The band Bono thought crushed the spirit of U2
It’s difficult to really quantify the sincerity that comes from a band like U2.
As much as Bono genuinely believes that he’s trying to help the world every single time he plays, there’s only so many times he can talk about the greatest problems with humanity without coming off like one of the most self-righteous frontmen of all time. But that kind of sincerity only came after he saw the band’s dreams crushed before their very eyes.
Then again, any musician should get used to things not working out the way they dreamed them back in their garages. The music business is far from the massive party that everyone expects it to be, and while there can be opportunities for people to have a real impact on the world, that doesn’t always fit the market that the higher-ups are shooting for. It’s always about the bottom line for them, but U2 had far greater dreams than that.
Going through their discography, there isn’t one moment throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s where Bono didn’t seem genuinely interested in the state of the world. It could get a touch annoying hearing him talk about politics every single time he had a microphone in his hand, but when listening to The Joshua Tree, the reason why ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ works is because of how he sells it. He believes that music has the power to change the world, and that’s due to the fact that he saw it firsthand.
After all, the prog rock sphere was all but decimated when punk rock started rearing its head. Bands like The Clash and Ramones were rebelling against the corporate version of rock and roll that had disappeared up its own ass, but while Bono did have a lot of admiration for Sex Pistols, he remembered being deflated when he realised that the whole thing was a sham.
The songs were definitely there and the band’s defiant attitude endeared them to a lot of early punk fans, but Malcolm McLaren’s idea for the group was a lot more special than the music half the time. As far as the rest of the group was concerned, all of them were really good actors trying to play half-decent music together to tap into the zeitgeist, and anyone finding out about their history would be the equivalent of telling a kid where Santa Claus is really coming from.
And when Bono heard about it, it felt like all the band were doing was based on lies, saying, “It was sad for us in U2 to discover when we were eighteen that the Sex Pistols were a ”good idea” that someone had thought up. Because when we were sixteen we had believed in it, we believed in rock & roll. Often it is a sham. And it can be entertaining or even enlightening as that, but that’s not what I like.”
That’s probably why Bono was one of the few rockstars in the 1990s that advocated for genres like grunge to rise to the forefront. The Seattle scene was one of the most authentic changes that the music industry had ever seen, and while not every band was prepared for that level of attention, it was enough for Bono to take Pearl Jam under their wing when they invited them on the ZooTV tour in the early 1990s.
Sex Pistols may have been a great example of why not everyone should meet their heroes, but for Bono, it wasn’t enough to discourage him from making music, either. Because if there was a band that could inspire generations of people with a thin veil of sincerity, imagine what a group could sound like if they meant every single thing they said?
