping for some reason, while that guitar scratched out a needling counterpoint, then pinged harmonics over a chorus of falsetto regrets—this was U2's end-of-the-world-party vibe in a nutshell, and it is this combo of doomy and brassy that has drawn me to them over many years and dispensations (it is the animating spirit of their best album) more than their fist-pumping anthems.

I've since learned that the song was inspired by Bono's bemusement at a concert by the Cramps, its guttering candles and despair and white makeup suggesting "the atmosphere of the Black Mass," as he later put it. That may explain the song's sound, which suggests a sort of Goth rockabilly, though this probably also has something to do with the presence of Joy Division producer Martin Hannett as producer of the original studio single. But none of this accounts for the song's outsized sweep, with its hectoring "la la la" verse and final aching "Call out your name/Call out in shame" refrain over long, sharp guitar lines.

In retrospect the bigness of "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" feels prophetic for this young band, who seemed to know exactly where they were headed, and gave notice to fans like me where we were headed also: to an arena, with Bono leading us in rock Mass, getting us to clap and sing along with songs about suffering, searching, dying, being reborn. You might call this guilty party music, and for a boy raised, as these lads were, in the church, it would be hard to strike much deeper chords of sad celebration and smiling-to-keep-from-crying grief.