The genre that Bono called the worst in the world: “The enemy”
Every move that Bono has ever made can either be badass or pretentious, depending on who you talk to.
Those classic shots of him performing at Live Aid or the massive shows that the band played while filming Rattle and Hum have become pieces of rock and roll folklore at this point, but when he goes on tirades onstage today, he’s either a zealot of rock trying to harness the power of three chords and the truth or a self-righteous windbag looking for yet another soapbox to get up on. But even for those still in the camp of thinking that he was God’s curse to music, it’s not like he didn’t have a few points here and there.
Because when you think about it, a lot of U2’s best moments have come from ideas that Bono had before anybody. No one could have ever thought they could have made a song so undeniably human as ‘One’ or make a gospel-style hymn like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, and yet the reason why both of them work is because you can hear the true pain in his voice as he’s delivering every line.
It might sound painful, but what Bono does isn’t about him trying to suffer for his art. He knew that hardship was necessary to conquer the greatest obstacles, and as long as he was doing things for the right reasons, that was all he could ask for. But the “right reasons” started to take on different faces when the rest of his bandmates started putting together a band in Ireland during the late 1970s.
The Beatles may have sparked everyone’s imagination from the minute that they got on the charts, but the influx of punk was a necessary evil for rock to thrive. Not every single band necessarily died thanks to bands like Ramones and The Clash, but the ones that needed to get off their high horse were brought down a couple of pegs as a result. People simply didn’t care about the grandiose side of things, and nowhere was this more evident than prog rock.
While there were legitimately great artists that were getting high on their own hubris at times, like Led Zeppelin, bands like Yes and Genesis were everything that Bono was opposed to. These were artists that were trying to make rock and roll into a sophisticated genre of music, and that was never going to satisfy the same guy who lived by every single word that Joe Strummer had to say.
Despite The Edge having a few favourite prog bands, Bono felt like the genre as a whole was tearing apart what rock and roll was all about, saying, “Progressive rock was the enemy in 1976. And it still is. And it has many, many faces. This beast is lurking everywhere. It can describe itself as indie rock. It’s the same [blanking] thing. It’s misery. I have seen so many great minds struck down by it.” But the idea of progressive rock goes beyond a specific genre of music for him.
Sure, there are bands that are content with following their own rules and having a punk rock edge to them like Rush, but “prog bands” were always those who took themselves too seriously. Even Bino was guilty of falling down that rabbit hole when the band started making their more artistic ventures in the late 1990s, but he at least knows when to recalibrate himself when making records like All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
So while the U2 frontman might not have wanted to rally against the likes of Genesis and Gentle Giant that went on long sweeping solos, it was always more about the aesthetic than anything. Any musician should be free to do what they want in rock and roll, but the ultimate test was for them to be able to look themselves in the eye and say that they still have the same kind of heart that they had when they first picked up a guitar.
