Day 25 – Bad Bono
The continuing adventures of “Eric’s Trip Around the Sun”. One final trip with the iPod.
Bono.
He’s a caricature of himself. Out of the progressive rock and roll artists of the 80s I would argue that Bono embraced the concept of the lead singer the most.
He’s also the lead singer that I have found the easiest to criticize over the years. There was no doubt something endearing about him in the late 80s and early 90s when he would be spending time on the Zoo TV tour trying to call up George H.W. Bush from the stage. There were so many worthy causes over the years that the band supported that there could be concern that would be known more about all the causes such as Amnesty International rather than being a rock and roll band.
This Irishman of the 80s is now a businessman of the naughts.
Their shining accomplishment for me will always be ‘Achtung Baby,’ a brave album to make when U2 was the biggest band on the planet.
‘Bad’ however, came from ‘Unforgettable Fire,’ a fine album that allowed the band to continue to climb up the charts of biggest band status.
For this song, I have to make a special call out to my roommate John, in college who made it part of a weekend ritual, especially if alcohol was involved to blasting Bad from a bootleg version that I had acquired at about 2 in the morning. The version of ‘Bad’ that was playing was from the Chicago 1998 Joshua Tree Tour. (YouTube clip above is the actual version from a boot titled “Rock’s Hottest Ticket”). The subject of the song has been about heroin use. Oftentimes, Bono would introduce the song to that effect, as in the version above, but change the subjects of the song.
So we would blast this from Corcoran Hall while John would air guitar in front of a huge Joshua Tree poster that hung in our room. This disturbed our neighbors either for being too loud or in the case of one of our neighbor Matt, he felt that Bono was breaking some sacred oath by including couple lines from the Rolling Stone’s ‘Ruby Tuesday’.
Reminiscing back at those times, it was easy to get wrapped up in the ideology of what rock and roll icons stood for. In fact, I still embrace it to a degree, wondering what kids of this generation and beyond will cling onto. I’ve questioned whether I have been too hard on him at times as I and I imagine countless others have had to come to terms with the realities of life.
31 years ago to the day when the song was released, I live in a city that is considered the capital of the heroin trade. Change the city that Bono mentions in the video from Dublin to Chicago, you begin to realize that the world has not changed.
I am older. I have a lot more gray hair now. I carry a few more pounds and have a beard but I realize that I have not changed much either.
• Guided By Voices – Back to Saturn X Radio Report
• Kode9 & LD – Bad
• U2 – Bad
• Battles – Bad Trails