U2Soar
War Child
Twenty One Years of Pop Music
Propaganda, Issue 26, June 01, 1997
Neil McCormick
His conversation shoots off down unexpected alleyways. Discussing one of the album's standout tracks, "Mofo," a wailing techno-blues for an absent mother, he'll suddenly launch into an animated flight of fancy. "We should have called it Oedipussy," he declares, laughing. "Maybe I could sing it hanging from a giant umbilical cord." There is, however, darkness lurking behind the humour. Bono's mother died when he was 14 years old, and he has long recognised that this was a defining moment in his life, pushing him in two directions at once: toward his profound faith in God and towards rock and roll.
The prevailing wisdom is that the devil has all the best tunes. Yet three members of U2 (Bono, Edge and Larry) have been devout Christians since their teens. Although they avoid preaching or crusading, their spiritual faith infuses their music. It could even be argued that the tension between their Christian values and the very primal, sexually and usually hedonistic nature of their chosen art form lies at the very heart of U2's creativity. As Bono sings on "Mofo," he has been "Lookin' for to save my soul/Lookin' for to fill that God-shaped hole."
"Everyone's got one," he says. "Some are blacker and wider than others. It goes right back to the blues, it's what first makes you want to shout at God, when you've been abandoned or someone's been taken away from you. And I don't think you ever fill it, not completely. You can fill it up with time, by living a full life, but if you're silent enough, you can still hear the hissing." Lightening the mood, he starts to sing, to a familiar Bruce Springsteen tune, "Everybody's got a hungry hole."
Some might imagine that faith would be enough to fill that hole. Yet several tracks on Pop suggest Bono might be experiencing a crisis in this department. On songs like "If God Will Send His Angels," "Please," a stunningly ironic paean to the values of quick-fix capitalism entitled "The Playboy Mansion" and the album's emotionally raw closing track "Wake Up Dead Man," he seems to be searching in vain for evidence of the hand of God amidst the chaos and injustice of worldly life ("Jesus, were you just around the corner? / Did You think to try and warn her? / Or are you working on something new? / If there's an order in all of this disorder / Is it like a tape recorder? / Can we rewind it just once more?").
"Belief and confusion are not mutually exclusive," Bono insists. "I think belief gives you a direction in the confusion. But you don't see the full picture. That's the point. That's what faith is. You can't see it."
Which brings us back to another argument we've been having ever since we first met. Between faith and faithlessness, I am an atheist and he's a believer and sometimes the gulf of mutual incomprehension that lies between these opposing points of view seems more than even friendship can compensate for.
"It's a hard thing to explain to another person," he says (although it does not seem to stop him trying). "It hasn't happened to you, so why should you believe it? I was just lucky. I just saw that there was logic in the universe, I could see it in everything, by just looking around me. When I was just a kid I could see it in flowers, or in a beautiful woman, or in the sound of strings, the sound of an electric guitar, just life. Life had a real beauty to it. I looked around and I saw it. It comes back to instinct. You're a writer, you know about instinct. Faith is just up the street, if not next-door neighbours. Faith and instinct. But you can't just rely on it. I'm sure you question your atheism, just as I question faith. You have to beat it up. You have to pummel it to make sure that it can withstand it, to make sure you can trust it."
? Propaganda, 1997. All rights reserved.
Propaganda, Issue 26, June 01, 1997
Neil McCormick
His conversation shoots off down unexpected alleyways. Discussing one of the album's standout tracks, "Mofo," a wailing techno-blues for an absent mother, he'll suddenly launch into an animated flight of fancy. "We should have called it Oedipussy," he declares, laughing. "Maybe I could sing it hanging from a giant umbilical cord." There is, however, darkness lurking behind the humour. Bono's mother died when he was 14 years old, and he has long recognised that this was a defining moment in his life, pushing him in two directions at once: toward his profound faith in God and towards rock and roll.
The prevailing wisdom is that the devil has all the best tunes. Yet three members of U2 (Bono, Edge and Larry) have been devout Christians since their teens. Although they avoid preaching or crusading, their spiritual faith infuses their music. It could even be argued that the tension between their Christian values and the very primal, sexually and usually hedonistic nature of their chosen art form lies at the very heart of U2's creativity. As Bono sings on "Mofo," he has been "Lookin' for to save my soul/Lookin' for to fill that God-shaped hole."
"Everyone's got one," he says. "Some are blacker and wider than others. It goes right back to the blues, it's what first makes you want to shout at God, when you've been abandoned or someone's been taken away from you. And I don't think you ever fill it, not completely. You can fill it up with time, by living a full life, but if you're silent enough, you can still hear the hissing." Lightening the mood, he starts to sing, to a familiar Bruce Springsteen tune, "Everybody's got a hungry hole."
Some might imagine that faith would be enough to fill that hole. Yet several tracks on Pop suggest Bono might be experiencing a crisis in this department. On songs like "If God Will Send His Angels," "Please," a stunningly ironic paean to the values of quick-fix capitalism entitled "The Playboy Mansion" and the album's emotionally raw closing track "Wake Up Dead Man," he seems to be searching in vain for evidence of the hand of God amidst the chaos and injustice of worldly life ("Jesus, were you just around the corner? / Did You think to try and warn her? / Or are you working on something new? / If there's an order in all of this disorder / Is it like a tape recorder? / Can we rewind it just once more?").
"Belief and confusion are not mutually exclusive," Bono insists. "I think belief gives you a direction in the confusion. But you don't see the full picture. That's the point. That's what faith is. You can't see it."
Which brings us back to another argument we've been having ever since we first met. Between faith and faithlessness, I am an atheist and he's a believer and sometimes the gulf of mutual incomprehension that lies between these opposing points of view seems more than even friendship can compensate for.
"It's a hard thing to explain to another person," he says (although it does not seem to stop him trying). "It hasn't happened to you, so why should you believe it? I was just lucky. I just saw that there was logic in the universe, I could see it in everything, by just looking around me. When I was just a kid I could see it in flowers, or in a beautiful woman, or in the sound of strings, the sound of an electric guitar, just life. Life had a real beauty to it. I looked around and I saw it. It comes back to instinct. You're a writer, you know about instinct. Faith is just up the street, if not next-door neighbours. Faith and instinct. But you can't just rely on it. I'm sure you question your atheism, just as I question faith. You have to beat it up. You have to pummel it to make sure that it can withstand it, to make sure you can trust it."
? Propaganda, 1997. All rights reserved.
......I would like to understand that, but I can't. What did Bono see in the sound of an electric guitar? Somehow...God? Or what? Really, I want to understand that sentence. I can understand when he says in 'flowers' because it is God's creation, but in sound? 
