In February 1991, U2 resumed the album’s sessions in the seaside manor “Elsinore” in Dalkey, renting the house for ₤10,000 per month. Lanois’ strategy to record in houses, mansions, or castles was something he believed brought atmosphere to the recordings. Dublin audio services company Big Bear Sound installed a recording studio in the house, with the recording room in a converted garage diagonally beneath the control room. Video cameras and TV monitors were used to monitor the spaces. Within walking distance of Bono’s and The Edge’s homes, the sessions at Elsinore were more relaxed and productive.The band struggled with one particular song—later released as the B-side “Lady With the Spinning Head”—but three separate tracks, “The Fly”, “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” and “Zoo Station” were derived from it. During the writing of “The Fly”, Bono conceived an alternate persona based on a pair of oversized black sunglasses that he wore to lighten the mood in the studio. Bono developed the character into a leather-clad egomaniac also called “The Fly”, and he assumed this alter ego for the band’s subsequent public appearances and live performances on the Zoo TV Tour.
In April, tapes from the earlier Berlin sessions were leaked and bootlegged. Bono dismissed the leaked demos as “gobbledygook”, and The Edge likened the situation to “being violated”. The leak shook the band’s confidence and soured their collective mood for a few weeks. Staffing logistics led to the band having three engineers at one point, and as a result, they split recording between Elsinore and The Edge’s home studio. Engineer Robbie Adams said the approach raised morale and activity levels: “There was always something different to listen to, always something exciting happening.” To record all of the band’s material and test different arrangements, the engineers utilised a technique they called “fatting”, which allowed them to achieve more than 48 tracks of audio by using a 24-track analogue recording, a DAT machine, and a synchroniser. In the June 1991 issue of U2’s fan magazine Propaganda, Lanois said that he believed some of the in-progress songs would become worldwide hits, despite lyrics and vocal takes being unfinished.
During the Dublin sessions, Eno was sent tapes of the previous two months’ work, which he called a “total disaster”. Joining U2 in the studio, he stripped away what he thought to be excessive overdubbing. The group believes his intervention saved the album. Eno theorised that the band was too close to their music, explaining, “if you know a piece of music terribly well and the mix changes and the bass guitar goes very quiet, you still hear the bass. You’re so accustomed to it being there that you compensate and remake it in your mind.” Eno also assisted them through a crisis point one month before the deadline to finish recording; he recalls that “everything seemed like a mess”, and he insisted the band take a two-week holiday from working on the album. The break gave them a clearer perspective and added decisiveness.
After work at Elsinore finished in July, Eno, Flood, Lanois, and previous U2 producer Steve Lillywhite mixed the tracks at Windmill Lane Studios. Each producer created his own mixes of the songs, and the band either picked the version they preferred or requested that certain aspects of each be combined. Additional recording and mixing continued at a frenetic pace until the 21 September deadline, including last-minute changes to “The Fly” and “One”. The Edge estimates that half of the work for the album sessions was done in the last three weeks to finalise songs. The final night was spent devising a running order for the record. The following day, The Edge travelled to Los Angeles with the album’s tapes for mastering.
for the seminal album’s 20th anniversary. 
” While there are some Christians who maintain that Bono is renouncing his faith in this song,
Mysterious Ways,” also contains Christian content. It is interpreted that Bono is speaking about the Holy Spirit moving in mysterious ways, because the last verse directly refers to spirits.
, will be examined for Christian content.
” which became an immediate hit. This song was inspired by the visit Bono and his wife Alison Stewart made to Ethiopia in 1985. In Ethiopia they saw great disparity between the rich, city-dwellers and the poor, rural villagers who were dying in the desert.
He goes on to explain: “I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they’re making - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become.
Garrett, an English professor at Baylor University, plumbs the U2 catalogue to reveal the group’s theological worldview. This is not a far stretch—three of the four band members were involved with a charismatic Christian community in Ireland as the group was starting out.
U2’s 20th anniversary re-issue of their 1991 album Achtung Baby will hit stores on November 1. Exclusive details regarding the special re-release have also surfaced.
