Bono, U2 and the adoration of BB King: “I felt like a girl”
U2 has always had a habit of taking their craft more than a little bit too seriously. Compared to every other rock band that have been known to loosen up after a while, it felt like Bono was incapable of getting off the soapbox for more than five minutes during the Irish group’s prime during The Joshua Tree. But even when they were working on their most pretentious album, Rattle and Hum, Bono could at least bow down to the vocal chops of BB King when working on ‘When Love Comes to Town’.
Then again, there’s a good chance that people would have had a problem with U2’s grandiose live album and movie on principle. They had the right to create whatever extravagant experience they wanted, but considering they were less than a decade into their recording career, seeing them put themselves on the same level as legends and cover the likes of Bob Dylan and The Beatles felt like jumping the gun on their iconic status.
Before ‘When Love Comes to Town’ even starts, fans had already sat through the more ridiculous moments in the movie, such as Bono claiming to “steal” ‘Helter Skelter’ back from Charles Manson. We were only a few minutes away from lecturing his audience for not caring about what he had to say, but a casual jam session with BB King was a nice palette cleanser.
Because as much as the group put themselves up on a high horse, they at least knew that the greatest rock and roll of all time came back to the blues. No matter how many times artists try to make futuristic music, no one could ever go wrong with sitting on a blues riff and soaking all of the emotion out of those three chords, and King was the true master of translating his sorrow through his guitar.
But the real energy behind King came whenever he opened his mouth. If you go back and listen to tracks like ‘The Thrill is Gone’, his gruff tone of voice when singing is as signature as his slow bends as if he’s trying everything he can to not scream out in pain that his love has abandoned him.
Bono already had some bluesy chops under his belt on a handful of U2 songs, but the minute that he started to sing alongside the guitarist, he knew that he was never going to match him, saying, “I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. Then B.B. opened his mouth, and I felt like a girl.”
Granted, Bono did at least know his place a little better in ‘When Love Comes To Town’, usually getting the hell out of the way so King can grandstand where he wants to. Compared to almost everything else in the movie and accompanying album, this is everything you could have wanted, with musicians playing for the sake of playing rather than stroking their egos one at a time.
And it’s not like Bono didn’t learn some tips from King along the way, either. Looking at where they went later on Achtung Baby, Bono found a more natural way of channelling his anguish in song rather than just shouting, like the subtle pain in ‘One’ or the world-weary tone of voice that he puts into ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’. U2 will always have their distinctive sound, but seeing them hold their own next to King proved that they were still as much students of music as they were rock and roll prophets.
