The one band Bono said deserved all the praise in the world: “It hardly seems enough”
For all of the pompous tirades that he has gone on, Bono never for a second claimed to be bigger than anyone else.
He knew that rock and roll was a tool that people could use to speak their mind, but even if he had the voice to project over an arena of people, he was only learning from the people that have come before him. But even if everyone from The Beatles to The Stones cast a wide net over all of rock and roll, some artists practically defy any kind of musical praise.
I know it’s hard to see Bono talking about any other music other than his own at some points, but when he was a kid, he knew that songs were going to be the one thing that set his world on fire. Other people may have been looking to become the biggest actor in the world or try their hand at playing sports, but when the U2 frontman heard a voice like John Lennon’s, he was absolutely hooked by what he heard.
Compared to every other member of the Fab Four, Lennon was speaking his mind from the minute that they had on their later material, and while it might not have always been easy to understand, Bono was transfixed. Especially when Lennon decided to push himself one step further on records like Plastic Ono Band, his performances on songs like ‘Mother’ practically set the gold standard for what U2 needed to be. They could have great songs, but if they didn’t have the passion, there was no point in continuing.
Then again, Lennon was ahead of the game in many respects by that point. No one could have possible believed that one of The Beatles would have laid themselves bare like that, but if Lennon managed to strip all of the sweetness away from his sound and get away with it, it was only a matter of time before the young kids started picking up instruments of their own and started making music that brought everything back down to basics like Lennon could.
Although the punk regime may have been given a massive kick in the ass once The Clash and Sex Pistols came out, Bono felt a much greater kinship with what the Ramones had been doing. They had started the punk tradition by playing fast and loud with songs as short as possible, but the songcrafting was always in the grand tradition of the pop groups of years gone by, which probably explains why they ended up working with Phil Spector later.
And while none of the original members are among the living anymore, Bono still thought that all the praise that he had for them still wouldn’t be enough, telling them, “I didn’t know that to be this simple was going to be so complicated, but without you I wouldn’t have started down the road of writer… and then Joey, you lent me your voice. It hardly seems enough to say thanks for that.”
But perhaps the reason why all that is not enough is because Ramones never seemed to get their just due. They never managed to make it to the big leagues in the same way that U2 did, and even when their music had become an archetype for what pop-punk bands would be doing in the mid-1990s, their timing couldn’t have been worse when they decided to call it a day in the era of Green Day and the Offspring.
That kind of success was never in the cards for them, and yet their legacy still lives on in the hearts of punk fans the same way that Lemmy lives on in every rock and roller that had a gravelly voice. Even if they weren’t claiming to be the greatest band in the world, Bono wasn’t that far off when he called Joey’s voice a miracle on Songs of Innocence. It was a godsend for him, and not many other vocalists could be as singular as he was when he got onstage.
