The U2 songs that Bono refuses to revisit
It’s never easy for any artist to go back and look at how their old records turned out. It might be a pleasant surprise when a song comes together better than normal, but there’s always that irking feeling when someone knows they could have done better than what actually ended up on the tape. And while Bono is more than happy to talk up to importance of U2 as a cultural force some of the time, there are often moments where even he can’t stand listening to the sound of his own voice.
Granted, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t used his voice for good in some places. Even if he has some great songs at his disposal, it often feels like music has been secondary to the band’s humanitarian efforts in recent years, as if they are using their position to become a secular prophet rather than a musical one.
In fact, a lot of Bono’s endeavours are so central to his public persona that a lot of people forget that this is a man who plays music. Even though they have done their best to change with every single record, hearing the band inch closer to their classic sound throughout the 1980s was part of the reason people got hooked in the first place, watching them go from post-punk weirdos to one of the biggest stadium acts in the world.
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some stumbling blocks, either. Rattle and Hum still exists, and it’s even more cringy than it was when they were at the top of the world, but given the fact that the band made The Joshua Tree, it’s easy to look past the more superficial aspects of their shows and start seeing them as people that some genuine change out of everyone they play their music to.
But an artist shouldn’t be defined by only one year of their lives. Although people might like to revisit their past, there are bound to be a few moments where things either sound off or don’t come together in the way that they hoped, and when listening to their greatest hits album, Bono was not going to willingly listen to his own music and try to marvel at what a fine wordsmith he was.
“I actually had to be physically held down to listen to the best of the ’80s”
Bono
According to the frontman, he eventually had to listen to the record by force before it was finalised, saying, “I actually had to be physically held down to listen to the best of the ’80s . . . Of course, I think those songs are much better live, and Edge thought that it was important for me to hear it through at least once, but I hadn’t really listened to those recordings since we made them . . . I think it sounds like I sing like a girl.”
It might come to life onstage a bit better than on record, but Bono shouldn’t discount this era of his career, either. The whole reason why he could strut his stuff in Rattle and Hum was based on the songs that built them, and even if they could disappear up their own ass at some points in their documentary film, hearing them play tracks like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ wouldn’t have been possible had that raw anger hadn’t come through when War was released.
Of course, that also might have to do with the way that Bono saw that version of his career once the 1990s kicked in. They had disassembled their sound to make something entirely different on Achtung Baby, and once ‘The Fly’ was brought out, no one wanted anything to do with The Joshua Tree for a while.
