Welcome to

“The Ethereal Connection: a synthesis of U2 and The Beatles”

This is the site where The Beatles and U2 are brought together and treated as: Two inter-related rock bands

What follows is a chronological comparison and synthetical analysis of their careers catalyzed by certain similar traits in their album covers that I discovered due to certain circumstances that came together at one point in time (explained below). And as this chronological journey unfolds, the main hypothesis that we present is introduced, mainly, the idea that:

“The careers of both bands, The Beatles and U2, have had a synchronistical development in THREE STAGES plus a concluding stage of achievment, all part of a   ‘Great Rock Cycle’ currently in development. And that in order to close this cycle, there is, or will be

A Third Band

That will have (or is having) a career with this same shape of development in triads, after which the purpose of the cycle will be fulfilled"

How It All Happened?

One day in 1994, when my friend Juan was visiting my house we decided to sat down and relate to each other the histories of our favorites bands, his The Beatles, mine U2. My mom had the whole Beatles vinyl collection, which she purchased in London, and I had all U2’s CD’s up to that point, so Juan and myself arranged the covers chronologically and use them as guides in the telling of our stories.

He was first with The Beatles…and then I followed with U2. When he got to the story of the SGT. PEPPER PERIOD, he was describing the same experience that I was having with ACHTUNG BABY and ZOOROPA. Eventually each one finished his tale, and Juan left home. Later, I went to my bedroom and still impressed by the strong similarities between ‘Sergeant’ and  ‘Achtung’, I took a look at the covers of both of them again.

The colors, the psychedelic feel, the use of ironic characters, and the radical and unpredictable change in sound, were traits that could easily be comparable in both albums.

So I asked my self:

 -How is it possible that at two different moments in time, these two albums had such a similar purpose to them?

-Did circumstances of recurrent pop culture cycles made it possible for this to happen once in the 60’s, and later once again in the 90’s?

-Could there be more of these similarities in the album covers when looking at them chronologically that could be significant?

Excitedly, I re-arranged the covers again from first to last, and looking for similar traits, passed them simultaneously, pair to pair.

Because of the Sergeant and Achtung connection I was predisposed and excited about the possibility of finding more; and I did find it. I found similarities in each of the pairs of covers that I compared. Maybe I wanted to find them so badly, that I sort of invented them out of nothing? I strongly suspected that could be the case (as a matter of fact, I still maintain that suspicion). So I went to show this to some friends and see what they thought about it. While I showed it, I was implying with awe that some sort of paralelism developed between the two bands. After seeing them, their opinions were split pretty much down the middle, some of them thought it made sense, and some of them thought I was out of my mind. Within me works in the same way, a part of me is certain about the veracity of the similarities while the other part doubts them strongly. Ultimately, the 'certain' part has outgrown the 'doubtful' one, leading me in a search for the meaning of this points of contact between The Beatles and U2 that concluded with the proposition that it's not only about these two bands, it's also about a Third Band that should enter the process to complete the scheme.

Original Mistake

Some time after discovering the similarities I realized that at the moment of relating The Beatles history, Juan misplaced the first and second albums. He showed me ‘With The Beatles’ as the first one and ‘Please Please Me’ as the second, when it really was in the contrary order. So when I went to my room and compared them, this is what I first saw:

Because of the strong similarities of these two album covers (black and white, childish innocence feel to it) I felt encouraged to keep up with the exercise, whereas, if Juan would have not originally displace the order and showed me the correct one to begin with, I would have found no similarity in the first pair of covers, and probably, at some point I would have dropped the exercise completely.

Because of the strong similarities of these two album covers (black and white, childish innocence feel to it) I felt encouraged to keep up with the exercise, whereas, if Juan would have not originally displace the order and showed me the correct one to begin with, I would have found no similarity in the first pair of covers, and probably, at some point I would have dropped the exercise completely.