The musical world Bono always wanted to live in: “They brought swagger back”
Bono didn’t want to see music as just one entity whenever he performed.
There are songs that appear on albums and songs that come together in those moments when you’re onstage, but regardless of what kind of tune he was singing, he was always going to play like it was the last thing that he was ever going to do with his life. He genuinely felt that music had the potential to change the world if you let it into your heart, and he felt that the moment it mattered most was when it felt like the world was on fire.
After all, some of U2’s greatest records in the 1980s were about hitting out against those who have gone through a lot of turmoil. Boy already saw him having a lot of baggage to unpack about his personal life, and even when working on some of their later records, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ was the perfect song for them because of how much it encapsulated every theme that they stood for. There was compassion, there was love, and there was more than a little bit of anger aimed at those who were willing to stamp out those ideals.
Because when you think about it, all music is supposed to be an escape from the norms of everyday life, and a lot of what Bono listened to back in the day was all about being larger than life. The glam movement had been the music that the band cut their teeth on when they were kids, listening to bands like T Rex and Sweet, so when the garage rock movement started up again, he felt that some bands brought that energy back into the fold.
The White Stripes were the one band that helped rock and roll get over all of the whining of grunge, but it wasn’t like they were the only ones using the bare essentials. Everyone from Queens of the Stone Age to The Strokes had taken a fair share of cues from rock and roll’s past, but after hearing about the horrible tragedy that happened at the Bataclan in Paris, Bono’s heart went out to Eagles of Death Metal before he had even heard a note of their music.
U2 didn’t really need to concern themselves with being a “hip” rock and roll band anymore, but the music Jesse Hughes made did have a much greater effect on him than he realised. The fact that he had to deal with putting on a show that resulted in the deaths of 89 people is the kind of burden that no one should have to bear, but the more that Bono looked into their music, the more he was going to do everything he could to accommodate his brothers in rock and roll.
Not all of their songs were complicated, but Bono would want to be anywhere near the band if he could, saying, “They come from a deep, deep tradition going back to the blues. As the cliche goes, rock lost the roll along the way. They brought that swagger back. That’s why I love the name. If you think of Eagles and Death Metal together, and I think, ‘Yeah, that’s where I want to live.’”
And while U2 were gracious enough to give the band their stage when they were playing their own stadium shows only a few weeks after the tragedy, it wasn’t only about giving them the chance to reunite. Rock and roll like that was about bringing people together, and they were making a statement that not even the worst pieces of humanity could ever take away from bands that were trying to make the world feel like paradise for a split second with nothing but a few amplifiers and guitars.
Even if both bands didn’t need to see eye-to-eye on absolutely everything, the fact that they were willing to work with each other says more about the camaraderie of every rock and roll band. It’s not easy being in this kind of business, and even if many people are trying to outdo the band next to them, it’s important to look at each other as brothers in arms when someone is at their lowest.
