The one musician Bono called the great instrumentalist of rock
No other rock and roll frontman truly knows the power of the human voice quite like Bono does.
He is definitely a good singer and has been able to pen some of the greatest melodies of all time, but when you’re talking about Bono’s ability to use his voice, it’s normally when he’s preaching on about the problems with the world or being absolutely insufferable about the fact that the crowd isn’t as invested in every one of his causes as he is. But while Bono is both the reason why people either love or hate pompous rock stars, he could bend his knee and pay respect to those much more seasoned than he ever was.
And when looking at the biggest names that Bono followed, not all of them needed to have a certain agenda behind what they were doing. John Lennon had a lot more to say outside of being in The Beatles, but even if Bono considered him an almighty god of rock throughout his career, that didn’t automatically discount all of the phenomenal records he made with Paul McCartney when the Fab Four were still singing about puppy love.
It was possible for rock and roll to be a bit more simplistic, but the best musicians were the ones that could get their point across with pure music. Everyone realised the rush that they got when they heard ‘Johnny B Goode’ all came from that one guitar lick, but if Chuck Berry lit a fire in every single guitarist that wanted to break the rules, Jimi Hendrix took that fire and threw a load of gasoline on it when he arrived.
Everyone had a decent idea of what blues was supposed to be when listening to Eric Clapton, but Hendrix was a one-of-a-kind guitarist that actually managed to feel otherworldly whenever he sang. He was channelling some kind of energy that no one else could really touch, and even when all the vocals dropped out on a song like ‘Purple Haze’, it felt like he was trying to get his guitar through the sound barrier and make the kind of musical colours that no one had touched on yet.
And while Hendrix was years before Bono’s time, he couldn’t deny the fact that he was listening to a legend when he first heard him, saying, “Jimi Hendrix had this role of [an] exorcist. He put Vietnam into that amplifier. He’s the great instrumental genius of rock and roll.” And while Bono does like to talk up a big game whenever he talks about his favourite artists, there isn’t a single thing he said there that wasn’t true.
When you look at a song like ‘Machine Gun’, the whole recording feels more like a piece of art than an actual song. The harsh reality of Vietnam was heavy on Hendrix’s mind when going through the entire tune, and while you can plot out where his solo is going if you’ve studied it for years at a time, there doesn’t seem to be any direction for Hendrix. He was letting his emotions dictate where his fingers were moving, and the entire track is practically a look into what the sound of a soldier in combat sounded like.
Bono could only hope to make those kinds of songs, but it’s not like The Edge didn’t have a few tricks up his sleeve. In no way, shape or form am I saying that The Edge is anywhere close to what Hendrix was capable of as a guitarist, but if you’re judging it solely on the influence, those delay effects were a gamechanger for guitarists the same way that Hendrix’s wah-wah pedal was for people in 1967.
But even though Hendrix might seem a bit more tame when looking at the virtuosos that show up on social media almost every other day, what you have to remember is that he was the first person to sound like that. He was laying the groundwork for everyone else, and while he and Eric Clapton belong in the same conversation in terms of influence, you don’t get modern guitar playing without Hendrix coming down to Earth.
