We were uncool because we were hot, we just erupted as a live band. We wore it as a stubborn badge of pride that we weren't prepared to fall into line with every other group and take the fashionable stance of the day.

Bad haircuts, worse hangovers, prayer meetings and wild parties, encounters with presidents and popes, intimate accounts of the creation of all their classic songs, it is all here in a beautifully-presented book overseen by the band with the same passion for substance, style and immaculate attention to details familiar from their musical career. Told with wit, insight and astonishing candour by the band themselves and manager Paul McGuinness, with pictures from their own archives, 'U2 By U2' allows unprecedented access into the inner life of the greatest rock band of our times. It is the only authorised, fully comprehensive guide to the biggest band in the world. This is the story of U2, in their own words and pictures. I always thought the job was to be as great as you could be.

Told with wit, insight and astonishing candour by the band themselves and manager Paul McGuinness, with pictures from their own archives, 'U2 by U2' allows unprecedented access into the inner life of the greatest rock band of our times.Paperback. From the anarchic days of their Seventies punk origins through their Eighties ascent to superstardom with the epic rock of 'The Joshua Tree', the dark post-modern ironies of 'Achtung Baby' in the Nineties and their 21st-Century resurgence as rock's biggest and boldest band, this is a tale of faith, love, drama, family, birth, death, survival, conflict, crises, creativity. In a epic journey that has taken them from the clubs of Dublin to the stadiums of the world, U2 have sold over 130 million albums, been number one all over the world, revolutionized live performance, spearheaded political campaigns and made music that defines the age we live in. Over thirty years later, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are still together, bound by intense loyalty, passionate idealism and a relentless belief in the power of rock and roll to change the world. The drum kit just about fit into the room, the lead guitarist was playing a homemade guitar, the bassist could barely play at all and nobody wanted to sing.

In 1975, four teenagers from Mount Temple School in Dublin gathered in a crowded kitchen to discuss forming a band.

U2 by u2 hardcover