“The Big Bang of grunge”: Bono discusses his favourite songs
It’s quite easy to laugh at U2 or dismiss them for everything they became as a group, filling out stadiums and removing all charisma and soul from their output. Their later material is a shadow of what the group were once capable of, and virtually all of their releases after the turn of the millennium are forgettable missteps in what could have been an ongoing creative spell.
However, you have to acknowledge that they began life as a vibrant post-punk outfit that pushed the genre’s scope to become more palatable to a wider audience, squeezing in pop hooks over complex rhythms and guitar-led experimentation. They might have phoned it all in for cash, but prior to the dollar signs glazing over their eyes, they were a seminal and influential group that released several classic albums in October, War and The Joshua Tree, to name but a few.
The band’s frontman and driving force, Bono, is a divisive figure, given his tendency to float off on often pretentious tangents and his enjoyment of the sound of his own ideas, but he’s always been acutely aware of the wealth of great music that has surrounded the band, whether as precursors, contemporaries, or even artists operating in very different lanes to U2. He’s gone on record in the past to declare a love for everyone from the Sex Pistols to Public Enemy, and one other act that he was known to have adored was Boston indie rock pioneers Pixies.
“They were brutish primary-colour rock and roll,” Bono said of the Boston group when he had invited them on tour with U2, “But lyrically they were sci-fi.” Praising them for their outside-the-box approach to rock music, Bono always knew there was something special about Pixies, and in a Rolling Stone feature to commemorate the singer’s 60th birthday in 2020, he would single out one of the group’s songs as being one of 60 that “saved his life”.
While it’s doubtful that hearing ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’ enabled the Irish singer to enjoy a few more laps around the sun, in a fan letter to the band, he declared that the Doolittle track was “the first of its kind. Untouchable. And incomparable,” before declaring that it ought to be considered as “The Big Bang of what some people call grunge.”
A large amount of this confession might have been taken up by Bono being Bono, riffing on ideas of America putting a monkey into space and being proud of the technological advancements they have achieved as a nation despite the harm they might be doing to the world, but his love for the song was still palpable in his message in spite of the rambling non-sequiturs. “Excuse this fan running off the mouth with your song,” he proclaimed, “but that’s what we fans do”.
His interpretation of the song being about the space race is a little inaccurate, as frontman Black Francis has previously declared that the true meaning of the song relates to the confusion that humans often feel regarding their place on Earth while throwing in some surreal images in the process. However, what is less debatable is Bono’s assertion that the song was a huge turning point in the history of rock and grunge music, with later bands such as Nirvana and Pavement looking to Pixies as being hugely influential to their sound.
Bono would end his address by singling out each of the band’s efforts. “Kim, your vocals are central to its appeal,” he began. “Thank you, Joey, thank you, David. Thanks to the spirit of Black Francis. We got a monkey in heaven and one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands of all times.” However much nonsense he might talk, Bono was on the money with this insight.
