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U2's song Vertigo from their album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb begins like this:

Un, dos, tres, catorce!!

In Spanish that's "one, two, three, fourteen". Why "fourteen"?

I've read a number of theories, ranging from it being a reference to the Bible, to the number of North Korea's atomic bombs, to a nudge to their producer, to Bruce Springsteen saying that "rock and roll does not have to be one, two, three, four", to it being the number of albums they had made, to them being just too drunk to get the Spanish words right.

What is U2's official stance, if any, regarding the meaning of "catorce" in this song?

5 Answers 5

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From Wikipedia:

At the beginning of the song, Bono counts off in Spanish "Unos, dos, tres, catorce!". In English, this translates to "one , two, three, fourteen!". When asked about this oddity in an interview for Rolling Stone, Bono replied "there may have been some alcohol involved".

Wikipedia's source for the quoted interview is here:

How do you explain the strange Spanish math at the beginning of "Vertigo"? In English, that countoff is "one, two, three, fourteen."

There might have been some alcohol involved [smiles]. Improvisation is where this group really hits its form. That's when Larry and Adam feel they're contributing the most to songwriting. Through improvisations, we got "Miracle Drug." That's Adam's chord sequence. "Yahweh" -- that is something that came into my mouth, out of my lips, before I knew what I was singing. [Yahweh is the Hebrew name for God.] What an amazing word. You know it's a holy word, even if you didn't know what it meant.

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  • Since this is the only answer with an actual official source, I'm marking it as accepted.
    – walen
    Commented Jun 6, 2022 at 21:03
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Found this reference on the net. Looks like it is a homage to John Ritter, an american comic actor famous for Three's Company sitcom, who died a year before the album was released.

The quote below is taken from the video description, link emphasized by me.

Bono did not come up with this phrase. It is really from the Three's Company episode "Double Trouble" - here is proof. I don't know why it has taken this long to be exposed

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  • 2
    Thanks for your answer, looks like a good possibility. Has U2 confirmed this?
    – walen
    Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 12:34
  • @walen haven't found an official statement or interview confirming that. Maybe the quote is so famous that it does not need a proof (eg. "the only thing you done was yesterday" in John Lennon's How Do You Sleep is an obvoius reference to Paul McCartney - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Do_You_Sleep%3F_(John_Lennon_song)
    – TimSparrow
    Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 12:39
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Bono's mother died when he was 14. That might factor in. It spun his world upside down, no?

She works her way into many U2 songs, and even Vertigo ends:

I can feel your love teaching me how
Your love is teaching me how
How to kneel

Which might be both a reference to his mother's love, and God, given Bono's faith.

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This is the strangest answer I’ve seen. From Quora:

Not a lot people know about Bono’s computer science background. Bono was clearly alluding at the starting sequence of the decimal representation of the diagonal from the corner to the origin of the n-th stage of growth of the two-dimensional cellular automaton defined by “Rule 505”, based on the 5-celled von Neumann neighborhood. As documented in A288770 - OEIS, the sequence starts with: “1, 2, 3, 14, ...”

Personally, I believe my first answer, that there was alcohol involved. I also think that Bono might have just wanted us to wonder about it and generate interest in the song. If that was the reason he did it, he was successful. I doubt if he watched “Three’s Company” but that’s just my humble opinion.

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  • Ok, that Quora answer seems like obvious trolling, but it is funny nonetheless.
    – walen
    Commented May 23, 2022 at 7:27
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In the Threes Company episode where Jack pretends to be a doctor, he picks up his stethoscope and says “testing….. uno, dos, tres, catorce…”

This was the only time I’ve ever heard it in that sequence until this song came out. That episode is from the early 80’s.

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