U2, Flat Lining on the Horizon: Scott Herold
“On the surface it appears that U2 fans, like Michael Jackson’s, are now in it for the cult of celebrity. Many U2 fans these days cannot even speak to the full breadth of their catalog.”
Michael Jackson just left the world a few weeks ago. He was sent off with an admonition from Jamie Foxx that the “Black community shared Michael Jackson with us” like he was an unwanted toy one was ashamed to admit owning, until another kid asked to play with it. As I watched Mr. Foxx deliver this ignorant and hateful statement, I wondered if one day, the Vatican would claim that Catholics the world over loaned us U2’s Bono. Like a touring holy relic we could buy the t-shirt, the CD’s and the dashboard Saint Bono.
The media and celebrity pageant surrounding Jackson’s death was like rolling back a boulder only to find the tomb empty. What Mister Foxx fails to understand is that our nation’s roots in slavery gave us American music. That music became the game changer. When kids in the 1950’s dropped a nickel in the Jukebox and listened to Chuck Berry, The Big Bopper, Little Richard, along with Johnny Cash, Gene Vincent and Dion they did not give a fuck about color. In the mid 1960’s Motown found its way into the homes off all kinds of people. Rock and Roll and Soul music ushered in change and helped to demand an end to segregation.
What do Michael Jackson and U2 have in common other than being two of the world’s biggest musical artists? Both made music that made us question political, social, and spiritual barriers. Eventually, however, the powerful, cultural phenomenon that was their music would give way to the cult of celebrity.
I remember where I was the first time I heard U2. It was 1982 and I was a sophomore in high school. I was sitting alone in my bedroom. My parents were recently divorced. I heard an “AAYEAHHHHHH” and a guitar that sounded like a freight train colliding with church bells. “All is Quiet on New Years Day/a world in white gets under way.” For a moment, I thought it was The Police. Then the DJ said “That is a new band out of Ireland called U2. They are fronted by Bono Vox, which is Latin for good voice, and a new guitar hero called The Edge”. It was “two fer Tuesday” and the DJ went straight in to Sunday Bloody Sunday.
My life changed forever at that moment. The Rock radio station in Omaha, Z 92, had recently begun to program new music in an FM format that was dominated by bands like Kansas, Rush and Supertramp. Punk and New Wave were taking over as the music of Generation X. Fueled by MTV and the death of Disco, program managers were forced to roll the dice on new acts like INXS, The Payolas, The Fix, REM, CS Angels and leading that charge to the airwaves was U2. And over on the top 40 stations you could not escape Michael Jackson.
Imagine a place in time where you would hear in the same half hour Styx followed by Ultravox Reap the Wild Wind. Then just turn the dial and some station somewhere would be playing PYT by Michael Jackson.
I immediately hid my holographic Boston belt buckle and records at the back of my closet. I asked my Mom to bleach my hair platinum blond and spike it. I ripped holes in my Police T-Shirt and started telling my red neck friends that we needed to ban apartheid. I even learned to Moon Walk.
Bono Vox was my new hero. When he climbed the lighting scaffles to raise a white flag of Solidarity over the crowd at Live AID it made every news channel. I felt the rebel songs stirring in my veins. This was real “bono-fide” let my people go Rock and Roll!
I took what little money I had earned mowing lawns and doing chores and bought War and October. Fuck Carry on My Wayward Son by Kansas! My new anthems were Party Girl and Two Hearts Beat as One. About a year later U2 would release “Live at Red Rocks” and proclaim to the world “This is not a Rebel Song this is Sunday Bloody Sunday”.
Bono was determined to defy all expectations and assumptions about his band.
When I left for College, I recall sitting up until sunrise my first night in the dorm listening to The Unforgettable Fire. I had no parents around to tell me to go to bed. All of the heartache of their divorce and all the shit I took for being an individual came pouring out of me. I wept to Bad and sang along “If I could/You Know I would/if I could I would let it go”. My dorm mates who chewed tobacco and got drunk daily to Hank Williams Jr. and Molly Hatchet thought I was mad. They gave me a new nick name “The Freak”. I relished in it.
U2 led to harder things like The Smiths, The Cure, The Church, The Alarm, and The Sisters of Mercy. As my musical experimentation grew U2 still remained the anchor to my “urbane mirror anger myth”. Then all hell would break loose.
Four lads who shook the world appeared on the cover of every magazine covered in grime and unshaven, like The Beatles “Hey Jude” via Willie Nelson. “Total Dirt bags” as one dorm mate put it. I knew and understood it as The Joshua Tree.
