The 1979 album The Edge couldn’t imagine life without: “This is amazing”
The essence of U2’s greatest tunes has always come from what The Edge has been playing.
Even though Bono can be really hit or miss depending on what he’s talking about, it’s hard to have a bad time when listening to those cascading guitar notes that soar over stadiums whenever they are performing. The Edge has written the rulebook on that style of playing, but he felt that there were more than a few songs that made him get a little more gritty than he normally did every single time he played.
Granted, it’s not like The Edge ever played notes that would have sounded too dirty for even the most polished religious stations in the world. ‘Vertigo’ was one of the grimiest rock and roll songs they had ever made, and even then, it sounds like the kind of tune that could play in a stadium or be featured in a TV commercial. But underneath all of that polish is a band that had their roots in punk rock.
The Edge was already into guitar thanks to watching people like Rory Gallagher, but when prog rock started taking over the airwaves, he didn’t want to be playing that for the rest of his life – he needed a better outlet for his anger, and when he heard The Clash play for the first time, he had finally found his calling. He had already heard of bands like Stiff Little Fingers, but Joe Strummer was bringing a greater message to the table.
Whereas most rock songs were about partying all night long, Strummer needed his songs to have a more political angle to them, and thanks to Mick Jones, every one of them sounded catchy as hell. ‘Safe European Home’ is still a fine song even with its lyrical content, but you would have sworn that Jones was trying to top himself with every single hook he put into the tune, whether it was the backing vocals or those blaring guitar riffs.
And as far as The Edge was concerned, he couldn’t have imagined life without London Calling setting his world on fire, saying, “They were part of our era, the punk and post-punk movement. One of the first punk shows I ever saw was Stiff Little Fingers, so music I cared about always had a political element. London Calling is their finest hour. It was released when they were being called sell-outs. I never cared about all that – I just thought this is an amazing band, this is an amazing record.”
All of the trademark Clash moments are on this record, but the political angle wasn’t lost on the other members of U2. There were plenty of opportunities for them to follow in the band’s footsteps, but even if they didn’t sound remotely like them when they played tunes like ‘I Will Follow’, they were probably never going to land on a song like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ without ‘London Calling’ coming first.
But beyond the lyrical content, it’s the diversity in the track list that makes the album so good. Some of that adventurousness may have gone a little bit overboard when they eventually made Sandinista, but on London Calling, you get a taste of everything they were good at, whether that was reggae on ‘The Guns of Brixton’, old-school rock and roll on ‘Brand New Cadillac’ or making rock and roll songs that didn’t seem to have a set genre to them like ‘Lost in the Supermarket’.
The punk regime did eventually end up getting a bit too elitist every now and again, but The Clash were the one band that helped open doors for people like The Edge. Not every one of U2’s albums was going to be a smash hit, but if they saw Strummer taking these kinds of chances, why couldn’t they do the same?
