The singer The Edge called “the benchmark” of good music
Rock and roll tended to mean something a lot different to The Edge when he first formed U2.
The entire music scene was inundated with bands that were all about showing off the best technique that they could, but all The Edge needed was a decent speaker system and mountains of attitude to get his point across whenever he played his massive cascading riffs in a live setting. He had grown up listening to punk rock acts, and as far as he was concerned, no song was worth pursuing if it didn’t have a sense of heart behind it.
And when looking through U2’s catalogue, they have been true to their word most of the time. Every one of their albums at least came from a place of passion whenever they made them, and even though Bono has since apologised for their mistakes on records like Pop and Songs of Innocence, you can still appreciate that they were trying to take a chance and not having it work out as well as it could have.
But even on their best material, The Edge felt that a lot of their best work came from listening intently to what the true missionaries of music had to say. Joe Strummer was always there pushing music forward on every Clash record, and the same could be said of John Lennon during his solo years, but there was no one else on this Earth who was able to have a command over their audience the same way that Bob Marley did.
He was one of the greatest missionaries for reggae music that the world had ever seen, and even if he started by becoming a simple songwriter, his journey to being a rock and roll god has more to do with the songs than anything. The image was secondary to him, and when listening to an album like Legend, you’re getting a one-stop shop of everything that made Marley’s music so beautiful for those who didn’t have a home in traditional rock and roll.
‘Three Little Birds’ and ‘Stir It Up’ may be the ones that everyone knows by heart, but The Edge felt that there was something pure about the way Marley sang everything, saying, “More than anyone, it’s Marley whose music I keep going back to. It’s the benchmark on every level, musically, spiritually… he’s in a different league. Some music puts you in a dark place, but Marley lifts me out of any funky mood I’m in.”
Then again, there’s a reason why we were spared the U2 reggae album that I’m sure no one was clamouring for. Bono and The Edge were men of many talents, but if they had the good sense not to write an entire album based around reggae music, the least they could do was use their platform the same way that Marley used it when talking about the troubles taking place in his home.
Throughout their career, a lot of what Bono has done for charitable causes and helping rid the world of hardship is like him delivering on what Marley was talking about in ‘Redemption Song’. He knew that there were clear injustices going on in the world, and if Marley wasn’t around to help fix them when he passed on, it would be much easier for Bono to act as the spokesman for that kind of mentality.
But Edge was far more interested in the simplicity of Marley’s songs. Not all of them were terribly hard to piece together when first starting out on any instrument, but even if they were simple, they managed to get to the heart of what he was talking about better than anyone. He speaks a lot of truth on those records, but sometimes, if you’re working with an emotion that is universal, it pays to keep things simple.
Because, like Marley, U2 are musicians who are trying their best to make the world a little bit better through their music, and even if they don’t succeed all the time, Edge would rather go down trying than not try at all. To them, musicians have an inherent duty to look out for the world, and Marley was their teacher whenever it came to getting the best message out there into the world.
