The song The Edge wrote to outdo The Strokes: “A very vital, ‘up’ rock and roll track”
What do you do when the musical landscape is rapidly changing around you and some new kids are coming for your crown? In the case of U2, the answer was simple: try to become them.
With the dawn of the new millennium, a new wave hit. The 1960s had rock and roll, the 1970s saw it get heavier and harder, the 1980s brought in electronic elements, and the 1990s was gloomy and grunge. Then, when the ball dropped on 2000, it was all about indie.
It had been brewing for a while as the New York scene especially was cooking up something new. Born out of a breeding ground for DIY music, when artists were moving out to Brooklyn and into warehouses and where communities of mates with no money were sharing ideas, that distinctive sound of ‘00s guitar music merged a rock and roll polished mindset with punk ethics, and topped it off with a huge dose of youthful silliness.
The youthful silliness is arguably the essential element here. When thinking back to the Meet Me in the Bathroom era, led by acts like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it was really their thrill-seeking attitude that fuelled everything, leading to catchy riffs and lyrics that didn’t take themselves all too seriously but were still sharp.
It launched a new obsession as quickly, where the New York scene and the bands it was inspiring across the pond as well, were becoming music’s latest stars. The indie sleaze era was in full swing and, in turn, bands like U2 who were still making classic rock, were beginning to feel stale and old.
But go back a decade or a few, and U2 were essentially their own generation’s equivalent of The Strokes. At one point, they’d been the exciting new name with all that fresh energy, and so, in 2003, they went on a direct mission to bring it back.
“I think with ‘Vertigo’ we really wanted to have something that was a very vital, ‘up’ rock and roll track,” bassist Adam Clayton said about the opening track of their 11th album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. They were always happy to admit where the influence came from as he added, “I think we’d been hearing that sort of energy coming from The Hives, The Strokes and The Vines, and that sound really connected with where we came from.”
For The Edge though, the creation of ‘Vertigo’ was a mission to prove his worth in a way.
In a musical landscape that seemed to be moving on, and fast, his decision to try and emulate this new sound was more a challenge to prove that with his years of seniority, he could not only do what the kids were doing, but beat them at it. “I think Edge felt that he could produce and write a song or riff that was even better than some of those,” Clayton admitted as he watched his bandmate work.
The Edge likely didn’t want to be entirely honest about that. Let’s face it: trying to win a race against the energetic new kids as a veteran on the scene is pretty embarrassing.
So instead, he claimed ‘Vertigo’ was an effort to embrace nostalgia, stating, “I was trying to come up with a sound and a guitar riff that was unashamedly rock and roll, full on, the best of that form which I love, like the Pistols or The Stones at their best punk,” rather than owning it up to it being a challenge of trying to outrun the future.
