The Edge picks out the best protest song: “A painting of war”
The entire political angle of music is why people love and hate U2. There are great messages to be found across all of their albums, but there comes a point when anyone would ask Bono to get off the damn soapbox and sing about football or something rather than just reminding us about the problems with the world. If you ignore those problems, though, people won’t listen, and The Edge considered Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Machine Gun’ as the best way to get the point across.
It’s not like Hendrix didn’t have competition in terms of protest songs back in the 1960s. The Vietnam War was still raging, and even though there were a lot of people trying their best to ignore the carnage happening half a world away, it took the brave souls of music to actually stand up against the violence.
While John Lennon is best known for ‘Give Peace a Chance’ in this arena, almost every single counterculture song had some protest behind it. The Rolling Stones had come under fire for their comments on the song ‘Street Fighting Man’, and as much as The Doors tried to create an atmosphere on ‘The End’, lines about a Roman wilderness of pain with insane children sure conjures up feelings of the Flower Generation.
But Hendrix was not that kind of artist. He was looking to observe more than he was preaching, and ‘Machine Gun’ is more indicative of what he saw on the battlefield from the graphic footage coming from the Asian jungles. While ‘Machine Gun’ did get a handful of releases, the original version from Band of Gypsys is probably the best way to experience it, as Hendrix lets his guitar solo sprawl out.
There are a few lyrics about a machine gun tearing his body apart, but his guitar truly is the star of the show, painting the picture of the bloodshed happening, with his percussive scratches almost signifying the gunman needing to reload before delivering even more death and destruction in his wake.
This kind of tone-painting had a huge impact on how The Edge saw protest music, saying, “I like it when music expresses something that words alone cannot. So as far as that goes, ‘Machine Gun’ by Hendrix would be my favourite. That song – for me – captures the Vietnam War in a very disturbing way. It’s like a painting of the war, with all its shades. Which is rather due to the music than the lyrics.”
Although Bono is more keen to let a lot of his words do the walking on tracks like ‘Bad’ or ‘Pride’, half the reason why U2 songs work so well is because of what The Edge does. He doesn’t need to solo, per se, but when he rips into the lead break on ‘New Year’s Day’ or puts on a slide for ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’, you can hear every emotion coming out of him, whether it’s anger or resentment at those who look at civilians as just pawns.
Hendrix was just looking to express what he felt inside, but where everyone saw a jam, The Edge saw a musical lesson. From that point forward, the guitar didn’t just need to be a stringed instrument. It could be an emotional tool to help communicate one’s frustration with the rest of the world.
