The worst band Brian Eno ever produced, according to Henry Rollins
Success has never been a measure of greatness. Chlamydia is, technically, successful, but that doesn’t warrant the cock-rotting virus any kind of adoration. This rule is also true in the subjective world of art. Record sales might imply a degree of reverence from ‘the people’ of the proletariat, but in the eternal words of Superhans, “People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can’t trust people”. Henry Rollins has always abided by this tried and tested rule of thumb.
As Bob Dylan once put it, “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked”. In every successful person’s life, there comes a sober reckoning—the moment they reconcile whether they were lucky or worthy. That moment has seemingly dawned on Bono, with the singer recently admitting that the band make him “cringe”.
“I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment,” the frontman famed for never removing his wrap-around sunglasses and flying his favourite trilby to Italy first class opined. Wide-necked Black Flag frontman, Henry Rollins, was already well ahead of him on this one—though his appraisal didn’t stop at the “embarrassment” threshold, he also thinks they’re simply shit.
His lambast was a force of nature. “They have the worst rhythm section in big rock,” Rollins said. “That is the most plodding, corny rhythm section ever to fill a stadium”. But they have, indeed, filled stadiums. In fact, in third place on the highest-grossing tours of all time, when adjusted for inflation, is the U2 360 Tour, which racked up a whopping $736million over 110 shows from 2009 to 2011.
Over seven million people watched the shows, which took place mostly in massive stadiums like Barcelona’s Nou Camp. In fact, they had an average attendance of roughly 66,000 over the course of the global jaunt. Playing such huge stadiums meant that they could offer rather reasonable ticket prices with a sliding scale of price categories to suit all budgets. Most tickets retailed between $30-55 in the US ($41-$68 today), with additional packages at $90 ($123 today) and $250 ($342 today). So perhaps they aren’t all that nefarious, but that still doesn’t explain certain things.
As Rollins explains on KZSC: “If you look at some of those records, they’re mediocre Brian Eno records with a bad band in the way. They need a producer like Eno or Daniel Lanois to kind of prop up this cabaret singer and his one-trick pony”. But the problem is that they have attracted talents like Eno and Lanois into their seedy lair. How? Well, it is often forgotten that U2’s earliest records were widely revered even by those who now condemn them—as though the band have befouled their triumphs, making it hard to separate the art from the artless, not because of any scandal, just pure overblown pomposity.
“I just think when you campaign [to promote both your band and world peace], it turns into a little bit like grandstanding, to me,” Rollins mused on this front. “Some people are completely immersed in charities for 80 to 100 hours a week, and he just kind of goes from one to the other. Is he on the road working for that? Or was it just for Newsweek?” That’s far from rhetorical, but it didn’t stop His Highness Eno from getting involved.
He might have made masterpieces with Roxy Music, David Bowie and Talking Heads, but in Rollins’ rollicking view, Eno shouldn’t have got himself involved with U2 and their “plodding” rhythm section, which against the odds has proved more catchy and successful than Chlamydia.
