The one singer Bono said had the “weight of the whole universe” in his voice
Being the frontman of a rock and roll outfit was never an easy job for Bono.
He thrived on the kind of pressure that came with controlling an audience, and while he didn’t always reach the same heights that the heroes did, there’s hardly anyone looking at one of U2’s shows and saying that the man doesn’t know how to entertain an audience. He can keep every crowd in the palm of his hand, but he realised that some of his favourite singers had that pressure on them even when they stepped off the stage.
Because being an artist wasn’t something that came naturally to any rock and roll star. It’s one thing to be able to entertain people, and maybe even try something new on guitar that no one has heard before, but being able to lay yourself bare is a whole different approach to life. Most people simply aren’t for that level of honesty, but Bono at least had a bunch of singers in his record collection that showed him what that kind of emotional bravery sounded like.
John Lennon had shed his Beatles skin from the minute he released Plastic Ono Band, and while Bruce Springsteen may have been at the end of his rope when working on Born to Run, that sense of musical hunger is what made him such a legend when he started to sing about the other kids that were going nowhere in the middle of New Jersey. No one could fake that kind of sincerity, but that mentality looked a lot different when the punk revolution came to town back in Ireland.
U2 were clearly huge fans of bands like The Clash, but their inception happened in the days when the early punk giants were being fizzled out. Sex Pistols had disbanded, and in their place were the biggest names in post-punk, whether that was Television or the early versions of bands like The Cure coming out around the same time. But of all the new faces, Bono counted himself lucky to be able to meet Ian Curtis of Joy Division.
While Curtis has become the kind of tragic figure in the same way that Kurt Cobain has for every grunge rocker, he was always about more than the mystique that was thrust upon him. He was one of the most earnest songwriters of his time, and while some sections of Unknown Pleasures could get more than a little bit uncomfortable to listen to, the music behind him matched his intensity on tunes like ‘She’s Lost Control.’
Bono could have easily seen Curtis as an example of someone with wisdom to impart, but he could only see the how beaten down the frontman seemed when he first saw him, saying, “This man with the weight of the whole universe in his voice, this crooner from some black hole — the dark lord — stepped forward and I was like: ‘Oh my god, I’m going to meet Ian Curtis’. He was this beautiful soul but he sang from this other place…. Just the most gentle conversation and it was a very special moment.”
Then again, that juxtaposition isn’t all that uncommon in the world of rock and roll. Not everyone that is one of the most insane performers of all time needs to be the same way offstage, and while people can look at someone like Dave Grohl and feel like he’s the same person off the stage, the greatest performers are the ones that can separate themselves from their darker side so that don’t go too far overboard.
That pressure may have been too hard for Curtis to take some of the time, but that doesn’t diminish the music that he made when he was still around. Some of it might not be easy to go back to, but it’s absolutely beautiful seeing him paint those masterpieces every time those early tunes come back on.
