The musician Bono crowned as the coolest in the world: “Knowing who you are and liking who you are”
The coolness of rock and roll wasn’t always a big part of what made Bono one of the biggest musicians in the world.
For everyone who thought he was one of the greatest musicians to ever live, there was still a good contingency of people who would have rather had U2 removed from the charts because of how many times they put their foot in their mouth every time the frontman talked. It’s no secret that he likes to talk himself up as one of the biggest deals in the music industry, but you can’t deny that there were some moments in his career where no one could touch him.
It took a long time for him to get there, but when looking through U2’s discography, Bono took a while before turning into the frontman he would eventually become. He didn’t like the idea of sitting around and waiting for the audience to catch up with him, and from the first few minutes that the band played at Live Aid, the world knew that they were looking at a band that would soon become legendary.
They would eventually prove everyone right on The Joshua Tree, but Bono’s real swagger came when he shed his messianic skin. He wasn’t afraid to play around with the band’s image, and his role as ‘The Fly’ during the Achtung Baby tour made everyone realise the kind of frontman he was. He was willing to tear down every notion of what a frontman was supposed to be, even if that meant hanging out with people who had absolutely nothing to do with rock and roll.
Bono wanted to give himself a spot next to some of the greatest entertainers in the world, and as much time as he spent working with people like Brian Eno, he was still trying to see what made Johnny Cash or Pavarotti want to sing whenever they got up onstage. He was endlessly fascinated by these living legends, but even when listening to Frank Sinatra’s tales, he was still just as interested in what Quincy Jones did behind the scenes.
Count Basie was the one known for sprinkling in some of the greatest sonic touches on Sinatra’s albums, but Jones was the one who carried that on to the next generation. He wasn’t afraid to push any of the biggest artists in the world to the brink whenever they made a new record, and whether it was working on smoother pop fare or Michael Jackson’s greatest hits, Bono felt that nobody could touch what Jones.
Other artists may have had their own track record for greatness, but what Jones had was the kind of mannerisms that Bono only wished he could have, saying, “To me, cool is about knowing who you are and liking who you are and walking without fear of who you are, with no baggage, no mask. And in that respect, Quincy Jones is the coolest person I’ve ever met.” And that cool demeanour also applied when he had to coach some of the biggest stars of all time through their process.
Jones knew what a hit sounded like, but that also meant that he could be incredibly blunt whenever working on an album. Anyone would have thought that Jackson had written one of the best records of his career with songs like ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, but after Jones said that the record needed an extra push, the fact that ‘The King of Pop’ came up with ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’ out of the blue was what really solidified Jones’s role.
He was the one who was looking out for whether a record had that wow factor, and while he could have been one of the greatest musicians of all time if he went out on his own, that wasn’t where he felt comfortable. The lip of the stage might feel like home for Bono, but Jones is the one who was forever behind the board and making artists eat, sleep, and breathe music until they had something perfect.
