Boy

Recorded at Windmill Lane in summer 1980 with Steve Lillywhite after Martin Hannett was dropped. Hannett had produced the band's earlier single 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, but the band objected to working with him and Island abandoned the plan. Lillywhite had produced the single A Day Without Me first and was won over after seeing the band in a small school hall.

Lillywhite recorded the drums in the stone stairwell of the studio's reception area, with microphones hung from the ceiling, after the receptionist went home, and the telephone could not be silenced. He also recorded smashed bottles and cutlery skimmed against the spokes of an upturned bicycle wheel. The rhythm section had trouble keeping time, so he and the assistant engineer Kevin Moloney spliced tape into drum loops. Bono sang into a handheld microphone in the control room and took about six takes of each song, which Lillywhite edited into a composite. The Edge played a Gibson Explorer through two Vox amplifiers and two Memory Man echo units, and told Elvis Costello the band had listened to Neu!, Kraftwerk, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo and the Bunnymen and Magazine.

Chart and reception

The album reached 52 in the United Kingdom, in August 1981, and 63 in the United States. Paul Morley of the NME called it honest, direct and distinctive. Rolling Stone placed it at number 417 on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums. Shadows and Tall Trees takes its name from a chapter of Lord of the Flies.