The “genius” song Bono was embarrassed to play: “That’s a tattoo”
Everyone usually has a handful of questionable songs they admitted to liking back in the day. Even if they haven’t held up to the passage of time all that well, there’s no shame in admitting that you dug on ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ when it first dropped or have fond memories of growing up in the late 1990s listening to Creed. When Bono first picked up a guitar and started to put chords together, though, he admitted that he was a little bit insecure about learning ‘If I Had a Hammer’ for the first time.
Then again, there are probably a few fans who would imagine it would be uncomfortable to sing almost any U2 song from memory. Compared to most of the big rock stars of yesteryear, Bono has made it a habit of making moves that look absolutely insufferable if they are not translated properly, and normally he ends up looking like one of the most pretentious people in the universe.
But everyone has to start somewhere, and ‘If I Had a Hammer’ was a good replacement for the handful of Beatles tunes that Bono had fallen in love with at first. No one can go wrong singing some of the Fab Four’s greatest hits, but when they split up, Bono found himself gravitating towards the raw side of instrumentation, preferring what John Lennon did on an album like Plastic Ono Band.
Beyond the sound of the record, it was all about making music that mattered to him, but ‘If I Had a Hammer’ has to be one of the goofier songs ever written about social change. Made popular by Peter, Paul, and Mary, this feels like the elementary school version of what people think protest songs are like, with the folk trio singing about how, while they may only be three people, their individual abilities can one day move mountains.
That kind of sentimental look at change certainly has its place, but it wasn’t something that teenage Bono was all that fond of, telling Rolling Stone, “That song — which is actually such a genius song, now that I think about it, you’re embarrassed the day after you learned it — ‘If I Had a Hammer’. That’s a tattoo, that song.”
If we peel back the layers of everything that Bono has said and done since, though, is there really any difference between his life philosophy and what Peter, Paul and Mary are getting at in this song? Sure, the harmonies might be a bit too saccharine for any self-respecting rock star to take seriously, but there are just as many great moments when looking at the lyrics as they sing about hammering out freedom all across the world.
If anything, this song says more about what Bono has been doing when not behind the microphone. When working with his various charity organisations, Bono has taken that kind of message to heart, looking to make it his personal mission to spark change in the world no matter how far up his ass his head goes.
Then again, even if Bono does have more than a few disagreeable moments in the spotlight, that doesn’t diminish him as one of the great voices of his time. ‘If I Had a Hammer’ is far from a perfect song, but calling for the freedom for everyone to live how they please is rarely a bad sentiment.
