Glory to Whoever

Song 362: This week on the playlist you can hear Gloria by U2, with music written by U2 and lyrics by Bono. In the early months of 1983, my good friend Eddie Spitzer started a guitar store in the back of a record store on Telegraph Ave. a couple of blocks south of the U.C. Berkeley campus, in a place that was also only a couple of blocks east of the house where I lived. I visited that store quite often, and in doing so, I would sometimes hear music that I might not have heard otherwise, including local heroes Rank and File and a new Irish band called U2. I liked what I was hearing from the Irish quartet, and soon enough, I picked up a copy of Under a Blood Red Sky and walked up to the register. Other people in my Berkeley songwriting circle also started tuning in to U2, and a few years later my housemate Michele and I would get to listen to them live at the Cow Palace one night in April of 1987. I had somehow gotten a vague idea about the group being Christian, and in that long-ago era before the internet and cyber spaces like A-Z Lyrics and Musixmatch, I could only guess at the words on this cut, but I detected some Latin phrasing, giving me an impression of a Christian message, though I didn't know for certain. I had to admit, though, that no matter where the door in this recording might be, U2 makes a very convincing case that The door is open.