The band Bono called too difficult to follow live: “I never want to walk on after”
Part of the rock and roll creed Bono lived by was always about being fearless.
Half of the projects U2 worked on would have been enough for any band to think that they’ve lost the plot and they should start over from scratch, but the fact that Bono has steered his bandmates through some of the most high-stakes gambles and managed to pull them off is one of the most impressive feats in musical history. That said, it’s not like Bono thought that he was absolutely bulletproof every single time he looked at what another band was doing.
If anything, his fans usually let him know when he’s not bulletproof half the time. There’s no doubt that The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are some of the finest records that any rock and roll band has ever made, but the band usually started to turn to shit when they started to take themselves a bit too seriously. Rattle and Hum was already one of the strangest documentaries ever made by a rock band, and Pop is still one of those rare moments where you start to wonder what they were even going for.
But even if they looked like one of the most pretentious bands in existence, Bono felt that it all came back to the fearlessness that he saw when he attended his first punk rock shows. U2 had clearly grown out of their post-punk beginnings, but when Bono and The Edge first heard a band like Ramones for the first time, they knew that they were hearing a band that was playing like their lives depended on it at every single turn.
It takes a lot of guts for someone to play with that much drive, but it was another matter entirely when all of them heard The Clash for the first time. Ramones may have still been writing love songs here and there and maybe the occasional tune about sniffing glue, but whenever Joe Strummer kicked off one of their songs, every lyric they sang felt important. They made their music sound like it was moving the Earth whenever it got played, and that was daunting for Bono to even fathom.
Because while U2 eventually grew into the kind of band that could fill a massive stadium and hold their own with the greatest of all time, the frontman felt that they would have been no match for The Clash in their prime, saying, “The only band that I never want to walk on after, past or present, was The Clash. And I’m not even a fan of all their music and some of it felt phony to me but, from terms of survival instinct, that’s the only band I wouldn’t have wanted to go on after.”
Granted, it’s not like Bono is wrong about some of the phoniness as well. Anyone who has a passing awareness of Cut the Crap knew that the band didn’t have the most optimal ending, but when looking through their entire catalogue, the way that they defy trends and go against the grain in the name of punk rock adventurousness is still the perfect example of what punk rock was supposed to be.
And while The Edge happily touted the band to be one of the greatest groups of all time, it was their messages that struck a nerve with Bono. Strummer was used to lashing out against the powers that be, and while Bono did eventually join the highest members of rock and roll society, he felt that his songs needed to reflect a certain optimism that was needed in a post-London Calling world.
So while The Clash was always going to be a lot less well-known than U2 was, their drive is something that can never really be duplicated. It was a matter of life and death whenever they strapped on their instruments, and for anyone who came out of one of their gigs, they knew that life was never going to be the same once they heard those chords and that voice singing ‘I Fought the Law’.
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