The Definitive Account of U2’s Most Interesting Era

When U2 released Pop in 1997, the Irish quartet had been on a decade-long run of hits that included The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. The band’s Zoo TV tour in the early 1990s was a multimedia extravaganza that dazzled critics and sold out venues the world over. But Pop turned out to be U2’s worst-selling album, and the accompanying PopMart tour played to half-filled stadiums and earned the nickname “Flop Mart” in the press. The Pop era was left behind, but many U2 fans never forgot what Bono once called the “best thing we've ever done.”

40-Foot Lemon: The Complete Story of U2's Pop & PopMart takes listeners into the studio and onto the stage during U2’s most experimental and ambitious era. It chronicles the difficult and expensive yearlong recording of Pop, where the band worked with five producers in multiple studios on two continents, striving to create a masterpiece. Instead, with tour dates already booked, U2 handed in an unfinished album.

40-Foot Lemon follows U2 around the globe on PopMart, the biggest tour in rock history, and featuring the world’s largest TV screen, a 10-story golden arch, a sofa-sized olive on a 100-foot martini stick, and a giant lemon disco ball that did all sorts of tricks. When it was working. PopMart struggled to fill seats in the U.S., but it shattered records in Europe and South America, playing to packed stadiums and making history from Sarajevo to Santiago. 40-Foot Lemon is the definitive account of U2 at their most interesting.