History
The song was originally written about the United States' military intervention during the 1980s in the El Salvador Civil War. Bono told The Edge to "put El Salvador through an amplifier". The song is a combination of The Edge's guitar slides, Adam Clayton's laid back bassline, Larry Mullen Jr.'s cold drumming and Bono's aggressive and growly vocals during the verses, and a spoken word section during the bridge. Bono was thinking of American President Ronald Reagan as he sang "This guy comes up to me / His face red like a rose on a thorn bush / Like all the colours of a royal flush / And he's peeling off those dollar bills / Slapping them down / 100! / 200!"
Read more about this topic: Bullet The Blue Sky
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
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“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)