U2-3

by Chris Nilsen and Matt McGee

It's not necessarily the most valuable or costly item you'll find in the world of U2 collectibles, but the U2-3 single is the most important. This record is where it all began - ground zero. It is the Holy Grail of U2 collectibles. If you consider yourself a serious collector, this item -- in some form -- will be in your collection.

Thanks to good marketing and U2's late bloom as an internationally-known Big Rock Band, there are many versions of U2-3, and some are pretty darn easy to find these days. But finding the first version -- the hand-numbered, limited edition of 1,000 12-inch single -- usually involves a hunt of epic proportions.

In this column, Chris Nilsen explains the various versions of this collectible that have been released over time, and Matt McGee looks at the history of U2-3 with Jackie Hayden, the man who developed the idea of issuing a collectible version and did the hand-numbering himself.

U2-3 versions by Chris Nilsen

The 7-inch single

All 7-inch versions are catalog No. 7951.

• 1st issue in 1979, with sunburst label. "UKTM No.B81 8092" written after the copyright warning. Original sleeves have the thumb cut on the front and back.
• 1st reissue (1982) in 4U2Play with red/black labels. Brown, white, orange, yellow and black vinyls.
• 2nd reissue (~1983) in 4U2Play with sunburst labels, no UKTM. Labels have "Made in England" on the edge and "CBS Inc." on the bottom.
• 3rd reissue (~1984) in 4U2Play with sunburst labels, no UKTM, "Made in England" or "CBS Inc."
• 4th reissue (~1985) in 4U2Play with red/black/white labels (like Pac 3).

Reissue sleeves have the thumb cut on the back only. Earlier printings have "Grafatone" printed on the back. Reissue sleeves were printed on thin glossy paper, thicker white card stock, and then cardboard.

I do not believe that a white label test pressing of U2-3 exists. I've never seen or heard of any marked test pressings of an Irish single. The white label copy that is around is a bootleg from around 1990. Derek Larkin of Borderline Records in Ireland told me in 1996 that there were no tests made. It is unlikely, however, that they did a run without some test copies as it is standard procedure in the record making process. I suspect that the first copies run from the plates were treated as tests.

The 12-inch single

All 12-inch versions are catalog No. 12-7951.

• 1st printing of 1000 copies in 1979 with hand-numbered sticker on CBS cover. Ireland is spelled correctly and the band's names appear on both sides of the record near the label. All copies I have confirmed are either black or blue ink numbers.
• 2nd printing. CBS cover, band names on both sides, Ireland misspelled.
• 3rd printing. CBS cover, band names on one side, Ireland misspelled.
• 4th printing. Black cover, band names on one side, Ireland mispelled. There may also be a 5th printing with the black sleeve since there are some label variations.

The cassette single

Issued in 1985, not 1979 as printed on cassette sleeve. Sleeve matches the original picture sleeve of the 7-inch single.

For more information about the various U2-3 release, please visit Chris Nilsen's web site.

The History of U2-3 by Matt McGee

How It All Began

Jackie Hayden had no idea what he was doing those fateful days in 1979. Okay, he knew what he was doing: he was hand-numbering the first 1,000 copies of a new 12" single by a new Dublin band called U2. But did he really know what he was doing? Is there any way he could've known in that moment that he was creating arguably one of the most valued collector's items in rock and roll history?

"No, I had no inkling that the work I was doing at that time would be -- would become so historic," Hayden says almost twenty years after the fact. "What I was thinking, probably, was that I'm quite happy to be doing this because it's something different, something creative. I would've taken pride in the fact that I'd come up with an original idea for a band I was a big fan of myself, and I would've been excited by that part of it. But I would've had no idea, no way of knowing, what the future would hold for the band."

Hayden was working for the CBS Ireland record label at the time. They had signed the young U2 to an Ireland-only distribution deal and sent the band into the studio to come up with its first formal record. U2 had already built a solid core of fans in and around Dublin, thanks in large part to Dave Fanning -- who at that that point was still doing a "pirate" radio show every night. It was on Fanning's show that listeners first heard the three songs that made the cut for this debut record.

"We arranged for Dave Fanning's program to play the three tracks that had been recorded each night for a week so that fans and listeners could vote as to which of those three tracks they would make the A-side," Hayden remembers. "In a sense, while all of this could be regarded as 'cynical record company marketing,' it was also doing creative stuff that nobody else had done before to the extent that we were doing it. And the whole thinking of it was, as far as I was concerned, that 'this is not just another Irish record that you stick on your turntable if you're a DJ and you listen to it, and you play it or you don't play it.' We wanted people to feel, particularly people in the media, this is special."

Special it was. After a full week's worth of airplay, Fanning's listeners chose "Out Of Control" as the A-side track. "Boy/Girl" and "Stories For Boys" were sent to the B-side of what eventually became item 12-7951 in the CBS catalog: U2-3.

It was, as far as Hayden could tell, the first time a 12-inch single had ever been hand-numbered and released as a collector's item.

"I was not aware of this ever happening before with a record. The only comparable situation was that the White Album by the Beatles was issued and each one was numbered, but it wasn't a limited edition. So as far as we were concerned, this was the first time a record had ever been released in which there was a limited quantity and every single person buying that limited quantity was guaranteed to get a unique item. And it was just simply part of wanting to make people feel 'this is not just another band, this is not just another record.' That was the first step."

The next step was to get U2-3 into the record-buying public's hands. First, Hayden and everyone at CBS Ireland had to get it on the store shelves. Every step they took with this record was new, and every step seemed to work.

"I think we quite cleverly used the limited edition situation quite well," Hayden admits. "We gave a small number of copies to radio stations for competition prizes, I think. Then we tried to sell special numbers to shops in the sense of saying to somebody who might only want six copies, 'We'll give you #500 if you take twelve' or 'We'll give you #999 if you take six,' or whatever it might be. Within literally a couple of days, the thousand copies were sold to the shops. By American standards, that would be nothing of any consequence. But in Irish terms, for a rock band to sell a thousand copies -- an unknown rock band selling a thousand copies of its first single -- that in itself was quite an extraordinary achievement. That might explain why we were so excited with the whole idea and the whole prospect of launching the band in this way. We knew if it worked, it was going to have quite a sizable impact."

Talk about impact: It's widely considered to be one of the most collectible U2 items in existence.

Jackie Hayden was CBS Ireland's Marketing Manager at the time, and he went out of his way to hand-number every 12-inch version of U2-3 himself. He doesn't recall exactly how long it took -- probably a couple days -- but he does remember wanting to make sure it was done right. Otherwise, it might not have been done at all.

"In the context of CBS Records in Ireland at the time, other people in the company -- particularly store staff and sales staff -- they would've regarded this as an irrelevance," Hayden says. "I was worried if I gave the job of numbering these records to somebody in the stores, for example, it might not have been done efficiently or whatever. So the only way I could satisfy myself that the job was done 100% perfectly and efficiently was to do it myself, which I did. The thing I wanted to make sure was that it was done properly -- that you didn't find at some later stage two people could claim that they had the same number, or that some hadn't been numbered at all. I thought numbering a thousand copies by hand myself was the best way of ensuring that it was going to be done properly."