Bono discusses the two artists that shaped U2: “That’s where we were”
No band can emerge fully formed, sounding like the future of music. For every act that claims to hold the key to the next evolution of rock and roll, there’s always a legion of influences that helped shape their sound along the way. While U2 has polished their image to the point of flirting with adult contemporary in some areas, Bono still believes their roots are firmly grounded in the early post-punk and new wave movements, drawing inspiration from artists like David Bowie and Joy Division.
Despite being a glorified dad rock band nowadays, there was a moment when U2 was the most interesting act bubbling up from the underground. They hadn’t lost the punk principles that most people sang about, but Boy fits somewhere between the moment when the first wave of punk officially ended, and something else was beginning.
And listening back to some of the guitar tones The Edge puts on their first record, it’s hard not to see a little bit of resemblance to Joy Division. While the raw emotion in Ian Curtis’s voice was never going to match with Bono’s croon, his lyrics about alienation and feeling emotionally despondent are evident in a lot of U2’s early work.
However, while Curtis was content to lay his feelings on the table and let other people take whatever they could from it, Bono tried to turn everything into a force for good. ‘I Will Follow’ is still one of the most bombastic post-punk tracks ever conceived, and from there, it’s only a little bit away from what they would eventually do going into albums like The Unforgettable Fire.
If Joy Division taught them to inhabit their emotions, though, Bowie taught them to be fearless in music. Across albums like Low, ‘The Starman’ was deconstructing everything that made him a star and learning to follow his own muse. Station to Station had been one of his darkest records, and his choice to move to Berlin for a few albums put him in the centre of art rock for a while, working alongside Brian Eno to bring different songs to life.
According to Bono, both acts were extremely important in giving them permission to see beyond their core sound, saying, “Punk started to look incredibly limited. It seemed so rigid, not just musically, but it started to have a rulebook and codes. And then I remember Joy Division came along, and I really related to that because of the moods and atmosphere. And David Bowie’s Low – that was very interesting. That’s where we were. So we started with that thing.”
Since Joy Division only had a few albums to their name, it’s a lot clearer to see Bowie’s influence on their later work, especially when they started working against their strengths and moved to Berlin to disassemble themselves on the album Achtung Baby. Like all great artists before them, they knew that life was about more than just the catchy single.
And while a lot of their career detours now warrant a casual eye-roll from fairweather fans, you can’t say that U2 aren’t doing exactly what they promised when they first started. They wanted to branch out from their contemporaries, and even if it was a detour into a big ditch, they would never say ‘no’ to an idea if they thought it had a little bit of merit to it.
