The legendary artists Bono said created their own galaxy: “Comes and goes”
When looking at all of rock’s most significant heroes, you’d be hard-pressed to find any who are more interested in the real intellectual purpose of rock ‘n’ roll and music itself than Bono.
After all, he once said that rock ‘n’ roll itself was a form of “liberation”, effectively arguing that, if for nothing else, it’s a form of music that allows you to feel free, a place where you can explore any theme or concept you want, and a tool for bringing people together or guiding society through rough times.
This observation isn’t totally off the mark, of course, as music genuinely does have the power to change the world. But where Bono’s views differ is that, compared to his peers, he seems to have acquired a level of self-belief and authenticity that places him in a better position when it comes to both the current musical landscape and his journey to the top with U2.
It’s also why he’s landed himself in hot water on more than one occasion, and why many people, particularly the younger audiences, struggle to box the band’s style or genre into one simple category. Depending on the record of the era, U2 can either be viewed as a revolutionary, forward-thinking rock band or a tryhard gimmick band, with usually no in between.
However, what’s even more interesting than that is often how Bono responds to such views or developments. For instance, there’s the obvious example with their infamous iTunes scandal, when the band decided to upload their record Songs of Innocence onto millions of users’ accounts, which justifiably sparked outrage, followed by a particularly relentless period of backlash that the band still finds themselves defending.
But Bono still stands by the fact that the idea was to gift their fans some free music, which is a similar attitude he’s held towards many of the band’s apparent mishaps. These usually occur when they’re accused of losing direction or selling out, to which Bono often maintains the view that they were only doing what felt like the right thing to do at the time.
During one of those times, he also said that rock suffers from a “poverty of ambition”. Now, although U2 most definitely has made the wrong choice more than once, he does have a point. After all, many musicians across all genres struggle with taking risks, and if U2 are to be accused of anything, they can’t ever be accused of playing it safe. Which is also incidentally something they learned from two of the greatest acts in history: The Beatles and Bob Dylan.
In fact, Bono once compared the two to a “collision” that “gave us the galaxy that our planet is in”. He also said that Dylan, in particular, is one of those strange, anarchic outliers, an otherworldly presence that “comes and goes”, often appearing like a shadow in groups of people, but an intriguing sort of higher being one-to-one. The pair have worked together numerous times in various capacities, enough for them to call each other friends.
And yet, Bono struggles to see it that way. In his eyes, he is and will always be a fan. As he put it himself, “I would consider myself to be more of a fan than a friend. He might call me friend; I would call me a fan. I find him very old-school, ancient values, ancient wisdom.”
Concluding, “For a man who helped to give birth to the modern era, he’s really coming from a very old place.”
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