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"Rock & roll music -- the noisier the better -- is still my alarm clock. It still keeps me awake. It's a hymn to the numbness, a reasonable response to the way we live." -- Bono, 1992 |
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"Rock & roll music -- the noisier the better -- is still my alarm clock. It still keeps me awake. It's a hymn to the numbness, a reasonable response to the way we live." -- Bono, 1992 |
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My Fan Year - #5
@U2,
February 05, 2005
I'm disqualified from entering this month's @U2 @10 contest, but I want to write a speech anyway. Here's how I'd induct U2 into the rock pantheon... I hope you realize the danger now faced by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is a band that's going to cause you trouble, my friends. If U2 were a multiple-choice question, the answer would be "all of the above." They are a band with no concept of boundaries. In their songs, the sexual is the spiritual is the political; the personal is broadcast live to twenty-two countries. We can expect some coloring outside the lines with a lineup of one Welshman, one Englishman and two northside Dubliners, one of whom grew up both/neither in an either/or world. Once he had figured out how to be both Catholic and Protestant, the rest was easy. U2 are a marching band drummer, a reggae bassist, an ambient minimalist engineering professor and a guy who can be anyone -- a cross between the devil and Elvis Presley, a crooner of Nelson Riddle arrangements, a black woman singing gospel. And all of these identities -- the band's and the singer's -- can and do emerge in a single song. No boundaries. That little fella singing lead ran in a street gang populated by boys who wore dresses. That guitar player can hold a note to infinity if you like. That bassist will ask what philosophers you're reading these days and that drummer has the best BS detector in this ridiculous business. Their love of the limitless has given U2 the freedom to have punk hits, dance hits, friends in high office, friends among the street bums, albums that dream of America, Europe, Japan; it has taken them into high life and harmonica solos, graffiti and public nudity and giant metallic fruit. Compared to them we all lack imagination; we impose boundaries because we fear chaos lurks beyond. U2 smash through restrictions imposed on them and let in, not chaos, but bright white light. A leap from the Live Aid stage -- the singer isn't mobbed, he's danced with. Concerts leap from club to theatre to arena to stadium -- the intimacy never lessens, it grows. I remember a web chat with Bono a few years back. Thousands of people from dozens of countries were furiously typing, all trying to push past the moderator with their questions -- and then Bono asked him to, in effect, open the gates. Everyone's words came pouring onto the screen at once. It was glorious. Bono led a cyber-singalong, typing in one verse of a song at a time and asking the fans to type it after him. Some did; others cried in caps lock screams WE LOVE YOU!!! and still others kept flinging questions. Seeing all this text scroll down the page was like getting to hear every individual voice in the 20,000-strong crowds that go to see U2 play. It may have seemed like cacophony, but it was really music -- the kind of music you get when you embrace all possibilities, all contradictions. U2 music. No one else has done it. You have to tear down the walls of ego to keep the same lineup for 25 years. Who keeps a manager that long? Record producers? Photographers and album cover designers and tour directors and soundmen? So many around the band have been there from the beginning -- fans, too, have followed for twenty years or more. We follow because in this world there's no horizon in sight, because limits are imposed by fear and the opposite of fear is love. And these four, they don't believe in the devil, excess, riches (but boy, you should see where they live!) -- they believe in love. Here's your multiple choice question. Shall the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame count among its members A. Larry Mullen Jr., who started it all at Mt. Temple School with a "musicians wanted" notice on the bulletin board and who has apparently found, if not the Fountain, then the Harley-Davidson of Youth? or B. Adam Clayton, that quiet, unassuming gent with the mighty mighty bass, the first of many true believers in the band, or C. Bono, the hero for many an aspiring young rock star and the bane of many a government official's existence, who dreams out loud then makes dreams reality through sheer force of will, or D. I don't know what to say about this man. Do you know who this is? Do you KNOW who this IS? THIS IS THE EDGE!!! Ladies and gentlemen: if we induct one we induct them all, but if we induct them all there'll be no stopping them. That's the danger. There'll be no barring the gates or making the Hall of Fame an exclusive place anymore, because these four bring in with them Paul McGuinness, Joe O'Herlihy, Willie Williams, Steve Lillywhite, Salman Rushdie, Bill Clinton, Naomi Campbell, everyone at Dandelion Market, everyone at Live Aid, everyone who bought The Joshua Tree, everyone at Superbowl XXXVI, everyone who's ever been a part of their world and we're all a part of their world now because they live where the streets have no name...If you're willing to take that risk, then it is my profound pleasure now to throw the gates open for U2! © @U2/Pancella, 2005.
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