“It’s extraordinary”: Bono names the Bob Dylan song that altered songwriting
As the frontman of U2, Bono has brought pleasure to ears across the globe for nearly half a century. The band set out with a post-punk aesthetic, as heard in early hits like ’11 O’Clock Tick-Tock’ and’ I Will Follow’. In due course, they pulled up alongside Scotland’s Simple Minds in a battle of synth-era pop-rock eminence.
While U2 were eternally conscious of radio appeal and chart success, Bono’s writing often searched beneath the skin with personal reflection and sociopolitical commentary. For the latter, he has several major influences to thank, but none more so than Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. Though delivered in a different style, one can draw parallels between some of Dylan’s early folk work and U2 songs like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’.
A young Bono fell in love with Dylan’s early political songwriting and the material of his creative peak in the mid-1960s folk-rock trilogy. Songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ captured the youngster’s attention and thus triggered a lifelong love affair with Dylan’s music.
Speaking to Mojo for a past feature, the U2 singer noted how Dylan’s music developed over the years with a maturity and edifying quality that can guide you at any point in your life. “In your 20s, you’re not so much interested in ideas like [Dylan’s 1980s material]. You’re more interested in The Times They Are A-Changin”,” he mused. “But Bob Dylan is there for you at every stage of your life.”
U2 released their debut album, Boy, in 1980, and by the following year, Bono enjoyed fame on an international scale. From his steadily rising stature, he never forgot his biggest songwriting influence and was dumbfounded by Dylan’s 1981 album Shot of Love, primarily because of its epic closer ‘Every Grain of Sand’.
During a 2022 appearance on BBC Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs, Bono picked out ‘Every Grain of Sand’ as one of his all-time favourite songs. Remembering events from earlier that morning, Bono likened Bob Dylan’s work to that of the British poet William Blake. “This very morning, I walked to Picadilly, and there was a Christopher Wren building there, a little church, and you can just sit there,” he said.
Upon entering the building, Bono noticed that it had hosted William Blake’s baptism over two centuries before. “I saw on the door, written there on the plaque: ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the Palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour,'” Bono quoted. “This must’ve been in Bob Dyan’s — in the back of his mind.”
It isn’t clear whether these lines of Blake’s directly influenced Dylan’s lyrics in ‘Every Grain of Sand’. However, the songwriter found inspiration in eminent literary icons spanning the centuries, from William Shakespeare to Allen Ginsberg. This voracious appetite for cultural and historical immersion fuelled Dylan’s unique timelessness.
Five years on, Dylan released another truly inspired track, a diamond in the rough of a relative nadir in his lengthy career. The Minnesotan troubadour is at his best when whipping up a thick narrative in his poetic verse. In ‘Brownsville Girl’, a cut from Knocked Out Loaded, he unfurled the story of a long lost love blended with a reflection on a Gregory Peck western. It was a rare songwriting collaboration with playwright Sam Shepard.
Bono, who picked the song out as another favourite from Dylan’s catalogue, felt that the 11-minute epic “altered songwriting” forever. “It’s a completely new kind of song and also has this spectacular line because he can always make you burst out laughing: ‘If there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now.'”
Continuing, he commended Dylan’s idea of addressing the song to an elusive romantic interest. The line, “She ain’t you, but she’s here, and she’s got that dark rhythm in her soul”, suggests that the song isn’t actually about the Brownsville Girl. Bono noted similar allusions in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ before realising the “Italian poet” mentioned in the song was Dante. “Every word that Dante wrote was for his muse, Beatrice, and there’s a Beatrice there in most Bob Dylan songs,” he concluded. “Whether she’s real or imagined isn’t important to me, but it’s extraordinary.”
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