The show that Bono was most proud of playing: “I didn’t expect it”
If you were to ask Bono about his favourite-ever U2 moments, the ones that really stuck out as crucial points in their trajectory, chances are he’d be spoilt for choice.
After all, even the more controversial moments or times considered their downfall are ones that Bono looks back at in a different light, reframed from his own perspective and how they handled creative pressures or freedom. One obvious example is the infamous iTunes incident, in which they uploaded an entire album onto millions of iTunes users’ devices.
But even then, Bono didn’t see that as a failure. Instead, he saw it for what it was always intended to be – a statement about music accessibility, re-positioning their material as a gift to anybody who wanted it. Unfortunately for U2, not many people actually wanted it, which sparked debates about the boundaries of intrusive marketing promo.
But Bono took it in his stride, something he’s done through their ups and downs, taking any twist and turn as another part of the magical ride of being a successful act. In fact, it’s those moments of struggle that often spur Bono on, pushing him into another direction or informing the way he responds creatively to such challenges.
In the early 2000s, many people thought U2 had lost their place or had begun to opt for more overtly commercial places to push their success to new heights. Bono, of course, had a lot to say in the face of those sorts of opinions, beginning with the fact that many of U2’s successes are too often seen as these so-called sell-out decisions.
This is what he previously explained to writer Greg Kot, who, up to that point, had covered the band for over a decade, and yet one negative review sparked a direct call from Bono himself. At the time, the band was weathering several storms, one that included a poorly executed marketing decision to have fans pay to enter a fan club and another messy ticketing situation that caused more chaos than anything else.
When asked about these decisions and the fact that they’d played the Super Bowl halftime show around the same time, Bono said, “There’s this poverty of ambition, in terms of what rock people will do to promote their work. That’s a critical issue to me… Progressive rock was the enemy in 1976. And it still is. And it has many, many faces. This beast is lurking everywhere. It can describe itself as indie rock.”
He went on, “It’s the same thing. It’s misery. I have seen so many great minds struck down by it. When you suggest we’re betraying ourselves by doing TV shows and promotional stuff, to me, the Super Bowl was our Ed Sullivan moment. It just came 25 years later. I didn’t expect it. But it is one of the moments I’m most proud of in my life.”
In true Bono fashion, he managed to twist what others would call a negative into his own personal positive, reinstating the fact that he’ll almost always see these things in a completely different light. Many moments in U2’s journey don’t exactly make sense to the outsider, but Bono will always know the truth at the heart of it, and mostly, it’s got a lot to do with following what they feel is right at any given moment.
