The band Bono called “essential” to his career
Love them or loathe them, no one can deny that U2 is one of the biggest rock bands in modern music. Since their breakout in the 1980s, the Irish group has achieved a level of success unseen since the glory days of the 1960s, following blueprints laid down by iconic bands that Bono has admired and emulated ever since.
Bono has never been shy about his influences. In numerous interviews, from the beginning of his career through to today, he’s always more than happy to worship at the altar of those who came before him. As part of the 2005 film I’m Your Man, he’s seen looking awestruck as he shares a stage with Leonard Cohen. He later paid tribute to the artist as he said, “He’s an addiction I’m not ready to give up.” Bono has also spoken about the impact artists like Bob Dylan, The Clash, David Bowie and more had on him.
But there’s one act that he deems “essential” to his own career. At first, Bono was raised on a diet of The Beatles. He remembers hearing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ first when he was only four, telling Rolling Stone, “I remember watching the Beatles with my brother on St. Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas.”
He added, “The sense of a gang that they had about them, from just what I’ve been saying, you can tell that connected, as well as the melodic power, the haircuts and the sexuality.” That was his first insight into the power of a band and the first suggestion that, maybe one day, he wanted to be in one.
But then, by the time Bono was a teenager and was actually old enough to get a band together, The Beatles had faded into a kind of twee troupe. With all the music of childhood playing out of parents’ speakers, it tends to be rejected, even just for a while. Those songs get thrown out in an act of teenage rebellion, even if they’re still great. But with the angst and the hormones, there has to come a new soundtrack.
For Bono, that came in the form of The Who, a band that he credits with being a necessary dose of inspiration. He was studying at Mount Temple Comprehensive School while his friends, David Evans, who they called the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr, were starting to jam together. He said that at “about age fifteen,” The Who “starts really connecting”.
Immediately, it’s something different. In a lot of ways, The Who were the first punks, pushing beyond the sound of typical rock and roll into grittier territories that would later lead to the punk scene of the 1970s and beyond. For a teenage boy looking for music to match up with the raging carnage of hormones and the desperate desire to make something of his life, there really was no better group than The Who, with their high-octane instrumentals and anthemic lyrics.
But it was more than that. “In amongst the din and the noise, the power chords and the rage, there’s another voice,” Bono explained, touching on something deeper within that has acted as a motivation for his whole career. He said their music held “the beginnings of what I would discover is one of the essential aspects for me – and why I’m drawn to a piece of music – which has something to do with a quest.”
With their storytelling lyrics that take listeners on a journey and emotionally charged chants that transform raw emotions into something comprehensible, The Who’s energy resonated deeply with Bono and has continued to inspire him ever since.
