The group Bono called the best rock and roll band “on record”
To mark Bono‘s 60th birthday in 2020, the U2 frontman wrote the feature ’60 Songs That Saved My Life’, a collation of songs he had a personal affinity with, each accompanied by a short fan letter to the respective artist.
“The ones I couldn’t have lived without,” he said. “The ones that got me from there to here, zero to 60… through all the scrapes, all manner of nuisance, from the serious to the silly… and the joy, mostly joy.” It’s a nice idea. A brief peruse through his list reveals a man with wildly eclectic taste and an undimmed enthusiasm for contemporary music, from Kraftwerk and Billy Eilish to Johnny Cash and Kendrick Lamar.
Many of his inclusions also help tell the U2 story. Longtime producer and collaborator Daniel Lanois is featured, plus his duet with Frank Sinatra on their re-record of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, and another of his duets with Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti on ‘Miserere’ (who also recorded together on the experimental side-project Passengers’ ‘Miss Sarajevo’).
There are also artists who directly inspired some of U2’s songs. INXS singer Michael Hutchence’s untimely death was the subject matter of U2’s 2000 hit ‘Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’, and the Ramones’ addition should be no surprise, Bono declaring his reverence for the New York icons on ’14’s ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)’. There’s one group, however, who, in his estimation, were the best rock ‘n’ roll band on record.
Like most artists of his generation, the impact one particular London band had on him is hard to overstate. The Sex Pistols‘ punk grenade toward the antiquated British state amid the so-called ‘winter of discontent’ and their irreverent attack on an establishment still yet to shake off its Victorian residue has become such a prevalent feature of the UK’s cultural tapestry that the band who were genuinely discussed in parliament for perceived treason were celebrated in the ’12 Olympics opening ceremony. Singer John Lydon’s a different man now, too, aligning himself with the MAGA right, whether sincerely or out of oafish contrarianism, and current band Public Image Ltd offering a condolence in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death.
Still, The Pistols’ sole album, Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, hasn’t lost its raw power and subversive bite. Bono affectionately stated: “That Johnny Rotten fella was something, wasn’t he… looking back, you were part Richard III, part vaudeville, part soothsayer but always truth-teller with a voice like a bagpipe that could march armies of lovers and haters into battle… and it did.”
He added: “I couldn’t make up my mind which side I was on, but then I realized that all depended on what you loved and what you hated. You sung with a sneer that was so English and yet you are so Irish… like all four Beatles, like Elvis Costello, like Morrissey, like the Gallagher brothers, like Declan McKenna… the Irish do well with English words and music, and the English do well with us.”
Was Bono’s fandom reciprocated? Not quite. In a video catching Lydon on his way to the Toronto International Film Film Festival to promote Sons of Norway, which he featured in, Lydon quipped: “That man’s used everyone’s style, he owes us all!”
Later, in a 2022 interview with the Irish Independent, where Lydon criticised Bono’s presence in Ukraine, U2’s hijacking of American music, and their dress sense, he wryly stated: “I like Bono, but I also like taking the mick out of him.”
