The 1984 song Bono called painful to perform: “Excruciating”
The number one rule Bono abided by in U2 was always about trying new things.
He didn’t like the idea of staying in one place for too long every single time he wrote a record, and every one of their new releases has felt like a step forward for the band, even if it did mean making some truly bone-headed decisions along the way. That’s the reason that so many people love to hate the Irish legends every time they come out with something new, but Bono didn’t mince words about it being difficult to get every member of the band to agree on what should turn up on one of their records.
Even the band has stated that most of their records didn’t capture everything that they were supposed to when they first laid everything down, and while they had to stick with what came out on record, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t change things up when they went onstage. That was where they felt the most at home, and Bono was practically free to say whatever was on his mind at the time.
Granted, that’s half the reason why people say that he has a messiah complex every time he sings, but he’s never exactly malicious, either. He firmly believes that music is one of the reasons why they could change the world for the better, and considering how big they had become by the time they made The Joshua Tree, it seemed like he genuinely could be right when getting so many people on their feet.
That kind of music could move mountains, but those hits only came after the frontman was able to open himself up a little bit more. A lot of what turned up on their first records featured him sounding a bit unsure of himself, and while ‘I Will Follow’ will always be a permanent fixture of their setlist, it’s not like it was saying anything as profound as ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ was years after the fact.
In fact, the turning point for their career had already started when they started making War, but there was a lot of ground to be covered beyond just political material. Bono wanted the chance to have a profound effect on people, and while religion and politics may have been a bit of a stretch for people to get on board, he felt that ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’ was the first time he felt like things were changing. Paying tribute to Martin Luther King Jr may have been the first step, but Bono was much more interested in that one word in parentheses.
Compared to every other rock band out at the time, Bono said that what separated him from the pack was being able to talk about love without sounding too sentimental, saying, “It is probably our big subject as a band. When we sang ‘Pride (In the Name of Love),’ that was an excruciating thing for a young male to sing, if you think about it. But if you are asking what side of love this is, you know, the English language is so rich, but it is limited in this word ‘love’.”
And it’s not about the romantic side of the word by any means. King was looking at the shape of the human heart and hoping that the world could find it within themselves to melt prejudices that they saw around them, and that kind of compassion was what Bono was getting at. There was no reason for him to talk about romance at the time, but the idea of people working together was the kind of sentiment that carried him from this song all the way to a song like ‘One’.
Because as much as love songs can come across as a little bit trite in rock and roll circles, it was never a bad word for Bono. ‘Love’ was the word that The Beatles had built their career on, and while they had their fair share of love songs, they were prepared to talk about the deeper meanings of what human connection was, the same way that Bono would be doing decades down the line.
