“Great hope”: The band Bono said inspired U2’s sound more than any other in the 1980s
A long time ago, in a galaxy that we know all too well, U2 were once cool. It might seem unfathomable given Bono’s extensive collection of Police shades, fur-trimmed jackets and increasingly ridiculous lyrics, as well as the band’s continued commitment to completely unbind their stellar early legacy, but it is true. For the majority of the 1980s, the Dublin quartet were the hottest guitar band around.
While the above statement is all about context, and not exactly true when you bring into consideration the culturally vital strokes that were being enacted in alternative rock in the underground, The Smiths’ pioneering indie sound and, of course, the transformative impact that the ‘Big Four’ of thrash made, when it came to the mainstream, U2 were indeed the most cherished guitar band. Not only did they appeal to musos, something that seems almost inexplicable to most music lovers today, but their resonant anthems also tapped into the era’s defiant spirit, providing solace as The Cold War limped on.
Ironically, U2 started life as a post-punk outfit, given the clean-cut, stadium-filling image they’ve had for decades now, but their first handful of records pushed the genre’s formula forward, gradually tying it with the decade’s expansive proclivities. Incredibly compelling at the time, this immense sound was also their key to superstardom on 1987’s The Joshua Tree and signalled all the ensuing moments we’d rather forget.
U2’s character in their early records was undeniably fresh. It is typified by 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, an atmospheric effort brought to life by the master of all things ambient, Brian Eno, alongside Daniel Lanois. It also laid the foundations for their magnum opus three years later. Yet, according to Bono, the sound wasn’t exactly original.
As ‘Big Music’ was the sound of the day, with rock bands getting incredibly cacophonous during the 1980s, U2 weren’t the first to institute it. While it came together thanks to a combination of the post-punk ethos, new wave and even the sonic proclivities of the New Romantics bleeding into culture, no one really knows who conceived the first record in the mightily successful ‘Big Music’ trend. While The Waterboys had a key hand on their first three albums, one of the other most instrumental acts was Glasgow’s Simple Minds.
Although the Jim Kerr-fronted band is best known for their 1985 global hit, ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, which featured in that year’s iconic coming-of-age movie, The Breakfast Club, before reaching that pinnacle, they had conceived a signature sound and became lauded for it. They had several popular songs during the early 1980s, including 1982’s ‘Someone Somewhere In Summertime’, from their fifth album, New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84).
According to Bono on his 2022 Desert Island Discs appearance, ‘Someone Somewhere In Summertime’ had the greatest impact on his band’s sound during the formative years of the early 1980s. He said the song “just has great hope” and Simple Minds were fully immersed in the moment in that period, with this flow state creating such a stellar track.
“Very few people get to own a sound, and I think in U2, we got to own certain colours of the spectrum or certain feelings that are ours, but some of them are from Simple Minds”, Bono said. “For some of this song, you will feel some early U2 in it, and we learnt from them.”
With much larger tracks on 1983’s War, such as ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Two Hearts Beat As One’ than what came before, it was clear what direction U2 were moving and how they had taken several vital cues from the sound of Simple Minds. To be fair to them, it was an astute creative decision. Without it, they wouldn’t have ended up with their residency at the Las Vegas Sphere.
