It was March 1989 when The Edge joined Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, Brynsley Forde (of Aswad), Annie Lennox, the Thompson Twins, Chrissie Hynde, Jerry Harrison, and Karl Wallinger (of World Party) in Moscow to support Greenpeace’s efforts to educate and impact environmental change in the Soviet Union. As Greenpeace put it, “The gathering in Red Square represented, by several orders of magnitude, the largest and most potent collection of rock’s elite ever to gather in Eastern Europe. It also serves as a sort of crescendo to rock-and-roll’s environmental chorus. Like dozens of other major rock acts, the artists who gathered in Red Square are converts to eco-activism. They were in the Soviet Union as volunteers, to promote the release of an album of songs they had donated to Greenpeace. The record, called Breakthrough, would introduce environmental issues in general, and Greenpeace in particular, to young people in the Soviet Union. Each record included a brochure that described environmental problems, Greenpeace and provided an address in the Soviet Union for more information.”
Elsewhere in the world, the album was known as Rainbow Warriors, however Greenpeace wanted to use this as an opportunity to use popular music to reach out and break through (as it were) to the millions in the then-police state of the Soviet Union. It was 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall had yet to happen. Billy Joel had just completed his tour of the Soviet Union a couple of years prior and the feeling of glasnost was still present. Greenpeace took this as an opportunity to get their message out.
So, as U2 tour Moscow this week, the buildings may be the same but so much has changed since Edge visited Red Square in 1989. Greenpeace asked the question on the front page of their November/December 1989 magazine, “Can Rock ‘n’ Roll Save the World?” Two decades later, the answer is it certainly has helped to an extent.
To find out more about Edge’s trip to Moscow with Greenpeace, check out the Hot Press article written by Bill Graham, reprinted in Propaganda.
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