BONO: Making The Effort

BONO: Making The Effort

FEATURES

Adrian Thrills

(For the edification of our always-concerned readers who might be wondering what the heck U2 have been doing of late, here’s the scoop: they’re recording a brand new album. Until that arrives, shall we content ourselves with a few words from lead singer Bono? He’s interviewed here by the NME ’s Adrian Thrills; the major topic of discussion is his exemplary contribution to the Sun City album—the track “Silver And Gold, ” an unusual collaboration between the Irish singer and two well-known performers in the Rolling Stones.—-Ed.)

On their 1984 U S. tour, the one that coincided with the last U.S. election, U2 were becoming increasingly associated with a growing resurgence of the American civil rights and anti-apartheid movements. Before playing the anthemic “Pride,” for instance, lead singer Bono Vox would regularly refer to the South African struggle. On one date of the tour he even received a telephone call of encouragement from Bishop Desmond Tutu, one of the most influential black church leaders in South Africa.

Bono himself is guarded as to pop or rock’s ability to actually influence political change and is wisely wary of any “U2 Save World” shtick, but the band’s efforts in the States do, incredibly, appear to have had a minor effect: they were cited as one of the factors in reawakening the spirit Of struggle at the Democratic Party’s presidential convention in ’84, and an editorial in the New York Times also associated the Irish band with the perceptively shifting attitudes of a sector of American youth.

The singer, however, sensibly plays down his potential political impact.

“I’m just like anyone else. I watch the television and read the papers and I don’t really know what’s going on, especially regarding something like South Africa. I really don’t know. I’m just as numb and mummified as anyone else.

“I use my songs as a way to awaken myself. It’s like sticking a needle in your leg after it has gone to sleep.”

More so than even “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride,” the latter inspired by Martin Luther King, Bono’s recent contribution to The Artists United Against Apartheid’s Sun City album—-“Silver And Gold”—is the most specific political song he has ever written. According to its composer, it is set apart in a couple of other ways, too.

“It’s the first song that I’ve ever written that comes from somebody else’s point of view. U2 songs are always from my point of view, but this is a departure into the third person. It’s also the first blues-influenced song I’ve written. I play the guitar with my foot miked up, the way that old bluesmen like Robert Johnson used to do. And I’m banging the side of my guitar with my, knuckles to keep the rhythm. As the song goes on, the tempo keeps getting faster and the mood more and more intense.

“The line that started the whole thing for me was one about a boxer, the idea of a prize fighter in his corner being egged on by a trainer. It’s a sport that I’ve found increasingly interesting over the past year. I find a lot of aspects of it very sordid, a bit like cock fighting or something, but the image was very powerful for the song.”

The circumstances leading to the linkup between Bono and the two Stones that play on “Silver And Gold” and the realization of the song in so short a timespace are covered in more detail by Dave Marsh’s excellent book Sun City—The Making Of The Record (Penguin Books). Briefly, however, the idea arose following a studio conversation about the history of the blues between Bono, Peter Wolf (former vocalist of the J. Geils Band), Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood in New York’s West Side Studio, where the Stones were recording. Bono was in the city for the shooting of the “Sun City” single video and, when he suggested that they record another song for inelusion on the album, Richards and Wood needed no convincing.

TURN TO PAGE 56

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

And, though their musical and personal backgrounds would appear to be poles apart, Bono was rather taken by Richards and Wood during the recording session that ensued.

“Richards is the kind of person that sometimes gives the impression that he’s in a world of his own over at the other side of the room, but he’s actually very wide awake. He’s a man with all the infamy and fortune anyone could want and it all means very little to him.

“The music is the all-important thing to him. Whether you like or dislike him isn’t really the point. The important thing is that he hasn’t taken the bait and been middleclassed out like so many others.”

With the twin guitarists adding a dense, dank and eerily oppressive atmosphere to the track—Wood reportedly playing slide guitar with a switchblade!—Bono’s vocal is an uncharacteristic but powerful gutteral murmur, punctuated by shrill whoops. The mood is primal and basic, enhanced by Keith LeBlanc and Steve Jordan’s percussive knuckle-dusting of a pair of cardboard boxes and lightened only slightly by the clarinet of New York Times jazz writer Robert Palmer (no relation) and a female chorus led by Tina B and Kirsty MacColl.

As an old friend of Steve Van Zandt, Bono had been one of the first artists to pledge his support to the “Sun City” single, and was assigned the prestigious final line of the last verse on the version that was ultimately released.

By the October morning that he and engineer Tom Lord-Alge handed the tapes of “Silver And Gold” over to former EStreeter Van Zandt for a final mix, the Sun City LP was on the point of the mastering process.

Now, months later, the song still stands as a bold and powerful statement and a moving piece of music. Like Gil Scott-Heron and Peter Gabriel in the late 70s and Jerry Dammers and Steve Van Zandt in the early ’80s, Bono Vox has produced one of his most effective and spontaneous songwriting moments from the rage he feels at the system presided over by PW Botha. And as long as that abhorrent regime and its tacit support lobbies in the West persists, he won’t be the last.

You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out a fire. 0