“Really bad”: The rock classic Bono thought U2 butchered
Any band cutting their teeth must learn the importance of having original material pretty fast. It’s one thing to be able to get the crowdpleasers out of the way, but if all that the audience is looking for is just the standard schlock every time you play, there’s no way that you’re going to evolve past the standard bar band circuit. Although U2 did have the potential to create great music on their own, Bono thought that they did a pretty poor version of The Rolling Stones’s ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.
Then again, it’s not like U2 were the best cover band in existence, either. There have been many moments where their covers have felt important at the moment, but listening back to Rattle and Hum, their versions of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ are both pretty flawed, especially when Bono starts spouting his own rhetoric when Dylan’s words would have sufficed.
Looking at the Rolling Stones, though, some of their tunes seem much easier than what meets the eye. A track like ‘Honky Tonk Women’ will probably still be played in dive bars until the end of time, by getting that signature sound of the cowbell and honing that Keith Richards-style guitar feel is near impossible to put into just a few minutes onstage.
When you’re just a kid with not much to go on, though, you will stick to the songs in your record collection for as long as possible. While everyone in U2 had different tastes in what the band should be playing, all of them were at least fluent enough in ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ to try to give it a go.
But even then, ‘Jack Flash’ isn’t something that any garage band should take lightly. Yes, it sounds like a walk in the park, but if anything is taken out of the mix, it will sound like trash, and as far as Bono was concerned, this was the moment where he realised that they should probably be sticking to originals.
Despite having more covers up their sleeve later in life, Bono remembered that the first version of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ wasn’t worth digging through the vaults to hear, saying, “We actually aren’t able to play other people’s songs. The one Stones song we tried to play was ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. It was really bad. So we started writing our own. It was easier.”
Then again, the group did fall into a trap trying to cover other tunes in their B-sides as well. No matter how much they wanted to make it different and suitable for the 1990s, hearing them try their hand at making CCR’s ‘Fortunate Son’ some kind of electronic dystopian experiment is still one of the most off-the-mark covers anyone ever got away with on record.
And while Songs of Innocence was famous for being shoved down everyone’s gullet without permission, ‘The Miracle of Joey Ramone’ at least showed that U2 learned a valuable lesson about their own musicianship. Even though they may love an artist, it’s better to write a song about them than try to redo their song.
