11 O'Clock Tick Tock

Did You Know?

• The title was taken from a note that Bono's friend Gavin Friday left on Bono's front door after being unable to reach him by phone.
• The harmonic guitar section incorporates the Third Quarter chime of the Westminster Quarters from the Big Ben clock tower.

Background

After signing with Island Records in March 1980, U2 began planning an album and a single. Island A&R representative Nick Stewart sought a producer who could improve the band's studio recordings without sacrificing live energy. He recommended Martin Hannett, who was producing Joy Division, U2's favourite band at the time. Stewart considered Hannett a genius. U2 travelled to England to meet Hannett and observed Joy Division's recording sessions for "Love Will Tear Us Apart". They played him a demo of "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"; he was not impressed with the recording but liked the song.

Recording

Hannett made the trip to Dublin for the recording, held at Windmill Lane Studios over Easter weekend in early April 1980. Unhappy with what the studio offered, he had gear shipped in from London. Kevin Moloney, the sound engineer there, described the session as "wild" and said Hannett matched his "mad genius" reputation. The producer worked on electronics in ways the band had never encountered, obsessing over tiny details.

He insisted every sound be captured on its own, even building the bassline by putting each note Adam Clayton played onto a separate track and then piecing them together. Moloney thought the band was unsettled by Hannett's odd behavior; they suspected he was on acid, and at one point he fell backward out of his chair, shouting that he had just hallucinated a gherkin. The group was anxious, as this was their first time with a real producer, and Clayton felt that tension hurt their playing.

The rhythm section kept speeding up, so Hannett suggested a click track for Larry Mullen Jr., who had never used one. Around 3 a.m., Hannett asked the Edge what to do since the rhythm section couldn't keep time. During the session, the Atrix, another Dublin band, showed up and accused U2 of stealing the guitar riff from their song "Treasure on the Wasteland." After they left, engineer Paul Thomas proposed adding a reversed cymbal sound, which they did.

Once the backing track was done, the Edge wanted to add more guitar parts. Hannett was confused but let him try. The Edge improvised a harmony to the main riff, and Hannett loved it, saying it sounded like brass.

Mixing

Hannett insisted the song be mixed at 3 a.m., deeming it the "most creative time". He and Moloney stayed up for three days without sleep, making tape loops to fix the band's poor timekeeping. Hannett applied his trademark drum sound by processing the snare through a Time Modulator, then reset the settings so engineers could not see what he did. After returning to London, the band rejected his first mix but accepted his second. Three studio mixes exist: the 3:47 single mix, a 4:03 mix on the Hannett tribute album And Here Is the Young Man, and a 4:13 version with a longer intro on the 1984 UK "Pride (In the Name of Love)" 12-inch limited edition single.

Live performances

Before it was known as "11 O'Clock Tick Tock," the song first appeared onstage in August 1979 under the working title "Silver Lining" with different words. The version that became the single took shape between March and May 1980. Its B-side, "Touch," grew out of an earlier piece called "Trevor" and was performed during the Boy Tour in 1980–1981, but never again afterward. In the early 1980s, the track was a live staple for U2, featured on the 1983 album Under a Blood Red Sky and the concert film Live at Red Rocks.

Because the band had few songs at the time, they would sometimes play it twice in one show—once early and once during the encore. Until the end of 1982, it was regularly paired with "The Ocean" from Boy; that combination can be heard on the "Fire" single. After the Unforgettable Fire Tour ended in July 1985, the song has been performed only thirteen times, seven of which came during the 2001 Elevation Tour. Its most recent outing was at the Roxy Theatre in 2015, part of a promotional stop on the Innocence + Experience Tour. Despite the drop in frequency, it remains among U2’s 25 most-played live songs.