Sunday, Bloody Sunday

This song was played in my honor the other day and my brother mentioned that one of his favorite groups had done a cover of the song.  While I like the group, I didn't care for their version of the song.  I just felt like the way they did it that they had lost all of the meaning, and if you lose the meaning of this song, it's just not the same.  I tried to explain this to my brother, but I don't think he understood.  So, I'll explain it here.

Bono (Paul Hewson) is from Dublin, Ireland and Bloody Sunday is an incident that took place back in the 70s where 14 unarmed protesters were killed in the streets of Ireland.  It was part of an ongoing battle in Ireland between two separate groups...not unlike what is going on in the Middle East right now.  U2 wrote the song, not to commemorate that day, but to encourage people to stop the violence.

He talks in the song about how the people of Ireland are basically forced to choose sides.

But I won't heed the battle call

It puts my back up

Puts my back up against a wall

And the battle's just begun

There's many lost, but tell me who has won

The trenches dug within our hearts

And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart.

The initial killings happened in 1972 and during a march in Ireland on November 8, 1987 called the Remembrance Day Parade there was a bombing that killed 11 people.  At a concert in Denver that same night, Bono went on a mid-song rant about the incident.  This is what he had to say:

And let me tell you somethin'.  I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to be and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home...and the glory of the revolution...and the glory of dying for the revolution.  F*** the revolution!!  They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution.  What's the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and children?  Where's the glory in that?  Where's the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day.  Where's the glory in that?  To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of the revolution, that the majority of the people in my country don't want.  No more!  No more!  No more!"