The Meaning Behind “I Will Follow” by U2

Long before their Las Vegas residency at Sphere, before all of their many reinventions, before The Joshua Tree made them international superstars, U2 released Boy. As far as debut albums go, U2’s 1980 release did fairly well, reaching No. 63 on the Billboard 200 and getting into the Top 20 on Canada’s and New Zealand’s album charts. It also spawned U2’s first hit single, “I Will Follow.”

While U2’s sound evolved over the decades, “I WIll Follow” was a brilliant introduction to the band’s inimitable approach. It is also the first of several times throughout U2’s discography that lead singer Bono references his mother, Iris, who died of a brain hemorrhage when he was 14 years old. It’s as much a song about Bono’s youth as it is about his mother, and its twists and turns deserve a closer look.

“I Will Follow”’s Progression from Boyhood to Manhood

Bono has said that he wrote “I Will Follow” from his mother’s perspective, and that the song’s refrain, If you walk away, walk away / I’ll walk away, walk away / I will follow, is a statement about her unconditional love for her children. Yet the verses appear to be from Bono’s own perspective. The first verse makes more sense when coming from a young boy who has yet to fully understand the needs of others.

I was on the outside
When you said, you said you needed me
I was looking at myself
I was blind, I could not see

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Whereas the first verse is a flashback to a time when Iris was still alive–and Bono was too young to understand her vulnerability–the second verse takes us to a snapshot of teenage Bono, who struggles to come of age in the absence of his mother.

A boy tries hard to be a man
His mother takes him by his hand
If he stops to think, he starts to cry
Oh, why?

The third and final verse continues the progression of Bono from boy to man. In the first verse, he says he is “on the outside,” hinting at the detachment he felt from his mother, but in the third verse, he feels connected to her, even though she is no longer with him.

I was on the inside
When they pulled the four walls down
I was looking through the window
I was lost, I am found

Now Bono is “on the inside” and looking outward instead of inward. So while he feels lost without his mother, he is also found because he is now mature enough to feel more of a connection with her.

Bono wanted to make sure the music for “I Will Follow” had an emotional intensity that could match those of his lyrics. When recording the song, The Edge initially had difficulty translating Bono’s anguish into his own guitar playing, much to the frontman’s frustration. Bono grabbed Edge’s guitar from him to demonstrate what he was looking for, so he had a hand in the intense guitar sound that was central to many music fans’ introduction to U2.

The Impact of “I Will Follow”

Initially, “I Will Follow” only received substantial airplay on album-oriented rock stations, getting enough exposure to land at No. 20 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. However, the song had a second wave of popularity when U2 released a version of it from their 1983 live album, Under a Blood Red Sky. That version, taken from a show in Sankt Goarshausen, Germany, went to No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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Versions of “I Will Follow” recorded by other artists have appeared on several covers and tribute albums. Also, the Replacements’ song “Kids Don’t Follow,” from their 1982 EP, Stink, was a song that Paul Westerberg wrote in response to hearing U2 play “I Will Follow” at a live show he attended. Westerberg assumed that Bono wrote the entire song from his own perspective, so “Kids Don’t Follow” was his assertion that young people won’t do what their parents want them to do.

It was an understandable mistake for Westerberg to make, especially since Bono appears to change his perspective throughout “I Will Follow.” While U2’s sound has changed frequently over the course of their career, “I Will Follow” shows that they were already accomplished musicians and songwriters in their early days. If not for the mega-success they would enjoy just a few years later, the song might be long forgotten. Continued radio airplay and its inclusion in U2’s live sets has introduced more and more fans to “I Will Follow” over the years, helping to build its reputation as one of the band’s most essential songs to know.

Photo by Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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