"Fleet Click" (1995)
Demo Song
Background Information
Brian Eno published his diary from 1995, called A Year with Swollen Appendices. It was published as a book in 1996 by Faber and Faber in the UK. That was the year that Eno worked with U2 on Original Soundtracks 1, and the book makes mention of a number of demos and working titles throughout. “Fleet Click” is one of the songs included in the book.
“Fleet Click” is mentioned a number of times in the book starting with:
Fascinating day. ‘Fleet Click’ – revealed to have some amazing overdubs from the London sessions I did with Holger Zschenderlein. Immediately great, but much time spent on trying ot fix Bono’s original guitar (which is the only instrument suggesting chordal movement) and then deciding to use it and edit the track round it.The extraordinary development was that a strange and wonderful song appeared – suddenly, after six minutes of music. Did backing vocals. Everyone helping – cooperation at its best. (Des came up with a gorgeous sample – from ‘Love is Blindness’)
On June 6 he wrote a list of progress off songs, and in that list “Fleet Click” needs ‘editing and lyric divisions’.
On July 3 he mentions “Fleet Click” again. “Then to work on ‘Fleet Click’, which Bono feels is flat, featurless and lacking any kind of signature / hook (which of course puts it right up my Strasse – like NEU! circa 1976, We always argue about this, though when the hook finally appears I’m readily caught), and so he tries several melodic approaches – including Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ (!) – but it ends up still in no man’s land.”
“Fleet Click” is also mentioned in a list of songs that the band was working on in studio in an article in Issue 23 of Propaganda Magazine, titled “All Passengers Present and Correct”.
In Bill Flanagan’s book U2 at the End of the World, Flanagan is present for some of the recording sessions for the Passengers Original Soundtracks album.
“Fleet Click” is mentioned in the book:
Maybe it’s just the group flashing back to the last time they played together, but it is startling almost a full year later to hear that sense of Tokyo overload coming out of the music U2 is making. A jam called “Tokyo Fast Bass” ducks and weaves with the barely organized frenzy of the Alta train station. “Fleet Click” staggers like those nights in the neon back alleys, but what’s impressive is that, unlike almost every rhythm track I’ve ever heard a rock band cook up, it does not suggest any limitation on what could sit on top of it. The piece could go anywhere.