The Edge names the one person who revolutionised the guitar: “Total anti-hero stuff”
The Edge is more than used to firing up stadiums with the help of only his guitar, the majesty and spectacle of which often sees him hailed as a hero. But if you told him that, he’d somewhat scoff at the title.
By the very nature of everything that he and his bandmates in U2 have always stood for, they became rock titans on the principle of lifting up the everyman, of providing a voice to the voiceless, and not letting the injustices of life and society go down without a roar. In that sense, no matter what pretences of humility and modesty he may attempt to cough up, it would admittedly be a step too far for The Edge to brand himself as a so-called hero.
However, there’s no escaping the fact that the term is a piece of common parlance in the music business, weighted with history. Tracing back through the scores of rock lineages, the halls are adorned with titles of hero to prodigy to god, and everything in between. It would seem strange not to include the likes of U2 in those ranks. But if you turn left down a different corridor, you’ll find something even better: the league of anti-heroes.
This is the place where you will find The Edge basking in all his glory, knowing that he’s not one of those shiny titans but instead a rugged, real, and ultimately prolific music emblem of the masses. Yet he is not alone in this line-up – by his own admission, there are a whole group of fellow anti-heroes who all helped to guide his path, with one man in particular being the true North Star.
“I think it’s that I’ve never really had any guitar heroes. All of the guitarists that I’ve liked have been total anti-hero stuff,” he mused in an interview from 1985. “I think of Neil Young – that guy gets so much feeling into his playing, but he’s stumbling around a few notes. It means so much, but it’s so simple and basic.” And it’s true – Young has never been known for completely blitzing up the six-string, but enraptured the audience in his spirits nonetheless. The Edge’s ultimate guitar worshipper also followed that same muse.
“Tom Verlaine was never an incredible virtuoso, yet he revolutionised guitar playing, as far as I was concerned,” he added. “He suddenly said, ‘Look, you can do something different. You don’t have to do the same thing. This is nothing like anything you’ve heard before’.”
As such, beaming his way straight from Television into the hearts of millions, not least The Edge, Verlaine really was the antithesis of a guitar god by any standard. He was not prolific, blitzing, or untouchable by any means, but just straightforward – and that was all that really mattered.
For someone like The Edge, that was a mantra that clearly resonated, while washing over the heads of those in search of a more illustrious kind of stardom. At the end of the day, if you want to be in the business of being a beacon to the everyman, you can’t go about with hero’s pretences, because it just puts you at odds with reality. Instead, if you dig in, get your hands dirty, and really understand what it means to be an anti-hero, you’ll soon reap the rewards – just as he and Verlaine always did.
