The album Bono said was destined to last forever
When Bono first started U2, he wasn’t in the business of making music for his time.
There are plenty of records in their catalogue that feel like a snapshot of the 1980s in many respects, but the rest of their body of work was meant to be songs that could have the same resonance whether they were made in 1987 or 2027. That kind of resonance doesn’t happen by accident, and Bono’s approach always came from the amount of passion that they were able to translate onto the tape every time they played.
After all, there wasn’t a moment onstage where Bono didn’t sound like he meant what he said. Some of it may have been long-winded, and judging by him asking if he was bothering the audience in the middle of Rattle and Hum, it’s not like the people back then didn’t understand when he couldn’t shut up. Then again, it was better to have someone who believed in what they were saying rather than trying to sell you a product whenever they went onstage.
The punk revolution that U2 was born out of wanted nothing to do with the typical rock and roll phonies of the world, and when looking at their later records, they still had the same conviction they had in the early days. Achtung Baby had no right being the success that it was back in the day, and yet when listening to Bono embrace his inner smarmy rock and roll star, he was clearly taking the piss and making everyone laugh at the lavish superstar figure he built around himself.
But all of his heroes had a lot more going for them than simply being a good rock and roll singer. From John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, all of the frontmen Bono followed in the footsteps and got into the business for more than playing rock and roll. All they wanted to do was make some sense of their own lives through song, and while Van Morrison may have been a bit left-of-field for some, he made all the sense in the world to Bono whenever he began performing.
That said, it’s not like everyone could understand every word that was coming out of his mouth. Long before there was Michael Stipe confusing everyone on the first handful of REM records, Morrison was known for devouring nearly every word he sang, usually sounding like he was throwing syllables at you half the time he sang. That might seem like the sound of pure chaos, but it ended up being a match made in heaven when Astral Weeks came out.
With only a few additional musicians, Morrison made the most earnest record of his career, and for Bono, this was the kind of album that he wanted to make, saying, “[It was a] white man singing like a black guy, as everybody during the ‘60s was, but in a local, colloquial language that formed a new hybrid. It’s Van’s life up till then on one record, his map laid out for ever more.” But Morrison’s influence is a lot more subtle compared to the rest of Bono’s heroes whenever he sings.
The passion was certainly there from the first U2 record onward, but that kind of gruff exterior was exactly the kind of sound that Bono made his own on the band’s later records. He still sounded a bit more youthful when singing tunes like ‘New Year’s Day’, but the passion and subtle anger were like the inverse of the love songs that Morrison was making in the post-Them days.
There are still artists who manage to astound Bono throughout every generation, but Morrison’s influence was about a lot more than teaching him how to sing with passion. This was a man who was laying himself bare whenever he made a new record, and while it may not have been the most coherent thing to listen to, it was always for Bono to see what one man was able to make someone feel with one song.
