U2 Take a Stand At The Oscars With 'The Hands That Built America'

It’s March 7 and the Oscars air tonight on ABC.

U2 won’t be on hand at this year’s ceremony. It Might Get Loud seemed like a shoo-in for Best Documentary and “Winter” had a decent shot at Best Original Song, but neither earned nominations. What’s more is that the Best Song nominees won’t even perform at tonight’s ceremony.

The situation was a bit different in 2003, when U2 took the stage at the Oscars with “The Hands That Built America.” Commissioned for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and also appearing on The Best of 1990-2000, “Hands” is initially set in the same time period as the film, tracing the evolving relationship between Ireland and America from the late 1800s to the modern day.

Beginning just days before the 2003 Oscars, America’s controversial invasion of Iraq marked a jolt in that bond’s growth. The fallout from Bono’s choice of words upon winning the Golden Globe for Best Original Song two months earlier demanded he watch his tongue, but U2 refused to suppress their distaste for recent events.

For the final verse, which originally referenced the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, Bono substituted two new lines about the war: “In the spring, a yellow cloud on a desert skyline / Some father’s son, is it his or is it mine?” The sentiment dovetails with the rest of the song, introducing a set of “hands” America now more deeply recognizes as influential in its the continual building and rebuilding, while also emphasizing the grave sense of confusion that arrives after one conflict breeds another.

For a coda, Larry drums out the first five beats of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” as though to remind listeners, “I won’t heed the battle call.”

U2 lost Best Original Song to Eminem that night and have yet to have another crack at the category. But live being “where we live,” U2 made the most of “Hands,” both at the Oscars and after. Although retired since the end of the 2005-2006 Vertigo Tour, the song had a healthy life, cropping up in full several times but mostly giving eerie new vigor to “Bullet the Blue Sky” as a snippet.

[Via http://zooropagazette.wordpress.com]