The 1970s rock band Bono said blew everyone else away: “A sense of exorcism”
Anything that Bono ever liked didn’t have to be the most sophisticated music in the world.
He had the opportunity to work with the true greats of music history, like Pavarotti, but when you’re looking at U2’s entire body of work, a lot of their best tunes are about taking the bare essentials of rock and roll and making something beautiful out of it. It doesn’t always require having the most sophisticated songs of all time, and Bono knew that any band could get the job done if they had a lot of passion and energy behind what they were doing.
Even though any musician is going to want to be the best they can be on their instrument, there are more than a few times when that doesn’t really cut it in rock and roll. Yngwie Malmsteen is one of the fastest guitar players in the world and deserves every accolade that he has as one of the greatest players of his generation, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t really care that he can play that fast.
Rock and roll wasn’t based on being the most proficient on any instrument, and it’s not like The Edge was a masterful guitar player by any means. He worked with what he had most of the time, and he wanted the chance to make some of the greatest melodies to come out of the guitar, whether it was the riff of ‘Vertigo’, the single chiming opening of ‘I Will Follow’, or the entire sonic world he seemed to create when he recorded ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’.
Most kids wouldn’t have had the confidence to take those kinds of risks, but the punk movement reminded everyone that things didn’t need to be totally perfect to sound great. The Ramones were playing some of the crudest rock and roll that anyone had ever heard, and while they picked up the ball and ran with it, the entire world seemed to shift on its axis when the Sex Pistols first started gaining steam.
John Lydon didn’t bother taking vocal lessons, and there were already rumours that none of the band members actually knew how to play their instruments, but that didn’t stop them from making some of the best punk music out there. There was genuine anger in Lydon’s voice, and that was more than enough for Bono to get on board when he heard Never Mind the Bollocks for the first time.
From the minute those stomping boots start on ‘Holiday in the Sun’, every single kid realised they were listening to something more dangerous than anything else, and Bono knew no one else compared to that kind of attitude, saying, “[With punk] there was always a sense of exorcism in rock and roll. Sex Pistols just blew everything out of the water. It was an incredible roar of rock and roll. “
That kind of comment isn’t really helping Bono being looked at like someone with a messiah complex, but he does have a fair point. The entire rock scene had been inundated with bands that were only looking to make the most polished music of all time, and even in an era when Led Zeppelin were still the reigning kings of rock, Lydon seemed a lot more attainable as a rock and roll star than anything Robert Plant or Jimmy Page was doing.
Not every part of Nevermind the Bollocks has exactly aged well by any stretch, but it was never supposed to, either. Lydon only aimed to reflect what he felt in that moment, and he was going to spend the rest of his life staying as angry as he could. After all, he was the one telling us that anger was an energy, and it was up to us to decide how to use that energy every time someone sang a song.
