The band U2 was just one of the many

[jenaizhang]

Hi, I have a question regarding usage of past perfect tense. In particular, I want to reference material taken from GMAT SC strategy guide (4th edition) pg 100, 5th paragraph.

"Using this construction, you can even make a tricky sentence in which the first clasuse expresses an early action in simple past. Then, a second clause expresses a later action in past perfect to indicate continued effect (by a still later past time).

ex. The band U2 was just one of the many new groups on the rock musis scene in the early 80s, but less than ten years later, U2 had fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music."

My question is that I thought past perfect is used to indicate an earlier past event and simple past is used to indicate a later past event. Therefore the information quoted above seems to contradict normal usage of past perfect tense.

Can an instructor please shed light on this and explain why the above sentence construction is correct?

Thank you very much.

Jenai

[esledge]

My question is that I thought past perfect is used to indicate an earlier past event and simple past is used to indicate a later past event. Therefore the information quoted above seems to contradict normal usage of past perfect tense.

Can an instructor please shed light on this and explain why the above sentence construction is correct?

Great question Jenai! The main point is that this use of past perfect is an exception to the general rule.

Generally, when you have two verbs in a sentence, one simple past and one past perfect, the timeline from earliest to latest event is (1) past perfect, (2) simple past, (3) now.

When we arrived at the theater, the movie had started.
Timeline: (1) movie began, (2) we arrived, (3) now.

In this exception:

The band U2 was just one of the many new groups on the rock musis scene in the early 80s, but less than ten years later, U2 had fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music."
Timeline: U2 a new group (early 80's), U2 eclipses rivals (sometime in 80's), U2 top of pantheon of music (early 90's).

It's truly a tricky sentence, as the past perfect action happens before a certain implied event, which is simply the conclusion of that action. The main thing to note is that you could never make this exceptional use of the tense without very careful use of the time-indicating phrases in italics above.

[AmandeepL201]

I am still not convinced . can it be elaborated a bit

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please could you be clearer: which part doesn't convince you?

[AakankshaR655]

The event when the band eclipsed its past rival is happening as most recent. so why we have used "Had" . Could you give any more example to deal this kind of problem and its explanation in details.

Thanks

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

The rule that you've learnt is that past perfect indicated the 'past before the past', i.e. an action before a previous action. In contrast with Emily (above) I wouldn't describe this as an exception to that rule. It's just a more complicated example. If we take the part of the sentence above after the 'but', we have "less than ten years later, U2 had fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music." We could replace the first part with an equivalent time phrase and make this an independent sentence: By the early 1990s, U2 had fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music. This is a nice, simple example of the past perfect according to the rule above.

All that's happened here is that we've got a separate time-frame in the first clause of the sentence. Here are a couple more (correct) examples for you to analyze:
I woke up with a terrible headache yesterday, but by the time I got to school it had gone.
By the age of 30 my grandmother had climbed Everest and had trekked to the South Pole: she was born to achieve great things.