page_title: Slug (song)
section_title: Background and recording
hierarchical_section_title: Slug (song) / Background and recording
caption_attribution_description: I forgot which part of Shinjuku this is. But it sure looks awesome. Made to explorer Apr 30, 2006 #499
context_page_description: "Slug" is a song by Passengers, a side project of rock band U2 and musician Brian Eno. It is the second track on Passengers' only release, the 1995 album Original Soundtracks 1. The track was originally titled "Seibu" and was almost left off the album before it was rediscovered later during the recording sessions. Though Eno made most of the creative decisions during the recording sessions, "Slug" was one of the few tracks that the members from U2 tried to craft themselves.
  Lyrically, it is a portrait of a desolate soul during a time of celebration. As Passengers were writing songs for fictional soundtracks, they tried to create a visual suggestion from the music that was more important than the story within the lyrics. In "Slug", the instrumentation is intended to represent the lights turning on in a city at night. The group primarily drew inspiration for the song from U2's experiences in Tokyo at the conclusion of the Zoo TV Tour. "Slug" was praised as one of the best songs on the album by critics from various publications.
context_section_description: U2 and musician Brian Eno intended to record a soundtrack for Peter Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book. Although the plan did not come to fruition, Eno suggested they continue recording music suitable for film soundtracks, as Eno did with his Music for Films album series. The result was Original Soundtracks 1, an experimental album of ambient and electronica music, created as a side project between U2 and Eno under the pseudonym "Passengers". Vocalist Bono felt the visual suggestion from the music was more important than the story told by the lyrics, so the band tried to create visual music when recording.  U2 spent time in Shinjuku, Tokyo, at the end of the Zoo TV Tour in 1993, and their experience in the city influenced the recording sessions. The vivid colours of the street signs and billboards reminded them of the set of the 1982 science-fiction film Blade Runner. Bono has said that Original Soundtracks 1 evoked the setting of a "bullet train in Tokyo".
  Recording sessions for Original Soundtracks 1 began with a two-week session in November 1994 at Westside Studios in London, and continued for another five weeks in mid-1995 at Hanover Quay in Dublin.  "Slug" was originally titled "Seibu", after the Japanese department store of the same name.  The song was written to create the visual of lights turning on at dusk in a city like Tokyo, beginning with "tinkling" opening notes resembling Christmas lights, and a gradually rising and falling synthesizer rhythm throughout the song.  After recording "Seibu", the band set it aside, and the piece was forgotten as the sessions progressed. It was almost left off the album, until guitarist The Edge rediscovered the track while looking through the session's discarded songs. Recognizing its potential to become a great song, The Edge brought "Seibu" to Eno's attention, and in early June 1995, Eno listed "Seibu" as a late entry to be considered for the album.
  As producer, Eno had most of the artistic control during the sessions, limiting U2's creative input on the recordings, which prompted The Edge to ensure extra work was put into arranging the song. He has said that along with "Miss Sarajevo" and "Your Blue Room", "Seibu" was one of only three tracks from the album in which U2 "really dug in [their] heels and did more work on and tried to craft".  By early July 1995, the band renamed the song "Seibu/Slug", and Eno noted that the piece started to sound better and described it as a "lovely song". During the final editing of the track, Eno became angry with U2 because they seemed unfocused and he felt he was doing all the work. Bono decided to completely deconstruct the mix of the song. Eno initially disapproved, but was satisfied after hearing the changes. The editing of the track was finalised on 10 July, and The Edge later said he felt his effort to put extra work into the song "paid off".  It was released with the title "Slug" on 7 November 1995, as the second track on the Passengers album Original Soundtracks 1; out of the fourteen tracks on the album, it is one of six tracks to feature vocals.  Details of the song's recording sessions were documented in Eno's 1996 book, A Year with Swollen Appendices.
  As the compositions on Original Soundtracks 1 were written as film soundtrack music, each track is associated with a specific film in the album's liner notes, which were written by Eno.  Four of the fourteen tracks are associated with real films, while "Slug" is credited as having been written for a fictional German film of the same name, directed by "Peter von Heineken" (a reference to U2 manager Paul McGuinness). The liner notes describe the plot of Slug as the story of a young car mechanic who aspires to attract the attention of a cashier by staging a robbery and pretending to be the hero. However, the "robbers" decide to abandon the scheme and commit an actual robbery, causing a shootout where the cashier accidentally shoots a security guard and is arrested, and the mechanic must find a way to get her released from prison.
caption: The music from "Slug" was intended to create the visual of lights in a city like Tokyo, whose setting was an inspiration for the album.
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