Robert Palmer’s issue with Bono’s voice: “U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot”
It’s hard to really think of Bono as the most beloved figure in popular music.
He’s definitely one of the most popular frontmen that the rock world has ever seen, but ever since he first stepped into the public eye back in the 1980s, there’s a clear dividing line between people that think that he should be considered a god among men whenever he plays or people that think that he should be tried for the sins he committed against rock and roll. Both of them are right to some degree, but Bono remembered more than a few singers who seemed to have it in for him even in his prime.
But even if you argue about Bono being too preachy or that he should stay out of politics, you can’t deny that his voice was one-of-a-kind when he first started performing. Every single track that he ever sang on was worthy of being a final take, and even when he was working on The Joshua Tree, most people would have loved to be able to reach those massive octave jumps that he did when working on tunes like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, especially on the demo, which is somehow higher than the recorded version.
That high register might be taxing, but that’s the reason why his voice works so well. Whereas most other singers feel like they’re gliding above the music every single time they sing, Bono is practically shouting from deep within the band whenever he bellows out songs like ‘Pride’, almost like he’s summoning up every single muscle in his body to deliver his message to the world.
And even if you don’t have time for his world views, you can’t deny that he believes every single thing that he was singing. There are more than a few times when his onstage rants warranted a few eyerolls, but when you hear him talking about it behind the scenes, it wasn’t about trying to preach from a soapbox. He had a higher calling, and he felt that it should be making the world a better place through his music.
In the age of MTV, that wasn’t exactly what everyone wanted to hear, and when Robert Palmer heard Bono, he had more than a few issues. Admittedly, Palmer’s slick, bluesy voice was much different from what Bono was doing, but the frontman remembered the ‘Addicted to Love’ singer asking his bandmates behind the scenes why the hell he needed to sound so shrill on every single song they put out.
Compared to every other singer at the time, Palmer said that Bono needed to lay off the higher octaves, with the U2 frontman recalling, “[He told Adam Clayton] ‘God, would you ever tell your singer to just take down the keys a little bit, he’d do himself a favour and he’d do us all a favour who have to listen to him.’ But I was thinking out of my body. I wasn’t thinking about singing. I didn’t really think about changing keys. Did we ever change a key? I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot and maybe that’s the place to be as an artist, you know right at the edge of your level of embarrassment.”
It can be a bit much for someone who isn’t ready for it, but Bono really hits the nail on the head when talking about how potentially embarrassing his voice can sound. It’s not always making the prettiest melodies, but Bono would rather make a record that reflected the emotion that he was feeling than trying to make everything sound too slick for the sake of getting a song in the charts.
So even if Palmer had a much different technique, that didn’t mean that Bono’s was ineffective every time he sang. There were more than a few artists who would be red-faced if they heard that voice coming out of their body, but if you weren’t getting a little bit embarrassed whenever you’re onstage, then you weren’t doing your job right.
