“The revolution had come”: The Edge discusses the most intense show he ever witnessed
A rock concert has not always been known as the safest place to be. Even though it’s nice to have a bunch of people coming together to experience the same music as a community, the genre’s beginnings meant that things could get a bit rough if you weren’t too careful. And once the punk regime started seeping into the mainstream, The Edge admitted that he was shellshocked listening to one specific band thrash a small club to the ground for the first time.
Compared to the rest of U2, though, The Edge had started looking at music from all angles. Whereas they now seem like the same type of dad rock that comes on the radio one too many times, The Edge was a fan of all types of inventive music, going so far as to attempt to learn various Yes songs before forming his own group.
If the sounds of prog got him interested in music, punk was what convinced everyone in the band that they could do it themselves. Since acts like Sex Pistols and Ramones weren’t focusing on being the best musicians in the world, it made more sense for them to do whatever they could with their primitive musical ability and see if they could get a great song out of it.
But even with idols like Ramones, there wasn’t that much going on behind their lyrics other than straight nihilism or the occasional song about wanting to sniff glue. There was still a grey area regarding what the genre stood for, but once The Clash descended onto Ireland, they convinced The Edge what rock and roll could really sound like.
The music was still purely punk, but Joe Strummer had an axe to grind every time he stepped up to the microphone. Even though their songs were some of the catchiest in the entire punk canon, their political angle gave them an edge that no other band could claim to have, which turned every concert into a rally for individuality, even bordering on religious event in some respects.
From the minute that the band kicked into ‘White Riot’, though, The Edge knew he had found a home listening to The Clash, saying, “It was the most intense thing that anyone in that building had ever seen. The rage, the commitment, everything. Whatever was going on, it went way past behind just a rock and roll show. It was something shamanistic, and by the end of the night, Dublin was a very different place. The revolution had come to town.”
While The Edge still loved listening to his prog records, a lot of what U2 stood for going forward had to do with that punk ethos. Even though not every one of their songs sounded like punk, hearing them embrace that ethos by going against the norm or living by The Clash’s creed of pushing against the system helped them turn into a band that had the potential to move the Earth for a few seconds.
Then again, it’s hard not to think that anyone who saw The Clash in action back in the day felt the exact same way. Mick Jagger might have coined the phrase ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’, but those three words meant something different whenever Strummer and Mick Jones played together. By the time that everyone got out of that gig, it felt like things were going to be different.