This was then things got curious. Out of the woodwork, the religious right began to co-opt U2 as a Christian Rock band. Bono now had a pulpit from which to give his sermons. I began getting high to Bullet the Blue Sky. A hit of acid and a joint at dawn, as the sun rises over the great plains, while your dancing to “In the locust Wind/Came a Rattle and Hum/ Jacob wrestled the Angel/The angel was overcome” is truly a religious experience. I almost got expelled for running a Ban Apartheid banner up the flag pole on campus while tripping my balls off and telling the security guard “I can see your soul”.
I believe that the high tide of celebrity worship may have led Bono to create the “Macphisto” and “The Fly” characters as he began to struggle with his stardom. In 1992 when Achtung Baby hit the streets Bono would become a caricature of himself.
Let’s get to the present. It is 2009. U2, for me, is “flat lining on the horizon.” I rattle and yawn. U2 is an enterprise, a brand. They play their career safe. Bono no longer needs to speak from his pulpit. He can simply sing a tagging line “Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die”. There is no need for activism or rebel songs you can simply buy U2 records and concert tickets for hundreds of dollars and feel like you are contributing to the greater good.
The band that once sang “Banks are the new Cathedrals” would also have you believe that the musical one stop shop “Live Nation” is the greater good. It is widely believed that “Live Nation” sat down Macphisto and company and said “You have arrived at an apex in your careers. The record business is dying. Concerts, Social Media and Merchandise are where it’s at. We can handle all of it. Here is a cashier’s check for $100 Million dollars”. In an instant U2 went from “What you don’t have you don’t need it now” to riding the gravy train and “By the way which ones Pink?”
I was driving around in Irvine, California recently when I heard the DJ come on and say “Here is the new single from U2. Every time I hear these guys it reminds me they are still on there game. There 360 degree world tour kicks off in Barcelona, Spain tonight. Tickets for future dates are on sale through ticket master “I will Go Crazy If I can’t Go Crazy tonight”. A shocking contrast to what I heard on the radio in 1982. It seems there is this hidden compliance in the industry regarding all things U2.
On the surface it appears that U2’s fans, like Michael Jackson’s, are in it for the cult of celebrity. Many U2 fans these days can not even speak to the full breadth of U2’s musical catalog. They go for sound bites. They no longer want the politics, the urgency and the humanitarianism. They want the unapologetic wealth and smarm of Bono. And, it seems, they want him canonized.
I guess I feel let down, a real sense of betrayal. Perhaps I am being forced to see beyond the illusion. Bono’s “Red” which gives 50% of the purchase price of various products to help provide medicine to persons dying of HIV in Africa is an excellent piece of marketing and AIDS awareness. Then I have to stop and recall the white flag of solidarity. I know that 33 Million people are infected with AIDS world wide. Over 2.1 Million live with the disease in Europe and North America. A great majority do not have access to affordable drugs for the care of HIV. Many can not afford the insurance costs. Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.
Front line model organizations like Minnesota AIDS Project, Clare Housing and Open Arms of Minnesota are desperately underfunded. There are many more like them who see no money from Red. When you buy a Red product do you learn that Heterosexuals are the driving force behind the AIDS pandemic?
Am I wrong to single Bono out? Should I crucify him for the lack of funding for HIV causes in America? Should I cast him out of the temple for cashing the philistines check? Should I cry in anguish “You sell outs”?! To single Bono out for the dire state of Rock and Roll would, of course, be absurd. As an adult who has spent years in the corporate world I realize that the only real revolution is to live alongside the man. Separate but with him. I guess my real sense of betrayal comes from realizing my heroes have creeping integrity.
I think back to the impact that Live AID had on me as a boy. So much in fact that I started a non-profit devoted to creating Rock and Roll concerts to raise support and awareness for other causes. Rock the Cause over the past two years has produced several concerts that have raised close to $20,000 for HIV charities. We have created a call to action list of over 1000 people who want to know how they can support HIV causes. We have done amazing work on less than a few thousand dollars.
I am finding it difficult to find a home for future Rock the Cause events as venue owners and concert promoters want outrageous venue fees and alcohol sale guarantees. Promoters like Live Nation will give guarantees which squeeze the independent Rock and Rollers out. They make it near impossible for new acts to tour and get noticed. Many young bands like The Alarmists, The Shy’s, So It Goes, and The Vacancies play with the same urgency and passion of the early U2.
Rock and Roll seems fucked. As I look at the world and its biggest rock act, I will offer Bono’s own lyrics to describe my feelings of betrayal “You speak in signs and wonders/I need something other/I would believe if I was able/I am living off the crumbs from your table/ Dignity passed us by”.
Scott Herold is CEO of Rock the Cause and a venerable guest blogger for Sacre Bleu.
